Manifest Enmity - Origins, Development and Persistence of Classical Wahhabism PDF

MANIFEST ENMITY:
THE ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND PERSISTENCE OF

CLASSICAL WAHHĀBISM (1153-1351/1741-1932)
Cole M. Bunzel
A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY
THE DEPARTMENT OF
NEAR EASTERN STUDIES
Adviser: Bernard A. Haykel
September 2018
© Copyright by Cole M. Bunzel, 2018. All rights reserved.
Abstract
This dissertation presents a critical reexamination of Wahhābism (al-Wahhābiyya), the
Islamic revivalist movement named for Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), from
its emergence in central Arabia in the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth
century. Drawing on an array of new primary source material, including rare manuscripts
gathered from around the world, this study provides a new account of the movement’s
origins, development, and persistence over a nearly two-hundred-year span, namely,
1741-1932. Its main contention is that throughout this period Wahhābism was a
fundamentally exclusivist and activist movement, one set on converting the nominal
Islamic world to its version of the faith by coercive means, including violence. In
addition to calling on Muslims to turn away from what it considered polytheism (shirk),
Wahhābism adamantly required its adherents to manifest enmity (ʿadāwa) to those
Muslims deemed polytheists.
As is examined in detail, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb grounded his doctrine in the
religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), two
fourteenth-century Syrian Ḥanbalī scholars who stoked controversy in their own day for
their views. Among other things, they held that the widespread practices associated with
visiting the burial sites of saints and prophets constituted shirk. Following them, Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb likewise deemed such practices to be shirk. Yet not only did he adopt these
earlier scholars’ views, he adapted them in a more extremist direction. Furthermore, he
launched a religio-political movement to eliminate shirk, following the example of the
Prophet Muḥammad and the early Muslim community.
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For nearly two-hundred years, the exclusivist and activist spirit of classical
Wahhābism persisted in the writings and activities of the leading Wahhābī scholars. It
was only attenuated in the early decades of the third Saudi state (1902-present). From that
point onward, while Wahhābī scholars continued to elaborate their doctrine as before, the
hard-edged elements of the creed were less observed. Much later, beginning in the 1970s,
the classical Wahhābī heritage was rediscovered and reappropriated by the emergent
Jihādī Salafī movement, which found in the Wahhābī tradition ample justification, as well
as inspiration, for a new form of Islamic activism.
iv
Acknowledgments
My thanks are due first to my adviser, Professor Bernard Haykel, for his endless
encouragement and support throughout the researching and writing of this dissertation. It
has benefited tremendously from his guidance and assistance, including his help with
procuring rare manuscripts and making introductions in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. It
has also been considerably improved by his many comments and corrections, including
the occasional criticism (“too much inside baseball!”). So much of what I have learned
about Wahhābism and Saudi Arabia I owe to him.
Professor Michael Cook, who early on agreed to be one of the readers for this
project, has nearly served as a second adviser, and I am eternally grateful to him as well.
It has been my great fortune to have had someone of his scholarly caliber, and whose
familiarity with the subject matter stretches back decades, reading and commenting on
my work. His scholarship—aimed at “reconstitut[ing] the past from the fragmentary
evidence that survives from it,” and proceeding from the notion that “bigger things do
rest on smaller things”—has for me been a model of historical writing.
I should also like to thank Professors Muhammad Qasim Zaman and Khaled El-
Rouayheb for their most helpful feedback on several of the chapters. They gave
generously of their time and wisdom, and I am grateful to them for it.
In Riyadh, I had the pleasure of being hosted twice by the King Faisal Center for
Research and Islamic Studies as a visiting fellow (summers 2013 and 2015), on both
occasions with the support of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional
Studies. My thanks are to both outfits, as well as to the several other Saudi institutions
that assisted me with sources: the King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives,
v
the King Salman Library at King Saud University, and the King Fahd National Library. I
am grateful to the many Saudis who helped me during these research trips, including
Saud Al-Sarhan (of the King Faisal Center), Fahd al-Semmari and Ayman al-Ḥunayḥin
(of the King Abdulaziz Foundation), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shuqayr, Abdulaziz Alrasheed,
and Ahmad Shanbary. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and Abdulaziz played key roles in facilitating my
travel to the northern city of Ḥāʾil, where I had the good fortune of being granted access
to the Ṣāliḥ ibn Sālim Āl Bunayyān family library. Needless to say, I alone am
responsible for the views presented here, as well as for any errors or inaccuracies.
My parents, Robert and Mary Bunzel, who shall no longer have to explain why
their son is still in school, made many paths available to me, including this peculiar one.
Professor Fouad Ajami, my late mentor and friend, encouraged me to take it. Finally, I
would like to express my thanks to Kelly Seeger, for her love, support, and patience.
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Note on Conventions
In transliterating Arabic, I have generally followed the system of the Encyclopedia of
Islam Three, with two main differences: (1) I prefer to indicate of the elision of alifs with
a half ring (e.g., fī ʾl-masjid, not fī l-masjid, and waʾl-kitāb, not wa-l-kitāb); and (2) I
prefer to spell out ibn and bint rather than shortening them to b. and bt. As will be seen,
words and phrases are transliterated in parentheses in the main text; longer passages and
quotations are transliterated in the footnotes. The blessing ṣallā ʾllāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallama
following mention of the Prophet Muḥammad is here shortened to ṣ. In translating from
Arabic, I generally omit this, as well as the blessings following mention of God.
Dates are in most cases provided according to both the hijrī and Gregorian
calendars, in the format AH (Anno Hegirae)/CE (Common Era). The letter f appended to
a year indicates that and the following year. When only one year is given, it is the
Gregorian year.
vii
viii
ix
x
Najd (twelfth/eighteenth century)
Created using Esri data in GQIS
xi
Table of Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... v
Note on Conventions .................................................................................................... vii
Genealogy of the Āl al-Shaykh .................................................................................... viii
Genealogy of the Āl Suʿūd............................................................................................. ix
Map of the Arabian Peninsula ......................................................................................... x
Map of Najd .................................................................................................................. xi
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1
Wahhābism and Classical Wahhābism .................................................................................................. 4
Outline of Chapters ............................................................................................................................ 11
Geography and Demography of Central Arabia ................................................................................... 14
Wahhābism Studies ............................................................................................................................ 17
Sources for the Study of Classical Wahhābism.................................................................................... 23
Chapter 1: The Early Refutation of Wahhābism ............................................................ 33

Ibn ʿAfāliq’s Tahakkum al-muqallidīn ................................................................................................ 36
Al-Qabbānī’s Faṣl al-khiṭāb ............................................................................................................... 43
Al-Ṭandatāwī’s Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla................................................................................................... 49
Al-Qabbānī’s Kashf al-ḥijāb, Ibn Suḥaym’s Epistle, and Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s Refutation............................ 52
Al-Qabbānī’s Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl .................................................................................................. 59
Unsorted Refutations of the al-ʿUyayna Period ................................................................................... 61
Unsorted Refutations of the al-Dirʿiyya Period.................................................................................... 63
Ibn ʿAfāliq’s Letters to ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar ................................................................................. 70
Sulaymān’s ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Letter to Ḥasan ibn ʿĪdān .............................................................. 75
The Recantation of Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī .......................................................................................... 80
The Refutation of ʿAbdallāh Afandī al-Rāwī ....................................................................................... 85
The Twilight and Failure of Anti-Wahhābī Scholarly Activism ........................................................... 87
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 94
Chapter 2: The Doctrine of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb I: The Taymiyyan Background .......... 96
The Education of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.............................................................................................. 101
Summoning Ibn Taymiyya ............................................................................................................... 113
Ibn Taymiyya and Ḥanbalī Theology ................................................................................................ 123
xii
Ibn Taymiyya’s Circle ...................................................................................................................... 141
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 144
Excursus: Ibn Taymiyya’s Legacy before the Wahhābīs .................................................................... 145
Chapter 3: The Doctrine of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb II: The Key Components ..................151
Authority ......................................................................................................................................... 152
Tawḥīd ............................................................................................................................................. 161
Takfīr ............................................................................................................................................... 181
Al-Walāʾ waʾl-Barāʾ......................................................................................................................... 196
Jihād................................................................................................................................................ 208
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 218
Excursus: Wahhābism and Early Modern Islamic Revivalism ........................................................... 220
Chapter 4: In the Footsteps of the Prophet: The Warpath of Early Wahhābism (1153-
1233/1741-1818) .........................................................................................................226
The Prophet’s Path ........................................................................................................................... 231
From Basra and Ḥuraymilāʾ to al-ʿUyayna ........................................................................................ 237
From al-ʿUyayna to al-Dirʿiyya ........................................................................................................ 242
The Conquest of Ḥuraymilāʾ............................................................................................................. 247
New Obligations and Clarified Roles ................................................................................................ 251
Patterns of Expansion ....................................................................................................................... 255
The Letters of Suʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ............................................................................................. 268
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 274
Chapter 5: The Persistence of Classical Wahhābism (1238-1351/1823-1932) ..............277

I. The Second Egyptian Occupation (1253-59/1837-43) .................................................................... 280
Ibn Nabhān and a Man from al-Kharj ........................................................................................... 284
Ibn Duʿayj ................................................................................................................................... 290
II. The Saudi Civil War and the Rashīdī Interregnum (1282-1319/1865-1902) ................................... 294
Ibn ʿAjlān .................................................................................................................................... 295
The Opponents of Hijra in al-Aḥsāʾ ............................................................................................. 302
Ibn Jirjīs, Part I ............................................................................................................................ 306
Ibn Manṣūr .................................................................................................................................. 311
Ibn Jirjīs, Part II ........................................................................................................................... 316
Zaynī Daḥlān ............................................................................................................................... 320
Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr ................................................................................................................. 330
III. The Rise of the Third Saudi State (1319-1351/1902-1932) .......................................................... 344
The Ikhwān.................................................................................................................................. 347
Rashīd Riḍā ................................................................................................................................. 355
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Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 364
Conclusion...................................................................................................................369
Appendix I: Kalimāt fī bayān shahādat an lā ilāha illā ʾllāh (c. 1155/1742) ................378
Arabic text ....................................................................................................................................... 378
English translation............................................................................................................................ 385
Appendix II: Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (c. 1158/1745).....................................................397

Arabic text ....................................................................................................................................... 397
Appendix III: Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (1218/1803) .......................................................406

Arabic text ....................................................................................................................................... 406
Bibliography ................................................................................................................413
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Introduction
In 1405/1984, ʿĀṣim al-Barqāwī, a young Jordanian of Palestinian descent living in
Kuwait, authored a short book titled Millat Ibrāhīm (“The Religion of Abraham”).1 The
book was an indictment of the ruling regimes of the Islamic Middle East, as well as a
fervent call to revolution against those regimes in the form of jihād. In its purpose, it was
similar to previous Islamist manifestos such as al-Farīḍa al-ghāʾiba (“The Absent Duty”)
by the Egyptian Khālid al-Islāmbūlī (d. 1402/1982), which inspired the assassination of
Anwar Sadat in 1401/1981. Yet Millat Ibrāhīm possessed a quality that made it strikingly
different from its predecessors. This was that it made its case primarily in terms of
Wahhābism, or, more specifically, the Wahhābī heritage of the mid-twelfth to mid-
fourteenth/mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Names such as Muḥammad ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792), Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. 1233/1818), ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan (d. 1285/1869), ʿAbdallāh Abā Buṭayn (d. 1282/1865), Ḥamad ibn
ʿAtīq (d. 1301/1884), and Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān (d. 1349/1930) appear again and again
throughout the pages, al-Barqāwī repeatedly quoting these leading Wahhābī scholars to
emphasize certain Wahhābī principles. The central Wahhābī idea underscored in these
quotations is twofold: (1) that all worship is owed to God alone, and (2) that the believer
who grasps this must show enmity (ʿadāwa) to unbelievers and polytheists; otherwise he
has not met the conditions of pure monotheism, the religion of Abraham.
In al-Barqāwī’s presentation, the obligation to manifest enmity to the unbelievers
is illustrated first and foremost by the example of the Prophet Abraham, who is quoted in
1
Abū Muḥammad al-Maqdisī (= ʿĀṣim al-Barqāwī), Millat Ibrāhīm wa-daʿwat al-anbiyāʾ waʾl-mursalīn
wa-asālīb al-ṭughāt fī tamyīʿihā wa-ṣarf al-duʿāt ʿanhā, Minbar al-Tawḥīd waʾl-Jihād, 1431/2009f. For the
completion date, see ibid., 72.
1
the Qurʾān telling his unbelieving community, “between us and you enmity and hatred
have shown themselves forever, until you believe in God alone” (Q. 60:4).2 Hence the
title of the book, “The Religion of Abraham.” According to al-Barqāwī, as according to
the Wahhābī scholars he cites, the duty is also underlined by the example of the Prophet
Muḥammad, who is depicted as having been uncompromisingly hostile to the polytheists
of Arabia among whom he preached. As al-Barqāwī puts it, the condition of the Prophet
vis-à-vis the unbelievers of his time (ḥālahu … maʿa kuffār zamānihi) was one of
“manifest enmity to all who showed enmity to the religion” (ʿadāwa ẓāhira li-kull man
ʿādā ʾl-dīn).3 While the exact meaning of enmity is not spelled out by the author, no
doubt it means some form of confrontation, verbal or otherwise. At its highest level, al-
Barqāwī says, it takes the form of jihād.4
At the time he completed his book, al-Barqāwī, better known today as Abū
Muḥammad al-Maqdisī, had just returned to his home in Kuwait from Saudi Arabia,
where he had spent the past year pursuing informal religious studies.5 By his own
account, this was an eye-opening experience, not so much because of his teachers as
because of the books that he encountered outside the classroom. These books were to
have an immediate impact on al-Maqdisī’s writing, and a lasting impact on his thinking.6
The book that most affected him was the multi-volume compendium of Wahhābī texts
titled al-Durar al-saniyya fī ʾl-ajwiba al-Najdiyya (“The Splendid Pearls of Najdī
2
wa-badā baynanā wa-baynakumu ʾl-ʿadāwatu waʾl-baghḍāʾu abadan ḥattā tuʾminū biʾllāhi waḥdahu,
ibid., 18.
3
Ibid., 49.
4
al-jihād waʾl-qitāl … huwa aʿlā marātib iẓhār al-ʿadāwa waʾl-baghḍāʾ li-aʿdāʾ Allāh, ibid., 47.
5
See Joas Wagemakers, A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 36-37.
6
Abū Muḥammad al-Maqdisī, Wa-lākin kūnū rabbāniyyīn, Muʾassasat al-Taḥāyā, 1436/2015, 24. This is a
transcript (tafrīgh) of a video series in which al-Maqdisī narrates his life story.
2
Responsa”), which he came across in the library of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. This
was his first exposure to the Wahhābī scholarly tradition, and he was instantly hooked.
That year he would buy several more Wahhābī books in Saudi Arabia, studying them
carefully and taking notes. Millat Ibrāhīm, he would later say, was “the fruit of this
reading” (thamarat hādhihi ʾl-muṭālaʿa).7
What al-Maqdisī found so enticing about the Wahhābī heritage was its
uncompromising and activist nature. The main tenets of Wahhābism included
excommunication (takfīr) and association and dissociation (al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ),
precepts that entailed action. The Wahhābī scholars had, at certain times, deployed them
in political contexts, and al-Maqdisī took note of this. He was particularly intrigued by
the way that they applied these concepts to the invading Ottoman and Egypt forces in the
thirteenth/nineteenth century.8 Here was a tradition, it seemed to him, ready-made for the
circumstances of the Middle East of his own day, a region he saw as being ruled by idols
(ṭawāghīt, sing. ṭāghūt) ruling by man-made laws and allied with the “Crusader” West.
The main reason these rulers were held to be ṭawāghīt was that they were usurping God’s
legislative prerogative by establishing man-made laws; obeying them was thus
tantamount to polytheism (shirk). Traditionally, the main target of Wahhābism was shirk
in the sense of worshipping human beings at the burial sites of saints and prophets, not in
the sense of obeying illegitimate rulers. But al-Maqdisī had no problem redirecting
Wahhābī activist principles toward a new polytheistic target. The incendiary doctrine of
Wahhābism could, in his view, light the way to jihādī revolution.
7
Ibid., 9, 24.
8
Ibid., 24-25.
3
Shortly after finishing Millat Ibrāhīm, al-Maqdisī departed Kuwait for the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, drawn there by the cause of jihād against the Soviets
occupying Afghanistan. He joined up with the numerous Arab volunteers who had
flocked to the region for the same reason. Shortly thereafter, Millat Ibrāhīm saw
publication for the first time in Peshawar, Pakistan, and it quickly became a hit among
the Arab Afghans. Al-Maqdisī would say that it spread like wildfire (intashara ʾl-kitāb
intishār al-nār biʾl-hashīm), being read widely both in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
area and back in the Arab world.9 Many would see it as the manifesto of the emergent
Sunnī jihādī movement, which gradually came to be recognized as Jihādī Salafism (al-
salafiyya al-jihādiyya). Over time, al-Maqdisī acquired a reputation as the most
influential thinker in this movement, writing a great many more books and essays putting
the Wahhābī heritage front and center. Such is the place of Wahhābism in the ideology of
Jihādī Salafism.
Wahhābism and Classical Wahhābism
The present study is not much concerned with the jihādīs and their latter-day
appropriation of the Wahhābī heritage, though the subject will be revisited in the
conclusion. Rather, it is an inquiry into the Wahhābī tradition that the jihādīs have come
to claim as their own, namely, Wahhābism as it was from the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth
century to the mid-fourteenth/early twentieth century. This was a period when, far from
being a subservient or docile form of Islam, Wahhābism was one that encouraged, even
9
Ibid., 27.
4
demanded, confrontation with those Muslims deemed polytheists. This earlier form of
Wahhābism will occasionally be referred to here as “classical Wahhābism.”
It is important to recognize at the outset that the Arabic terms Wahhābism (al-
Wahhābiyya) and Wahhābī (Wahhābī, pl. Wahhābiyyūn) are in origin pejoratives coined
by the enemies of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792), Wahhābism’s
eponymous founder. Wahhābism refers to both the doctrine elaborated by Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb and his followers and the predicatory movement (daʿwa) that he initiated.
Another term that must be attended to here is Saudi, or more properly Suʿūdī.
Shortly after he began preaching in central Arabia in the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth
century, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb formed an alliance with a man named Muḥammad ibn
Suʿūd (d. 1179/1765), the leader of a town called al-Dirʿiyya, who gave his support to the
Wahhābī missionary effort. Over the course of the next several decades, the originally
minor polity based in al-Dirʿiyya expanded to encompass all of central Arabia, and by the
early 1200s/1800s it had annexed western and eastern Arabia as well. In most scholarly
analysis, this polity is known as the first Saudi state (c. 1157-1213/1744f-1818), the
headship of state being the exclusive province of the Āl Suʿūd. More accurately, the
polity might be termed the first Saudi-Wahhābī state, as Wahhābism, conceived of as the
only true form of Islam, was the state’s raison d'être and its lifeblood. Its leaders saw
themselves as expanding not just their political authority but also the ambit of true Islam,
following the example of the early Muslims in the first/seventh century.
The Saudi-Wahhābī partnership began as the alliance between Ibn Suʿūd and Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, but it endured as an alliance between the Āl Suʿūd and the descendants
of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the Āl al-Shaykh. The first Saudi state was destroyed in
5
1223/1818 by the military forces of Muḥammad ʿAlī’s Egypt, but the Saudi-Wahhābī
enterprise quickly resurfaced in a second Saudi state (1238-1305/1823-87). This
controlled central Arabia as well as eastern Arabia for a time, but it never managed to
reconstitute the empire of the first state. The third Saudi state, launched in 1319/1902, did
succeed in recovering most of the territory of the first state. In 1351/1932, the third Saudi
state was renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has remained its official name to
this day.
While the word Saudi arouses no controversy, the Wahhābī epithet has been
deeply unpopular among those to whom it applies. Wahhābism is therefore by no means
a neutral term. Yet the problem, from a scholarly point of view, is that no alternative
readily presents itself. During the first Saudi state, the Wahhābīs referred to themselves
merely as Muslims (Muslimūn) and monotheists (muwaḥḥidūn), casting their opponents
as unbelievers (kuffār) and polytheists (mushrikūn). It is therefore not really an option to
adopt the Wahhābīs’ own terminology without crediting their theological claims. In
Western scholarship, Wahhābism and Wahhābī have long been the convention. In the
1940s, one scholar, looking for a more neutral option, gave “unitarianism” and
“unitarian” a try, but it did not catch on.10 Another option would be to adopt the line
advanced by many Saudi officials and intellectuals today who insist that Wahhābism does
not even exist. The general argument here is that there is nothing particular about the
version of Islam known as Wahhābism; it is simply Islam, plain and simple.11 Yet this is
10
This was George Rentz. See his The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia: Muḥammad
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (1703/4-1792) and the Beginnings of the Unitarian Empire in Arabia (London:
Arabian Publishing, 2004), which was originally his 1947 doctoral thesis. Even he still used Wahhābī in the
footnotes.
11
See, for instance, Wael Mahdi, “There Is No Such Thing as Wahhabism, Saudi Prince Says,” The
National, March 18, 2010.
6
of course unfeasible, as it suggests that there is no subject to be treated at all.
Furthermore, this claim is belied by the Wahhābīs themselves, who have long depicted
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as the progenitor of a distinct daʿwa, often described as al-daʿwa al-
Najdiyya (“the Najdī call” or “the Najdī mission”). The scholars of the daʿwa are often
termed aʾimmat al-daʿwa al-Najdiyya (“the imāms of the Najdī mission”). Clearly, the
Wahhābī movement is not illusory. Moreover, for a period of about fifty years beginning
in the 1300s/1880s, as will be seen in Chapter 5, many Wahhābīs actually embraced the
term Wahhābī. One of them, Ibn Siḥmān, described the Wahhābīs as “the Muḥammadan
Wahhābī sect” (al-ṭāʾifa al-Muḥammadiyya al-Wahhābiyya). It is therefore inaccurate to
assume that the term Wahhābī is inherently insulting.12
Yet another alternative to Wahhābism is Salafism (al-salafiyya), a term that some
Wahhābīs have seized on in recent decades as a more appropriate appellation for their
movement. To be sure, Wahhābism can rightly be seen as part of a larger Salafī
movement in Sunnī Islam. To my mind, Salafism is a movement that combines a
fundamentalist hermeneutics (that is, one that privileges direct engagement with the
source texts of revelation and the sayings and doings of the first three generations of
Muslims, al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ) with a commitment to the doctrinal tenets elaborated by Ibn
Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350).13 As a
name for the Wahhābī movement, however, Salafism was not popular until the mid-
12
In my own experience speaking with Wahhābī scholars, I have found that many of them have no problem
using Wahhābism and Wahhābī so long as they see that one knows what one is talking about.
13
On Salafism, see Bernard Haykel, “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action,” in Global Salafism:
Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 33-57.
On the doctrinal tenets of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, see below, ch. 3.
7
twentieth century,14 although one does occasionally find Wahhābī scholars using the
word Salafī before the modern era.15 Wahhābism is better seen as a subset of Salafism
rather than as Salafism itself, particularly as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb differed from Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in significant ways, as will be seen.
While I do not wish to abandon the convention of using the term Wahhābism, I do
propose here a modest terminological innovation, namely, classical Wahhābism. The
addition of classical of course presupposes some kind of transition away from one form
of Wahhābism to another, from classical Wahhābism to, say, modern Wahhābism. Such a
transition is of course not affirmed in official Saudi historiography, which presents the
modern Saudi kingdom as the natural heir of the first Saudi state. Yet since the rise of the
third Saudi state, there have been many actors, from the Ikhwān rebels of the early
fourteenth/early twentieth century to the jihādīs, who have accused the modern Saudi
ruling establishment of abandoning strict Wahhābī principles. With their sentiment I must
confess a certain degree of sympathy. For as this study will demonstrate, Wahhābism in
its earlier phase was of a markedly different character from the Wahhābism endorsed by
the modern Saudi government. Such a transition has also been noted by other scholars
who have worked on the movement. For instance, Werner Ende has written of the “Alt-
Wahhabiyya” (“old Wahhābism”) as distinguished from the new Wahhābism developed
in the third Saudi state.16 He did not, however, really define these terms. Guido Steinberg,
picking up on Ende’s observation, suggested that the transition from “Alt-Wahhabiyya”
14
David Commins, “From Wahhabi to Salafi,” in Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political,
Economic and Religious Change, ed. Bernard Haykel, Thomas Hegghammer, and Stéphane Lacroix
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 151-66
15
See, for instance, al-Durar al-saniyya, 12:367, 12:504.
16
Ende, “Religion, Politik und Literatur in Saudi-Arabien: Der geistesgeschichtliche Hintergrund der
heutigen religiösen und kulturpolitischen Situation,” Orient 22 (1981): 377-90 (I); Orient 23 (1982): 21-35
(II), 378-93 (III), 524-39 (IV).
8
to “Wahhabiyya” was a gradual one that took place between 1925 and 1953 when the
influence of the Wahhābī scholars was on the wane.17 More in line with my
understanding of this transition is Nabil Mouline’s identification of early Wahhābism as a
“counterreligion,” drawing on an idea in religious studies developed by Jan Assmann. 18
In Mouline’s telling, a counterreligion is a religion that “refuse[s] all compromise,” in
which “exclusion is the golden rule and interaction with other groups is possible only in
the framework of conversion or confrontation.”19 This notion of a counterreligion applies
well to Wahhābism as it was before the early twentieth century, after which it was forced
to come to terms with the constraints of the modern world, being routinized and
institutionalized as a “state religion.”20
Mouline’s portrayal of Wahhābism as a counterreligion accords with my idea of
classical Wahhābism, though in my usage the latter is defined by specific doctrinal
features, namely, exclusivism and activism. What is meant by exclusivism is the
extremely narrow definition of the boundaries of the faith. Indeed, the operative
assumption in classical Wahhābī writings is that the majority of the Islamic world is not
really Muslim at all but polytheistic. The rationale for this is that most professed Muslims
are either engaged in or tolerant of the cult of saints, meaning the ritual practices
associated with visiting the burial sites of saints and prophets, including asking the dead
for worldly favors and pleading with them for divine intercession. Such practices were
17
Steinberg, Religion und Staat in Saudi-Arabien: Die wahhabitischen Gelehrten, 1902-1953 (Würzburg:
Ergon Verlag, 2002), 610.
18
See Assman, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997).
19
Mouline, The Clerics of Islam: Religious Authority and Political Power in Saudi Arabia (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2014), 14, 57-58.
20
Ibid., 14.
9
part and parcel of mainstream Sunnī Islam in the twelfth/eighteenth century; but for Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, they were polytheistic practices that expelled one from the faith.
In classical Wahhābism, exclusivism had to be paired with activism before one
could be considered a true Muslim. Activism involved confronting, in one way or
another, the polytheists who had yet to see the light. To acknowledge the veracity of Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s claims regarding shirk was not enough to bring one into the fold of
Islam; it was also necessary to confront the unbelievers in one’s midst. Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb put this clearly in one of his earliest epistles, written no later than 1155/1742. He
tells the intended convert,
Do not think that if you say, “This is the truth. I follow it and eschew all else, but
I will not confront them and I will say nothing concerning them,” do not think that
that will profit you. Rather, it is necessary to hate them, to hate those whom they
love, to revile them, and to show them enmity.21
In other words, a real monotheist was required to exhibit enmity and hatred to the
putative polytheists around him. In subsequent generations of Wahhābism, enmity
(ʿadāwa) emerged as the catchword for this kind of activism. The display of enmity was
considered the sine qua non of manifesting the religion (iẓhār al-dīn). One of the most
prominent Wahhābī scholars of the thirteenth/nineteenth century, Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq (d.
1301/1884), put it thus: “Manifesting the religion means openly expressing enmity to the
unbelievers … Indeed, hatred that is not accompanied by manifest enmity is profitless.”22
As the Wahhābīs achieved political success in the first Saudi state, enmity came to be
21
lā taẓunna annaka idhā qulta hādhā huwa ʾl-ḥaqq wa-anā muttabiʿuhu wa-tārik mā siwāhu lākin lā
ataʿarraḍuhum wa-lā aqūlu fīhim shayʾan lā taẓunna anna dhālika yaḥṣulu laka bal lā budda min
bughḍihim wa-bughḍ man yuḥibbuhum wa-masabbatihim wa-muʿādātihim, quoted in Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-
Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb fī radd ḍalālāt Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ms. Baghdad, 9284, f. 65a. On this epistle, see
below, ch. 1, pp. 45-48.
22
iẓhār al-dīn huwa ʾl-taṣrīḥ lil-kuffār biʾl-ʿadāwa … fa-inna ʾl-bughḍ alladhī lā tuqārinuhu ʾl-ʿadāwa al-
ẓāhira lā yanfaʿu, Ibn ʿAtīq, al-Difāʿ ʿan ahl al-sunna waʾl-ittibāʿ, ed. Ismāʿīl ibn Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq (Riyadh:
Dār al-Hidāya, 1410/1990), 15, 30-31.
10
glossed as jihād, in the sense of armed struggle. When the Wahhābīs were having less
success, they still maintained that the manifestation of enmity, if only in the sense of
verbal condemnation, was an absolute necessity. The spirit of classical Wahhābism was
one of manifest enmity.
Outline of Chapters
This dissertation explores the origins, development, and persistence of classical
Wahhābism. By origins I mean the origins of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine in the
religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, including the ways that Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb modified or neglected certain aspects of their thought. By development I
mean the development of the Wahhābī movement from a marginal and persecuted group
to being embodied in an expansionary state. And by persistence I mean the persistence of
Wahhābism in adhering to its exclusivist and activist principles, from the beginning of
the second Saudi state through the rise of the third.
The dissertation comprises five chapters. Chapter 1, “The Early Refutation of
Wahhābism,” examines the extant refutations of Wahhābism produced between the
1150s/1740s and the early 1200s/1800s. Many of the refutations surveyed here survive
only in manuscript form and have never been discussed before. I have collected them
from around the world—Saudi Arabia, India, the United Kingdom, and Germany, among
other places. The scholarly enemies of the early Wahhābī movement, as will become
clear, were numerous, and while their collected testimony is by no means unbiased it
nonetheless constitutes a highly informative new source for the study of Wahhābism in
this phase. Indeed, the refutations are key to reconstructing the early history of
11
Wahhābism, as they can be used to show what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was saying and doing
at different points in time. They further allow us to put into chronological order some of
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s writings.
