WAHHĀBIS

Members of a puritanical Islamic movement founded in Nejd in the mid-18th century by Muḥammad ibn-’Abd-al-Wahhāb (1703–93), who began his career as a jurist of the ultraconservative school of the Syrian theologian ibn-Taymīyah (d. 1328). After journeying in neighboring lands the young reformer returned home convinced that Islam had deviated from the original path and determined to restore it to the golden age of the Prophet. All innovations (sing. bid'ah ), including past attempts at adapting the religion to changing conditions, were to be abandoned. The cult of saints, veneration of tombs, and visitation of shrines compromised the unity of God and savored of polytheism (shirk ), if not idolatry. Idolatry was kufr, punishable by death. Even Muḥammmad's intercession was condemned. The Wahhābi name for themselves was Muwaḥḥidūn ("unitarians"). The Prophet's mosque in medina had no minaret, no mosaic or gilded decoration, therefore Muslim mosques were to follow suit. Not only drinking and gambling, prohibited by the Qur’ān, were proscribed, but smoking, silken apparel, and all forms of luxury in living and self-indulgence were forbidden.

Such reforms could win no sizable number of adherents until a Nejdi chieftain, Muḥammad ibn-Saud (Su’ūd, d. 1765), espoused their cause. In addition, he married the reformer's daughter. This was not the first time religion and the sword in islam marched together to victory. Converts flocked to the new movement, prompted more by convenience than conviction. Riyadh (al-Riyāḍ), the future Wahhābi-Saudi capital, was captured in 1773. The drive eastward netted the entire area to the Persian Gulf. Northward the raids reached (in 1801) the two most sacred shrines of the Shī’ah, Kerbela (Karbalā') and al-Najaf (in the Iraq desert) commemorating the burial places of Ḥusayn and his father ali. Both were pillaged and stripped of their treasures that had been accumulated as votive offerings. Masters of central and eastern Arabia, Wahhābi warriors moved against Mecca and Medina and subjected them to a purge (1803–04). The road was open to Damascus, which was attacked. Thus did the Wahhābi realm in about 30 years extend itself from Hejaz to al-Hasa and in the north from Palmyra to Kerbela.

Alarmed, Sultan Maḥmūd II directed his Egyptianviceroy Muḥammad ‘Ali to check the rising menace to the Ottoman Empire. In a series of campaigns in the Arabian peninsula, ending in 1818, the Wahhābi power was broken. Later even Nejd fell under a rival dynasty, al-Rashīd's of Jabal Shammar in northern Nejd.

The revival of Saudi-Wahhābi power was initiated by a young refugee in al-Kuwayt (kuwait), ‘Abd-al-‘Azīz ibn-Saud. In a surprise attack ‘Abdviceroy Muh al-‘Azīz seized Riyadh (1901), consolidated his ancestral realm in Nejd and in 1913 added al-Ḥasa. Fifteen years later he drove King Ḥusayn (Hussein) out of Mecca and occupied it together with Medina. In 1932 he declared himself head of the newly created Kingdom of saudi arabia. He maintained an army with a core of the Wahhābi fraternity (Ikhwān ), recruited mostly from Bedouins, but settled in agricultural colonies; these were trained and disciplined warriors as well as active propagandists of the faith. Though limited today largely to the Arabian peninsula, Wahhābis still exercise appreciable influence on Islam, especially in many parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bibliography: a. f. rihani, Maker of Modern Arabia (Boston 1926). k. williams, Ibn Sa'ud: The Puritan King of Arabia (New York 1933). h. st. john b. philby, Arabia (New York 1930); Arabia of the Wahhabis (New York 1930).

[p. k. hitti/eds.]