Chapters 2 and 3 look in some depth at the nature of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
doctrine, which is to say his religious thought, including its relationship to the doctrine of
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. While it is no revelation that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was
influenced by these earlier scholars, it has yet to be shown in a systematic fashion exactly
what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb borrowed, what he built on, and what he discarded. That is the
goal of these two chapters. Chapter 2, “The Doctrine of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb I: The
Taymiyyan Background,” is mostly concerned with Ibn Taymiyya and his doctrine. It
first examines Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s background and education, concluding that his
particular religious vision was without question shaped by his reading of Ibn Taymiyya
and Ibn al-Qayyim. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not hide his admiration for these men, and
many of the refuters regarded him as emulating them. The chapter goes on to summarizes
some of the distinctive aspects of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought that were to be incorporated
into Wahhābism. Chapter 3, “The Doctrine of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb II: The Key
Components,” presents a detailed analysis of the central features of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s doctrine, or doctrinal approach. I consider these to be five: (1) disregard for
contemporary religious authority, (2) the division of tawḥīd (God’s oneness) into two
kinds, (3) takfīr (excommunication), (4) al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ (association and
dissociation), and (5) jihād. For each of these, I assess the degree to which Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s ideas correspond to those of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. A major
divergence is identified in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s approach to takfīr. He was far less
12
restrained than Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim with regard to takfīr; and so, by
extension, he was far less restrained in his approach to al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and jihād.
Chapter 4, “In the Footsteps of the Prophet: The Warpath of Early Wahhābism
(1153-1223/1741-1818),” looks at Wahhābism’s development in the period beginning
with Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching and ending in the destruction of the first Saudi
state. The analysis proceeds from the observation, of both his detractors and his
supporters, that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was in some way imitating the Prophet in his
preaching and his other activities. The chapter argues that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s career
indeed hewed closely to that of the Prophet, beginning as it did with secretive preaching,
then public preaching without violence, then preaching with defensive jihād, and finally
preaching with offensive jihād. It is further shown that the Saudi state grew more
aggressive still following Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s death, threatening to expand into Iraq
and Syria and calling on the leaders of these lands to adopt Wahhābism. If not for
external intervention, the first Saudi state may well have expanded beyond Arabia, as was
its ambition.
Chapter 5, “The Persistence of Classical Wahhābism (1238-1351/1823-1932),”
takes up the efforts of the leading Wahhābī scholars during the second Saudi state and the
beginning of the third to safeguard Wahhābism from internal corruption and external
attack. The scholars in question, beginning with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh
(d. 1285/1869) and ending with Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān (d. 1349/1930), dreamed of
recreating something like the first Saudi state, but often found themselves on the
defensive. They repeatedly emphasized the duty of showing enmity to non-Wahhābī
Muslims, and argued that travel to non-Wahhābī lands was not permitted. The chapter is
13
divided into three sections treating three time periods: (1) the second Egyptian occupation
(1253-59/1837-43), (2) the Saudi civil war and the Rashīdī interregnum (1282-
1319/1865-1902), and (3) the rise of the third Saudi state (1319-1351/1902-1932). Only
in the latter did the scholars begin to exhibit signs of a willingness to compromise on
certain matters of doctrine. But the main theme underlined in the chapter is the scholars’
longstanding determination, and related literary efforts, to head off threats to Wahhābī
exclusivism and activism.
In the remainder of this introduction, I will address three preliminary matters with
which the reader needs to be familiar. First, I will cover the geography and demography
of central Arabia, which is the area of the Arabian Peninsula in which Wahhābism
emerged and the backdrop of most of the events that will be discussed. Second, I will
review some of the existing literature on Wahhābism in order to situate this work in the
space of what might be called Wahhābism studies. And third, I will introduce the
essential primary sources for the study of classical Wahhābism, an important step given
the source-critical nature of this work.
Geography and Demography of Central Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula, or Arabia—in Arabic, jazīrat al-ʿArab, or “the island of the
Arabs”—is the landmass situated in the southern Middle East and bounded to the west by
the Red Sea, to the south by the Indian Ocean, to the east by the Persian Gulf, and to the
north by Syria and Mesopotamia.23 Though larger in expanse than the Indian
subcontinent, Arabia is a historically sparsely populated place, largely because of the
23
See EI3, s.v. “Arabian Peninsula” (Robert Hoyland).
14
prevalence of desert conditions and meager rainfall. There is, however, some geographic
diversity. Four major geographic areas can be identified: (1) the western highlands, which
run north-south along the Red Sea and are separated from the water by a long coastal
plain known as the Tihāma; (2) the fertile southwest with its mountains, valleys, and
plains; (3) the flatter eastern coastlands of the Persian Gulf, where agriculture is enabled
in places by an abundance of groundwater; and (4) the harsh desert interior, the largest of
all these areas, composed of vast, sandy deserts such as the Dahnāʾ in the north and al-
Rubʿ al-Khālī (“the Empty Quarter”) in the south. The western highlands are divided into
two regions: ʿAsīr in the south and the Ḥijāz in the north, the Ḥijāz being the birthplace
of Islam and the home of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The fertile southwest
comprises the historical regions of Yemen (al-Yaman) and Ḥaḍramawt, while the eastern
coastlands encompass several distinct areas, including Oman in the south and the cluster
of oases known as al-Aḥsāʾ (often pronounced and written al-Ḥasā) in the north. In the
interior one finds a great plateau stretching hundreds of miles from north to south and
east to west. This plateau area is known as Najd, meaning “upland.” It was here, in one of
the most isolated and desolate parts of Arabia, that Wahhābism emerged and took root.
In the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth century, the most habitable parts of Najd were
located around Jabal Ṭuwayq, the long mountain range that extends some 500 miles from
north to south and rises to about 800 feet at its highest point.24 It was around the wādīs—
dry river valleys beneath which groundwater is usually accessible—and oases of Jabal
Ṭuwayq that settlements, or towns, grew up. The clusters of these towns came to form
24
On the geography of Najd, see Uwaidah M. Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement: Social,
Political and Religious Conditions During the Three Centuries Preceding the Rise of the Saudi State
(Reading: Ithaca Press, 2002), 23-37, 149-52.
15
identifiable districts, or subregions, of which at least ten could be counted. From
northwest to southeast, these were al-Qaṣīm, Sudayr, al-Washm, Thādiq, al-Miḥmal, al-
Shaʿīb, al-ʿĀriḍ, al-Kharj, al-Furʿ, and al-Aflāj. Further north lay the elevated region of
Jabal Shammar and its principal town of Ḥāʾil. At the dawn of Wahhābism, each of the
subregions of Najd was generally dominated by one of its towns. Again, proceeding from
northwest to southwest, these dominant towns were ʿUnayza in al-Qaṣīm, Julājil in
Sudayr, Tharmadāʾ in al-Washm, Thādiq in al-Miḥmal, Ḥuraymilāʾ in al-Shaʿīb, al-
ʿUyayna in al-ʿĀriḍ, and al-Dilam in al-Kharj. Al-ʿĀriḍ, which is identified with a wādī
known as the Wādī Ḥanīfa, holds a special place in the history of Wahhābism, as Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was born and raised in al-ʿUyayna and later moved to another of its
towns, al-Dirʿiyya, which formed the capital of the first Saudi state. Riyadh, the capital of
the next two Saudi states, is also located in al-ʿĀriḍ.
The people of Najd, who were mostly Sunnī Muslims belonging to the Ḥanbalī
madhhab, generally fell into two demographic categories: the settled peoples (ḥaḍar) and
the nomadic peoples (badw, or bedouin).25 The line of demarcation was not always clear,
but the differences between the two populations was significant nonetheless. The ḥaḍar
lived in the towns, making their livelihood in agriculture, crafts, and trade. It was they
who maintained a culture of religious learning, and thus they who produced Wahhābism
and its early following. The badw, by contrast, moved from place to place all around
Najd, practicing animal husbandry and acquiring wealth through raiding and extortion.
They were especially at home in the pasturelands of the large area known as ʿĀliyat Najd
25
A succinct introduction to ḥaḍar-badw dynamics is Abdulaziz H. Al-Fahad, “Raiders and Traders: A
Poet’s Lament on the End of the Bedouin Heroic Age,” in Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social,
Political, Economic and Religious Change, ed. Bernard Haykel, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015), 231-62, at 237-41.
16
(“upper Najd”), the higher part of the Najd plateau on the western side of Jabal Ṭuwayq.
Most of the ḥaḍar lived in Sāfilat Najd (“lower Najd”), the lower part of the plateau on
the eastern side of Jabal Ṭuwayq and where most of the towns are located. The badw
were not a unified entity but rather were divided by tribal affiliation. The dominant tribes
in our period were the ʿAnaza, the Ẓafīr, the Muṭayr, the Qaḥṭān, and the ʿUtayba. The
demographic weights of these tribes varied considerably over time on account of
migration. The ḥaḍar, for their part, were essentially detribalized, though most of them
maintained an ancestral tribal affiliation. These tribal identities could play an important
role in Najdī society, determining status and restricting opportunities for marriage. A
person without a pure (aṣīl) tribal ancestry was known as a khaḍīrī, which was an
undesirable status for a ḥaḍarī.
Wahhābism Studies
From the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, Wahhābism drew little
attention from Western scholars of Islam. In one sense, this lack of attention was
understandable, as the Wahhābīs were throughout this period a minority sect in Islam,
viewed by the great majority of the Islamic world as dreadful heretics. Furthermore, apart
from their short-lived occupation of the holy cities in the early 1200s/1800s, the
Wahhābīs were not a particularly significant force, either militarily or religiously, in the
larger world of Islam. The lack of scholarly attention to Wahhābism was almost certainly
also related to the relative neglect of Ḥanbalism among Islamicists. The Wahhābīs
belonged to the Ḥanbalī madhhab, the smallest of the four schools of law in Sunnī Islam
and by far the least studied by Orientalists. George Makdisi (d. 2002), who himself
17
devoted much of his career to Ḥanbalism, has written that “the nineteenth century [was]
the great enemy of Hanbalite studies,” and that “[h]ad it not been for the interest shown
by the Salafī movement in Egypt and the Wahhābīs of Saudi Arabia in the Hanbalites,
Hanbalism might well have remained even longer, perhaps forever, among the
‘insignificant’ schools in the mind of Islamists [i.e., Islamicists].”26
The entry on Wahhābism in the first Encyclopedia of Islam, the relevant volume
of which was published in 1934, shows how little scholarly work had been devoted to the
subject in the preceding years.27 The entry was written by David Margoliouth (d. 1940),
the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford, who was no expert on
Wahhābism himself. Yet despite having hardly any secondary sources to guide him,
Margoliouth did an admirable job, and a mostly accurate one, tracing the main lines of
Wahhābī history and doctrine.28 The Hungarian Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921) had
painted a similarly accurate portrait of Wahhābism in his 1910 Vorlesungen über den
Islam (“Lectures on Islam”), noting Wahhābism’s opposition to the cult of saints and the
unmistakable influence of Ibn Taymiyya.29 Margoliouth did not cite Goldziher, but he
reached the same conclusions regarding Wahhābism’s hostility to saint veneration and
Taymiyyan character.
26
Makdisi, “Hanbalite Islam,” in Studies on Islam, ed. and trans. Merlin L. Swartz (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1981), 216-74, at 219.
27
EI1, s.v. “Wahhābīya” (David Margoliouth).
28
His main error was depending too much on a unique manuscript in the British Museum (Lamʿ al-shihāb
fī sīrat Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), which contains a largely unreliable description of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s travels and education. This was later shown to have likely been written at the request of a British
official in the Gulf in 1233/1817. See Michael Cook, “The Provenance of the Lam‘ al-shihāb fī sīrat
Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb,” Journal of Turkish Studies 10 (1986): 79-86.
29
Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. Andras and Ruth Hamori (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981), 242-45. Two other early contributions, both on the right track but as yet
not informed by key primary sources, were Richard Hartmann, “Die Wahhābiten,” Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 78 (1924): 176-213; Roelof Willem van Diffelen, De leer der
Wahhabieten (Leiden: Brill, 1927). Of these three, Margoliouth cites only the last.
18
Apart from manuscript sources, Margoliouth mostly relied on the accounts of
European explorers and diplomats who had travelled in Arabia. Indeed, it was these
travelers who, more than the Orientalists, were the pioneers of Wahhābism studies in the
West, as it was they who produced the first exposés of the movement for a Western
readership. Though few of these men (and, in a few cases, women) actually penetrated
the Wahhābī heartland of central Arabia, they were nonetheless eager to learn all they
could about the controversial movement. In the eighteenth century, the number of
travelers who wrote about Wahhābism was small—William Browne (d. 1813), Guillaume
Olivier (d. 1814), Carsten Niebuhr (d. 1815), and Constantin de Volney (d. 1820). The
nineteenth century saw many more, as witnessed by the accounts of Domingo Badía y
Leblich (d. 1819), Ulrich Seetzen (d. 1811), Johann Burckhardt (d. 1817), Jean-Baptiste
Rousseau (d. 1831), Alexandre de Corancez (d. 1832), Harford Jones Brydges (d. 1847),
William Palgrave (d. 1888), Eduard Nolde (d. 1892), Julius Euting (d. 1913), Anne Blunt
(d. 1917), Wilfrid Blunt (d. 1922), and Charles Doughty (d. 1926), among others.
Giovanni Bonacina, in his study of early European perceptions of Wahhābism, details
how many of the travelers read European religious developments into the movement,
likening it to “deism” or “puritanism.”30 Influenced by their anti-Wahhābī informants,
some of the travelers were convinced that the Wahhābīs rejected the authority of the
Qurʾān and/or the ḥadīth.31 In at least one case, such misapprehensions found their way
into early Orientalist scholarship. What seems to be the earliest Western scholarly
treatment of Wahhābism, a short article by Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (d. 1838)
30
Bonacina, The Wahhabis Seen through European Eyes (1772-1830): Deists and Puritans of Islam
(Leiden: Brill, 2015).
31
Goldziher and Margoliouth both take Nolde to task for alleging that the Wahhābīs reject the ḥadīth.
19
published in 1805, takes its cues from Niebuhr and an anonymous traveler; but it builds
on their misunderstanding by speculating that the Wahhābīs are in some way derived
from the Shīʿī Qarmaṭians.32
The later travelers were better informed, and it was their work that formed the
foundation of scholarship on Wahhābism (and the history and culture of the Arabian
Peninsula more generally). The most prolific, as well as most influential, of these writers
was Harry St. John Philby (d. 1960), a British civil servant and explorer who later settled
in Arabia, becoming a close adviser to King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Philby’s many books, none of
which is specifically devoted to Wahhābism, were for decades an indispensable source
for anyone trying to learn about the Arabian Peninsula. His 1930 Arabia was the first
piece of Western scholarship to make use of the history of Ḥusayn ibn Ghannām (d.
1225/1810f), the most important primary source for early Wahhābism.33
Yet Philby’s books, lacking a robust scholarly apparatus, were riddled with errors
large and small. Many of these would be pointed out by George Rentz (d. 1987) in his
1947 dissertation for the University of California, Berkeley, titled Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-
Wahhāb (1703/4-1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia.34 Rentz’s
study, which was published for the first time in 2004, consists of a straightforward
narrative of early Wahhābī history based on the information found in the chronicles of
Ibn Ghannām and the later Wahhābī historian ʿUthmān ibn Bishr (d. 1290/1873). As a
32
Silvestre de Sacy, “Observations sur les Wahhabites,” Magasin Encyclopédique 59 (1805): 35-41; noted
in Bonacina, Wahhabis Seen through European Eyes, 50.
33
See Philby, Arabia (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), x (“… the work of Husain ibn Ghannam
al Najdi … appears never to have been used hitherto in the preparation of such treatises and monographs on
the history of Wahhabism as have appeared from time to time …”). While the Czech Orientalist Alois
Musil (d. 1944) mentions Ibn Ghannām’s history in the bibliography of his Northern Neǧd: A
Topographical Itinerary (New York: American Geographical Society, 1928), 329, he does not appear to
have consulted it; cf. Rentz, Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement, 237.
34
Rentz, Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement, passim.
20
contribution to scholarship, Rentz’s work was of considerable value in providing a
factual framework that would inform future studies. But it was limited in that it did not
attempt to assess analytically the origins and development of Wahhābism.35
In the earlier twentieth century, one of the few scholars who really dug into the
religious background of Wahhābism was Henri Laoust (d. 1983), in a chapter in his 1939
study of the doctrine of Ibn Taymiyya.36 Laoust went further than Goldziher or
Margoliouth in establishing the Taymiyyan character of Wahhābism, and his chapter,
though modest in length and scope, remained the most comprehensive treatment of
Wahhābī doctrine for decades to come.
Throughout the twentieth century, general accounts of the history and politics of
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proliferated. By the 1970s, only two scholarly monographs
seemed to buck this trend. One was a detailed and valuable book by R. Bayly Winder (d.
1988) on Saudi history in the nineteenth century;37 the other was a thorough (if entirely
apologetic) account of the life and thought of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb by a
Saudi scholar, ʿAbdallāh al-ʿUthaymīn (d. 1436/2016).38 Substantial progress in the study
of early Wahhābī history and doctrine was to be made only in the 1980s and 1990s, with
a series of articles by the historian Michael Cook.39 One of these examined the origins of
35
For an insightful appreciation of Rentz’s thesis, see Michael Cook, “Tales of Arabian Might,” Times
Literary Supplement, April 7, 2006.
36
Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taḳī-d-Dīn Aḥmad b. Taimīya (Cairo: Imprimerie
de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1939), 506-40. Another was Roelof Willem van Diffelen, but
his work seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.
37
Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965). This was
originally a dissertation completed at Princeton University in 1950.
38
al-ʿUthaymīn, Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb: The Man and his Works (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009).
This was originally a dissertation completed at the University of Edinburgh in 1972. A somewhat revised
version in Arabic was published as al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: ḥayātuhu wa-afkāruhu
(Riyadh: Dār al-ʿUlūm, 1399/1979).
39
See Cook, “Provenance of the Lam‘ al-shihāb”; idem, “The Expansion of the First Saudi State: The Case
of Washm,” in The Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times, ed. C. E. Bosworth, et al. (Princeton:
The Darwin Press, 1989), 661-99; idem, “On the Origins of Wahhābism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
21
Wahhābism, highlighting Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s exclusivism and his sense of divine
mission; another looked at the gradual rise of the first Saudi state, emphasizing the role
played by religion in its ultimate success. In 2002, when the entry on Wahhābism in the
second Encyclopedia of Islam was published, it was evident that the state of knowledge
concerning the movement had advanced considerably.40 Still, the number of scholars
paying it attention was small.
This was to change following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which
invited unprecedented scrutiny in the West of Saudi Arabia and its associated religious
ideology. The body of Wahhābism-focused scholarship grew rapidly. Key contributions
have included David Commins’s general history of the movement,41 Michael Crawford’s
biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,42 and Guido Steinberg’s and Nabil Mouline’s
respective studies of the Wahhābī scholarly class.43 To be sure, the post-9/11 period has
brought forth polemical and apologetic studies as well.44 Fortunately, there remains
much work to be done.45
Society, series 3, 2 (1992): 191-202. See further his Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic
Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165-92.
40
EI2, s.v. “Wahhābiyya” (“The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Esther Peskes; “The Twentieth
Century,” Werner Ende). Peskes’s monograph on early Wahhābism, Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-
92) im Widerstreit: Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der Frühgeschichte der Wahhābīya (Beirut: In
Kommission bei Franz Steiner, 1993), was another substantial contribution; unfortunately, it relied on poor
editions of Ibn Ghannām and Ibn Bishr.
41
Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).
42
Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (London: Oneworld, 2014).
43
Steinberg, Religion und Staat in Saudi-Arabien (researched before 9/11); Mouline, The Clerics of Islam:
Religious Authority and Political Power in Saudi Arabia, trans. Ethan Rundell (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2014).
44
These include the anti-Wahhābī diatribe by Hamid Algar and the philo-Wahhābī book by Natana
DeLong-Bas. See Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International,
2002); DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
45
For a recent collection of books and articles representing something of the state of the field, see Esther
Peskes, ed., Wahhabism: Doctrine and Development, 2 vols. (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2016). One should also
mention here, among the general histories of Saudi Arabia, Madawi Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi
Arabia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) (first ed. 2002). The most comprehensive
22
Sources for the Study of Classical Wahhābism
The sources for the study of classical Wahhābism—excepting secondary sources—are of
three principal kinds: historiography, bibliography, and other writings (epistles, books,
fatwās, etc.) by individual Wahhābī scholars or notables, some of which have been
gathered into compendia. I am speaking, of course, about literature produced by the
Wahhābīs, though I will have occasion to mention some of the most important non-
Wahhābī sources as well.
Of the Wahhābī histories, the most valuable are those by Ḥusayn ibn Ghannām (d.
1225/1810f) and ʿUthmān ibn Bishr (d. 1290/1873), a fact that has been acknowledged
by many scholars working on Wahhābism. Yet these two books, it must be borne in
mind, while they treat many of the same events and personages, are not of equal
historical value. The main reason is that Ibn Ghannām was much older than Ibn Bishr and
was writing at a much earlier date. As one would expect, he is much more reliable for the
earliest period of Wahhābism. As will be seen in Chapter 1, it was actually another
Wahhābī scholar, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Gharīb (d. 1208/1793), who contributed the
earliest account of the birth of the Wahhābī movement, but this came in the course of a
refutation.46 Because of just how important Ibn Ghannām and Ibn Bishr are to what we
know about classical Wahhābism, some background on them and their histories is in
order.
book in this regard remains Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia, trans. P. A. Seslavin (New
York: New York University Press, 2000).
46
The refutation is known as al-Tawḍīḥ ʿan tawḥīd al-Khallāq, on which see below, ch. 1, pp. 84-87.
23
Ibn Ghannām, who very likely belonged to the Mālikī madhhab, was born in al-
Aḥsāʾ in 1152/1739f.47He relocated to al-Dirʿiyya at an unknown date, likely in the years
leading up to the Wahhābī conquest of al-Aḥsāʾ in 1210/1796. His scholarly expertise lay
in the domain of grammar and language, and in al-Dirʿiyya he is said to have instructed a
generation of Wahhābī students in Arabic. His history, titled Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-afhām
li-murtād ḥāl al-imām wa-taʿdād ghazawāt dhawī ʾl-Islām (“The Garden of Thoughts
and Reflections for an Inquirer into the Condition of the Imām and the Enumeration of
the Raids of the Muslims”), where imām refers to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, is divided into
two volumes.48 The first consists of a biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, complete with
many of his letters, epistles, fatwās, and writings on Qurʾānic exegesis. The second
volume, which bears the secondary title Kitāb al-Ghazawāt al-bayāniyya waʾl-futūḥāt al-
rabbāniyya (“The Book of the Exemplary Raids and the Lordly Conquests”), is a
chronicle of the years 1160/1747 to 1212/1797f, preceded by an account of the events
around (fī ḥudūd) the year 1157/1744f.49 As Ibn Ghannām notes in the introduction to
47
On him see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:299; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr ʿulamāʾ Najd, 185-201; Āl
Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:56-58; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:104-5. And see further, for his birth year,
Jaḥḥāf, Durar nuḥūr al-ḥūr al-ʿīn, 1045-1046.
48
See Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh Ibn Ghannām al-musammā Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-afhām li-murtād ḥāl al-
imām wa-taʿdād ghazawāt dhawī ʾl-Islām, ed. Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī, 2 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-
Thulūthiyya, 1431/2010). Two previous editions that are serviceable are the lithograph published by al-
Maṭbaʿa al-Muṣṭafawiyya in Bombay in 1337/1918 and the edition published by Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā ʾl-Bābī
al-Ḥalabī in Riyadh in 1368/1949. The problem with the Bombay lithograph is that it is missing the larger
part of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s fatwās and the beginning of his Qurʾānic exegesis (the elision occurs in vol.
1, p. 232, line 4, between the words ʿAbd al-Dīnār and wa-qāla; the missing text can be found in al-
Kharāshī’s edition at 1:452-535). The much-too-cited “edition” of Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Asad (d. 1436/2015),
published by Maṭbaʿat al-Madanī in Cairo in 1381/1961, was an attempt to render Ibn Ghannām’s rhyming
prose into a modern idiom; in the process, the content was heavily bowdlerized.
49
In all of the editions we have, the second volume ends abruptly, mid-poem, in the section devoted to the
year 1212/1797f. This has given rise to suspicions that much of the book was lost, but the suspicions are
unfounded. Three manuscripts of Ibn Ghannām’s history that I have seen show the complete section for the
year 1212/1797f, after which the book ends. One of these states that this was the final year that Ibn
Ghannām covered (wa-hādhā ākhir mā arrakhahu ʾl-shaykh Ḥusayn ibn Ghannām). See Ibn Ghannām,
Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-afhām, ms. Lucknow, Maktabat Dār al-ʿUlūm li-Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ, Tārīkh 2130, f.
232a. The other manuscripts are at the British Library (Add. 19,799-19,800 and Add. 23,344-23,345); on
these see William Cureton and Charles Rieu, Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium qui in
24
volume one, Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-afhām was written at the behest of the imām, who in
this case is almost certainly ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad Āl Suʿūd (r. 1179-1218/1765-
1803), then the leader of the first Saudi state.50 While the book is undated, one can be
relatively certain that it was completed no later 1216/1801.51
Ibn Bishr’s history, titled ʿUnwān al-majd fī tārīkh Najd (“The Sign of Glory in
the History of Najd”), consists of two volumes, both of them chronicles.52 The first
volume, which also includes a brief biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, treats the years
850-1237/1446f-1821f, the second the years 1238-1267/1822-1850f.53 As the author
indicates, the first volume was completed in 1251/1835, the second in 1270/1854.54 Ibn
Bishr was thus writing during the second Saudi state, unlike Ibn Ghannām, who was
writing during the first. Ibn Bishr did experience some of the first Saudi state, however.
Born in 1210/1795f, in Julājil in Sudayr, where he lived most of his life, he studied for
some time in al-Dirʿiyya before its destruction.55 He was thus an eyewitness to the fall of
the first Saudi state and the rise of the second. One will notice that Ibn Bishr begins his
history much earlier than Ibn Ghannām, in 850/1446f as opposed to 1157/1744f. The
Museo Britannico asservantur, pars secunda (London: Impensis Curatorum Musei Britannici, 1846-71),
436 (nos. 953-54), 576 (nos. 1260-61).
50
waʾl-imām ayyadahu ʾllāh taʿālā yaʿzimu ʿalayya fī dhālika wa-yushīru, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:168.
The reason this imām is likely not Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is that the latter is described throughout as dead;
and the reason it is likely ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz is that Ibn Ghannām’s only other extant work, a commentary on
certain ḥadīth of creedal import, was commissioned by him explicitly (fa-ʿanna li-ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ḥafiẓahu
ʾllāh an tujmaʿa ʾl-aḥādīth…). See Ibn Ghannām, al-ʿIqd al-thamīn fī sharḥ aḥādīth uṣūl al-dīn, ed.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Habdān (Riyadh: Dār al-Qāsim, 1424/2002), 27.
51
This is because al-ʿIqd al-thamīn refers explicitly to Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-afhām (ibid., 28) and is dated
Ṣafar 1216/June 1801 (ibid., 251).
52
See Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd fī tārīkh Najd, ed. Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir al-Shathrī, 2 vols. (Riyadh: n.p.,
1433/2012). There are many editions, but al-Shathrī’s is the most reliable as it is based on a rare manuscript
of Ibn Bishr’s final version of the book. Pictures of the full manuscript are reproduced in idem, ʿUnwān al-
majd fī tārīkh Najd (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿĀmma, 1423/2002).
53
In all other manuscripts and editions of the book, the years 850-1156/1446f-1743f were not covered at
the beginning but were appended to the end of select years.
54
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:417, 2:236.
55
On him see Āl al-Shaykh, 5:115-26; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 2:120-22.
25
reason is that Ibn Bishr was writing within the larger Najdī historiographical tradition.56
For him, Najdī history did not begin with Wahhābism, as it seems to have for Ibn
Ghannām. Nonetheless, Ibn Bishr wrote in a defiantly unapologetic Wahhābī tone.
While Ibn Ghannām’s and Ibn Bishr’s histories are indispensable, they are not the
only Najdī histories worth mentioning. Among earlier ones, those by Ibn Yūsuf (fl.
1207/1792f) and Ibn ʿAbbād (d. 1175/1761f) treat Najdī history through the beginning of
the Wahhābī period (1173/1759f and 1175/1761f, respectively).57 They are not very full,
however, exemplifying the threadbare character of Najdī historiography that prevailed
before the rise of Wahhābism. Of greater interest are two chronicles by Najdī scholars
who belonged to Ibn Ghannām’s generation, both of which survive only in French
translations. The first is an abridgement of the chronicle of a certain “Suléiman il
Nedjedi,” who relates Wahhābī history through the year 1224/1809f. Acquired in Aleppo
by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, it was published in 1818 in his Mémoire sur les trois plus
fameuses sectes du Musulmanisme.58 The second is the chronicle of a certain “cheykh
Abderrahman el-Oguyeh,” a grandson of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s and very possibly ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh, who was taken to Egypt in 1818. The chronicle,
which covers the history of Wahhābism through the year 1225/1810f, is found in the
56
On this tradition, see Michael Cook, “The Historians of Pre-Wahhābī Najd,” Studia Islamica 76 (1992):
163-76; and see further Ḥamad ibn Muḥammad al-Jāsir, “Muʾarrikhū Najd min ahlihā (1),” al-ʿArab 5
(1391/1971): 785-801; idem, “Muʾarrikhū Najd min ahlihā (2),” al-ʿArab 5 (1391/1971): 881-900.
57
See Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf, Tārīkh Ibn Yūsuf, ed. ʿUwayḍa ibn Mitayrīk al-Juhanī (Riyadh:
al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma lil-Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka, 1419/1999); Muḥammad ibn
Ḥamad ibn ʿAbbād, Tārīkh Ibn ʿAbbād, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf al-Shibl (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma lil-
Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka, 1419/1999). The history of Ibn Rabīʿa (d. 1158/1745f)
misses the Wahhābī period by ten years. See Muḥammad ibn Rabīʿa, Tārīkh Ibn Rabīʿa, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn
Yūsuf al-Shibl (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma lil-Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka,
1419/1999).
58
Rousseau, Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du Musulmanisme (Paris: Chez Masvert, 1818),
27-35.
26
second volume of the 1823 Histoire de l’Égypte sous le gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly
by the Cairo-based Félix Mengin (fl. 1839).59 These chronicles are particularly useful as a
supplement to Ibn Bishr’s coverage of the later years of the first Saudi state, which Ibn
Ghannām did not get to.
Ibn Bishr was not the only Najdī historian of his generation either. Three others
who produced chronicles of some value are Ḥamad ibn Muḥammad ibn Laʿbūn (d. c.
1277/1860), from Ḥarma in Sudayr, Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Fākhirī (d. 1277/1860),
also from Ḥarma, and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Muḥammad ibn Turkī (fl. 1257/1841f), from
ʿUnayza in al-Qaṣīm. Ibn Laʿbūn’s history, which covers the years 800/1397f to
1257/1841f, is the fullest account of the three.60 Ibn Bishr appears to have borrowed from
it repeatedly.61 Al-Fākhirī’s book, which spans the years 850/1446f to 1277/1860f
(brought through to 1288/1871f by his son), is much more meager in detail.62 Ibn Turkī’s
book is of interest in that its author was an opponent of Wahhābism, living mostly in Iraq.
Like Ibn Laʿbūn’s, it covers the years 850/1446f to 1257/1841f, but it is much spottier in
its coverage.63
Among the next generation of historians, the best-regarded is Ibrāhīm ibn Ṣāliḥ
ibn ʿĪsā (d. 1343/1925), from Ushayqir in al-Washm, whose chronicle is presented as an
extension (dhayl) of Ibn Bishr’s ʿUnwān al-majd. It carries the history of the Wahhābīs
59
Mengin, Histoire de l’Égypte sous le gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly, 2 vols. (Paris: Chez Arthus
Bertrand, 1823), 2:449-544. For the identification of “cheykh Abderrahman el-Oguyeh” as the “petit-fils du
célèbre ebn-Abdul-Wahab,” see ibid., 1:vi.
60
See Ibn Laʿbūn, Tārīkh al-shaykh Ḥamad ibn Muḥammad ibn Laʿbūn al-Mudlajī al-Wāʾilī, ed. ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Laʿbūn (Kuwait: Dār Ibn Laʿbūn, 1429/2008).
61
See ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Laʿbūn, Nuqūlāt ʿUnwān al-majd min tārīkh Ibn Laʿbūn: Ibn Bishr
ʿalā khuṭā ʾbn Laʿbūn (Kuwait: Dār Ibn Laʿbūn, 2014).
62
See al-Fākhirī, Tārīkh al-Fākhirī, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf al-Shibl (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma lil-
Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka, 1419/1999).
63
See Ibn Turkī, Tārīkh Najd, in Khizānat al-tawārīkh al-Najdiyya, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl
Bassām, 10 vols. (n.p.: n.p., 1999), 4:137-184.
27
forward to 1340/1921f.64 Ibn ʿĪsā also wrote a more comprehensive, if less detailed,
chronicle covering the period from the eighth/fourteenth century to 1339/1920f.65 A
similar work is the chronicle of ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad al-Bassām (d. 1346/1927), a
scholar from ʿUnayza, which starts in the ninth/fifteenth century and ends in 1344/1925f,
also being light in detail.66
In the mid-fourteenth/mid-twentieth century, the traditional historiographical form
of the chronicle gave way to a more modern historiography infused with Saudi
nationalism.67 An important and valuable exception to this pattern is the extensive
chronicle of the Burayda-born scholar Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUbayd Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin (d.
1425/2004), titled Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā waʾl-ʿirfān bi-ayyām Allāh al-wāḥid al-dayyān
(“Reminding the Wise and Perceptive of the Days of God, the One, the Requiter”).
Written over a period of decades and published in full only in 1428/2007, the book
comprises eight volumes that cover some one hundred and fifty years—1268-
1421/1851f-2000f. 68 The book may be a historiographical anachronism, but it provides a
great deal of information for the period just before and during the rise of the third Saudi
state.
64
See Ibn ʿĪsā, ʿIqd al-durar fīmā waqaʿa fī Najd min al-ḥawādith fī ākhir al-qarn al-thālith ʿashar wa-
awwal al-rābiʿ ʿashar, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma
lil-Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka, 1419/1999).
65
See idem, Tārīkh baʿḍ al-ḥawādith al-wāqiʿa fī Najd, ed. Ḥamad al-Jāsir (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma
lil-Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-Mamlaka, 1419/1999).
66
See al-Bassām, Tuḥfat al-mushtāq fī akhbār Najd waʾl-Ḥijāz waʾl-ʿIrāq, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Khālidī (Kuwait:
Sharikat al-Mukhtalif, 2000).
67
Jörg Matthias Determann, Historiography in Saudi Arabia: Globalization and the State in the Middle
East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 50ff.
68
See Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā waʾl-ʿirfān bi-ayyām Allāh al-wāḥid al-rayyān, 8 vols.
(Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1428/2007). The first four volumes were published previously at an unknown
date; the fifth volume was then published in 1406/1985f. The first four volumes of the final set exhibit
signs of modest bowdlerization. Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin’s book escapes mention in Determann, Historiography
in Saudi Arabia.
28
As for the histories by non-Wahhābīs, those most deserving of mention include
the ones by the Egyptian ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan al-Jabartī (d. 1240/1825),69 the Iraqi
(of Najdī ancestry) ʿUthmān ibn Sanad (d. 1242/1827),70 the Yemeni Luṭf Allāh ibn
Aḥmad Jaḥḥāf (d. 1243/1827f),71 the Kurdish Iraqi Rasūl Ḥāwī al-Karkūklī (d.
1243/1827f),72 and the Ḥijāzī Aḥmad ibn Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1304/1886).73 While most of
these authors were generally hostile to Wahhābism, some of them, including al-Jabartī
and Jaḥḥāf, had more nuanced views.
The literary genre of the biographical dictionary is an old one in Islamic
scholarship, but the Wahhābīs did not develop a biographical tradition until quite late.
The earliest Wahhābī biographical dictionaries appeared only in the late fourteenth/mid-
twentieth century. The three standard works in this genre are the dictionaries by ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1406/1986),74 from Riyadh, ʿAbdallāh ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl Bassām (d. 1423/2003),75 from ʿUnayza, and Muḥammad ibn
ʿUthmān al-Qāḍī,76 also from ʿUnayza. Āl al-Shaykh’s dictionary is the earliest and the
shortest, and is concerned exclusively with Wahhābī scholars. Āl Bassām’s and al-Qāḍī’s
69
al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī ʾl-tarājim waʾl-akhbār, 4 vols. (Būlāq: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīriyya,
1297/1897f.)
70
Ibn Sanad, Maṭāliʿ al-suʿūd bi-ṭīb akhbār al-wālī Dāwūd, ed. ʿImād ʿAbd al-Salām Raʾūf (Beirut: al-Dār
al-ʿArabiyya lil-Mawsūʿāt, 1431/2010); idem, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad fī akhbār Aḥmad najl Rizq al-Asʿad, ed.
Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad Āl Thānī (Doha: Markaz Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Āl Thānī lil-Dirāsāt al-
Tārīkhiyya, 200)7.
71
Jaḥḥāf, Durar nuḥūr al-ḥūr al-ʿīn bi-sīrat al-Manṣūr ʿAlī wa-dawlatihi ʾl-mayāmīn, ed. ʿĀrif
Muḥammad al-Raʿawī (Sanaa: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa waʾl-Siyāḥa, 1425/2004).
72
al-Karkūklī, Dawḥat al-wuzarāʾ fī tārīkh waqāʾiʿ Baghdād al-zawrāʾ, ed. and trans. Mūsā Kāẓim Nawras
(Beirut: Dār al-Kātib al-ʿArabī, n.d.).
73
Daḥlān, Khulāṣat al-kalām fī bayān umarāʾ al-balad al-ḥarām (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Khayriyya,
1305/1887f.)
74
Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr ʿulamāʾ Najd wa-ghayrihim, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Dār al-Yamāma, 1394/1974f). The
first edition appeared in 1392/1972f; it built on the author’s earlier ʿUlamāʾ al-daʿwa, published in
1386/1966.
75
Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd khilāl thamāniyat qurūn, 6 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1419/1998f). An
earlier version in three volumes, ʿUlamāʾ Najd khilāl sittat qurūn, appeared in 1397/1976f.
76
al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn ʿan maʾāthir ʿulamāʾ Najd wa-ḥawādith al-sinīn, 3 vols., new ed. (Riyadh:
Dār al-Thulūthiyya, 1433/2012). The first edition appeared in two volumes in 1400/1980.
29
cover the scholars of Najd in the pre-Wahhābī era as well. Of the two, Āl Bassām’s is
more authoritative and comprehensive. There are several other Wahhābī biographical
dictionaries focused on particular areas of central Arabia. These include Ṣāliḥ ibn
Sulaymān al-ʿUmarī’s work on the scholars of al-Qaṣīm,77 and ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-
Hindī’s (d. 1419/1998) on the scholars of Ḥāʾil.78 All of these dictionaries must be used
cautiously, given the relatively late date of their composition. But often they are informed
by earlier sources, such as the histories, and contain valuable information and quote
unique documents such as ijāzas. The histories are indeed the go-to source for
biographical information on Wahhābī scholars; the biographical dictionaries are the next
best thing.79
Many non-Wahhābīs and anti-Wahhābīs also produced biographical dictionaries
that are of great value to this study, and these will be cited in due course. Particularly
noteworthy is the book by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Ḥumayd (d. 1295/1878), a
Najdī opponent of Wahhābism from ʿUnayza whose biographical dictionary of Ḥanbalī
scholars is presented as a continuation of Ibn Rajab’s Dhayl ʿalā Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila.
With few exceptions, the Wahhābīs are excluded from consideration.80
77
al-ʿUmarī, ʿUlamāʾ Āl Salīm wa-talāmidhatuhum wa-ʿulamāʾ al-Qaṣīm, 3rd ed. (Burayda: n.p.,
1431/2010). This first appeared in 1405/1984f.
78
See al-Hindī, Zahr al-khamāʾil fī tarājim ʿulamāʾ Ḥāʾil, ed. Sulṭān ibn Hulayyal al-Mismār (Ḥāʾil: n.p.,
1346/2014f). This was originally published in 1380/1960f. A newer and more comprehensive dictionary on
the scholars of Ḥāʾil is Ḥassān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Rudayʿān, Manbaʿ al-karam waʾl-shamāʾil fī dhikr akhbār
wa-āthār man ʿāsha min ahl al-ʿilm fī Ḥāʾil (Ḥāʾil: Maktabat Fahd al-ʿArīfī, 1340/2009).
79
One should also mention, in addition to the big three, the shorter biographical dictionary by Sulaymān
ibn Ḥamdān (d. 1397/1976f): Tarājim li-mutaʾakhkhirī ʾl-Ḥanābila, ed. Bakr ibn ʿAbdallāh Abū Zayd (al-
Dammām: Dār ibn al-Jawzī, 1420/1999f).
80
See Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila ʿalā ḍarāʾiḥ al-Ḥanābila, ed. Bakr ibn ʿAbdallāh Abū Zayd and
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān al-ʿUthaymīn, 3 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1416/1996). On this
book, see David Commins, “Traditional Anti-Wahhabi Hanbalism in Nineteenth-Century Arabia,” in
Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration: Studies in Honour of Butrus Abu-Manneh, ed. Itzchak
Weismann and Fruma Zachs (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 81-96.
30
In addition to the histories, the surviving texts by Wahhābī scholars and other
authors are legion, and every year more of these are published in edited volumes of
exceptional quality. Many Wahhābī texts, however, were assembled into compendia of
varying scope and length in the mid-fourteenth/early twentieth century. This was shortly
after the Wahhābīs began making use of the printing press for the first time. The most
comprehensive, as well as the most canonical, of these compendia is al-Durar al-saniyya
fī ʾl-ajwiba al-Najdiyya, which was mentioned at the beginning of this introduction. Al-
Durar al-saniyya was arranged and edited by the Wahhābī scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Muḥammad ibn Qāsim (d. 1392/1972), and published for the first time, albeit
incompletely, in Mecca between 1352/1933f and 1356/1937f in three volumes. It was
published in complete form in Riyadh between 1385/1965 and 1388/1968f, and finally
was published in a new and updated edition of 16 volumes between 1402/1981f and
1417/1996.81 Al-Durar al-saniyya does not include some of the best-known Wahhābī
books and epistles that had already been published, such as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Kitāb
al-tawḥīd. Some of these core Wahhābī texts were previously brought together in the
one-volume Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd (“The Compendium of Tawḥīd”), first published in
Mecca in 1343/1925.82 Another collection, similar in scope to al-Durar al-saniyya, is
Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya (“The Compendium of Najdī Epistles and
Responsa”), which was published in Cairo in four volumes between 1344/1925f and
81
All subsequent “editions” are reprints of this third edition, including the version cited here: Ibn Qāsim,
ed., al-Durar al-saniyya fī ʾl-ajwiba al-Najdiyya, new ed., 16 vols. (Riyadh: Warathat al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn Qāsim, 1433/2012). The additions to the third edition, though printed after his death, were
made by the editor himself. His grandson affirms that while some of the content of the original was
rearranged, none was removed. See ʿAbd al-Mālik ibn Muḥammad al-Qāsim, al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
ibn Qāsim: ḥayātuhu wa-sīratuhu wa-muʾallafātuhu (Riyadh: Dār al-Qāsim, 1425/2005), 85.
82
Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad Yāsīn, ed., al-Kitāb al-mufīd fī maʿrifat ḥaqq Allāh ʿalā ʾl-ʿabīd al-musammā
Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd (Mecca: Maṭbaʿat Umm al-Qurā, 1343/1925). This was preceded by several Indian
lithograph editions.
31
1349/1930f.83 This collection was the product of a collaboration between the Wahhābī
scholars in Najd and the Islamic modernist Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1354/1935) in Egypt. In
1398/1977f, there appeared a multi-volume book consisting of all the works of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb. 84 Most of these had already been published before. It bears noting that the
earliest compendium of Wahhābī texts is, in a sense, Ibn Ghannām’s history, which, as
was mentioned before, preserves many of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s writings.
The present study, while informed by the secondary literature noted above, is
primarily the product of an exhaustive and meticulous reading of the primary sources
listed here, as well as many others that will be introduced in due course. It is to a
particular set of unexplored primary sources that we now turn.
83
Rashīd Riḍā, ed., Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1344-
49/1925f-1930f).
84
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh al-imām Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
ibn Zayd al-Rūmī, et al., multiple vols. (Riyadh: Jāmʿiat al-Imām Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd al-Islāmiyya,
1398/1977f).
32
Chapter 1
The Early Refutation of Wahhābism
“[A]s in the case of Eckhart and Marie des Vallées, the most significant texts have been
preserved for us thanks to a mine of hostile commentaries” – Louis Massignon, The
Passion of al-Hallaj1
This chapter surveys the early scholarly opposition to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb—
those who refuted him, their refutations, and the views expressed therein. The Arabic
word radd (pl. rudūd), translated here as “refutation,” denotes an Arabic literary genre
going back to the earliest centuries of Islam.2 Traditionally, the refutation was a
theological polemic directed against specific persons, religions, or sects (e.g., Murjiʾism,
Muʿtazilism, Khārijism, Shīʿism). In the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth century, the
emergence of the Wahhābī movement in central Arabia gave rise to a new subgenre of
the refutation: that of Wahhābism and its founder.
In the early 1150s/1740s, a number of heated anti-Wahhābī tracts appeared almost
simultaneously in and around the Arabian Peninsula. From the Ḥijāz in the west to al-
Aḥsāʾ in the east, and from Basra in the north to Yemen in the south, Sunnī Muslim
scholars took aim at what they considered a new heresy gaining strength in Najd, and
were merciless in their denunciations. From the perspective of these scholars, dwelling
for the most part in urban and cosmopolitan settings, Najd was a desert wasteland:
desolate, thinly populated, and politically fractious. But it was not so remote as to be
safely ignored. Located in the center of the Arabian Peninsula, Najd stood in relatively
1
Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, trans. Herbert Mason, 4 vols.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 1:lviii; for the French, see idem, La Passion de Husayn Ibn
Mansûr Hallâj: martyr mystique de l’Islam exécuté à Bagdad le 26 mars 922, new ed., 4 vols. (Paris:
Gallimard, 1975), 1:23.
2
See EI2, s.v. “Radd” (Daniel Gimaret).
33
close proximity to the Ḥijāz (about 450 miles) and lay not far off the trade and pilgrimage
routes connecting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to Iraq and eastern Arabia.
The doctrine emanating from Najd was evidently scandalous to these men of
religion: a direct challenge to their authority and a grave affront, as they saw it, to certain
centuries-old standards of Islamic belief and practice. Some of the refutations came
directly in response to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s epistles; others were written at the request
of Najdī opponents of the new creed. In the face of this flurry of refutations, Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb and his followers held their ground. In a number of counter-refutations, which
sometimes took the form of new epistles, they reaffirmed their views and sought to
demonstrate the errors and false claims of their enemies. The collective result is an
unwieldy mass of refutational literature that is an indispensable source for the study of
early Wahhābism. Two recent articles, one by Samer Traboulsi and one Michael Cook,
have shown just how valuable these refutations can be.3 Here I intend to build on their
work, availing myself of a greater wealth of material, much of which has only recently
come to light.
The following examines, in chronological order, the refutations of Wahhābism
written during the lifetime of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and shortly thereafter (1155-
1216/1742-1802). Most of the refutations that will be discussed have not been dealt with
in previous scholarship.4 While some of them have been published, the majority remain
3
Traboulsi, “An Early Refutation of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Reformist Views,” Die Welt des
Islams, New Series, 42 (2002): 373-415; Cook, “Written and Oral Aspects of an Early Wahhābī Epistle,”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 78 (2015): 161-78.
4
Two earlier surveys of anti-Wahhābī refutations are Hamadi Redissi, “The Refutation of Wahhabism in
Arabic Sources, 1745-1932,” in Kingdom without Borders: Saudi Political, Religious and Media Frontiers,
ed. Madawi Al-Rasheed (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 157-81; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn
Muḥammad Āl ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Daʿāwā ʾl-munāwiʾīn li-daʿwat al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
(Riyadh: Dār Ṭayba, 1409/1989). Redissi’s article does not cover the early period in depth, while Āl ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf’s book is mainly concerned with refuting the refutations. Some of the earliest refutations are
34
in manuscript form in different libraries around the world, including in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Several more are partially
preserved in two later refutations, Ibn Dāwūd’s al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd (completed in
1210/1795)5 and al-Ḥaddād’s Miṣbāḥ al-anām (completed in 1215/1801),6 which we will
come to at the end of this chapter.
As will be seen, the refutations do well in illustrating the nature and development
of the conflict between the Wahhābīs and their opponents, highlighting the intensity of
the odium theologicum that divided them and giving a sense of the history and doctrine
of Wahhābism in this period. Most significant, they allow us to see how Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s movement developed over time, even helping in the dating of some of his
earliest epistles. Since many of the refutations are dated or roughly dateable, and since
many of them quote his epistles or reproduce them in their entirety, one can ascertain the
terminus ante quem of the quoted or embedded epistles.7 Very few of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s works are otherwise dateable. Occasionally, Ibn Ghannām tells us when or
where a certain text was written, and sometimes internal evidence, such as a
correspondent’s name, can be brought to bear to help with dating. But the refutations
allow one to put time constraints on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s writings as never before.
discussed in Michael Crawford, “The Daʿwa of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb before the Āl Saʿūd,” Journal of
Arabian Studies 1 (2011): 147-61. A survey of some of the more obscure ones, brought to my attention by
Crawford, is Aḥmad al-Bassām, “Min asbāb al-muʿāraḍa al-maḥalliyya li-daʿwat al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fī ʿahd al-dawla al-Suʿūdiyya al-ūlā,” al-Dirʿiyya 14 (1422/2001): 23-77.
5
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd raddan ʿalā ʾl-shaqī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Suʿūd, ms. Patna, India, Khuda
Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, HL 1238; on this manuscript, see Edward Ross, et al., Catalogue of the
Arabic and Persian Manuscripts in the Oriental Public Library at Bankipore, 25 vols. (Patna: Government
Printing, 1908-42), 10:87-89. I am grateful to Bernard Haykel for helping me obtain a copy.
6
al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām wa-jalāʾ al-ẓalām fī radd shubah al-bidʿī al-Najdī allatī aḍalla bihā ʾl-
ʿawāmm (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿĀmira al-Sharafiyya, 1325/1907f).
7
On this method of dating, see Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 178-79.
35
The most dramatic change that will be observed here is the transition from a non-
violent mode of preaching to a violent one following Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s move to al-
Dirʿiyya in approximately 1158/1745. As Chapters 2 and 4 relate in greater detail, Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb launched his movement in the Najdī town of Ḥuraymilāʾ shortly after
his father’s death there in 1153/1741. Within a year he relocated to the town of al-
ʿUyayna, where he allied himself with the local ruler, ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar (d.
1163/1750), and began sending out epistles calling people to Islam (i.e., the Wahhābī
version of Islam). After being expelled from al-ʿUyayna in around 1158/1745, he moved
on to the town of al-Dirʿiyya, where he formed an alliance with that town’s local ruler,
Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd (d. 1179/1765). This was the starting point of the first Saudi state,
which would last until 1223/1818. As the refutational evidence shows, in al-ʿUyayna, Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb called on his followers to evince enmity (ʿadāwa) to polytheists
(mushrikūn), enmity meaning verbal, not armed, confrontation. In al-Dirʿiyya, he further
called on his followers to wage jihād against them. Only in al-Dirʿiyya, then, did Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb advocate violence.
Ibn ʿAfāliq’s Tahakkum al-muqallidīn
The earliest surviving refutation of Wahhābism is, unfortunately, not dated, but one can
be relatively certain of its place in the chronology for reasons that will become clear.
Written in the form of a letter to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, but intended to be read by his
supporters as well, its author was the Ḥanbalī in al-Aḥsāʾ, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn ʿAfāliq (d. 1163/1750);8 it came to be known as Tahakkum al-muqallidīn fī
8
On him see Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, Tarājim mā kāna fī jihat al-Aḥsāʾ min ʿulamāʾ al-Ḥanābila, ms.
Princeton, Princeton University, Garrett 651Y, ff. 77a-78a; Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 292; Ibn Ḥumayd,
36
muddaʿī tajdīd al-dīn (“The Emulators’ Ridicule of the One Claiming to Renew the
Religion”).9 Only one copy, held at the University of Tübingen in Germany, appears to
be extant,10 though some of the later refutations quote parts of it.11 Ibn ʿAfāliq is depicted
in the biographical sources as the preeminent Ḥanbalī scholar of al-Aḥsāʾ, a man whose
knowledge spanned a number of fields, including jurisprudence, grammar, poetry,
rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and even astronomy, on which he wrote two books. As his
refutation shows, he had nothing but contempt for the Najdī reformer, whom he saw as a
rabble-rouser and an imposter of a scholar.
Ibn ʿAfāliq states that he wrote Tahakkum al-muqallidīn in response to an epistle
of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s that arrived in al-Aḥsāʾ; this was likely not long after Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s arrival in al-ʿUyayna, that is, around 1155/1742. Because Ibn ʿAfāliq quotes
bits it, we can identify the epistle to which he is responding. It is a statement of four
principles (qawāʿid, sing. qāʿida) for arriving at judgments (aḥkām, sing. ḥukm) on
questions of religion, in particular legal questions. Wahhābī tradition preserves it under
the title Arbaʿ qawāʿid tadūru ʾl-aḥkām ʿalayhā (“Four Principles on which Judgments
Are Based”),12 which is derived from the opening lines: “These are four principles from
among the principles of the religion on which judgements are based.”13 The epistle argues
al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:927-28; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 6:38-43; Muḥammad al-Nuwayṣir, al-Muʿāraḍa
li-daʿwat al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fī ʾl-Aḥsāʾ, Ph.D. dissertation, Jāmiʿat al-Imām
Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd al-Islāmiyya, 1410/1990, 189-207. I have used the death date given by Ibn Fayrūz,
as he was a student of Ibn ʿAfāliq’s and his biography is the earliest.
9
Many of the refutations show no sign of having been titled by their authors, as appears to be the case here.
10
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, ms. Tübingen, Universität Tübingen, Ma VI 138, ff. 41a-52b; on
this manuscript, see Max Weisweiler, Verzeichnis der arabischen Handschriften (Leipzig: Harrassowitz,
1930), 104. I am grateful to Michael Crawford for sharing his photocopy with me.
11
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 119b-121a; al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 3, 85.
12
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh, 2:2:3-10. Compare ibid., 2:2:4, 6, 5-6 and Ibn ʿAfāliq,
Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, ff. 47b, 43a, 56b, respectively. A slightly different version of the epistle is found,
broken up into two pieces, in al-Durar al-saniyya, 4:5-7, 135-39.
13
hādhihi arbaʿ qawāʿid min qawāʿid al-dīn allatī tadūru ʾl-aḥkām ʿalayhā, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
Muʾallafāt al-shaykh, 2:2:3.
37
that scholars must avoid issuing judgments with certainty if they are following only
probabilistic reasoning (ẓann), and implicitly reproaches them for doing just this.14 The
four principles, each of which is supported by a Qurʾānic verse or ḥadīth, are as follows:
The first principle is the prohibition against speaking concerning God without
knowledge … The second principle is that all things about which the Legislator is
silent are permitted; it is not permissible for one to deem them prohibited or
obligatory, recommended or disapproved … The third principle is that eschewing
clear proof and using as proof an ambiguous statement is the path of the wayward,
such as the Rāfiḍa [i.e., the Shīʿa] and the Khārijites … The fourth principle is
that the Prophet said, “Verily what is permitted is clear, and what is prohibited is
clear, and what is between the two are matters obscure.”15
After enumerating these principles, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb gives an example of an issue to
which they can be applied: the kind of water suitable for ablution.16 Many scholars, he
says, take for granted the legal maxim that water is of three types: “purifying, pure, and
impure” (ṭahūr wa-ṭāhir wa-najis).17 He contends that this typology has no basis in the
foundational Islamic texts and is substantiated only by ambiguous proofs, saying to those
who would adhere to it, “You have fallen upon the path of the people of perversion in
eschewing the unambiguous and following the ambiguous.”18 The opponents of
Wahhābism, beginning with Ibn ʿAfāliq, seized on this line as evidence of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s hostility to the tradition of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).
Ibn ʿAfāliq writes to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb that “your filthy principles”
(qawāʿiduka ʾl-khabītha) arrived “in two leaves” (fī waraqatayn) and “in your own
14
Ibid., 2:2:5.
15
al-qāʿida al-ūlā taḥrīm al-qawl ʿalā ʾllāh bilā ʿilm … al-qāʿida al-thāniya anna kull shayʾ sakata ʿanhu
ʾl-Shāriʿ fa-huwa ʿafw lā yaḥillu li-aḥad an yuḥarrimahu aw yūjibahu aw yastaḥibbahu aw yakrahahu …
al-qāʿida al-thālitha anna tark al-dalīl al-wāḍiḥ waʾl-istidlāl bi-lafẓ mutashābih huwa ṭarīq ahl al-zaygh
kaʾl-Rāfiḍa waʾl-Khawārij … al-qāʿida al-rābiʿa anna ʾl-nabī dhakara inna ʾl-ḥalāl bayyin waʾl-ḥarām
bayyin wa-mā baynahumā umūr mushtabihāt, ibid., 2:2:3-4.
16
Ibid., 2:2:5-10.
17
Ibid., 2:2:5.
18
waqaʿtum fī ṭarīq ahl al-zaygh fī tark al-muḥkam waʾttibāʿ al-mutashābih, ibid., 2:2:6.
38
handwriting” (bi-khaṭṭ yadika).19 The aim of the epistle, as he saw it, was to attack the
scholars (al-ṭaʿn fī ʾl-ʿulamāʾ).20 He says that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is speaking before the
masses in the voice of independent legal reasoning (ijtihād) and deigning to draw
conclusions directly from the foundational texts (instinbāṭ).21 Are you not embarrassed,
he asks Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, to be claiming to renew the religion (a-mā tastaḥyī taddaʿī
ʾl-tajdīd)?22 For the Najdī is, in his opinion, completely and utterly unqualified for such a
task: not only does he not meet the conditions (shurūṭ) of ijtihād,23 he has shunned the
entire system of Islamic religious education:
This man does not say, “so-and-so related ḥadīth to me,” or “transmitted akhbār
to me,” or “informed me,” or “I studied [texts] by audition and I studied fiqh with
so-and-so,” and “I studied [texts] by reading with so-and-so.” He has no chain [of
knowledge transmission] and no teachers.24
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has located all religious knowledge in himself, requiring every
intended student of religion, or seeker of truth (ṭālib al-ḥaqq), to emigrate to him (al-hijra
ilayka).25 To expose him as a fraud, Ibn ʿAfāliq proceeds to ask Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb a
series of advanced questions about the different branches of religious knowledge,26
calling on his supporters to force him (aliḥḥū ʿalā hādhā ʾl-maghrūr) to respond to the
questions posed within one year in ten volumes (fī ʿasharat mujalladāt), as any mujtahid
could easily do.27 No such response, of course, was forthcoming.
19
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, ff. 50b, 49b.
20
Ibid., f. 43a.
21
yatakallamu ʿalā ʾl-ghawghāʾ bi-lisān al-ijtihād wa-yaddaʿī ʾl-istinbāṭ, ibid., f. 42a
22
Ibid., f. 45a.
23
Ibid., f. 49b.
24
wa-hādhā ʾl-ādamī lā yaqūlu ḥaddathanī fulān wa-lā akhbaranī wa-lā anbaʾanī wa-lā samiʿtu wa-lā
tafaqqahtu ʿalā fulān wa-lā qaraʾtu ʿalā fulān lā sanada lahu wa-lā mashyakha, ibid., f. 42b.
25
Ibid., f. 49b.
26
Ibid., ff. 43b-48a, 49b.
27
Ibid., ff. 51a-51b.
39
In the developing confrontation between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his opponents,
the Arbaʿ qawāʿid tadūru ʾl-aḥkāmʿalayhā attracts only minimal attention. This is
because it is a rather unusual Wahhābī epistle, being primarily a polemic against certain
received ideas in the fiqh tradition. The notion that water is of three kinds is commonly
found at the beginning of books of fiqh, including Ḥanbalī ones,28 so to say that those
who adopt this view have taken “the path of the people of perversion” (ṭarīq ahl al-
zaygh) is indicative of extreme hostilitity to the fiqh tradition. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb writes
that while his four principles apply generally to all fields of religious knowledge, they
apply to fiqh in particular, specifically between the chapters of purification (ṭahāra) and
acknowledgment (iqrār) in the books of fiqh.29 The chapters of purification and
acknowledgment were the first and last chapters, respectively, of the Ḥanbalī law book
with which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was best acquainted, al-Iqnāʿ li-ṭālib al-intifāʿ, by the
Damascene Ḥanbalī Mūsā ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥajjāwī (d. 968/1560).30 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
was thus proposing a stripped-down fiqh methodology to challenge the received tradition
of Islamic law. His epistle may go some way toward explaining why so many of his
opponents accused him of claiming ijtihād and of reviling fiqh, for he is practically
advocating throwing out the books of fiqh here.
28
See, for example, Mūsā ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥajjāwī, al-Iqnāʿ li-ṭālib al-intifāʿ, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-
Muḥsin al-Turkī, 4 vols. (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma lil-Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-
Mamlaka, 1423/2002), 1:5 (Kitāb al-ṭahāra).
29
wa-hādhihi ʾl-qawāʿid tadkhulu fī jamīʿ anwāʿ al-ʿulūm al-dīniyya ʿāmmatan wa-fī ʿilm al-fiqh min kitāb
al-ṭahāra ilā bāb al-iqrār khāṣṣatan, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh, 2:2:10.
30
On him see ʿAbd al-Ḥayy ibn Aḥmad ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, ed.
Maḥmūd al-Arnaʾūṭ, 10 vols. (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1406/1986), 10:472; Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad
al-Ghazzī, al-Naʿt al-akmal li-aṣḥāb al-imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ed. Muḥammad Muṭīʿ al-Ḥāfiẓ and Nizār
al-Abāẓa (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1402/1982), 124-26; Muḥammad Jamīl al-Shaṭṭī, Mukhtaṣar ṭabaqāt al-
Ḥanābila (Damascus: Dār al-Taraqqī, 1339/1920f), 84-85; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:1134-1136.
40
As we will see in the rest of this chapter, the primary concern of most of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s epistles is quite different: namely, the need to distinguish between true
Muslims and those who are in reality polytheists. The Arbaʿ qawāʿid tadūru ʾl-
aḥkāmʿalayhā does not even hint at this exclusivist idea, which was at the center of the
Wahhābī doctrinal project. Though the evidence is limited, it may well be that Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb assailed the fiqh tradition only at the beginning of his daʿwa, later confining
his message to matters of creed.
In Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, Ibn ʿAfāliq only refers to the exclusivist element of
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine at the very end, attributing it to Ibn Taymiyya. In a brief
comment, he deplores the fact that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has made use of a line of Ibn
Taymiyya’s that is quoted in al-Ḥajjāwī’s Iqnāʿ.31 The Iqnāʿ was the most popular book
of Ḥanbalī fiqh in twelfth/eighteenth-century Najd, and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb indeed
quotes from it on certain occasions. According to Ibn ʿAfāliq, he has misleadingly
presented a controversial opinion of Ibn Taymiyya’s as al-Ḥajjāwī’s own. “It is
outrageous,” says Ibn ʿAfāliq,
that he draws on his statement in the Iqnāʿ, “Whoso sets up intermediaries

between himself and God…” For the Iqnāʿ quoted this from the shaykh Ibn
Taymiyya,’ and it is stated in the opening passage of the Iqnāʿ, “And sometimes I
will attribute a statement to its author as a way of not endorsing it (khurūjan min
tabiʿatihi).” So how can he use as evidence words that he [i.e., al-Ḥajjāwī]
attributed in the Iqnāʿ to the shaykh [i.e., Ibn Taymiya], when it was said in the
opening passage that attribution is for the purpose of not endorsing?32
31
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, f. 52a.
32
wa-min al-ʿajab annahu yastadillu bi-qawlihi fī ʾl-Iqnāʿ wa-man jaʿala baynahu wa-bayn Allāh wasāʾiṭ
ilā ākhir al-masʾala waʾl-Iqnāʿ naqalahu ʿan al-shaykh Ibn Taymiyya wa-fī khuṭbat al-Iqnāʿ wa-rubbamā
ʿazawtu qawlan ilā qāʾilihi khurūjan min tabiʿatihi fa-kayfa yastadillu bi-kalām ʿazāhu fī ʾl-Iqnāʿ ilā ʾl-
shaykh wa-qadama fī ʾl-khuṭba anna ʾl-ʿuzw lil-khurūj min tabiʿatihi, ibid., f. 52b.
41
Al-Ḥajjāwī indeed notes in the Iqnāʿ that he will sometimes attribute an opinion to its
speaker in order to avoid endorsing it (khurūjan min tabiʿatihi).33 The line of Ibn
Taymiyya’s that he mentions would seem to be one such opinion. The Iqnāʿ has it as
follows, in a section outlining the acts and beliefs that render one an apostate (bāb ḥukm
al-murtadd): “[Whoso] sets up intermediaries between himself and God, relying on them,
calling on them, and asking [things] of them [has disbelieved] as a matter of
consensus.”34
Ibn ʿAfāliq does not explicitly say to what end Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is using this
line, but one can assume that it is to excommunicate, or declare to be unbelievers (takfīr),
those who set up intermediaries (wasāʾiṭ) with God in the way described. But to depend
on this opinion is wrong, says Ibn ʿAfāliq, as it was a minority one that got Ibn Taymiyya
into a great deal of trouble in his day:
[Al-Ḥajjāwī] refrained from endorsing it (tabarraʾa min tabiʿatihi) by attributing

it to the shaykh, because it is one of the views unique to Ibn Taymiyya, and for
which he was tried and imprisoned and subject to the fierce opposition of the
scholars of his time and those who came after.35
In response to this, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb writes in one of his letters that Ibn ʿAfāliq has
called his doctrine “the religion of Ibn Taymiyya” (dīn Ibn Taymiyya).36
It is not clear whether Ibn ʿAfāliq had seen Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quoting this line
in the Iqnāʿ, or whether he had only heard about his quoting it, but the latter is more
likely. For much of what Ibn ʿAfāliq relates about Wahhābism in this refutation seems to
33
al-Ḥajjāwī, Iqnāʿ, 1:4.
34
[man] jaʿala baynahu wa-bayn Allāh wasāʾiṭ yatawakkalu ʿalayhim wa-yadʿūhum wa-yasʾaluhum
[kafara] ijmāʿan, al-Ḥajjāwī, Iqnāʿ, 4:285.
35
fa-qad tabarraʾa min tabiʿatihi bi-ʿuzwihi ilā ʾl-shaykh li-annahā min al-masāʾil allatī infarada bihā ʾbn
Taymiyya waʾmtuḥina li-ajlihā wa-ḥubisa wa-qāmat ʿalayhi ʾl-qiyāma min ʿulamāʾ ʿaṣrihi wa-man
baʿdahum, Ibn ʿAfāliq, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, f. 52a.
36
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:336 (letter to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbbād). Cf. Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,”
200n91.
42
be based on second-hand information. He states, for example, that he has heard (samiʿtu)
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quotes from a work of Ibn al-Qayyim’s and teaches the Qurʾān
commentary of Ibn Kathīr.37 He does not appear to have had access to any Wahhābī
writings save this one epistle. Indeed, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn betrays a limited
knowledge of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine—in contrast to the much greater
knowledge that Ibn ʿAfāliq displays in his later refutations—which is one reason to date
it early. The second reason is that the author of the next refutation (the first that is dated)
alludes to an earlier one written by one of the luminaries of al-Aḥsāʾ.
Al-Qabbānī’s Faṣl al-khiṭāb
The author of this second refutation was a Shāfiʿī scholar in Basra named Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī
al-Qabbānī (fl. 1159/1746). Little is known about him apart from the names of some of
his books,38 his Shāfiʿī allegiance,39 and the year of his birth, 1108/1696f.40 The title of
his refutation is Faṣl al-khiṭāb fī radd ḍalālāt Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (“The Decisive
Statement in Refutation of the Errors of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb”). According to the
manuscript in Baghdad, presumably the only surviving copy, it was completed on 12
Shawwāl 1155/mid-December 1742.41
In the beginning of his work, al-Qabbānī relates that an epistle from Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb, whom he calls the judge of al-ʿUyayna (qāḍī ʾl-ʿUyayna), reached him
37
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, ff. 45a, 42a.
38
Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 377-79, 382.
39
Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 162.
40
Muḥammad Rafīq al-Ḥusaynī, “Makhṭūṭ nādir min maktabat al-shaykh Qāsim,” al-Ayyām, March 11,
2016. This article describes a manuscript in which al-Qabbānī notes his birth year.
41
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, ms. Baghdad, 9284, f. 124b. This and the other two refutations by al-Qabbānī
are part of a study and edition being prepared by Bernard Haykel and Samer Traboulsi. I am grateful to
them for sharing the first and second of these texts with me. The third was discovered by Michael Cook;
see Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 162.
43
(waradat ʿalaynā) in Basra in mid-1155/mid-1742 (awāsiṭ sanat khams wa-khamsīn wa-
miʾa wa-alf); thereafter an unidentified person or persons (baʿḍ al-nās) asked him to
compose a commentary on it (an aktuba ʿalayhā sharḥan) exposing its errors and
defending the practices related to the cult of saints—that is, the popular practices
involved in Ṣūfī ritual—namely, istighātha (asking the dead for help) and tawassul (using
the dead as a means to God, in particular calling on them to intercede with God on the
Day of Judgment).42 This he does at length, never failing in the course of his commentary
to heap abuse on the Wahhābī founder, described as, among other things, “Satan’s
deputy” (khalīfat Iblīs).43
Al-Qabbānī’s has sometimes been considered the earliest refutation of
Wahhābism, but a brief passage within shows this not to be the case. Al-Qabbānī refers to
an earlier work that he has not been able to read himself, this being, in all likelihood, a
reference to Ibn ʿAfāliq’s Tahakkum al-muqallidīn. He writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
began sending epistles to distant lands calling mankind to worship God alone (fa-arsala
ilā ʾl-buldān al-baʿīda wa-daʿāhum ilā ʿibādat Allāh waḥdahu),44 and that a man from al-
Aḥsāʾ responded with a refutation:
He sent an epistle to al-Aḥsāʾ, an epistle to Basra, and an epistle to al-Shām. A

number of trustworthy persons informed me that one of the distinguished men of
al-Aḥsāʾ undertook to refute his epistle. However, I have not come across that
epistle or that refutation.45
42
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 4b. The Iraqi historian ʿAbbās al-ʿAzzāwī (d. 1391/1971) likewise notes the
arrival of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s epistle in the middle of this year, relying on his own copy of Faṣl al-
khiṭāb (likely the same copy available to me). For the epistle’s arrival, see al-ʿAzzāwī, Tārīkh al-ʿIrāq bayn
iḥtilālayn, 6 vols. (Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat Baghdād, 1353-73/1935-54), 6:336; and for his copy, see ibid.,
5:310.
43
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 68a.
44
Ibid., f. 54a.
45
arsala risāla ilā ʾl-Aḥsāʾ wa-risāla ilā ʾl-Baṣra wa-risāla ilā ʾl-Shām wa-qad akhbaranī jamʿ thiqāt anna
baʿḍ fuḍalāʾ al-Aḥsāʾ taṣaddā li-radd risālatihi lākinnī lam aqif ʿalā tilka ʾl-risāla wa-lā ʿalā ʾl-radd, ibid.,
f. 54b. My thanks to Michael Cook for helping me decipher this nearly illegible passage.
44
The epistle that Ibn ʿAfāliq refuted in Tahakkum al-muqallidīn was not really concerned
with calling people to Islam, as we have seen. Al-Qabbānī, however, as he acknowledges,
was not really apprised of these epistles’ contents.
Like Ibn ʿAfāliq, al-Qabbānī accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of both leaning heavily
on Ibn Taymiyya and claiming ijtihād. But unlike him, he refers explicitly to the matter
of Wahhābī exclusivism, accusing the Najdī of excommunicating the Muslim community
(takfīr hādhihi ʾl-umma).46 Among the other anti-Wahhābī themes that al-Qabbānī
introduces is the portrayal of Najd as the land of Musaylima, the false prophet of al-
Yamāma (a geographical designation roughly comparable to Najd) who was defeated in
the “wars of apostasy” in early Islam. At one point al-Qabbānī asks Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
derisively, if he took his evidence for takfīr “from the remnants of the pages revealed to
the lying Musaylima with you in the areas of al-Yamāma.”47 Later refuters would cite a
ḥadīth, traditionally associated with Musaylima’s appearance, in which the Prophet
refuses to bless Najd and foretells that it will be the site of “earthquakes and tribulations,
and in it will arise the horn of the devil.”48
In the course of his commentary, al-Qabbānī preserves the text of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s epistle in its entirety.49 The epistle, which is also preserved in the Wahhābī
46
See, for example, ibid., ff. 52b, 56a, 103b.
47
min baqāyā ʾl-ṣuḥuf allatī unzilat ʿalā Musaylima al-kadhdhāb ʿindakum bi-nawāḥī ʾl-Yamāma, ibid., ff.
55a-55b.
48
hunāka ʾl-zalāzil waʾl-fitan wa-bihā yaṭlaʿu qarn al-shayṭān, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ
al-Bukhārī, ed. Abū Ṣuhayb al-Karmī (Riyadh: Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawliyya, 1419/1998), 205 (Kitāb al-
istisqāʾ, bāb mā qīla fī ʾl-zalāzil waʾl-āyāt, no. 1037); cf. Abū ʾl-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ
Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, 5 vols. (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1412/1991),
4:2228-2229 (Kitāb al-fitan wa-ashrāṭ al-sāʿa, bāb al-fitan min al-mashriq min ḥayth yaṭlaʿu qarn al-
shayṭān, no. 2905).
49
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, ff. 25a-29a, 30b-31a, 33a-34b, 39a-41a, 50b-51a, 52b-54a, 59a-59b, 63a-63b,
65a-65b, 68b, 72a, 81b-83b, 112b, 116b-117a, 119a, 121a-122a. See Appendix I for the text and
translation.
45
tradition in two versions,50 begins after the opening invocation: “These are words in
explication of the confession that there is no god but God” (hādhihi kalimāt fī bayān
shahādat an lā ilāha illā ʾllāh).51 I will therefore refer to it as the Kalimāt fī bayān
shahādat an lā ilāha illā ʾllāh, or the Kalimāt for short. Unlike the epistle that reached
Ibn ʿAfāliq in al-Aḥsāʾ, the Kalimāt brings out the central issues of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s doctrine.
In al-Qabbānī’s words, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s principal targets in the Kalimāt are
the practices of istighātha (calling on the dead for help) and tawassul (using the dead as a
means to God). Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb claims that those engaging in these practices are
guilty of polytheism (shirk), and that this polytheism is in fact worse than the polytheism
of the unbelievers from the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. He further contentds that the
unbelievers of today must be shown enmity and hatred, and those who fail to show them
enmity and hatred must in turn be shown enmity and hatred. Al-Qabbānī summarizes the
epistle thus:
What is in it is that istighātha and tawassul of the Prophet or one of the saints is
major polytheism (shirk akbar); that the polytheism of the unbelievers [at the time
of the Prophet] was less severe than it [i.e., the polytheism of today’s
unbelievers]; and that the believer who does not approve of istighātha but does
not curse those who practice istighātha, and does not show enmity to them, hate
them, hate those who love them, and dissociate from them and from those
prophets and saints they worship apart from God is not a believer. He determined
this decisively and stated it absolutely, not confining himself to one of the schools
of law of the imāms [i.e., Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ibn Ḥanbal], calling
people therewith [i.e., the epistle] to worship God alone, directing worship to Him
exclusively.52
50
al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:100-12; Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, 4:15-23. The differences
between al-Qabbānī’s version and the first of these are minimal; the second shows some signs of
sanitization.
51
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 25b.
52
maḍmūnuhā anna ʾl-istighātha waʾl-tawassul biʾl-nabī aw bi-aḥad mina al-awliyāʾ shirk akbar wa-anna
shirk al-kuffār akhaff minhu wa-anna ʾl-muʾmin alladhī lā yarā ʾl-istighātha lākinnahu lam yasubba ʾl-
mustaghīthīn wa-lam yuʿādihim wa-yubghiḍhum wa-yubghiḍ man yuḥibbuhum wa-yabraʾ minhum wa-
mimman ʿabadūhu min dūn Allāh min al-anbiyāʾ waʾl-awliyāʾ lā yakūnu muʾminan wa-jazama bi-dhālika
46
The Kalimāt is not argue in merely abstract terms. On the matter of istighātha, for
instance, which concerns the popular practice of visiting the tombs of prophets and saints
and seeking their help, he singles out two saints in particular as the objects of such
polytheistic veneration: ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166), a Ḥanbalī saint buried in
Baghdad and the namesake of the Qādirī Sufi order, and Shamsān ibn Muḥammad, a
local saint in al-Kharj in the south of Najd, around whom a major cult had sprung up.53
Al-Qabbānī states that Shamsān was a sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet, who had only
recently died (tuwuffiyā min zaman qarīb).54 Two other saints in al-Kharj are mentioned
as well: a certain Ḥusayn and a certain “guardian of the place of seclusion” (rāʿī ʾl-
khalwa).55 Al-Qabbānī identifies the latter as Idrīs, the son of Ḥusayn, both of whom he
says are deceased.56 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is dismayed that people are seeking the help of
these dead holy men for such things as safe travel and appealing to them for intercession
(shafāʿa) with God on the Day of Judgment.57 He is also upset that people are seeking the
help of living holy men and making vows to them.58 He describes these saints, living and
dead, as ṭawāghīt (sing. ṭāghūt), a Qurʾānic term meaning someone or something that is
worshipped apart from God.59
As in most of his works, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not plainly condemn the
majority of professed Muslims as unbelievers in the Kalimāt, as al-Qabbānī accuses him
wa-aṭlaqa min ghayr taqyīd bi-madhhab min madhāhib al-aʾimma yadʿū bihā ʾl-nās ilā ʿibādat Allāh
waḥdahu mukhliṣīn lahu ʾl-dīn, ibid., f. 4b.
53
Ibid., f. 33b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:104). On al-Jīlānī, see EI3, s.v. “ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī”
(Jacqueline Chabbi).
54
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 33b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:104).
55
Ibid., f. 72b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:110, which does not give the names of these saints).
56
Ibid., f. 81b.
57
Ibid., ff. 33b, 34a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:104).
58
Ibid., f. 68b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:110).
59
Ibid.
47
of doing. Rather, he speaks in general terms about polytheists (mushrikūn) and
unbelievers (kuffār) without specifying exactly who is intended. But for al-Qabbānī as for
the other refuters, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s intention was perfectly clear: he is referring to
the vast majority of Muslims. As al-Qabbānī says, “The purpose of this epistle is to
demonstrate that this Muslim community has associated [things] with God in manifest
polytheism.”60 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb must have known that his words were extraordinarily
provocative and would be met with fierce opposition, for in the Kalimāt he anticipates
that he will be refuted: “One ought not to launch into condemnation [of what I am
saying]; and one ought to know that if one rejects it one will only be rejecting God.”61
At the end of the Kalimāt, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb introduces a related issue that
would long remain a point of contention between the Wahhābīs and their enemies: the
alleged polytheism in the poem al-Burda (“The Cloak”) by the Egyptian Ṣūfī Muḥammad
ibn Saʿīd al-Būṣīrī (d. seventh/thirteenth century).62 The line in the poem that strikes Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as particularly offensive is this: “O most noble of creation [i.e., the
Prophet], none have I to seek refuge in / but you …” (yā akrama ʾl-khalqi mā lī man
alūdhu bihi / siwāka …). For Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, this kind of calling upon orr
supplication to (duʿāʾ) the Prophet constitutes worship.63 Needless to say, al-Qabbānī
disagreed.
60
kāna gharaḍ hādhihi ʾl-risāla huwa bayān anna hādhihi ʾl-umma qad ashrakat biʾllāh taʿālā shirkan
jaliyyan, ibid., f. 25b.
61
wa-lā yubdiya biʾl-inkār waʾl-yaʿlam in radda fa-innamā radda ʿalā ʾllāh, ibid., f. 81b: (=al-Durar al-
saniyya, 2:111, which has wa-lā yubādir instead of wa-lā yubdiya and lacks fa-innamā).
62
On him see EI3, s.v. “al-Būṣīrī” (Thomas Homerin).
63
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 83b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:111).
48
Al-Ṭandatāwī’s Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla
The third extant refutation of Wahhābism comes from the Ḥijāz. Its author, ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb ibn Aḥmad Barakāt al-Ṭandatāwī (d. 1156/1743), was an Egyptian Shāfiʿī living
in Mecca whose roots lay in the town of Ṭanṭā in the Nile Delta. Al-Ṭandatāwī was also a
Ṣūfī of the Aḥmadī order and a former student at al-Azhar; otherwise, little about his life
and career is known.64 The only known copy of his work, which was recently edited by
Samer Traboulsi,65 is held at Princeton University, and was made by none other than al-
Qabbānī.66 Titled Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla wa-qamʿ al-jahāla (“The Book of the Prevention
of Error and the Suppression of Ignorance”), it is a short work followed by the encomia
(taqrīẓāt) of ten scholars in Mecca. Al-Ṭandatāwī completed it on 6 Muḥarram
1156/March 2, 1743, just two and a half months after al-Qabbānī finished his Faṣl al-
khiṭāb.67 The scholarly opposition to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was thus beginning to take
form nearly simultaneously in al-Aḥsāʾ, Basra, and the Ḥijāz.
Al-Ṭandatāwī’s Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla covers much of the same ground traversed
by Ibn ʿAfāliq and al-Qabbānī. He rails against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, whom he does not
identify by name, for drawing inferences directly from the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth
64
On him see Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 380; and for further biographical information, including his
death date, see ʿAbdallāh Murdād Abū ʾl-Khayr, al-Mukhtaṣar min Kitāb nashr al-nawr waʾl-zahr fī
tarājim afāḍil Makka min al-qarn al-ʿāshir ilā ʾl-qarn al-rābiʿ ʿashar, 2nd ed. (Jeddah: ʿĀlam al-Maʿrifa,
1406/1986), 333-34. This source gives two death dates: 1154/1741f, on the authority of Muḥammad ʿĀbid
al-Sindī (d. 1257/1841f), and Shaʿbān 1156/September 1743, on the authority of Aḥmad al-Qaṭṭān (d.
thirteenth/nineteenth century). The first is impossible since al-Ṭandatāwī wrote his refutation some two
years after this date. For the full text of al-Qaṭṭān’s biography of al-Ṭandatāwī, see al-Qaṭṭān, Tanzīl al-
raḥamāt ʿalā man māt (part two), ms. Mecca, Maktabat al-Ḥaram al-Makkī, Tarājim 2790, p. 268; and on
this manuscript, see Muḥammad ibn Sayyid Aḥmad Muṭīʿ al-Raḥmān and ʿĀdil ibn Jāmil ʿĪd, al-Fihris al-
mukhtaṣar li-makhṭūṭāt al-Ḥaram al-Makkī al-Sharīf, 4 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Malik Fahd al-
Waṭaniyya,1427/2006), 3:1103 (no. 3973).
65
Traboulsi, “Early Refutation.”
66
Ibid., 405. The copy was completed on 23 Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1156/early January 1744.
67
Ibid.
49
(istinbāṭ) as opposed to emulating (taqlīd) one of the four law schools,68 and for
condemning (takfīr, taḍlīl) the Muslim community on account of the practices associated
with the cult of saints, such as istighātha and tawassul.69 He appears to be the first anti-
Wahhābī scholar to argue that the Muslim community cannot have fallen into unbelief on
account of the ḥadīth that says, “My community will not agree on an error” (inna ummatī
lā tajtajmiʿu ʿalā ḍalāla).70 He also refers to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alleged
excommunication of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī71 and al-Būṣīrī,72 quoting the offending line
of the latter, and discusses the quotation in al-Ḥajjāwī’s Iqnāʿ concerning one who takes
intermediaries between oneself and God.73 Unlike Ibn ʿAfāliq, however, who dismissed
this line as a minority opinion of Ibn Taymiyya’s, al-Ṭandatāwī claims that Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb has misunderstood it. Very similar objections to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrinal
views were thus being raised in al-Aḥsāʾ, Basra, and the Ḥijāz.74
The Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla differs from the previous two refutations in two key
respects. First, it does not quote Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb directly. This is likely because it
was not written in response to one of his epistles, but rather was prompted by the reports
68
Ibid., 395.
69
Ibid., 391, 402.
70
Ibid., 393, 402. For the ḥadīth, see Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Māja, Sunan Ibn Māja, ed.
Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, 2 vols. (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1372-73/1952-54),
2:1303 (Kitāb al-fitan, bāb al-sawād al-aʿẓam, no. 3950); cf. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad al-imām Aḥmad
ibn Ḥanbal, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ and ʿĀdil Murshid, 52 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1413-
29/1993-2008), 45:200 (ḥadīth Abī Baṣra al-Ghifārī, no. 27224); Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad al-Tirmidhī, al-
Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ wa-huwa Sunan al-Tirmidhī, ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir, et al, 5 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat
Muṣṭafā ʾl-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, n.d.-1395/n.d.-1975), 4:466 (Kitāb al-fitan, bāb mā jāʾa fī luzūm al-jamāʿa, no.
2167); Sulaymān Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī ʾl-Dīn ʿAbd al-
Ḥamīd, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā Muḥammad, 1354/1935), 4:98 (Kitāb al-fitan, dhikr al-fitan wa-
dalāʾilihā, no. 4253).
71
Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 391.
72
Ibid., 400.
73
Ibid., 401-2.
74
As Traboulsi notes (ibid., 386), al-Ṭandatāwī also “attacks the Shaykh for making the local chiefs [in
Najd] take land tax (ʿushūr) from the inhabitants,” an unusual accusation that does not appear elsewhere.
50
(khuṭūṭ) of certain Najdī scholars writing to Mecca and warning about the dangerous
reformer in their midst.75 In referring to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s various transgressions, al-
Ṭandatāwī usually says, “We have heard that he…” (wa-samiʿnā annahu…),76 or words
to that effect. Second, al-Ṭandatāwī’s refutation calls for specific action to be taken
against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to stop him from spreading his heresy. Near the end of his
work, he states, “It is incumbent upon those Muslim rulers who are capable of doing so to
restrain him and hinder him till he repents of his horrific acts.”77 The same sentiment is
expressed by several of the authors of the encomia, two of whom go even further in their
calls for punitive action. The first of these, the Ḥanafī Amīn ibn Ḥasan al-Mīrghanī (d.
1161/1748),78 writes that if Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is insane (in kāna majnūnan), then he
should be detained and isolated; however, “if he is of sound mind, then he is an
unbelieving heretic whom it is a duty to kill for all who are capable of getting hold of
him.”79 The second scholar, a Ḥanafī named Asʿad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAtāqī (d.
1169/1755f),80 agrees that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb should be killed if necessary. If he is
insane, al-ʿAtāqī says, “he should be imprisoned, beaten, and treated with medication for
insanity”; if not, however, and if he refuses to repent, then “it has become clear that he is
a misled misleader, who should be killed after being publicly denounced so as to deter
the likes of him.”81 Al-ʿAtāqī even relishes the idea of carrying out the deed himself: “If
my hands could reach him I would kill him” (wa-law tanāluhu yadayya la-
75
Ibid., 392.
76
Ibid., 391-92.
77
wa-ʿalā kull qādir min wulāt al-Islām zajruhu wa-radʿuhu ḥattā yatūba min qabīḥ fiʿālihi, ibid., 401.
78
On him see Abū ʾl-Khayr, Mukhtaṣar, 134-35.
79
wa-in kāna ʿāqilan fa-huwa kāfir zindīq yajibu ʿalā kull man yaqduru ʿalayhi qatluhu, Traboulsi, “Early
Refutation,” 409.
80
On him see Abū ʾl-Khayr, Mukhtaṣar, 309.
81
ḥubisa wa-ḍuriba wa-ʿūlija bi-adwiyat al-junūn … ẓahara annahu ḍāll muḍill yuqtalu baʿd an
yushannaʿa ʿalayhi ʾl-tashnīʿ alladhī yurtadaʿu bihi amthāluhu, Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 411-12.
51
aqtulannahu).82 The opponents of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb were beginning to call for his
head—and this well before the Wahhābīs were being accused of violence.
Al-Qabbānī’s Kashf al-ḥijāb, Ibn Suḥaym’s Epistle, and Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s Refutation
In late Rajab 1157/early September 1744, some ten months after al-Ṭandatāwī wrote his
Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla in Mecca, al-Qabbānī completed a second refutation of Wahhābism,
later titled Kashf al-ḥijāb ʿan wajh ḍalālāt Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (“Lifting the Veil from
the Face of the Errors of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb”).83 Two copies, one in Hyderabad and one
in Cairo, are known to be extant.84 Though rather long, Kashf al-ḥijāb is mostly an
abridgement of Faṣl al-khiṭāb—peppered with several approving quotations from al-
Ṭandatāwī’s refutation—and like the latter it preserves the entirety of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s Kalimāt epistle. The impetus for this second effort was, as al-Qabbānī
explains, an appeal from one or more Najdī scholars (suʾāl min baʿḍ ʿulamāʾ Najd) who
complained that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was continuing to lead Muslims astray.85 This
inspired him to make the abridgement; but upon completing it he was confronted by
another such request.86 This last was an epistle by the Najdī scholar Sulaymān ibn
82
Ibid., 412.
83
For the completion date, see al-Qabbānī, Kashf al-ḥijāb, ms. Hyderabad, State Central Library, Kalām
1238, f. 298b; on this manuscript, see Fihrist-i kutubi-i ʿArabī va-Fārsī va-Ūrdū-i makhzūneh-yi
Kutubkhāneh-yi Āṣafiyyeh-yi Sarkār-i ʿĀlī (Hyderabad: Dār al-Ṭabʿ-i Sarkār-i ʿĀlī, 1333-55/1914f-36f),
3:538-39; Carl Brockelman, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2nd ed., 2 vols., 3 supplements (Leiden:
Brill, 1996), SII, 532. The author does not title the refutation within the work itself, but he refers to it as
Kashf al-ḥijāb ʿan wajh ḍalālāt Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in his next refutation (see al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid
al-ḍalāl wa-rafḍ ʿaqāʾid al-ḍullāl, ms. Princeton, Princeton University, Garrett 3788Y, f. 42a). This has led
to some confusion: both catalogs confuse Kashf al-ḥijāb with Faṣl al-khiṭāb, and Āl ʿAbd al-Laṭīf (Daʿāwā
ʾl-munāwiʾīn, 44) likewise mistakes his photocopy of Kashf al-ḥijāb for Faṣl al-khiṭāb.
84
For the Hyderabad copy, see the previous note; for the Cairo copy, which I have not consulted, see Fihris
al-Khizāna al-Taymūriyya, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1367-69/1948-50), 4:112.
85
al-Qabbānī, Kashf al-ḥijāb, f. 4a.
86
Ibid., f. 188b.
52
Muḥammad ibn Suḥaym (d. 1181/1767f), which is reproduced and commented upon in a
final section of Kashf al-ḥijāb.
Ibn Suḥaym was one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s chief scholarly opponents in
Najd.87 His epistle is already known,88 as Ibn Ghannām preserves it in his history, where
he mentions that it was sent to Basra and al-Aḥsāʾ.89 A muṭawwaʿ (pl. maṭāwiʿ)90 of the
town of Riyadh, Ibn Suḥaym was an early supporter of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s but quickly
turned against him. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s letter show that the two were engaged in
correspondence. In one of these letters, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb accuses Ibn Suḥaym of
complaining about him and his followers to the Ḥijāz (wa-tashkūnā ʿind ahl al-
Ḥaramayn),91 which suggests that Ibn Suḥaym may have been behind the anti-Wahhābī
reports that reached Mecca in 1156/1743. His epistle must have been written at a slightly
later date, as a major development had taken place since. This was the Wahhābīs’
destruction of tombs in al-Jubayla, a town just outside of al-ʿUyayna. Al-Ṭandatāwī had
accused Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of condemning those who visit the tombs of the Prophet’s
companions buried there;92 Ibn Suḥaym states that the Wahhābīs have destroyed these
tombs, including that of Zayd ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.93 Al-Qabbānīs notes that Ibn Suḥaym’s
87
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:381-82; ʿAbdallāh al-ʿUthaymīn, Buḥūth wa-taʿlīqāt fī tārīkh
al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Suʿūdiyya, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Tawba, 1411/1990), 91-113 (“Mawqif
Sulaymān ibn Suḥaym min daʿwat al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb”).
88
For an analysis and partial translation of the epistle in English, see al-ʿUthaymīn, Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhāb, 45-46; for an analysis and partial translation in German, see Peskes, Muḥammad b.
ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92) im Widerstreit, 70-75.
89
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 344-47. There are practically no differences between Ibn Ghannām’s and al-
Qabbānī’s versions.
90
“The muṭawwa‘ of a town was, it seems, the imām of its mosque, and at the same time the local scholar
and religious leader,” Cook, “Expansion of the First Saudi State,” 672. The word would appear to be a
vernacular corruption of muṭawwiʿ or mutaṭawwiʿ.
91
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:391.
92
Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 391-92.
93
53
epistle arrived in Basra in 1157/1744, which means that the tombs’ destruction occurred
before then.94
The epistle is addressed by Ibn Suḥaym to all Muslim scholars who come across it
(ilā man yaṣilu ilayhi min ʿulamāʾ al-Muslimīn).95 Its stated purpose is to apprise them of
the worsening situation in Najd and to elicit some kind of response. It comprises a list of
fifteen of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alleged innovations and errors (min bidaʿihi wa-
ḍalālātihi), which are summarized below:96
1. He has destroyed the tombs of al-Jubayla as well as a mosque there;

2. He has burned the Ṣūfī books Dalāʾil al-khayrāt and Rawḍ al-rayāḥīn;
3. He has said that he would destroy the Prophet’s chamber in Medina (ḥujrat al-
rasūl, where the Prophet, Abū Bakr, and ʿUmar are held to be buried) and replace
the gilt water-spout (mīzāb) of the Kaʿba with a wooden one if he could;
4. He has said that Muslims have ceased to be Muslims for 600 years (al-nās min sitt
miʾat sana laysū ʿalā shayʾ);
5. He has made takfīr of those who do not agree with his every word (man lam
yuwāfiqhu fī kull mā qāla);
6. He has written a letter to us saying that none of his teachers possessed his
understanding of the religion (anna ʿilmahu hādhā lam yaʿrifhu mashāyikhuhu);
7. He has made takfīr of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and Ibn ʿArabī (two well-known Ṣūfī scholars
of the sixth/thirteenth century);
8. He has made takfīr of the descendants of the Prophet among us (al-sāda ʿindanā
min āl al-rasūl) on account of their accepting vows (li-ajl annahum yaʾkhūdhūn
al-nadhr);
9. He has said, against the view that “difference among the imāms is a mercy”
(ikhtilāf al-aʾimma raḥma),97 “difference among them is an abomination”
(ikhtilāfuhum naqma);
10. He has declared pious endowments to be corrupt (yaqṭaʿu bi-fasād al-waqf);
11. He has declared it wrong to pay someone to perform the ḥajj on another’s behalf
(ibṭāl al-juʿāla ʿalā ʾl-ḥajj);
12. He has ceased praising the Caliph (taraka tamjīd al-sulṭān) during the prayer, and
has called the Caliph a sinner (al-sulṭān fāsiq);
94
al-Qabbānī, Kashf al-ḥijāb, f. 4a. As Kashf al-ḥijāb was completed toward the end Rajab 1157, the
window of Ibn Suḥaym’s epistle’s arrival can be narrowed to Muḥarram-Rajab 1157/mid-February-early
September 1744.
95
Ibid.
96
Ibid., 1:344-47.
97
Cf. al-Qabbānī, Kashf al-ḥijāb, f. 259a, which has al-umma instead of al-aʾimma. This famous phrase is
not found in the canonical Sunnī ḥadīth collections, but it is attributed to the Prophet and his companions
elsewhere.
54
13. He has said that saying prayers for the Prophet (al-ṣalāt ʿalā rasūl Allāh) on
Fridays at day and at night is an innovation and an error;
14. He has said that the payment taken by judges (quḍāt) to resolve disputes is bribery
(rishwa);
15. He has made takfīr of those who, in the course of ritual slaughter, say things to
ward off the evil of the jinn (dafʿ sharr al-jinn).
Ibn Suḥaym laments that “many of the people of our land have been seduced by him”
(iftatana bihi nās kathīr min ahl quṭrinā), and ends by calling on scholars reading the
epistle to respond, presumably by expressing their outrage at the person described:
“Responding is an individual duty” (al-jawāb mutaʿayyin).98
The epistle appears to have achieved a wide circulation, not only as evidenced by
al-Qabbānī’s Kashf al-ḥijāb but also because Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb mentions it on several
occasions. In an undated letter to the people of al-Qaṣīm, for instance, he writes that one
or more of the scholars there have found it persuasive (qabalahā wa-ṣaddaqahā baʿḍ al-
muntamīn lil-ʿilm), and dismisses Ibn Suḥaym as a liar, saying that most of the charges
are false.99 He denies having said that Muslims have not really been so for 600 years, that
difference among the scholars is an abomination, or that he would destroy the Prophet’s
chamber and replace the Kaʿba’s water-spout. He further denies having burned the books
Dalāʾil al-khayrāt and Rawḍ al-rayāḥīn, or having made takfīr of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn al-
Fāriḍ, and even contests certain points not made by Ibn Suḥaym in the epistle, such as
that he claims ijtihād, opposes taqlīd, and considers the books of the four law schools to
be worthless (mubṭil kutub al-madhāhib al-arbaʿa).100 However, he admits that some of
Ibn Suḥaym’s charges are accurate. What is true, he says,
98
99
al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:33.
100
Ibid., 1:34-35. However, he declares in a fatwā that difference among the companions (ṣaḥāba) is
punishment and sedition (ikhtilāfuhum ʿuqūba wa-fitna; Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:476), and in another that
those who follow the path (madhhab) of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn al-Fāriḍ are unbelievers (ibid., 1:468).
55
is that I say that a person does not become a Muslim until he knows the meaning
of “there is no god but God,” and that I provide instruction in its meaning to those
who come to me; that I excommunicate those who make vows [to holy men or the
dead] if by the vow they seek nearness to something other than God and make the
vow for that purpose; [that I say] that making ritual sacrifice to something other
than God is an act of unbelief and that meat so slaughtered is unlawful. These
matters are true.101
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb can thus be seen here as trying to downplay the severity of his
doctrine, making his use of takfīr seem more measured than his opponents claim.
Elsewhere, he addresses the issue of endowments to which Ibn Suḥaym alludes,
explaining that what he prohibits is not endowments in general but endowments of wrong
and iniquity (waqf al-janaf waʾl-ithm). The latter are those set up for the purpose of
bypassing inheritance law—for example, an endowment used to bequeath certain
amounts to one’s offspring.102 One accusation that he noticeably avoids addressing is the
one concerning his teachers. This is probably because the charge was both true and
embarrassing. In one of his letters, he states plainly that none of his teachers understood
tawḥīd as he does, and even describes his knowledge as a blessing from God.103 Ibn
Suḥaym refers to this by scornfully asking if Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s knowledge was
revealed to him (hal ūḥiya ilayhi?).104
The notion that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had no teachers was sometimes related to the
accusation, made by al-Qabbānī in Kashf al-ḥijāb, that he was acting like a prophet or
claiming prophecy. Here al-Qabbānī mocks Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s behavior as pseudo-
101
annī aqūlu lā yatimmu Islām al-insān ḥattā yaʿrifa maʿnā lā ilāha illā ʾllāh wa-annī uʿarrifu man yaʾtīnī
bi-maʿnāhā wa-annī ukaffiru ʾl-nādhir idhā arāda bi-nadhrihi ʾl-taqarrub li-ghayr Allāh wa-akhadha ʾl-
nadhr li-ajl dhālika wa-anna ʾl-dhabḥ li-ghayr Allāh kufr waʾl-dhabīḥa ḥarām fa-hādhihi ʾl-masāʾil ḥaqq,
al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:34-35. For a similarly worded response to Ibn Suḥaym’s accusations, see Ibn
Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:348-49 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn Suḥaym).
102
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:364-73.
103
Ibid., 1:401-9. For more on this remark, see below, ch. 2, p. 106.
104
Ibid., 1:346.
56
prophetic by referring to him as “the pretender-prophet of al-ʿUyayna” (mutanabbī ʾl-
ʿUyayna) or “the pretender-prophet of the lands of al-Yamāma” (mutanabbī nawāḥī ʾl-
Yamāma);105 and he writes that, according to him, mankind was in a state of disbelief for
600 years, “until the pretender-prophet of al-ʿUyayna was sent [by God] calling to the
religion of Islam (ilā an buʿitha mutanabbī ʾl-ʿUyayna dāʿiyan ilā dīn al-Islām).”106
A few months after al-Qabbānī completed his second refutation in Basra, another
scholar, the Mālikī Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Maghribī (d. 1170/1756f), was finishing
a refutation in Medina. Parts of this work are preserved by Ibn Dāwūd.107 Born and raised
in Fez, Ibn al-Ṭayyib is remembered chiefly as an expert on language and poetry, on
which subjects he wrote several books.108 His refutation was, like al-Ṭandatāwī’s, the
product of solicitation, the solicitor in this case being a certain ʿUmar ibn Ḥāmid, a man
likely of Indian origin living in Sudayr who wrote to the people of the Ḥijāz (ilā ahl al-
Ḥaramayn) to request their support.109 In heeding this call, Ibn al-Ṭayyib refers to some
of the charges that were raised by Ibn Suḥaym in his epistle—presumably they were also
made by Ibn Ḥāmid—including that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb intends to destroy the Prophet’s
tomb, that he makes takfīr of his opponents, that he dismisses the legality of pious
endowments, and that he prohibits saying prayers for the Prophet.110 Ibn al-Ṭayyib also
criticizes Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for excommunicating all Muslims (takfīr jamīʿ al-ʿibād),
105
al-Qabbānī, Kashf al-ḥijāb, ff. 73a, 234a, 236a, 245b
106
Ibid., f. 236a.
107
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 81b-82b, 113a, 142b-143a.
108
On him see Muḥammad Khalīl ibn ʿAlī al-Murādī, Silk al-durar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-thānī ʿashar, 4 vols.
(Būlāq: n.p., 1291-1301/1874f-83f), 4:91-94.
109
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 82a. ʿUmar ibn Ḥāmid was, according to Ibn Dāwūd, a migrant
who had settled in Sudayr (ibid., f. 81b). He can probably be identified as ʿUmar ibn Ḥāmid al-Hindī, who
is named as a witness in a contemporary legal document from Sudayr. See ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad
al-Fāyiz, “Min nawādir al-wathāʾiq fī baldat al-Dākhila bi-iqlīm Sudayr,” al-Jazīra, September 21, 2014.
110
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 82b, 142b-143a.
57
claiming ijtihād, prohibiting taqlīd, and asserting that his knowledge of tawḥīd came to
him through divine inspiration (biʾl-ilhām).111 There is also a brief reference to Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s rejection of the idea that water is of three kinds (al-miyāh thalāthat
aqsām).112
As for what should be done about the Najdī, Ibn al-Ṭayyib, like the two scholars
who endorsed al-Ṭandatāwī’s refutation, does not mince words: “Jihād against this
sinner, and taking action to kill him and relieve all people of his error, are a duty
incumbent on all who are able, not to be delayed.”113 Here, then, was another early
opponent of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s who wanted him dead, this once again being before
the Wahhābīs had perpetrated violence against other Muslims.
There is one other important remark in Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s refutation that should be
noted. This pertains to another scholar living in Medina at this time, Muḥammad Ḥayāt
al-Sindī (d. 1163/1750), who, according to Ibn al-Ṭayyib, had also written to the people
of Najd concerning Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (waʾl-shaykh Muḥammad Ḥayāt kataba lakum
mā ẓahara lahu), meaning that he had written a refutation of him.114 This is an important
point, for al-Sindī, who is reported to have been a teacher of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s,
would later be portrayed by the Wahhābīs as an ally of Wahhābism. Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s
comment establishes that this was not so.115
111
Ibid., ff. 81b-82b.
112
Ibid., f. 82a.
113
faʾl-jihād fī hādhā ʾl-fāsiq waʾl-mubādara li-qatlihi wa-irāḥat jamīʿ al-nās min ḍalālatihi wājib ʿalā kull
man yaqduru ʿalayhi bi-lā taʾkhīr, ibid.
114
Ibid., f. 82b.
115
A fragment of what appears to be al-Sindī’s refutation is preserved by al-Ḥaddād (Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 54).
Here al-Sindī defends the practice of tawassul, rejecting a distinction made by Ibn Taymiyya in one of his
books between al-tawassul biʾl-aʿmāl al-ṣāliḥa (using one’s good acts as a means to God) and al-tawassul
biʾl-amwāt (using the dead as a means to God). Ibn Taymiyya approved of the former and disapproved of
the latter; al-Sindī, citing ḥadīth and reason (ʿaql), says that both are allowed. For Ibn Taymiyya’s
argument, see Ibn Taymiyya, Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm li-mukhālafat aṣḥāb al-jaḥīm, ed. Nāṣir ibn ʿAbd
58
Al-Qabbānī’s Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl
Approximately ten months after finishing his second refutation, al-Qabbānī wrote his
third and final one, which he titled Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl wa-rafḍ ʿaqāʾid al-ḍullāl
(“Criticizing the Principles of Error and Rejecting the Doctrines of the Misleaders”).
Dated 22 Jumādā I 1158/late June 1745, it survives at Princeton University in a unique
copy in al-Qabbānī’s own hand.116 The occasion for its composition was the arrival in
Basra, in the earlier half of 1158/1745, of another epistle from Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.117
As he had with the Kalimāt in his first refutation, al-Qabbānī writes a disparaging
commentary on this second epistle, quoting it in its entirety.118
Like the Arbaʿ qawāʿid tadūru ʾl-aḥkām ʿalayhā, this epistle is a statement of four
principles (or rather two sets of four principles), but in its content it is more similar to the
Kalimāt. That is to say, it is concerned with theology, not fiqh. Known in the Wahhābī
tradition as Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (“Four Principles concerning Religion”), it would go
on to become, in various forms, the most influential of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s catechisms.
Al-Qabbānī provides another helpful summary:
What is in it is that a Muslim monotheist is one who does not seek the help of (lā
yastaghīthu) prophets and saints, does not deem istighātha to be permissible,
excommunicates those who engage in istighātha and those who deem it
permissible, and excommunicates those who do not excommunicate them, show
them enmity, and hate them; and [what is in it is] that an unbelieving polytheist is
one who engages in istighātha, or deems it permissible, or does not
al-Karīm al-ʿAql, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Riyadh: Dār Ishbīliyā, 1419/1998), 2:321 (al-aʿmāl al-ṣāliḥa hiya aʿẓam
mā yatawassalu bihi ʾl-ʿabd ilā ʾllāh taʿālā), 2:318 (al-mayyit lā yuṭlabu minhu shayʾ lā duʿāʾ wa-lā
ghayruhu).
116
al-Qabbānī, Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, ms. Princeton, Princeton University, Garrett 3788Y, f. 63a; on this
manuscript, see Rudolph Mach, Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts (Yahuda Section) in the Garrett
Collection, Princeton University Library (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 225 no. 2636;
Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 379; Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 162ff.
117
Al-Qabbānī says it arrived in 1158 (Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, f. 41b), which yields a window of
Muḥarram-Jumādā I 1158, or February-June 1745.
118
al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, ff. 42a-45a, 46a-47b, 57a, 58b, 62a-62b. See Appendix II for the
text and translation, and see further Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle.”
59
excommunicate those who engage in istighātha or who deem it permissible, or
does not excommunicate those who do not excommunicate them, hate them, and
show them enmity.119
In the epistle, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb again condemns the saints of Najd, naming Shamsān,
Ḥusayn, Idrīs, and Tāj, as well as those who venerate these living and dead holy men by
making vows to them and asking them to relieve harms and supply their needs (tafrīj al-
kurubāt wa-qaḍāʾ al-ḥājāt).120 He explains that his preaching has led to the division of
Najdī society, which has fallen into a state of mutual takfīr: “We and they—both sides—
declare the other to be unbelievers.”121 Al-Qabbābī addresses the people of al-ʿUyayna
(yā ahl al-ʿUyayna) and refers to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as their wayward one (ḍāllukum),
which stongly suggests that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. was still in al-ʿUyayna at this time
(mid-1158/mid-1745).122
The Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl is much shorter than al-Qabbānī’s previous
refutations, with which it is consistent in its allegations and arguments. Again, al-
Qabbānī accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of claiming ijtihād and following Ibn Taymiyya in
rejecting istighātha and tawassul.123
119
maḍmūnuhā anna ʾl-Muslim al-muwaḥḥid huwa man lā yastaghīthu biʾl-anbiyāʾ waʾl-awliyāʾ wa-lā
yarā jawāz al-istighātha wa-yukaffiru ʾl-mustaghīthīn waʾl-qāʾilīn bi-jawāzihā wa-yukaffiru man lam
yukaffirhum wa-yuʿādihim wa-yubghiḍhum wa-anna ʾl-mushrik al-kāfir huwa man yastaghīthu aw yarā
jawāzahā aw lam yukaffir al-mustaghīthīn aw al-qāʾilīn bi-jawāzihā aw lam yukaffir man lam yukaffirhum
wa-lam yubghiḍhum wa-yuʿādihim, al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, f. 41b.
120
Ibid., 47a. According to Ibn Ghannām, Tāj led an active cult in al-Kharj at the time of the rise of
Wahhābism (Tārīkh, 1:175-76) and was the son of Shāmsān (ibid., 2:676).
121
annā wa-iyyāhum kull ṭāʾifa tukaffiru ʾl-ukhrā, al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, 58b; translation
from Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 167.
122
al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, f. 57a. It is of course possible that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had already
moved to al-Dirʿiyya and that al-Qabbānī was unaware.
123
Ibid., ff. 41b, 51b.
60
Unsorted Refutations of the al-ʿUyayna Period
Several other refutations were likely written during Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s time al-
ʿUyayna. These develop the same anti-Wahhābī themes seen above, making no reference
to violence. All of them were written by scholars in al-Aḥsāʾ; none of them is extant in its
entirety.
The first is by the Ḥanbalī ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz (d.
1175/1762),124 from the town of al-Mubarraz,125 who is mainly known as the father of
Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, an even more prolific refuter of Wahhābism. Snippets of his
refutation, quoted by Ibn Dāwūd,126 deal with Ibn Taymiyya’s line in the Iqnāʿ about
those who take intermediaries (wasāʾiṭ) between themselves and God. Like al-Ṭandatāwī,
Ibn Fayrūz does not repudiate Ibn Taymiyya’s phrase but rather reads it restrictively,
arguing that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has misunderstood it. The phrase, he says, pertains to
certain heretical Ṣūfīs (fī nās min mulḥidī ʾl-Ṣūfiyya), not to the masses and the ignorant
(al-ʿawāmm wa-juhhāl al-Muslimīn).127 Even if one of the latter were guilty of taking
holy men (ahl al-ṣalāḥ) as intermediaries with God, the accused should be arrested, have
his views corrected, and be given the opportunity to repent.128
The second of these refutations was written by another Ḥanbalī, the Najdī ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Razīnī (d. 1179/1765).129 Born in Uthayfiya, a town in
al-Washm, al-Razīnī seems to have moved to al-Aḥsāʾ, where he studied under ʿAbdallāh
ibn Fayrūz and his son. His refutation, which takes the form of a letter to the people of
124
On him see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:652-53; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:487-89.
125
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb places him there in one of his letters. See Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:251 (letter to
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf).
126
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 196b-197b.
127
Ibid., f. 196b.
128
Ibid., ff. 196b-198a.
129
Ibn Fayrūz, Tarājim, f. 78a; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:540-44 (the latter quoting the former).
61
Uthaythiya, is devoted to the issue of pious endowments. A manuscript copy of the
refutation is noted in an article by Aḥmad al-Bassām, who quotes several passages from
it and reprodudes a few pictures of it.130 Noteworthy is a brief comment to the effect that
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has taken Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim out of context and used
their words to mislead his followers.131
The third refutation is by the Mālikī ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muṭlaq (d.
1198/1783f), a blind scholar from al-Mubarraz remembered as a teacher of grammar
(naḥw) and the principles of jurisprudence (ʿilm al-ụsūl).132 A short fragment and
summary of it are found in the refutation by al-Ḥaddād, who says that Ibn Muṭlaq
adduces numerous ḥadīth in favor of istighātha and tawassul.133 The part that is quoted
consists of a defense of al-Būṣīrī and his poem.134
The fourth of these refutations is entirely lost, but we know something about it
nonetheless. It was written by a Shāfiʿī in al-Aḥsāʾ, ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf (d. 1181/1767f),135 and is described by al-Ḥaddād as Tajrīd sayf al-jihād li-
muddaʿī ʾl-ijtihād (“Unsheathing the Sword of Jihād against the Claimant to Ijtihād”).136
Not much is known about Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf except the names of some of his books and
the fact that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb originally held him in high regard when they spent time
130
See al-Bassām, “Min asbāb al-muʿārāḍa,” 30, 39, 62-63.
131
Ibid., 39.
132
On him see Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh Āl ʿAbd al-Qādir, Tuḥfat al-mustafīd bi-tārīkh al-Aḥsāʾ fī ʾl-
qadīm waʾl-jadīd, 2 vols. (Riyadh: al-Amāna al-ʿĀmma lil-Iḥtifāl bi-Murūr Miʾat ʿĀm ʿalā Taʾsīs al-
Mamlaka, 1419/1999), 2:629-31; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿUṣfūr, ed., Fatāwā ʿulamāʾ al-Aḥsāʾ wa-masāʾiluhum,
2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1422/2001), 2:520n1. He is also briefly mentioned in Ibn
Fayrūz, Tarājim, f. 77b.
133
al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 62-63
134
Ibid., 63.
135
On him see Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 291-92; al-Nuwayṣir, Muʿāraḍa, 208-23; al-ʿUṣfūr, Fatāwā
ʿulamāʾ al-Aḥsāʾ, 2:499n2.
136
al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 70.
62
together in al-Aḥsāʾ. Ibn Ghannām preserves a long letter from Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to
Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf responding to the latter’s refutation.137 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb expresses
his great disappointment in Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf: “When it was said that you had written
with them [i.e., the other refuters], it gave me some distress … I did not think that you
would act hastily in this matter.”138 His letter, in which rejects the charge of ijtihād at
length, is his most thorough treatment of the subjects of ijtihād, taqlīd, and religious
authority more generally. A subsequent refutation by Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, a letter to the
people of Kuwait dated 1174/1760f, is partly reproduced in a Saudi dissertation from
1410/1990.139 Here he writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s innovation has grown famous
and that his evil has spread (ishtaharat bidʿatuhu waʾntasharat shunʿatuhu).140 The letter
also has strong words for Ibn Taymiyya, whom Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb of following.141
Unsorted Refutations of the al-Dirʿiyya Period
A number of refutations are clearly from the al-Dirʿiyya period but cannot be precisely
dated. The reason why they must belong to this period is that they describe Wahhābism
as an armed movement. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is not only accused of declaring Muslims to
be unbelievers but also of fighting them as such, deeming their blood and property licit.
137
138
wa-lammā qīla innaka katabta maʿahum waqaʿa fī ʾl-khāṭir baʿḍ al-shayʾ … lam aẓunna fīka ʾl-
musāraʿa fī hādhā ʾl-amr, ibid., 1:246-47.
139
al-Nuwayṣir, Muʿāraḍa, 180, 218-22, 348.
140
Ibid., 219.
141
Ibid., 221.
63
Two of these were written by the leading Ḥanbalī scholar of the town of Nābulus
in northern Palestine, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Saffārīnī (d. 1188/1774).142 Born there
in 1114/1702f and partly educated in Damascus, al-Saffārīnī was in many ways a natural
ally of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s. An admirer of the exclusivist theology of Ibn Taymiyya,
on which he wrote several books, he lamented the many innovations that he perceived to
be accumulating in the Islamic world, including kalām theology and antinomian
Ṣūfism.143 Yet he had nothing but scorn for the man from Najd.
Al-Saffārīnī refers to him at least tweice. The first time is in a fatwā in response to
a question about an unnamed man who claims ijtihād and rejects the books of fiqh.144 Al-
Saffārīnī describes him as a misled misleader (ḍāll muḍill)145 and rejects the purported
claim to ijtihād, which he compares to Musaylima’s claim to prophecy (daʿwāhu ʾl-
ijtihād ka-daʿwā Musaylima al-kadhdhāb al-nubuwwa).146 Ijtihād in the full sense, he
says, is not possible in the modern age.147 No mention of violence, however, is found
here, and indeed this fatwā may have been written during the al-ʿUyayna years.
The second time that he writes about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb there is violence
aplenty. The occasion was a series of questions posed to al-Saffārīnī by people from
Najd; his response to them is a collection titled al-Ajwiba al-najdiyya ʿan al-suʾālāt al-
142
On him see Muḥammad Murtaḍā ibn Muḥammad al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, ed. Niẓām
Muḥammad Yaʿqūbī and Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir al-ʿAjamī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya,
1427/2006), 642-47; al-Ghazzī, al-Naʿt al-akmal, 301-6; al-Murādī, Silk al-durar, 4:31-34; Ibn Ḥumayd,
al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:839-46; al-Shaṭṭī, Mukhtaṣar, 127-30. See also Cook, Commanding Right and
Forbidding Wrong, 163n125, and the references therein.
143
See the useful summary of al-Saffārīnī’s creedal views in Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī, Taʿaqqubāt
al-ʿulamāʾ ʿalā Lawāmiʿ al-anwār al-bahiyya lil-imām al-Saffārīnī (Kuwait: Dār Īlāf al-Dawliyya,
1438/2017), 15-20.
144
al-Saffārīnī, Jawāb al-ʿallāma al-Saffārīnī ʿalā man zaʿama anna ʾl-ʿamal ghayr jāʾiz bi-kutub al-fiqh,
ed. Walīd ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAlī, in Liqāʾ al-ʿashr al-awākhir biʾl-Masjid al-Ḥarām, vol. 10, section 119
(Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 1439/2008).
145
Ibid., 28.
146
Ibid., 27.
147
man rāma ʾl-ijtihād fī hādhihi ʾl-azmina … fa-qad rāma ʾl-muḥāl, ibid., 30.
64
Najdiyya (“The Helpful Answers to the Najdī Questions”), which was only recently
edited and published.148 The last of the questions is whether a person of unsound mind
(ghayr kāmil al-qarīḥa) who rejects the great scholars before him should be allowed to
derive judgments from the Qurʾān and the sunna (an yaʾkhudha ʾl-aḥkām min al-Qurʾān
al-ʿaẓīm wa-sunnat al-nabī).149 The answer is a definitive no. Al-Saffārīnī compares Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (hādhā ʾl-aḥmaq) to Ibn Tūmart (d. 524/1130), the founder of the
Almohad dynasty in North Africa who famously proclaimed himself the mahdī and who,
according to al-Saffārīnī, also proscribed taqlīd of the four Sunnī law schools. But the
heresy and innovation of Ibn Tūmart were not as bad as those of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.150
An even more fitting analogy, he remarks, is to the early Khārijite leader Nāfiʿ ibn al-
Azraq (d. 65/685), whose Azāriqa Khārijite sect was known for its indifference to the
killing of Muslims and the deeming licit of their blood, property, women, and children.151
Al-Saffārīnī finishes his response by accusing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb—still unnamed—of
allowing his followers to make taqlīd of him and him alone, and of excommunicating and
deeming licit the blood of all those who do not adopt his doctrine.152
Such is the flavor of the refutations of the al-Dirʿiyya period, which never miss an
opportunity to deplore Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s willingness to use violence against fellow
Muslims. While the analogy to the Almohads is unusual, the portrayal of the Wahhābīs as
Khārijites is henceforward a staple in the refutational literature.
148
Idem, al-Ajwiba al-najdiyya ʿan al-asʾila al-Najdiyya, ed. Mubārak ibn Rāshid al-Ḥathlān (Amman: Dār
al-Fatḥ, 1436/2015). For the title as chosen by the author, see ibid., 22.
149
Ibid., 117.
150
wa-qad kāna fīhi khurūj waʾbtidāʿ … wa-lākin dūn mā ʿalayhi hādhā min al-khurūj waʾl-ibtidāʿ, ibid.,
128.
151
ʿadam iktirāthihim fī irāqat dimāʾ al-Muslimīn waʾrtiyāʿihim wa-ibāḥat dimāʾihim wa-amwālihim wa-
nisāʾihim wa-aṭfālihim, ibid.
152
wa-sawwagha li-atbāʿihi ʾl-māriqīn wa-shayāṭīnihi ʾl-ghāwīn taqlīdahu waʾttibāʿahu fī ʾl-dīn … wa-
kaffara man lam yaqul bi-maqālatihi wa-abāḥa dimāʾ man lam yattabiʿhu ʿalā ḍalālatihi, ibid., 129.
65
A similar refutation was composed by Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Kurdī (d.
1194/1780),153 a prominent Shāfiʿī muftī in Medina, and is preserved by al-Ḥaddād.154
Al-Kurdī was writing in response to a series of questions about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb—a
series that in reality is a litany of accusations. The questioner states:
He has appointed himself imām and requires that the Muslim community follow
his words and adhere to his school, compelling them to do so by force of the
sword. And he holds those who oppose him to be unbelievers, and deems licit
their blood and property, even if the pillars of faith are sounds in them.155
Other accusations are that he has no teachers and claims ijtihād. Concerning the former,
al-Kurdī cites the rhyming adage, “He whose teacher is a book, his wrongs are more than
his rights.”156 As for the latter, he takes almost the same approach as al-Saffārīnī,
declaring ijtihād to be practically impossible in this day and age.157 On the question of
Ibn Taymiyya’s line in the Iqnāʿ, al-Kurdī responds by quoting the opinions of al-
Ṭandatāwī in Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla and Ibn ʿAfāliq in Tahakkum al-muqallidīn.158
When it comes to violence, al-Kurdī chastises Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for
contravening the Prophet’s prohibition against killing those who say “there is no god but
God.” He cites the Prophet’s statement, “I was commanded to fight people till they
confess that there is no god but God,”159 and a ḥadīth in which the Prophet chides his
153
On him see al-Murādī, Silk al-durar, 4:111-12.
154
al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 82-86. Cf. the shorter version in al-Kurdī, Fatāwā ʾl-imām al-ʿallāma
waʾl-ḥibr al-fahhāma khātimat al-muḥaqqiqīn al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Kurdī (Cairo: al-
Maktaba al-Tijāriyya al-Kubrā, 1357/1938), 256-61.
155
yansubu nafsahu lil-imāma wa-yūjibu ʿalā ʾl-umma al-akhdh bi-qawlihi wa-luzūm madhhabihi wa-
yujbiruhum ʿalā dhālika biʾl-sayf qahran wa-yaʿtaqidu kufr man khālafahu wa-yastaḥillu damahu wa-
mālahu wa-law ustukmilat fīhi arkān al-Islām, al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 82.
156
fa-man kāna shaykhuhu ʾl-kitāb kāna khaṭaʾuhu akthar min al-ṣawāb, ibid., 83.
157
daʿwā ʾl-ijtihād al-yawm fī ghāya min al-buʿd, ibid.
158
Ibid., 85.
159
umirtu an uqātila ʾl-nās ḥattā yashhadū an lā ilāha illā ʾllāh, al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1321 (Kitāb istitābat
al-murtaddīn waʾl-muʿānidīn wa-qitālihim, bāb qatl man abā qabūl al-farāʾiḍ wa-mā nusibū ilā ʾl-ridda,
no. 6924); Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:51-52 (Kitāb al-īmān, bāb al-amr bi-qitāl al-nās ḥattā yaqūlū lā ilāha illā
ʾllāh Muḥammad rasūl Allāh…, no. 20).
66
former slave, Usāma ibn Zayd, for striking a man dead who had uttered the confession.160
When Usāma protests that the man said it only out of fear, the Prophet replies, “Did you
tear out his heart to see whether he said it [sincerely] or not?”161 These ḥadīth would be
routinely cited during the al-Dirʿiyya period to show that the Wahhābīs’ willingness to
engage in violence against fellow Muslims was at odds with one of the fundamental
precepts of Islam: that Muslims are not to kill one another.
Another of these refutations is concerned almost exclusively with violence. Its
author is Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz (d. 1216/1801),162 a student of Ibn ʿAfāliq’s and the son
of the ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayrūz encountered above. Born in al-Aḥsāʾ in 1141/1728, he is
described in the biographies as a brilliant polymath (much like Ibn ʿAfāliq) and as one of
the most active scholarly opponents of Wahhābism. One of his students depicts him as
“an unsheathed sword against the people of innovation” (sayf maslūl ʿalā ahl al-bidaʿ),163
claiming that he was so active in suppressing “the innovation of the people of al-ʿĀriḍ”
(bidʿat ahl al-ʿĀrịd) that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb placed a bounty on his head (badhala
ʿalayhi ṭāghiyatuhum khams miʾat aḥmar dhahaban li-man yaqtuluhu).164
In this refutation, Ibn Fayrūz refers repeatedly to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as “the
excommunicator” (al-mukaffir), arguing that the targets of his takfīr are Muslims who
160
Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:96-97 (Kitāb al-īmān, bāb taḥrīm qatl al-kāfir baʿd an qāla lā ilāha illā ʾllāh, no. 96);
cf. al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 807 (Kitāb al-maghāzī, bāb baʿth al-nabī Usāma ibn Zayd, 4269).
161
a-fa-lā shaqaqta ʿan qalbihi ḥattā taʿlama a-qālahā am lā, al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 83.
162
On him see Ṣāliḥ ibn Sayf al-ʿAtīqī, Tarjamat Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, ms. Princeton, Princeton
University, Garrett 651Y, ff. 75a-76b; Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 290-98; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-
wābila, 3:969-80; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 3:882-86; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 2:226-28; al-Nuwayṣir,
Muʿāraḍa, 224-33; Muḥammad ibn Ḥamad al-ʿAssāfī, Tarājim al-fuḍalāʾ, ms. Riyadh, Jāmiʿat al-Imām
Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd al-Islāmiyya, 9164, ff. 43a-59a.
163
al-ʿAtīqī, Tarjamat Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, f. 76b.
164
Ibid., f. 75a.
67
cannot possibly be compared to the unbelievers of the Prophet’s time.165 For the people
of Najd confess that “there is no god but God,” pray, and pay the alms tax (zakāt); they
do not deny the hour (al-sāʿa) or the resurrection (al-baʿth), and believe in the afterlife,
the Qurʾān, and the Prophet; and they do not assign partners to God.166 Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb is “misled, errant, lost, and of unsound mind” (ḍāll mukhṭiʾ tāʾih zāʾil al-ʿaql).167
The context of his writing is the war between al-Dirʿiyya and Riyadh, which broke out in
1159/1746f and ended with the latter’s submission in 1187/1783.168 Ibn Fayrūz gives the
impression that the war involves more than just the two towns, the Wahhābīs working to
recruit other towns to their cause:
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has excommunicated a great many Muslims, among them
the people of Riyadh and others; and he has deemed licit their blood and property,
and has gone about the lands making pacts with their people to fight the people of
Riyadh and others. He has deemed licit their blood and property, and made them
out to be like the polytheists whom God commanded His Prophet to fight.169
In this way Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his followers, says Ibn Fayrūz, are mimicking the
Prophet and his companions: “He has placed himself and the people of his country who
have followed him and accepted his words in the position of the Messenger of God and
his companions, whom God commanded to fight the unbelievers.”170 Ibn ʿAbd al-
165
Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ wa-man ḥawlahum min al-Muslimīn, ed. al-Azharī,
2010. The title is the invention of the pseudonymous editor, whose edition is made from a unique
manuscript in Bahrain.
166
Ibid., 27-34.
167
Ibid., 37.
168
For these events, see below, ch. 4.
169
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb kaffara jillatan [jumlatan?] min al-Muslimīn minhum ahl al-Riyāḍ wa-ghayruhum
wa-abāḥa dimāʾahum wa-amwālahum wa-sāra ilā ʾl-buldān yuʿāhidu ahlahā ʿalā qitāl ahl al-Riyāḍ wa-
ghayrihim wa-abāḥa dimāʾahum wa-amwālahum wa-jaʿalahum kaʾl-mushrikīn alladhīna amara ʾllāh
nabiyyahu bi-qitālihim, Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ, 25-26.
170
wa-aqāma nafsahu wa-ahl buldānihi ʾlladhīna naḥawhu wa-qabalū qawlahu maqām rasūl Allāh ṣ wa-
aṣḥābihi ʾlladhīna amarahum Allāh bi-qitāl al-kuffār, ibid., 26.
68
Wahhāb’s allegedy mimicry of the Prophet is a theme that was seen before in al-Qabbānī,
but the theme becomes even more pronounced in the al-Dirʿiyya years.
Another critic who stressed this theme was a certain Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Najdī,
described by Ibn Dāwūd as a Najdī scholar living in Medina.171 In the part of his
refutation quoted by Ibn Dāwūd, Ṣāliḥ accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of assuming the
prophetic office (aqāma … maqām al-nubuwwa), describing his followers as Emigrants
and Supporters (wa-sammā atbāʿahu ʾl-muhājirīn waʾl-anṣār), and likening their war to
the jihād of the companions and the Prophet (anna qitālahum al-Muslimīn ka-jihād al-
ṣaḥāba maʿa rasūl Allāh).172
At the beginning of the al-Dirʿiyya period, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s most prominent
scholarly detractor becomes ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĪsā al-Muways (d. 1175/1761f), the judge of
Ḥarma in Sudayr.173 Al-Muways had studied in Syria with al-Saffārīnī, among others,
and seems to have invoked his superior academic credentials in denouncing the
Wahhābīs. In one of his letters, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb taunts him as “your Shāmī”
(Shāmiyyukum),174 and in another claims that he is flaunting his elite Syrian training—
“you see me coming from al-Shām!” (tarāy jāy min al-Shām).175 The only bit of al-
Muways’s output that appears to have survived is a letter to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
preserved in a manuscript in Mecca.176 Here al-Muways rejects his correspondent’s
contention that he hates tawḥīd, affirming that “we only hate what you, at your whim,
have called tawḥīd, which entails excommunicating Muslims and deeming their blood
171
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 82b.
172
Ibid., ff. 82b-83a.
173
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:364-69; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:415-16; al-Bassām,
“Min asbāb al-muʿāraḍa,” 43-45.
174
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:360 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn Suḥaym).
175
Ibid., 1:326 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn Suḥaym). The Arabic phrase is in the vernacular.
176
al-Bassām, “Min asbāb al-muʿāraḍa,” 44n6; and see the photos ibid., 68.
69
and property licit, with no support from God or His Messenger except the way of the
Khārijites” 177
Ibn ʿAfāliq’s Letters to ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar
The earliest refutations of the al-Dirʿiyya period that can be dated, or at least roughly
dated, are two letters sent by Ibn ʿAfāliq, the Ḥanbalī scholar in al-Aḥsāʾ, to ʿUthmān ibn
Muʿammar. They are preserved in abridged form in a manuscript in Germany.178 Ibn
Muʿammar was the ruler of al-ʿUyayna who hosted Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb before the
latter’s departure for al-Dirʿiyya. After the move, Ibn Muʿammar appears to have
remained a loyal supporter of Wahhābism. He was assassinated in 1163/1750, also the
year of Ibn ʿAfāliq’s death. In the first of the two letters, Ibn ʿAfāliq refers to the ongoing
war between al-Dirʿiyya and Riyadh, which, as noted above, began in 1159/1746f.179 The
letters, therefore, have to have been written between the years 1159/1746f and
1163/1750—the outbreak of the war and the death of both correspondents. They show
Ibn ʿAfāliq trying to persuade Ibn Muʿammar to withdraw his support from Ibn ʿAbd al-
177
wa-innamā nubghiḍu mā sammayta anta tawḥīdan min tilqāʾ nafsika fīhi takfīr al-Muslimīn waʾstibāḥat
dimāʾihim wa-amwālihim bilā burhān ʿan Allāh aw ʿan rasūlihi illā ṭarīqat al-Khawārij, ibid., 44.
178
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla I, ms. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Pm. 25, ff. 36b-55b; idem, Risāla II, ms.
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Pm. 25, ff. 56a-73b; on these manuscripts, see Wilhelm Ahlwardt,
Verzeichnis der arabischen Handschriften, 10 vols. (Hildesheim: George Olms Verlag, 1980), 2:477 nos.
2157 and 2158. Ahlwardt casts doubt on the ascription of Risāla I to Ibn ʿAfāliq, and Peskes also takes this
view (Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92) im Widerstreit, 58-66). This is a mistake in my opinion.
Both letters are attributed to Ibn ʿAfāliq by the copyist and are very similar in style and substance. For
instance, both quote from the same two Wahhābī epistles, the Kalimāt and Kashf al-shubuhāt. Risāla II has
been discussed by Cook (“Origins of Wahhābism,” 200), while both letters are treated in ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, “Mawqif ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar min daʿwat al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb:
murājaʿāt min khilāl risālatay Ibn Muʿammar,” al-Dāra 32 (1427/2006): 189-200. For an edition of the
letters, see Ḥamādī al-Radīsī, ed., al-Radd ʿalā ʾl-Wahhābiyya: nuṣūs al-sharq al-Islāmī (Beirut: Dār al-
Ṭalīʿa, 1433/2012), 85-133; as this is not entirely reliable, I prefer to cite the manuscripts.
179
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla I, f. 49a.
70
Wahhāb and his movement, and Ibn Muʿammar not budging. The latter, indeed, comes
across as a committed Wahhābī.
As in Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, Ibn ʿAfāliq once again mocks Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s scholarly pretentions, claiming that he has no scholarly training or knowledge
(laysa lahu sābiqat ʿilm wa-lā maʿrifa biʾl-ʿilm wa-ahl al-ʿilm)180 and is “more misled
than his family’s donkey” (aḍall min ḥimār ahlihi).181 Unlike before, however, Ibn
ʿAfāliq now describes the Wahhābī movement as belligerent. “Why,” he asks Ibn
Muʿammar, “are you accepting his [i.e., Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s] statements, fighting and
spilling blood, and dismissing those more knowledgeable [of the religion] of God than
he?”182 Similarly, he complains that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is presenting the military
endeavors of the Wahhābīs as jihād against unbelievers: “[He] has required you to
undertake jihād, saying, ‘Fight the unbelievers who are near to you’ (Q. 9:123), so that
you have claimed that jihād has become obligatory for you.”183 The Wahhābīs, he says,
are the clear aggressors (muʿtadūn) in the war with Riyadh, and this is indefensible since
the Prophet prohibited warfare against those who say “there is no god but God.”184
According to Ibn ʿAfāliq, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also forces all Muslims to make
hijra, or emigration, to the lands under his control: “You have excommunicated the
community of His Prophet, deemed licit their blood and property without proof or
evidence, and made the land of Musaylima the abode of emigration, such that one who
180
Ibid., f. 53b.
181
Idem, Risāla II, f. 62a.
182
fa-li-mādhā taʾkhudhūna bi-aqwālihi wa-tuqātilūna wa-tasfikūna ʾl-dimāʾ wa-tatrukūna man huwa
aʿlam minhu biʾllāh, idem, Risāla I, f. 40a.
183
wa-alzamakum biʾl-jihād wa-qāla qātilū ʾlladhīna yalūnakum min al-kuffār fa-zaʿamtum anna ʾl-jihād
qad wajaba ʿalaykum, idem, Risāla II, f. 58b.
184
Idem, Risāla I, f. 49a.
71
does not emigrate there has no Islam and no faith.”185 In Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, Ibn
ʿAfāliq had accused Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of requiring every truth-seeker (ṭālib al-ḥaqq)
to emigrate; now the alleged obligation has grown to include all Muslims. Citing the
“horn of the devil” ḥadīth, he tells Ibn Muʿammar, “You have made out the land most
detested by the Prophet to be the stronghold and establishment of the faith, and made it
out to be a domain of emigration.”186 He refers to certain people who are picking up and
relocating to Najd with their property and families, and who are “claiming that it is
emigration to God and His Prophet” (zāʿiman annahā hijra ilā ʾllāh wa-rasūlihi).187
Ibn ʿAfāliq also touches on the theme of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alleged claim to
prophecy. In requiring people to follow his every word and excommunicating those who
do not, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb “has put himself on the level of a prophet” (anzala nafsahu
manzilat rasūl).188 Accordingly, his followers treat him as infallible (maʿṣūm).189
Probably referring to Ibn Suḥaym’s speculation about divine revelation, Ibn ʿAfāliq avers
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb “has claimed prophecy and claimed that that it was revealed to
him (waʾddaʿā ʾl-risāla wa-anna dhālika ūḥiya ilayhi).”190
Another difference between Ibn ʿAfāliq’s earlier critique and the one found in
these two letters is his approach to Ibn Taymiyya. Instead of arguing as before that Ibn
Taymiyya’s position on intermediaries with God is a regrettable error, he now defends
Ibn Taymiyya, along with his student Ibn al-Qayyim, and accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of
185
fa-kaffartum ummat rasūlihi waʾstaḥlaltum dimāʾahum wa-amwālahum min ghayr bayyina wa-lā dalīl
wa-jaʿaltum bilād Musaylima dār al-hijra fa-man lam yuhājir ilayhā fa-laysa lahu Islām wa-lā īmān, idem,
Risāla II, f. 69b.
186
wa-jaʿaltum abghaḍ al-bilād ilā rasūl Allāh hiya maʿqil al-īmān wa-maqarrahu wa-jaʿaltumūhā dār
hijra, ibid., f. 63a.
187
Idem, Risāla I, f. 46b.
188
Ibid., f. 49a.
189
Idem, Risāla II, f. 64a.
190
Idem, Risāla I, f. 48b.
72
misconstruing their words. One of the main purposes of these letters was indeed to
convince Ibn Muʿammar that these scholars could not be legitimately used to support
Wahhābism. Ibn ʿAfāliq’s advances an argument that turns on the distinction between al-
shirk al-akbar (major association) and al-shirk al-aṣghar (minor association). Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb, he says, fails to distinguish between these two kinds of shirk, which is a
fundamental error since only al-shirk al-akbar ejects one from the community of Islam.
Excessive acts of reverence for saints and prophets amount only to al-shirk al-aṣghar, he
maintains.191 He also terms such acts al-shirk fī ʾl-ʿibāda (association in worship), saying
that these are always al-shirk al-aṣghar. The correct understanding of al-shirk al-akbar,
he argues, is al-shirk fī ʾllāh (association with God) or al-shirk fī tawḥīd Allāh
(association in God’s oneness).192 These distinctions are not spelled out further, but one
gathers that, for Ibn ʿAfāliq, to commit al-shirk al-akbar requires more-or-less explicit
repudiation of God’s status as the sole God.
Ibn ʿAfāliq quotes two Wahhābī epistles in his letters: the first is the Kalimāt;193
the second is a more famous epistle known in the Wahhābī tradition as Kashf al-shubuhāt
(“Exposing the Specious Arguments”).194 In Ibn Ghannām’s history, where the full text
of Kashf al-shubuhāt is found,195 it is introduced as “a general epistle for the Muslims
titled Kashf al-shubuhāt” (risāla ʿāmma lil-Muslimīn tusammā Kashf al-shubuhāt),
191
Ibid., f. 52a.
192
Idem, Risāla II, ff. 66a, 67b-68a.
193
Compare idem, Risāla I, f. 51b and al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:111; and compare Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla II, f.
65b and al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:109.
194
Compare Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla I, f. 39a and Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:264; and compare Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla
II, ff. 64b, 65a, 66a 68b-69a, 69b, 70a, 70a-70b, 71a and Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:263, 264, 264-66, 264,
274, 274-75, 275, 275-76, respectively. The quotations of Kashf al-shubuhāt in Risāla II are noted in Cook,
“Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 178.
195
73
written in response to the many specious arguments (shubah, sing. shubha) being put
forth by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s detractors.196
Kashf al-shubuhāt, in addition to presenting the main theological points made
before in the Kalimāt and the Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn, comprises a sustained rebuttal of
the arguments being made by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s scholarly enemies, “the scholars of
the polytheists” (ʿulamāʾ al-mushrikīn).197 The Muslims, he writes, must arm themselves
against these shubuhāt in order to be able to engage successfully in verbal combat.198 The
epistle was thus intended as a kind of handbook for refuting the opponents of
Wahhābism. Naturally enough, much of it takes the form of a hypothetical debate
between a polytheist (mushrik) and a monotheist (muwaḥḥid), an approach similar to the
one adopted in the Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn.199 Among the arguments that Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb counters are that Muslims today cannot possibly be compared to the unbelievers
of the Prophet’s time;200 that it is permissible to ask the Prophet and righteous persons for
intercession (shafāʿa);201 that it is permissible to seek the help of the dead (istighātha);202
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is declaring Muslims to be unbelievers;203 and that whoso
confesses that there is no god but God must be treated as a Muslim.204
196
Ibid., 1:263. An earlier Wahhābī source (Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:178-79) refers to it as Kashf shubah al-
murtāb fīmā ʾltabasa ʿalayhi min al-khaṭaʾ waʾl-ṣawāb.
197
198
faʾl-wājib ʿalayka an taʿlama min dīn Allāh mā yaṣīru silāḥan laka tuqātilu bihi hāʾulāʾi ʾl-shayāṭīn,
ibid.
199
See Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 174-75.
200
201
Ibid., 1:269-70.
202
Ibid., 1:278-79.
203
Ibid., 1:275.
204
Ibid., 1:277-78.
74
One of the values of Ibn ʿAfāliq’s letters is to show, as Michael Cook has noted,
that Kashf al-shubuhāt “cannot have been composed later than 1163/1750.”205 A terminus
post quem of 1159/1746f can be adduced as well, since one of the shubuhāt mentioned by
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb pertains to violence. His opponents, he says, refer to the story of
Usāma ibn Zayd and to the ḥadīth in which the Prophet says, “I was commanded to fight
people until they say there is no god but God”—examples used by the refuters only in the
al-Dirʿiyya period. To this Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb replies that the Prophet fought the Jews,
even though they said “there is no god but God,” and that the Companions fought
apostates, even though they said the same.206 Kashf al-shubuhāt is thus the earliest
dateable Wahhābī epistle that justifies violence.
Sulaymān’s ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Letter to Ḥasan ibn ʿĪdān
A few years after the death of Ibn ʿAfāliq and Ibn Muʿammar, it was the turn of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s brother, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1208/1794), to contribute a
major refutation.207 Why Sulaymān waited so long before entering the fray is something
of a mystery, as are any details concerning his early life and education; it is not even clear
which of the two brothers was older. What is known is that when their father died in
Ḥuraymilāʾ in 1153/1741, Sulaymān succeeded him as the town’s judge. But there is no
evidence that Sulaymān was active in the scholarly opposition to his brother’s movement
205
Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 178.
206
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:277-78
207
On him see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:677-81; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:350-57; and see
further, for a valuable study of his refutation, Suʿūd al-Sarḥān, “Ḥaqīqat al-khilāf bayn Muḥammad ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wa-akhīhi Sulaymān,” unpublished paper, 2010.
75
until the mid-1160s/early 1750s, when he suddently emerges as a major anti-Wahhābī
figure.
In 1165/1751f, as Ibn Ghannām relates, the people of Ḥuraymilāʾ, where
Sulaymān was still the judge, apostatized (waqaʿa min ahl Ḥuraymilāʾ al-ridda waʾl-
iftitān), meaning that they withdrew their allegiance to the Saudi state.208 There ensued
not only physical war between al-Dirʿiyya and Ḥuraymilāʾ, but also scholarly war
between the two brothers. Following the revolt, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb scolded Sulaymān
for supporting the apostasy and for spreading numerous falsehoods about his movement
among the town’s rulers.209 But Sulaymān did not relent. In 1167/1753f, according to Ibn
Ghannām, he sent an anti-Wahhābī epistle to al-ʿUyayna via a courier, who was
discovered and apprehended. On the order of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the man was
executed. Nonetheless, Sulaymān continued to send anti-Wahhābī epistles to the town
(lam yazal yursilu ʾl-shubah fī ʾl-kutub li-ahl al-ʿUyayna).210 His activity cannot have
lasted for more than a couple years, however, for in 1168/1755 the Wahhābīs succeeded
in reimposing their authority over Ḥuraymilāʾ, whereupon Sulaymān fled (wa-kharaja
hāriban minhā mukhtafiyan).211 He managed to escape capture until 1190/1776f, when
the rulers of Sudayr handed him over to al-Dirʿiyya, where he quietly lived out his
remaining years.212
The only extant refutation by Sulaymān is a long letter to the Najdī scholar Ḥasan
ibn ʿĪdān (d. 1202/1787f).213 It was printed in 1306/1889 in Bombay as al-Ṣawāʿiq al-
208
209
waʾstanshaqa ʾl-shaykh min akhīhi Sulaymān annahu li-asbāb al-ridda miʿwān wa-annahu yulqī ilā ʾl-
ruʾasāʾ wa-khāṣṣatan min al-julasāʾ shubahan kathīra, ibid., 2:692.
210
Ibid., 2:695-96.
211
Ibid., 2:736-37.
212
Ibid., 2:812-13. Ibn Ghannām adds that he repented of his anti-Wahhābism.
213
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:51-52; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 3:37.
76
ilāhiyya fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Wahhābiyya (“The Divine Thunderbolts in Refutation of
Wahhābism”),214 which is almost certainly not the author’s title. Ibn ʿĪdān, from Ushayqir
in al-Washm, was likely living in al-Dirʿiyya at this time, so the letter is probably not one
of those sent to al-ʿUyayna. On the other hand, it may have been originally intended for
Ibn ʿĪdān and repurposed for a broader campaign of propaganda.215 In any event,
Sulaymān’s is one of the longest refutations to appear thus far. He does not quote his
brother’s words directly but alludes to several of his arguments, noting, for example, his
use of Ibn Taymiyya’s line in the Iqnāʿ.216 We can infer that the letter was written in
about 1166/1753, since Sulaymān twice refers to al-Dirʿiyya’s adoption of Wahhābism
“nearly eight years ago” (min qarīb thamān sinīn).217
As with Ibn ʿAfāliq’s letters to Ibn Muʿammar, Sulaymān’s letter to Ibn ʿĪdān
stands out for its repeated efforts to vindicate Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, whose
teachings Sulaymān accuses his brother of distorting and misusing. Also like Ibn ʿAfāliq,
Sulaymān accuses his brother and his followers of treating Muslim lands beyond those
controlled by al-Dirʿiyya as lands of war (bilād ḥarb)218—meaning that they must be
fought and conquered—and accuses them of deeming licit the blood and property of
Muslims (wa-tastaḥillūna dimāʾahum wa-amwālahum).219 And there are several
214
Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya (Bombay: Maṭbaʿat Nukhbat al-Akhbār,
1306/1889). Some sources refer to his refutation as Faṣl al-khiṭāb fī ʾl-radd ʿalā Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb; see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:679; Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad al-Bābānī, Īḍāḥ al-maknūn fī
ʾl-dhayl ʿalā Kashf al-ẓunūn, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 4:190.
215
As suggested in al-Sarḥān, “Ḥaqīqat al-khilāf,” 8.
216
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya, 9.
217
wa-lam yabqa illā bilādukum min an ẓahara qawlukum hādhā min qarīb thamān sinīn, ibid., 50;
muddatukum qarība min thamān sinīn, ibid.,51; noted in al-Sarḥān, “Ḥaqīqat al-khilāf,” 8. If Sulaymān is
referring to the beginning of the Wahhābī daʿwa more generally, this would put the date of composition
around 1153/1749. The first date should be favored, however, as it fits better with the time frame given by
Ibn Ghannām, and since Sulaymān is referring to his correspondent’s lands (bilād), likely meaning al-
Dirʿiyya.
218
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya, 5, 7.
219
Ibid., 15.
77
references to the requirement of emigration (hijra), though Sulaymān has a better
understanding of this than Ibn ʿAfāliq. “Your doctrine,” he says, “is that it is required for
the masses to adhere to your doctrine, and that those who adhere to it and cannot manifest
it in their land, nor declare the people of their land to be unbelievers, are required to
emigrate to you.”220 As will be seen in Chapter 3, this was indeed the Wahhābī position,
the ability to manifest the religion (iẓhār al-dīn) being the condition that, unmet, made
hijra obligatory.
Another similarity between Ibn ʿAfāliq’s letters to Ibn Muʿammar and
Sulaymān’s letter Ibn ʿĪdān is the distinction that each makes between al-shirk al-akbar
and al-shirk al-aṣghar. Sulaymān says that the practices condemned as shirk by Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim belong to the category of al-shirk al-aṣghar, not al-shirk
al-akbar, and thus do not eject one from the community of believers. For this reason,
these scholars did not consider Muslim lands to be lands of war.221 In those instances
where the shirk in question did amount to al-shirk al-akbar, he says, they did not declare
the accused to be an unbeliever until proof had been presented to him (ḥattā taqūma
ʿalayhi ʾl-ḥujja); for the time being, he was to be excused his ignorance (yuʿdharu biʾl-
jahl).222 As for Ibn Taymiyya’s line in the Iqnāʿ, Sulaymān makes an unusual
intervention, arguing that Ibn Taymiyya was careful to say “and,” not “or,” when
condemning those who call on their intermediaries, rely on them, and ask them for things
(yadʿūhum wa-yatawakkalu ʿalayhim wa-yasʾaluhum). Whereas Ibn Taymiyya combined
between the three actions (jamaʿa bayn al-duʿāʾ waʾl-tawakkul waʾl-suʾāl), such that one
220
madhhabukum annahu yajibu ʿalā ʾl-ʿāmma ittibāʿ madhhabikum wa-anna man ittabaʿahu wa-lam
yaqdur ʿalā iẓhārihi fī baladihi wa-takfīr ahl baladihi wajaba ʿalayhi ʾl-hijra ilaykum, ibid., 44.
221
Ibid., 6-7.
222
Ibid., 6-7, 10-11.
78
has to commit all three to have committed disbelief, “now you are declaring people to be
unbelievers on account of asking [things] alone!” (waʾl-ān antum tukaffirūna biʾl-suʾāl
waḥdahu).223
Other prominent themes treated here are the issue of ijtihād,224 the resemblance
between the Wahhābīs and the Khārijites,225 and the portrayal of Najd as a land in which
terrible things are prophesied to happen.226
In the year 1167/1753f, according to Ibn Ghannām—that is, within a year of
Sulaymān’s letter to Ibn ʿĪdān—Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote a long epistle to
al-ʿUyayna aimed at countering the his brother’s arguments (arsala li-ahl al-ʿUyayna
risāla abṭala fīhā mā mawwaha bihi Sulaymān wa-mā qālahu).227 This counter-
refutation, which Ibn Ghannām includes in his history, is known in the Wahhābī tradition
as Mufīd al-mustafīd fī kufr tārik al-tawḥīd (“The Responder to the Questioner about the
Unbelief of the Abandoner of God’s Oneness”).228 In it, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refers
directly to the alleged treachery and apostasy of Ḥuraymilāʾ, saying, “The people of
Ḥuraymilāʾ and beyond openly revile the religion … and they do and say things that are
the greatest and most abominable apostasy.”229 He mentions an epistle that has reached
223
Ibid., 9. Curiously, these very same words are attributed to ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayrūz in Ibn Dāwūd, al-
Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 196b.
224
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya, 3-4
225
Ibid., 11.
226
Ibid., 43.
227
228
Ibid., 2:696-735. A critical edition, based on multiple manuscript sources, is Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mufīd
al-mustafīd fī kufr tārik al-tawḥīd, ed. Ḥamad ibn Aḥmad al-ʿAṣlānī, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd,
1432/2011).
229
ahl Ḥuraymilāʾ wa-man warāʾahum yuṣarriḥūna bi-masabbat al-dīn … wa-yafʿalūna wa-yaqūlūna mā
huwa min akbar al-ridda wa-afḥashihā, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:712.
79
al-ʿUyayna (al-risāla allatī atatkum), whose author—presumably Sulaymān but never
identified by name—is described as the leader of the unbelievers (imāmuhum).230
The main issue dealt with in Mufīd al-mustafīd is what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb calls
the question of excommunication and fighting (masʾalat al-takfīr waʾl-qitāl).231 As in the
Kashf al-shubuhāt, he again justifies the use of violence against the opponents of his
movement, though here he does so at much greater length, citing several examples of
early Muslims who fought those who professed Islam. He also addresses the distinction
between al-shirk al-akbar and al-shirk al-aṣghar, maintaining that practices such as
istighātha and tawassul no doubt meet the threshold of al-shirk al-akbar; al-shirk al-
aṣghar, he says, includes such things as showing off (al-riyāʾ) and swearing by other than
God (al-ḥilf bi-ghayr Allāh).232 Throughout, he quotes liberally from Ibn Taymiyya and
Ibn al-Qayyim, countering the idea that these scholars contradict his doctrine.
The Recantation of Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī
At one point in Mufīd al-mustafīd, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quotes a line of verse that he
attributes to “the Yemeni” (al-Yamanī). The line criticizes the presence of inauthentic
ḥadīth in the book Dalāʾil al-khayrāt: “Hadīth that are not ascribed to one with
knowledge and do not / equal a penny if you subject [them] to scrutiny.”233 The Yemeni
in question is Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s contemporary, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Amīr al-
230
Ibid., 2:710.
231
Ibid., 2:713.
232
Ibid., 2:707-10.
233
aḥādīthu lā tuʿzā ilā ʿālimin fa-lā / tusāwiya falsan in rajaʿta ilā ʾl-naqdī (meter = ṭawīl), ibid., 2:720.
80
Ṣanʿānī (d. 1182/1768), better known as Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī.234 The line is from his
famous and controversial poem in praise of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.235
A prominent scholar in Sanaa, Ibn al-Amīr was known for championing, in a
Zaydī milieu, the authority of Sunnī ḥadīth and for supporting ijtihād as against taqlīd.
He was also, like Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, heavily influenced by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-
Qayyim. His poem, written in 1162/1748f and sent to Najd via the Ḥijāz, earned him a
reputation as a Wahhābī zealot and stirred controversy far and wide in the Middle East.
At a time when the Sunnī Islamic world seemed to be united in condemning Wahhābism,
here was a major scholar lending support to the movement. In the poem, Ibn al-Amīr
describes Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as a man after his own heart, a man seeking to revive the
religion and defeat ignorance and innovation:
And the reports about him came, telling that he

is reviving for us the noble religion by what he is manifesting,
And exposing publicly what has been concealed of it by every ignorant person
and innovator; thus he is in agreement with me …
Indeed I was pleased by what came to me of his way
having thought that this path was mine alone.236
Ibn al-Amīr goes on to praise Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for adhering to the words of God and
His Prophet, for destroying shrines, and for burning Dalāʾil al-khayrāt. The rest of the
poem consists of polemic against madhhab partisanship, taqlīd, and antinomian Ṣūfism.
234
On him see EI3, s.v. “al-Amīr, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl” (Bernard Haykel); Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-
Shawkānī, al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ bi-maḥāsin man baʿd al-qarn al-sābiʿ, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda,
1348/1929f), 2:133-39.
235
Noted in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 201n96. For the poem, see al-Amīr, Dīwān al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī
(Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Madanī, 1384/1964), 128-32 (our line is at 128).
236
wa-qad jāʾati ʾl-akhbāru ʿanhu bi-annahu / yuʿīdu lanā ʾl-sharʿa ʾl-sharīfa bi-mā yubdī // wa-yanshuru
jahran mā ṭawā kullu jāhilin / wa-mubtadiʿin minhu muwāfiqun [read fa-wāfaqa] mā ʿindī … la-qad
sarranī mā jāʾanī min ṭarīqihi / wa-kuntu arā hādhī ʾl-ṭarīqata lī waḥdī, al-Amīr, Dīwān, 129-30.
81
The poem was seized upon by the Wahhābīs as a major endorsement. Ibn
Ghannām includes it in his history, and Ibn Bishr reproduces much of it as well.237 But
for the opponents of Wahhābism, the poem was blasphemy. A number of Sunnī scholars
responded with verse refutations of it; one of them was a Shāfiʿī colleague of al-
Qabbānī’s in Basra, Yāsīn ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (fl. 1190/1776f).238 His refutation,
copies of which are extant in Germany and the United Kingdom, was completed in Rajab
1168/April 1755.239 After describing Ibn al-Amīr as a Khārijite aligned with “the
Musaylima of Najd,”240 Ibn Ibrāhīm refutes about a quarter of the poem line-by-line.
In 1170/1757, Ibn al-Amīr changed his mind about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
withdrawing his praise in a second poem accompanied by a commentary. The poem-cum-
commentary, which has recently been edited in Yemen, is known by several titles, one of
which is Irshād dhawī ʾl-albāb ilā ḥaqīqat aqwāl Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (“Guiding Those
Possessed of Understanding to the Truth concerning the Statements of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb”).241 In the introduction to it, Ibn al-Amīr explains that he has come into
possession of new information about the man from Najd, and that he has come to
237
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:241-44; Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:140-43. It is also found in Ibn Gharīb,
Tawḍīḥ, 1:220-29.
238
On him see al-Ḥusaynī, “Makhṭūṭ nādir.”
239
Ibn Ibrāhīm, Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī, ms. Tübingen, Universität Tübingen, Ma VI 143, ff. 1a-
5b. For the completion date, see ibid., f. 5b, and on this manuscript, see Weisweiler, Verzeichnis, 115. I am
grateful to the University of Tübingen for supplying me with a copy. The copy at the British Library is
mentioned in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 201n95.
240
wa-baʿdu fa-fī Ṣanʿāʾa qad bāna Khārijī / muwātin bi-taḍlīli Musaylimati ʾl-Najdī (meter = ṭawīl), Ibn
Ibrāhīm, Radd, f. 1b.
241
al-Amīr, Irshād dhawī ʾl-albāb ilā ḥaqīqat aqwāl Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Karīm Aḥmad
Jadbān (n.p.: Majālis Āl Muḥammad, 2008). For the poem sans commentary, see al-Amīr, Dīwān, 134-40.
The attribution of these to Ibn al-Amīr was long denied by the Wahhābīs, who dismissed them as
fabrications. The issue is discussed at length in Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAqīl al-Ẓāhirī, Rujūʿ al-Amīr al-
Ṣanʿānī ʿan madḥ al-shaykh al-muṣliḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb raḥimahu ʾllāh fī mīzān al-tawthīq
al-tārīkhī, unpublished manuscript, 1411/1991. Ibn ʿAqīl concludes here that the poem is genuine, the
commentary likely genuine. The senior Wahhābī scholar ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz (d. 1420/1999) prevailed
upon him not to publish it; see Ibn ʿAqīl, Maʿārik ṣuḥufiyya wa-mashāʿir ikhwāniyya wa-fawāʾid ʿilmiyya,
2 vols. (Riyadh: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1427/2007) 1:112-13. The editor of Irshād confirms the attribution with
manuscript evidence.
82
conclude that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was engaging in takfīr of the entire Muslim
community and fighting his enemies as unbelievers.242 This was conveyed to him by two
Najdī visitors, one of whom, Mirbad ibn Aḥmad al-Tamīmī (d. 1171/1757f),243 brought
with him some of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s writings. The second poem begins thus:
I renounce the poem that I wrote concerning the Najdī,

for it has been proved true to me that he is not in agreement with me …
Shaykh Mirbad came to us from his land
and verified all the things that he is manifesting;
And he brought epistles written by him
in which he excommunicates the people of the earth knowingly …
He has vied in spilling the blood of every Muslim
who prays and pays the zakāt and withdraws not from the covenant.244
While Ibn al-Amīr mentions epistles (rasāʾil) in the plural here, the only Wahhābī epistle
that we can be certain he read is Mufīd al-mustafīd, as he quotes in the commentary
several times.245 This means that he would have seen the line of his first poem quoted by
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s. Perhaps it was seeing his own words in a Wahhābī epistle
justifying violence that finally compelled him to recant.
In taking on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s use of takfīr and qitāl, Ibn al-Amīr makes
many familiar arguments, including that the Prophet forbade killing those who say “there
is no god but God.”246 He rejects the examples used in Mufīd al-mustafīd to support
violence, such as Abū Bakr’s enthusiasm for fighting those who withheld the zakāt; he
claims that Abū Bakr only fought them after they persisted in withholding it.247 Like
242
al-Amīr, Irshād, 108-10.
243
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 6:416-20.
244
rajaʿtu ʿani ʾl-naẓmi ʾlladhī qultu fī ʾl-Najdī / fa-qad ṣaḥḥa lī ʿanhu khilāfu ʾlladhī ʿindī … wa-qad
jāʾanā min arḍihi ʾl-shaykhu Mirbadun / fa-ḥaqqaqa min aḥwālihi kulla mā yubdī // wa-qad jāʾa min
taʾlīfihi bi-rasāʾilin / yukaffiru ahla ʾl-arḍi fīhā ʿalā ʿamdī … tajārā ʿalā ijrā dimā kulli Muslimin /
muṣallin muzakkin lā yaḥūlu ʿani ʾl-ʿahdī (meter = ṭawīl), al-Amīr, Irshād, 111.
245
Compare ibid., 119-20, 124, 127-28, 128 and Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:720, ibid., 2:712-13, 2:713,
respectively.
246
al-Amīr, Irshād, 113-16.
247
Ibid., 131.
83
many of the Ḥanbalī refuters, he draws attention to the distinction between the two types
of shirk, though for him this is derivative of the distinction between two types of kufr
(unbelief): kufr iʿtiqād (unbelief in creed) and kufr ʿamal (unbelief in action).248 Those
who call on saints and make vows to them, among other such practices, have only
committed the latter. In that case, the proper response is not takfīr, but rather
admonishment and instruction to dispel their ignorance (faʾl-wājib huwa waʿẓuhum wa-
taʿrīfuhum jahlahum).249 Also like the Ḥanbalīs, Ibn al-Amīr is concerned with rescuing
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. He states early on that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb appears to
be someone who is superficially learned, has not received a proper education, and has
misread and misunderstood the two great scholars:
We saw him to be the kind of man who knows a portion of the sharīʿa but has
not examined it carefully, and who did not study with those who could guide him
to the path of guidance, direct him to the beneficial religious sciences, and
instruct him in them. Instead he read some of the works of the Shaykh Abū ʾl-
ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyya, and [some of] the works of his student Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya, and emulated them poorly, despite the fact that both prohibit
emulation.250
However, while it is correct to say that Ibn al-Amīr fully withdrew his praise, he
was never as vitriolic in his opposition to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as were most of the other
refuters. The Najdī was not a hate figure for him but rather a fellow scholar, even if a
greatly misled one. He did not criticize Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for such things as claiming
ijtihād and prophecy, and his tone was more measured. Instead of being treated to
insulting epithets, he is described throughout the commentary as al-shaykh
248
Ibid., 134-54.
249
Ibid., 145-46.
250
fa-raʾaynā aḥwālahu aḥwāl man ʿarafa min al-sharīʿa shaṭran wa-lam yumʿin al-naẓar wa-lā qaraʾa
ʿalā man yahdīhi nahj al-hidāya wa-yadulluhu ʿalā ʾl-ʿulūm al-nāfiʿa wa-yufaqqihuhu fīhā bal ṭālaʿa
baʿḍan min muʾallafāt al-shaykh Abī ʾl-ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyya wa-muʾallafāt tilmīdhihi ʾbn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya wa-qalladahumā min ghayr itqān maʿa annahumā yuḥarrimāni ʾl-taqlīd, ibid., 108.
84
Muḥammad.251 It would appear that Ibn al-Amīr still saw something to admire in Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.
The Refutation of ʿAbdallāh Afandī al-Rāwī
The next refutation that can be placed in the chronology comes considerably later. It
belongs to the Iraqi Shāfiʿī scholar ʿAbdallāh Afandī al-Rāwī al-Baghdādī (d.
1215/1800f), who was a preacher in Baghdad closely aligned with the Ottoman governor
of that city, Sulaymān Bāshā (r. 1194-1217/1780-1802). The lone biographical entry for
al-Rāwī notes his authorship of several works of Shāfiʿī jurisprudence, and records that
he wrote a letter to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb at the behest of Sulaymān Bāshā.252 This letter is
partially preserved in a Wahhābī counter-refutation known by the title al-Tawḍīḥ ʿan
tawḥīd al-Khallāq fī jawāb ahl al-ʿIrāq wa-tadhkirat ulī ʾl-albāb fī ṭarīqat al-shaykh
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (“The Clarification of the Oneness of the Creator in
Response to the People of Iraq, and the Reminder to Those with Knowledge of the Way
of the Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb”), which was likely authored by the
Najdī scholar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Gharīb (d. 1208/1793).253 All that is known about
251
See, for example, ibid., 132.
252
lahu min al-muʾallafāt … kitāb arsalahu ilā ʾbn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Najdī bi-ishāra min al-wazīr, Saʿīd
al-Rāwī al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh al-usar al-ʿilmiyya fī Baghdād, ed. ʿImād ʿAbd al-Salām Raʾūf (Baghdad: Dār
al-Shuʾūn al-Thaqāfiyya al-ʿĀmma, 1997), 58-60, at 59.
253
On him see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:690-91 (where he is misidentified as ʿAbdallāh ibn
Gharīb); Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 6:312-16. The first edition of the Tawḍīḥ (printed in Cairo by al-
Maṭbaʿa al-ʿĀmira al-Sharafiyya in 1319/1901f) was mistakenly attributed to Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh (d.
1233/1818), a grandson of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s. As the editor of the new edition shows, this is
impossible, as an early manuscript of the work is dated 1204/1789f, when Sulaymān was a child (Ibn
Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:68-74). He favors its attribution to Ibn Gharīb, following the opinion of several Wahhābī
scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The attribution to Ibn Gharīb is strengthened by two
further pieces of evidence. The first is Ibn Ḥumayd’s remark that Ibn Gharīb responded to several questions
posed to the Wahhābīs from Baghdad (wa-ajāba ʿan ʿiddat asʾila fī ʿiddat funūn ursilat ilayhim min
Baghdād); the second is another work attributed to Ibn Gharīb that is remarkably similar to the Tawḍīḥ in
style and content. This other work is signed by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd (see the text in
Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān, ed., al-Hadiyya al-saniyya waʾl-tuḥfa al-Wahhābiyya al-Najdiyya (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat
85
Ibn Gharīb is that he refuted the enemies of Wahhābism and was killed under suspicious
circumstances, perhaps having been exposed as someone with secret anti-Wahhābī
views.254
The date of al-Rāwī’s refutation can be narrowed to between 1194/1780 (the year
of Sulaymān Bāshā’s assumption of power in Baghdad) and 1203/1789 (the date of the
earliest known manuscript of the Tawḍīḥ).255 It is unclear how much of it comes through
in the Tawḍīḥ, which quotes it selectively. What is striking about the part that we do have
is the extent to which it corresponds to Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī’s refutation—that is, the
commentary on his second poem.256 Whole passages from the latter are lifted verbatim by
al-Rāwī without attribution, including the better part of Ibn al-Amīr’s section on the two
types of kufr. Also reproduced is the statement about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s misreading
of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.257 In consequence, about a quarter of the Tawḍīḥ is
a response to Ibn al-Amīr. The latter’s refutation clearly had made its way to Baghdad,
but why al-Rāwī would plagiarize it is far from apparent. His reliance on Ibn al-Amīr
makes him unusual among the Shāfiʿī refuters, who generally pin the blame for Ibn ʿAbd
al-Manār, 1342/1923f), 4-28), but Ibn Dāwūd contends that its real author is Ibn Gharīb (al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-
ruʿūd, ff. 70a, 192b). Compare Tawḍīḥ, 1:491 (waʾl-tawḥīd laysa huwa maḥall al-ijtihād fa-lā taqlīda fīhi
wa-lā ʿinād) and al-Hadiyya al-saniyya, 7 (waʾl-tawḥīd laysa huwa maḥall al-ijtihād fa-lā taqlīda fīhi wa-
lā ʿinād); and compare also Tawḍīḥ, 1:137 (qāma ʿalayhi ahl al-ahwāʾ fa-kharrajūhu wa-baddaʿūhu wa-
minhum man jaʿala ʾl-Yahūd waʾl-Naṣārā akhaff sharran minhu wa-min atbāʿihi) and al-Hadiyya al-
saniyya, 6 (qāma ʿalaynā ahl al-ahwāʾ fa-kharrajūnā wa-baddaʿūnā wa-jaʿalū ʾl-Yahūd waʾl-Naṣārā
akhaff sharran minnā wa-min atbāʿinā).
254
See Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:690 (wa-kāna muṣāniʿan lahum fī ʾl-ẓāhir mukhālifan lahum fī
ʾl-bāṭin); Ibn Laʿbūn, Tārīkh, 579 (qutila … li-umūr uṣdirat minhu awjabat qatlahu); Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-
majd, 1:222 (qutila … fī ʾl-Dirʿiyya ṣabran li-ajl umūr qīlat fīhi).
255
This copy was finished in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1203/July 1789. See Ibn Gharīb, al-Radd ʿalā ʾl-Wahhābiyya,
ms. Cambridge, University Library, Or. 738 (9), f. 227b; and on this manuscript, see Edward G. Browne, A
Supplementary Hand-List of the Muḥammadan Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University and Colleges
of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 106. I am grateful to the Cambridge
University Library for providing me with a copy
256
Compare al-Amīr, Irshād, 135-53 and Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:338, 345-47, 382-83, 405, 409-10, 422-23,
427-28, 440, 446, 450, 453, 461-62, 464-65, 2:495, 498-99.
257
Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:163, 230; noted in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 201n93.
86
al-Wahhāb’s views on Ibn Taymiyya. Al-Rāwī, by contrast, reproduces some of Ibn al-
Amīr’s defense of Ibn Taymiyya. Yet al-Rāwī does part ways with Ibn al-Amīr in
offering a spirited defense of istighātha and al-Būṣīrī’s poem.258
Also noteworthy about al-Rāwī’s refutation is that it is the first to refer to Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s most famous work, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, which until this point has played
no role whatsoever in the refutations. According to Ibn Gharīb, this book was included in
a volume sent to Sulaymān Bāshā, along with Kashf al-shubuhāt and several others.259 So
far as one can tell, it is the only work of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s that al-Rāwī quotes.260
It should be noted that Ibn Gharīb’s Tawḍīḥ is a significant text in its own right,
for it comprises the earliest known biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, and the only one
written during his lifetime. Furthermore, the very fact that the Tawḍīḥ was written tells us
something about the state of the Wahhābī movement at this point: namely, that Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb had begun to rely on other scholars to do the work of propagating and
defending his doctrine. Wahhābism was poised to outlast its founder.
The Twilight and Failure of Anti-Wahhābī Scholarly Activism
A gap of at least a quarter century separates the refutations of Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī
(written in 1170/1757) and ʿAbdallāh Afandī al-Rāwī (written between 1194/1780 and
1203/1789). The 1170s/1750s thus seem to mark the beginning of the decline of the early
refutation of Wahhābism. The start of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s movement brought forth an
258
Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 2:742, 771-73.
259
Ibid., 1:197-98.
260
Compare ibid., 2:674, 685, 698, 712, 718, 742, 757, 771 and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Kitāb al-
tawḥīd alladhī huwa ḥaqq Allāh ʿalā ʾl-ʿabīd, 5th ed., ed. Daghash ibn Shabīb al-ʿAjmī (Kuwait: Maktabat
Ahl al-Athar, 1435/2014), 139, 149, 161, 163, 169, 165, 257, 276, respectively.
87
initial outburst of anti-Wahhābī writing. There appears to have been a sense of urgency to
confront and stamp out this dangerous heresy. But within a couple of decades, refuting
Wahhābism had become a niche activity, undertaken only by those with a special interest.
The main reason, it appears, is that the refutations had proven ineffective.
This is not to say that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb looked upon the refutations with
indifference; they bothered him greatly, and he refers to their pernicious influence
throughout his letters.261 Nor is it to say that they had no effect at all; the efforts of Ibn
Suḥaym, al-Muways, and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s brother, in particular, do seem to have
stalled the progress of the Wahhābī movement in its early expansion.
But ultimately the efforts of the refuters must be judged a collective failure, as
they failed to prevent Wahhābism from spreading. Already in the 1140s/1740s, Ibn
ʿAfāliq sensed that refuting the Wahhābīs was a futile enterprise. As he told Ibn
Muʿammar, “You react to every piece of writing that comes your way by rejecting it and
cursing and ridiculing its author, before it is even opened and looked at.”262 According to
Ibn Dāwūd, in al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, it was indeed the ineffectiveness of their words
that caused the refuters to cease writing against the movement:
Most of the scholars of the lands wrote refutations of him [i.e., Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb] … Then, when the scholars saw that he was not responding [positively]
and not returning to the truth … and that advising him was unsuccessful, but
rather his terrible acts were only multiplying, they stopped refuting him … and
they said, “This man is misled, and will only recant when he is overcome by
force; nothing will deter him but the sword of the sulṭān.”263
261
See, for example, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:424-26 (letter to Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm).
262
tubādirūna bi-kull mā jāʾakum min kitāb biʾl-iʿrāḍ ʿanhu waʾl-sibāb waʾl-safah ʿan qāʾilihi qabl an
yuftaḥa ʾl-kitāb wa-yunẓara fīhi, Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla I, f. 55a.
263
wa-radda ʿalayhi muʿẓam ʿulamāʾ al-amṣār … thumma inna ʾl-ʿulamāʾ lammā raʾaw annahu lā yujību
wa-lā yarjiʿu ilā ʾl-ḥaqq … wa-lam tujdi fīhi ʾl-naṣiḥa bal yatazādu [sic] afʿāluhu ʾl-qabīḥa tarakū ʾl-radd
ʿalayhi … wa-qālū hādhā maghrūr wa-lā yarjiʿu illā maqhūr wa-laysa lahu rādiʿ illā sayf al-sulṭān, Ibn
Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 12a.
88
Ibn Dāwūd goes on to say that his teachers advised him against writing his own
refutation, saying that it would be a waste of time.264 But he decided to write it anyway.
The full title of ʿAbdallāh ibn Dāwūd al-Zubayrī’s (d. 1212/1797f)265 refutation is
al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd raddan ʿalā ʾl-shaqī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Suʿūd (“Lightning and Thunder
in Refutation of the Damned ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Suʿūd”).266 A lone copy survives in Patna,
India.267 While the work itself is undated, an endorsement (taqrīẓ) preceding the main
text by Ibn Dāwūd’s teacher, Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, is dated Ṣafar 1210/August
1795;268 we can thus infer that it was completed shortly before then. Ibn Dāwūd belonged
to a group of Ḥanbalī scholars who had studied in al-Aḥsāʾ with Ibn Fayrūz, the leader of
the Ḥanbalī community there after Ibn ʿAfāliq. Many of them were Najdī émigrés,
including Ibn Dāwūd himself, whose ancestral homeland was in Sudayr. Three other
Najdī students of Ibn Fayrūz’s had roots in Sudayr as well: Ṣāliḥ ibn Sayf al-ʿAtīqī (d.
1223/1808),269 Ibrāhīm ibn Nāṣir ibn Jadīd (d. 1232/1817),270 and Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī
ibn Sallūm (d. 1246/1831).271 In 1208/1793, as the Wahhābī conquest of al-Aḥsāʾ loomed
large, Ibn Fayrūz left the area for Basra, which, along with the nearby town of al-Zubayr,
became the new home of this anti-Wahhābī community of Ḥanbalīs.272
264
Ibid., 13a.
265
On him see Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 257-59; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:619-20; Āl
Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:114-15. The latter two sources give his death date as 1225/1810f.
266
The title is supplied by al-Ḥaddād (Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 3); it is not internally titled.
267
See above, p. 35, note 5.
268
269
On him see Ibn Fayrūz, Tarājim, f. 78b; Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 268-70; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub
al-wābila, 2:429-30; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:474-77.
270
On him see Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 288-89; Ibn Ḥumayd, Suḥub, 1:71-76; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ
Najd, 1:423-27.
271
On him see Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 277-80; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:1007-12; Āl
Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 6:292-303.
272
For the date of his departure, see Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:922; on his move to Basra, see Ibn Ḥumayd,
al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:974.
89
Al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd is for the most part a response to an epistle from ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd (r. 1179-1218/1765-1803), the successor to Muḥammad
ibn Suʿūd as the leader of the first Saudi state. Addressed by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz “to whoever
sees it of the scholars and judges of the Two Holy Places, al-Shām, Egypt, and Iraq, and
all other scholars east and west” (ilā man yarāhu min al-ʿulamāʾ waʾl-quḍāt fī ʾl-
Ḥaramayn waʾl-Shām wa-Miṣr waʾl-ʿIrāq wa-sāʾir ʿulamāʾ al-mashriq waʾl-maghrib), it
calls on its readers to accept Wahhābism and polemicizes at length against the practices
of the cult of saints.273 The real author of the epistle, according to Ibn Dāwūd, is Ibn
Gharīb.274
The primary concern of al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, one of the longer refutations, is
the Wahhābīs’ use of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. Ibn Dāwūd devotes separate
sections (fuṣūl, sing. faṣl) to the difference between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s ideas and
those of Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, and another student of Ibn Taymiyya’s, Ibn
Mufliḥ.275 But while the treatment is longer and more systematic, the approach is
generally the same: viz., these earlier Ḥanbalīs, though they wrote at length about the
dangers of shirk, were restrained in their use of takfīr, and distinguished between al-shirk
al-aṣghar and al-shirk al-akbar. Ibn Dāwūd also gives space to discussing the origins of
the Wahhābī movement, as does Ibn Fayrūz in his endorsement. The rest of al-Ṣawāʿiq
waʾl-ruʿūd is a line-by-line refutation of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s epistle.276
273
For the letter as preserved in the Wahhābī tradition, see al-Hadiyya al-saniyya, 4-28.
274
275
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 39b-57a (al-faṣl al-thālith fī mubāyanat Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
liʾbn Taymiyya), 57a-64a (al-faṣl al-rābiʿ fī mubāyanat Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb liʾbn al-Qayyim), 64a-67b (al-
faṣl al-khāmis fī ʾl-radd ʿalayhi min kalām Ibn Mufliḥ).
276
This epistle prompted two further refutations of which I am aware: a short one by a certain Muḥammad
ibn Muḥammad al-Shāfiʿī al-Qādirī in Aleppo, dated 1211/1796f (al-Qādirī, Radd ʿalā risālat ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
ibn Suʿūd, ms. Riyadh, Maktabat al-Malik Salmān, Jāmiʿat al-Malik Suʿūd, 6803); and a longer one by a
Shīʿī scholar in Iraq, Jaʿfar ibn Khiḍr Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1228/1812) (Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ, Manhaj al-rashād
90
There is only one noticeable addition here to the many anti-Wahhābī themes seen
above. This is the claim that the Wahhābīs require their followers to shave their heads.
Ibn Dāwūd states that they do so as a way of distinguishing themselves from their
enemies, and that they will kill anyone they come across who is unshaven (faʾl-rajul
minhum matā raʾā rajulan lam yaḥliq qatalahu).277 He connects this to the Khārijite
theme, quoting a ḥadīth that predicts the appearance of a group of Muslims (generally
assumed to be the Khārijites) whose distinctive characteristic is shaving (sīmāhum al-
taḥlīq).278 In a letter written about a decade later, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Suʿūd’s son and
successor, Suʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 1218-29/1803-14), acknowledges that Wahhābī
soldiers do in fact shave their heads as a way of marking them off from the unbelievers
(kuffār).279
In his Iraqi exile, Ibn Fayrūz composed several anti-Wahhābī works himself,
urging his Iraqi hosts to wage jihād against the Wahhābīs in al-Aḥsāʾ. The first is a poem
written in 1211/1796f in support of a tribal chief’s campaign in al-Aḥsāʾ ordered by
Sulaymān Bāshā;280 Ibn Ghannām wrote a verse counter-refutation of it.281 The second is
a poem eulogizing the same tribal leader, who was assassinated in 1212/1797, and
encouraging his successor to finish the job.282 The third is a letter to Sulaymān Bāshā’s
li-man arāda ʾl-sadād (Beirut: Dār al-Thiqlayn, 1414/1994)). The latter is likely the first Shīʿī refutation of
Wahhābism. On its author, see Muḥsin al-Amīn al-ʿĀmilī, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, ed. Ḥasan al-Amīn, 11 vols.
(Beirut: Dār al-Taʿāruf, 1406/1986), 4:99-107.
277
278
Ibid., f. 21a. For the ḥadīth, see al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1444 (Kitāb al-tawḥīd, bāb qirāʾat al-fājir waʾl-
munāfiq wa-aṣwātuhum wa-tilāwatuhum lā tujāwizu ḥanājirahum, no. 7562).
279
280
See the poem in al-ʿAssāfī, Tarājim al-fuḍalāʾ, ff. 47a-49a; and for the date, see Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh,
2:952. The chief is Thuwaynī ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. 1212/1797), leader of the Muntafiq tribe of southern Iraq.
281
282
Al-ʿAssāfī, Tarājim al-fuḍalāʾ, ff. 52a-54b. The successor is Ḥamūd ibn Thāmir (d. 1242/1826f).
91
deputy or steward (ketkhüdā in Turkish; katkhudā or kahyā in Arabic)283 providing
religious sanction for jihād against the Wahhābīs.284 Ibn Fayrūz explains that they are
both rebels (ahl al-baghy) and unbelievers, and that anyone with a whiff (miska) of
religion should know that those who fight them will either die as martyrs or reap a
heavenly reward.285
The letter also comes with a jihād-promoting poem. One of the lines reads: “And
arise light or heavy, and wage jihād / with your possessions and your selves for the sake
of God and with passion.”286 None of these efforts would bear fruit, however, as the
Wahhābīs remained in control of al-Aḥsāʾ for more than a decade after the last anti-
Wahhābī campaign was launched from Iraq.
The last great refutation of Wahhābism written during the first Saudi state is al-
Ḥaddād’s Miṣbāḥ al-anām.287 A Shāfiʿī from Tarīm in Ḥaḍramawt, ʿAlawī ibn Aḥmad al-
Ḥaddād (d. 1232/1817)288 wrote this very long text during a visit to the Ḥijāz, finishing it
in Medina in 1215/1801.289 Its full title is Miṣbāḥ al-anām wa-jalāʾ al-ẓalām fī radd
shubah al-bidʿī al-Najdī allatī aḍalla bihā ʾl-ʿawāmm (“Enlightening Mankind and
Illuminating Darkness in Refutation of the Najdī Innovator’s Errors by which He Misled
283
See EI2, s.v. “ketk̲ h̲ udā.”
284
This was published in Bombay in 1307/1889f under the title al-Risāla al-marḍiyya fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-
Wahhābiyya (see al-ʿUthaymīn, al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 161). I have not managed to
locate a copy, but the text can be found in a counter-refutation by a later Wahhābī scholar. See ʿAbdallāh
ibn Saʿd Āl Maḥmūd, Taḥdhīr ahl al-īmān ʿammā taḍammanathū risālat Ibn Fayrūz min al-buhtān, ed.
Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī (Kuwait: Dār al-Khizāna, 1438/2017).
285
wa-lā yatawaqqafu … man lahu miska min al-dīn … fī kawn man qatalūhu shahīdan wa-man qatalahum
muthāban, Āl Maḥmūd, Taḥdhīr ahl al-īmān, 36.
286
fa-qūmū khifāfan aw thiqālan wa-jāhidū / bi-mālin wa-nafsin lil-ilāhi wa-raghbatī (meter = ṭawīl), ibid.,
42. Cf. Q. 9:41 (infirū khifāfan wa-thiqālan wa-jāhidū bi-amwālikum wa-anfusikum fī sabīli ʾllāh).
287
288
On him see ʿAbdallāh al-Saqqāf, Tārīkh al-shuʿarāʾ al-Ḥaḍramiyyīn, 5 vols. ([various places]: [various
publishers], 1353-1363/1934f-1944), 3:43-47. He was the grandson of the famous Ṣūfī master ʿAbdallāh
ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād (d. 1132/1720), on whom see EI3, s.v. “ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlawī al-Ḥaddād” (Ismail Fajrie
Alatas).
289
al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 78-79.
92
the Multitude”). It was published in Cairo in 1325/1907f. For someone not directly
affected by the Wahhābī issue, al-Ḥaddād took an unusual interest in it, collecting
numerous refutations during his travels across the Middle East. His interest was partly
sparked, he says, by witnessing the spread of Wahhābism to parts of ʿUmān and other
unidentified places.290
The bulk of Miṣbāḥ al-anām is dedicated to defending the cult of saints, which is
no surprise coming from a Shāfiʿī Ṣūfī scholar. What is somewhat surprising, however, is
al-Ḥaddād’s rather even-handed treatment of Ibn Taymiyya. He states that while Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine is entirely derived from the words of Ibn Taymiyya (wa-jull
mā ʿindahu muʿtamad ʿalā aqwāl Ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥanbalī), in the final analysis Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is different, more resembling of a godless heretic than a follower of Ibn
Taymiyya.291 Al-Ḥaddād was likely influenced in this conclusion by the many Ḥanbalī
refutations defending Ibn Taymiyya. As he tells us, he had read and admired Ibn
Dāwūd’s al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd.292
Yet al-Ḥaddād’s Miṣbāḥ al-anām, like Ibn Dāwūd’s al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd and
Ibn Fayrūz’s writings, also failed to stop Wahhābism. The Wahhābīs took control of
Medina just a few years after al-Ḥaddād had written his tract there. Most opponents of
Wahhābism were right to conclude that the demise of the first Saudi state would require
more than the lash of several dozen pens; it would require the military intervention of a
major power.293
290
Ibid., 5.
291
fa-huwa bi-maʿzil ʿan Ibn Taymiyya wa-ghayrihi wa-aḥwāluhu tushbihu ʾl-zindīq alladhī lam yantaḥil
dīnan yuʿtamadu ʿalayhi, ibid., 36.
292
Ibid., 3-4.
293
Following the Wahhābī occupation of the Ḥijāz, several scholars further afield, in Morocco and Tunisia,
would write refutations of Wahhābism. These include the Moroccan Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib ibn Kīrān (d.
1227/1812) and the Tunisian ʿUmar ibn Qāsim al-Maḥjūb (d. 1222/1807), on whose refutations see,
93
Conclusion
This survey of the early refutation of Wahhābism yields several findings. The most
significant concern the dating of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s early epistles. It has been seen
that the Arbaʿ qawāʿid tadūru ʾl-aḥkām ʿalayhā can be dated to approximately
1155/1742, the Kalimāt fī bayān shahādat an lā ilāha illā ʾllāh to no later than
1155/1742, the Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (or at least an early version of it) to no later than
1158/1745, Kashf al-shubuhāt to approximately 1159/1746f, and Mufīd al-mustafīd to
approximately 1167/1753f. The first epistle captures Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s hostility to
the fiqh tradition, while the latter four present his theological views and illustrate the
development of his movement, including its gradual adoption of violence. All of this will
weigh heavily in our study of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine in the following two
chapters, as will some of the remarks in the refutations themselves.
Another finding is that the early refutations fall generally into two camps: a
Shāfiʿī-led camp and a Ḥanbalī-led one. The Shāfiʿī refuters were mostly concerned with
defending the legitimacy of the cult of saints, in particular the practices of istighātha and
tawassul; some of them considered Ibn Taymiyya, along with Ibn al-Qayyim, to be the
source of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine. The Ḥanbalī refuters, in turn, were generally
less concerned with defending the legitimacy of these practices; placing them in the
category of al-shirk al-aṣghar, they sought to vindicate Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim
and focused on the Wahhābīs’ eagerness to excommunicate and fight fellow Muslims.
respectively, Paul L. Heck, “An Early Response to Wahhabism from Morocco: The Politics of
Intercession,” Studia Islamica 107 (2002): 235-54; Arnold H. Green, “A Tunisian Reply to a Wahhabi
Proclamation: Texts and Contexts,” in In Quest of an Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic Studies in
Memory of Mohamed al-Nowaihi, ed. Green (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1984), 155-
77.
94
Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī can be classed with the Ḥanbalīs, though he is somewhat less
hostile. In the later refutations of our period, there is evidence that the Shāfiʿīs were
influenced by the arguments of the Ḥanbalī. For two later Shāfiʿī refuters, al-Rāwī and al-
Ḥaddād, are noticeably less hostile to Ibn Taymiyya than the earlier ones.
It is not surprising that the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs would be the leaders of the
opposition to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, as the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs were the dominant
groups in the Arab Middle East and central Arabia, respectively. What is somewhat
surprising, however, considering the Ottoman Empire’s Ḥanafī allegiance, is that so few
refutations seem to have been written by Ḥanafī scholars. Perhaps there are more Ḥanafī
refutations in the Ottoman archives,294 or perhaps they have been lost. In all likelihood,
the greater part of what was written against Wahhābism during this period did not
survive. But what is available is highly valuable for understanding the origins and
evolution of Wahhābism.
294
Perhaps the refutations sent from the Ḥijāz to the Porte in 1749 and 1793 were authored by Ḥanafīs. For
the 1749 refutation, see Zakariyyā Qūrshūn, al-ʿUthmāniyyūn wa-Āl Suʿūd fī ʾl-arshīf al-ʿUthmānī (Beirut:
al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya lil-Mawsūʿāt, 1425/2005), 48; and for the 1793 one, see Dina Rizk Khoury, “Who Is a
True Muslim? Exclusion and Inclusion among Polemicists of Reform in Nineteenth-Century Baghdad,” in
The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire, ed. Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 256.
95
Chapter 2
The Doctrine of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb I: The Taymiyyan Background
“It is absolutely clear that you [i.e., Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb] have emulated Ibn Taymiyya in
what the most distinguished scholars counted among his faults and his fictions. You have
followed him in this abominable doctrine of his that the scholars of Islam declared to be
unmentionable” – Aḥmad al-Qabbānī (fl. 1159/1746), Shāfiʿī opponent of Wahhābism1
“No one dead or alive before him [i.e., Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb] espoused this abominable
doctrine of his” – Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz (d. 1216/1801), Ḥanbalī opponent of
Wahhābism2
This and the following chapter present a detailed study of the religious thought of
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, or what will also be referred to as his doctrine. The
present chapter explores the origins of his doctrine in the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and his
students, in particular Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya; the next chapter examines his doctrine’s
key components and the extent to which they conform to the views expounded by Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.
As was observed in Chapter 1, the early opponents of Wahhābism agreed that Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine was a terrible heresy, but disagreed as to its origins. The
above epigraphs illustrate something of this divide. For the Shāfiʿī-led camp of
opponents, the source of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s heresy was unmistakably Ibn Taymiyya.
Thus the Shāfiʿī al-Qabbānī is seen here accusing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of emulating Ibn
Taymiyya’s “abominable doctrine” (maqālatuhu ʾl-shanīʿa) concerning the cult of saints.
The Ḥanbalī-led camp, for its part, generally agreed that Ibn Taymiyya had been wrongly
1
fa-min al-maʿlūm alladhī lā miryata fīhi annaka qalladta ʾbn Taymiyya fīmā ʿaddathu asāṭīn al-ʿulamāʾ
al-aʿlām ʿan [read: min] hafawātihi wa-khurāfātihi wa-tabiʿtahu fī maqālatihi ʾl-shanīʿa allatī ṣarraḥa
mashāyikh al-Islām bi-annahu lā yanbaghī dhikruhā, al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 52b.
2
lā yasbiquhu ʿalā maqālatihi hādhihi ʾl-shanīʿa aḥad min al-amwāt waʾl-aḥyāʾ, Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā
man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ, 34.
96
implicated in the Wahhābī heresy, which in their view was simply without precedent in
Sunnī Islam. The Ḥanbalī Ibn Fayrūz is thus seen accusing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of
having invented “his abominable doctrine” (maqālatuhu ʾl-shanīʿa) of takfīr as if out of
thin air.3 Which side, then, had it right? Were the abominable doctrines spoken of by his
opponents—these constituent elements of a greater doctrine in the sense of a distinct set
of religious teachings—indeed drawn from the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya (the Shāfiʿī
position), or were they entirely novel (the Ḥanbalī position)?
To my mind, the answer is that the Shāfiʿīs were closer to the mark, if only
because they recognized the foundational role of Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s
ideas in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine. Indeed, Wahhābism can hardly be understood
without recourse to its Taymiyyan background. This is not to do dismiss the originality of
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s thought or to discount the level of contestation surrounding the
proper understanding of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. As the next chapter will show,
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb departed in significant ways from these two scholars. Nonetheless,
the necessary starting point for an inquiry into Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine is without
question the religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.
It is often said that Wahhābism is first and foremost a fundamentalist or anti-
traditional movement. Its main sources, in this view, are the foundational Islamic texts of
the Qurʾān and the sunna, as well as the views and practices of the first three generations
of Muslims, the salaf (“ancestors”). Religious fundamentalism, according to one
definition, is “the choice to return to the original foundations of one’s faith and take one’s
3
Both al-Qabbānī and Ibn Fayrūz use the term maqāla in the sense of a specific doctrinal tenet.
97
religion from its earliest sources.”4 In other words, it is the decision to locate authority in
the source texts of revelation as opposed to the cumulative scholarly tradition of
interpretation. To a certain extent, such a characterization of Wahhābism holds up. Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb cast his movement as an attempt to recover true Islam from a correct
reading of the Qurʾān, the sunna, and the ways the salaf. At the same time, however, he
did not present himself as anti-traditional; rather he claimed to be following (ittibāʿ)
earlier generations of Muslim scholars (ʿulamāʾ). On his own telling, there was nothing
new about his doctrine: it was fully in accord with the views of the scholars. This may
seem counterintuitive, given the number of contemporary scholars who opposed him. Yet
to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, these contemporaries were not scholars but frauds—traitors
against the Islamic scholarly tradition. His mission, as he framed it, was to recover true
Islam not only from the Qurʾān, the sunna, and the practice of the salaf, but also from the
Islamic scholarly tradition—from the clutches of its false keepers.
One does not have to look far to see that it was one group of scholars in particular
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb revered, whose works he quoted, and from which he derived
many of his ideas. This is the group of scholars headed by Ibn Taymiyya, the
eighth/fourteenth-century Ḥanbalī scholar who lived primarily in Damascus. Ibn
Taymiyya and his followers espoused ideas, particularly about theology, that were at
odds with the mainstream Sunnī scholarly establishment of the day. If many of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s scholarly opponents saw his doctrine as a throwback to Ibn Taymiyya’s
school of thought, it is because in many ways it was. Indeed, it is my contention here that
Wahhābism owes more to Taymiyyan thought than it does to textual fundamentalism. As
4
Michael Cook, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), xiii-xiv.
98
the next chapter will show, the key components of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine were
shaped—albeit to varying degrees—by Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas.
Whether to understand Wahhābism as a fundamentalist movement, or as a
Taymiyyan one, was a question taken up by the early refuters of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
reviewed in the preceding chapter. Some of the refuters accused him of engaging in
ijtihād (independent legal reasoning), in the sense of breaking with tradition and
reinterpreting Islam from the ground up. Others accused him of taqlīd (passive imitation),
in the sense of blindly following Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas. Some of his critics, such as al-
Qabbānī, accused him of both! The two charges, however, are difficult to reconcile, and
upon examination it is the taqlīd accusation that bears greater explanatory power.
Wahhābism was fundamentalist, to be sure, but its starting point was Taymiyyan thought,
not the source pool of scripture.5
This chapter begins by examining Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s background, particularly
his education, highlighting his rejection of contemporary religious authority and the fact
that his formal religious training had little influence on his controversial thinking. It will
be seen that he considered his own teachers to have been ignorant (juhhāl). The takeaway
here is that one searches in vain for a more proximate intellectual influence on Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb than the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.6 Next, the chapter looks at
some of the refuters’ comments concerning Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, as well as
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s own comments in this regard, establishing that his dependence on
5
Pointing to al-Ṭandatāwī’s comments accusing him of ijtihād, Michael Cook has described Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb as “a plausible example of … [a] fundamentalist in the field of theology” (Cook, Ancient
Religions, 379). One could, however, just as easily quote refuters accusing him of taqlīd, in which case he
would appear to be a plausible traditionalist.
6
A conclusion reached much earlier by Cook (“Origins of Wahhābism,” 201), but one that nevertheless
requires reinforcing.
99
or use of the two thinkers was widely acknowledged. Finally, the chapter looks in some
depth at the religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya and his legacy in the Ḥanbalī school.
Since, as it is argued here, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s real education took place in his reading
of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, it is imperative to be acquainted with the distinctive
features of their thought before trying to assess those of Wahhābism.
It will certainly come as no surprise to those with any familiarity with Wahhābism
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb drew heavily on the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.
Scholars of Islam have taken note of this fact since at least the time of Goldziher (d.
1921). The latter wrote, in his Vorlesungen über den Islam (“Lectures on Islam”), that
“[i]t was the influence of Ibn Taymīya’s teachings that called forth, around the middle of
the eighteenth century, one of the recent religious movements in Islam: that of the
Wahhābīs.”7 However, the relationship between Taymiyyan and Wahhābī thought has not
been rigorously studied before, and remains poorly understood. Since Henri Laoust’s
seminal work on Ibn Taymiyya’s thought, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de
Taḳī-d-Dīn Aḥmad b. Taimīya (1939), there have been great advances in research into the
ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim,8 yet the Wahhābī connection has not been
seriously explored. These two chapters may be seen as an effort to fill this research gap.
7
Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, 241.
8
Three recent edited volumes are particularly valuable contributions: Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed,
eds., Ibn Taymiyya and His Times (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010); Caterina Bori and Livnat
Holtzman, eds., A Scholar in the Shadow: Essays in the Legal and Theological Thought of Ibn Qayyim al-
Ǧawziyyah, Oriente Moderno, Nuova Serie, Anno 90 (2010); Birgit Krawietz and Georges Tamer, eds.,
Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2013).
100
The Education of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
Nothing in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s background stands out as having contributed directly to
the formation of his doctrine. The relatively favorable circumstances of his birth,
however, could be said to have contributed indirectly. His membership in a prominent
scholarly family, and upbringing in the wealthiest town in all of central Arabia,
positioned him favorably to succeed in his chosen pursuit of religious studies.
Family background and travels
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was born in 1115/1703f in al-ʿUyayna,9 by all accounts
the leading town in Najd in the early twelfth/early eighteenth century in terms of wealth,
population, and political heft.10 The ruler of al-ʿUyayna at the time of his birth was
ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Muʿammar (d. 1138/1725f), a member of the Āl
Muʿammar family—of the ʿAnāqir clan of the Banū Tamīm tribe—that had reigned in
the town since the ninth/fifteenth century.11 By the twelfth/eighteenth century, al-
ʿUyayna was the most powerful town in the Najdī subregion of al-ʿĀriḍ, its influence
extending into the other subregions as well. As was noted in the introduction, each of
Najd’s subregions appears to have been dominated by a particular town. Al-ʿUyayna was
the largest and strongest of all the towns in all the subregions, and was engaged in long-
standing conflicts in al-Shaʿīb (with Ḥuraymilāʾ) and in al-Kharj. The next largest town
in al-ʿĀriḍ, and the closest competitor with al-ʿUyayna for subregional dominance, was
9
So Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:208; Ibn Laʿbūn, Tārīkh, 329; al-Fākhirī, Tārīkh, 114; Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-
majd, 1:61; Ibn ʿĪsā, Tārīkh, 67. Ibn Gharīb gives 1115/1703f without birthplace (Tawḍīh, 1:165);
Sulaymān al-Najdī gives Ḥuraymilāʾ without birth year (Rousseau, Mémoire, 27); and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān “el-
Oguyeh” gives 1116/1704f and al-ʿUyayna (Mengin, Histoire de l’Égypt, 2:449).
10
Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement, 106-7, 150.
11
Ibid., 105.
101
al-Dirʿiyya (al-Riyāḍ, or Riyadh, was another competitor in al-ʿĀriḍ). In the early
twelfth/early eighteenth century, al-Dirʿiyya’s leadership was contested by the Āl Waṭbān
and Āl Muqrin families—both of the Murada clan12—but in 1139/1726 Muḥammad ibn
Suʿūd (d. 1179/1765) of the Āl Muqrin assumed control, and henceforth rule in the town
would remain in his family line, the Āl Suʿūd.13 Thus, by the time Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
reached the age of 24, the two largest towns in al-ʿĀriḍ were al-ʿUyayna and al-Dirʿiyya,
ruled by the Āl Muʿammar and Āl Suʿūd, respectively. Each town would play host to him
and his religious project.
The family into which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was born was the Āl Musharraf—of
the Wuhaba clan of the Banū Tamīm tribe—one of the leading scholarly families in
Najd.14 The family’s origins were in a town in al-Washm called Ushayqir, which was
Najd’s traditional center of religious learning. Ushayqir was Najd’s educational hub,
known for producing scholars who would go on to assume teaching positions and
judgeships in the various Najdī towns. Among these scholars were members of the Āl
Musharraf. In the mid-eleventh/mid-seventeenth century, family members held the
judgeships in Riyadh and al-ʿUyayna.15 Later in the century, Sulaymān ibn ʿAlī ibn
Muḥammad (d. 1079/1669), Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s paternal grandfather, served as the
12
Ibid., 104. The tribal origins of the Murada, and hence of the Āl Suʿūd, are contested. In the modern
period, Saudi rulers have located the family’s origins in the sedentary Banū Ḥanīfa, but previously the
dominant view put their origins in the nomadic ʿAnaza. See Nadav Samin, Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and
Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 195-97.
13
Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement, 104. See further, for the date of Muḥammad ibn
Suʿūd’s assumption of power, Ibn ʿAbbād, Tārīkh, 82; Ibn Laʿbūn, Tārīkh, 381; Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-
majd, 1:73.
14
Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement, 117, 134-35. While the Wahhābī tradition probably
exaggerates the prominence of the Āl Musharraf, the sources for this claim are not exclusively Wahhābī.
15
al-ʿUthaymīn, Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, 28. The qāḍī of Riyadh was Aḥmad ibn Nāṣir ibn
Muḥammad (d. 1049/1639f or 1048/1638f).The qāḍī of al-ʿUyayna was ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn
Mūsā (d. 1056/1646f).
102
judge (qāḍī) of al-ʿUyayna, where he was remembered as a popular teacher and unrivaled
legal authority.16 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Sulaymān (d. 1153/1741), his son and the father of
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, was a scholar of lesser renown who also held al-ʿUyayna’s
judgeship.17 He served in this position until 1139/1726f, when the town’s new ruler
dismissed him, whereafter he resettled in Ḥuraymilāʾ.18
According to Ibn Ghannām, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb received his early education at
the feet of his father in al-ʿUyayna.19 He married—or perhaps contracted a marriage—at
the age of twelve, performed the ḥajj, and returned to al-ʿUyayna to resume his studies
with his father. Sometime later he set off on a course of study abroad.20 It was not
unusual for aspiring Najdī scholars to embark on such journeys, the most common
destinations at the time being al-Aḥsāʾ, the Ḥijāz, and Damascus.21 With his privileged
background, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would have had the resources and pedigree necessary
for such a trip. Ibn Ghannām relates that he traveled first to Medina in the Ḥijāz, then to
Basra, and finally to al-Aḥsāʾ, the bulk of his time studying (akthar lubthihi li-akhdh al-
ʿilm) being spent in Basra.22 After an unknown period, which seems to have included
16
Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement, 132. For his biography, see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-
majd, 1:40-41; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:413-15; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:366-72. Ibn
Ḥumayd gives al-ʿUyayna as his birthplace, while Āl Bassām gives Ushayqir.
17
On him see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:675-81; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 5:40-43.
18
So Ibn Rabīʿa, Tārīkh, 87; Ibn Laʿbūn, Tārīkh, 385; al-Fākhirī, Tārīkh, 125; Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd,
1:73; Ibn ʿĪsā, Tārīkh, 78; al-Bassām, Tuḥfat al-mushtāq, 185. The new ruler was Muḥammad ibn Ḥamad
ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Muʿammar (d. 1142/1729f), a grandson of the previous ruler. Ibn Ghannām does not
mention the dismissal, merely recording that ʿAbd al-Wahhāb chose to move to Ḥuraymilāʾ and specifying
no date (Tārīkh, 1:212).
19
20
Ibid., 1:209-10.
21
Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement, 133.
22
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:210, 212. For the variant itineraries recorded in the Wahhābī and non-Wahhābī
sources, see Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 191-98. Nearly all the Wahhābī sources agree that Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb visited only the Ḥijāz, Iraq, and al-Aḥsāʾ, usually in that order. According to Ibn Bishr, after
departing Basra, he took refuge in al-Zubayr, from where he intended to visit Damascus but fell short of
funds (ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:84). The popular story of his alleged travel to and residence in Iran is almost
certainly a fabrication.
103
multiple trips back and forth from Najd to Basra, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb returned to Najd
for good, settling with his father in Ḥuraymilāʾ. Unfortunately, the sources do not afford
us a more specific timeline than this, though one of them places Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in
Basra in 1137/1724f.23
Launching the daʿwa
In 1153/1741, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s father died in Ḥuraymilāʾ. It is generally agreed that
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began spreading his doctrine soon thereafter, setting in motion a
process that saw him move first from Ḥuraymilāʾ to al-ʿUyayna, and then from al-
ʿUyayna to al-Dirʿiyya. As Ibn Bishr says, “His father, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, died in 1153;
then he [i.e., Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb] announced his mission (aʿlana biʾl-daʿwa).”24 As the
order of events suggests, the young preacher had in some way been restrained by his
father’s presence. So long as the latter was alive, it seems, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was wary
of launching a full-fledged predicatory campaign. According to Ibn Bishr, Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb was sharing some of his doctrinal views even before his father’s death. Upon
settling in Ḥuraymilāʾ, he says, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb criticized the innovations and
polytheism (al-bidaʿ waʾl-shirk) of those around him. His father took exception to this
behavior, and there followed an exchange of words between the two men (waqaʿa
baynahu wa-bayn abīhi kalām).25
This story of the tense relationship between father and son, and of the son’s
launching of the daʿwa only after the father’s death, is not found in the earliest Wahhābī
23
24
tuwiffiya abūhu ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fī sanat thalāth wa-khamsīn wa-miʾa wa-alf thumma aʿlana biʾl-daʿwa,
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:85.
25
Ibid.
104
sources—namely, Ibn Ghannam’s history and Ibn Gharīb’s Tawḍīḥ. Nonetheless, the
weight of the evidence comes down in its favor. Ibn Ghannām, who came well before Ibn
Bishr, depicts Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s father as tolerant, even supportive, of his son’s
preaching in Ḥuraymilāʾ.26 Ibn Bishr is the first Wahhābī source for the story, and it
would be repeated in later Wahhābī accounts until it became standard.27 It is also found in
an early anti-Wahhābī source, Ibn Dāwūd’s al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, written in 1210/1795.
As Ibn Dāwūd has it, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s father and brother were the first to censure
him for his doctrinal views (awwal man ankara ʿalayhi),28 and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did
not speak about takfīr before his father’s death (qabl mawt abīhi).29 In his endorsement of
al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, Ibn Fayrūz likewise describes the relationship between Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb and his father as an acrimonious one. Ibn Fayrūz states that his own father,
ʿAbdallāh, once wrote to ʿAbd al-Wahhāb urging him to set his son straight (an
yanṣaḥahu); ʿAbd al-Wahhāb lamented that his son was outside his control (faʿtadhara
bi-khurūjihi min ṭāʿatihi).30
The important point here is that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not inherit his
controversial ideas from his father. The latter did not seek to disrupt the social and
political order, or radically reform the scholarly institutions to which he belonged, as his
son would. Moreover, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb never acknowledged his father as an
influence on his thinking. Indeed, he denied the influence of any of his teachers on his
26
aqāma fīhā maʿa abīhi yuʿlinu biʾl-tawḥīd wa-yubdīhi, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:212.
27
See, for example, Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 1:28; it is also included in many Western
accounts of Wahhābism, such as Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 17.
28
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 40b. Cf. ibid., ff. 16a, 31b, 32b.
29
Ibid., f. 122a.
30
Ibid., ff. 1b-2a.
105
doctrine, accusing them of having failed to understand the meaning of “there is no god
but God” (lā ilāha illā ʾllāh).
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s teachers
This accusation is made in a famous letter from Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to the people of
Riyadh and Manfūḥa. The letter is preserved by Ibn Ghannām, who notes that it was
written while Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was still in al-ʿUyayna.31 One can be certain that it
was written before Ibn Suḥaym’s epistle of no later than 1157/1744, since Ibn Suḥaym
refers to it there. In the letter, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb touches on his teachers only briefly,
but his dismissal of them is categorical. He states that his followers should feel no shame
in having previously been ignorant (juhhāl, sing. jāhil)—ignorant, that is, of tawḥīd—as
he himself had been ignorant before and so had his teachers:
I will tell you about myself. By God, apart from whom there is no god, I sought
learning, and those who knew me believed that I had some; yet at that time I did
not know the meaning of “there is no god but God,” nor did I know the religion of
Islam, before this blessing that God vouchsafed [to me]. Likewise not one among
my teachers knew it; if any of the scholars of al-ʿĀriḍ claims that he knew the
meaning of “there is no god but God,” or knew the meaning of Islam, before this
time, or maintains that any of his teachers knew it, he lies, fabricates, leads people
astray, and falsely praises himself.32
Ibn Suḥaym, who was living in Riyadh where he would have received this letter,
considered this remark a confirmation of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alleged claim that for
31
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:401-9, at 401.
32
wa-anā ukhbirukum ʿan nafsī waʾllāh alladhī lā ilāha illā huwa la-qad ṭalabtu ʾl-ʿilm waʾʿtaqada man
ʿarafanī anna lī maʿrifa wa-anā dhālika ʾl-waqt lā aʿrifu maʿnā lā ilāha illā ʾllāh wa-lā aʿrifu dīn al-Islām
qabl hādhā ʾl-khayr alladhī manna ʾllāh bihi wa-kadhālika mashāyikhī mā minhum rajul ʿarafa dhālika fa-
man zaʿama min ʿulamāʾ al-ʿĀriḍ annahu ʿarafa maʿnā lā ilāha illā ʾllāh aw ʿarafa maʿnā ʾl-Islām qabl
hādhā ʾl-waqt aw zaʿama min mashāyikhihi anna aḥadan ʿarafa dhālika fa-qad kadhaba waʾftarā wa-
labbasa ʿalā ʾl-nās wa-madaḥa nafsahu bimā laysa fīhi … waʾḥmadū subḥānahu ʾlladhī manna ʿalaykum
wa-yassara lakum man yuʿarrifukum bi-dīn nabiyyikum, ibid., 1:402; translation borrowed from Cook,
“Origins of Wahhābism,” 202, with minor changes,.
106
six-hundred years professed Muslims had not really been so: “The confirmation of this is
that he sent me a letter in which he says, ‘Affirm that before me you (pl.) were ignorant
and wayward.’”33 Later in his epistle, Ibn Suḥaym refers to the letter again, emphasizing
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, by his own admission, had no teachers:
He sent to our lands a letter by his own hand, with one of his missionaries, in
which he swore that this knowledge of his was not known to any of his teachers,
by whom he claims to affiliate with learning—so he has no teachers!—and that
his father did not know it, nor the people of al-ʿĀriḍ. How strange then! If he did
not learn it from teachers, and neither his father nor the people of his country
knew it, then where does his knowledge come from? Where did he get it? Was it
divinely revealed to him, did he see it in a dream, or did Satan teach it to him? All
the people of al-ʿĀriḍ saw what he swore.34
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s letter, and his dismissal of his teachers as juhhāl, indeed
became well-known across Najd. Ibn Fayrūz refers to the letter in two of his refutations.
In each case he notes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb claimed to have received his knowledge
of tawḥīd in the form of a blessing (khayr) and that before then he and his teachers were
ignorant.35
Looking at the letter to Riyadh and Manfūḥa, one cannot avoid concluding that
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb regarded himself as having been entrusted with a divine mission of
sorts, and saw his teachers has having fallen short of true Islam. This being the case, one
might assume that the Wahhābī biographers would not waste their time describing his
studies with these juhhāl. And yet, they are keen on doing just this. What seems to have
33
wa-taṣdīq dhālika annahu baʿatha ilayya kitāban yaqūlu fīhi aqirrū annakum qablī juhhāl ḍullāl, Ibn
Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:345.
34
annahu baʿatha ilā buldāninā kitāban maʿa baʿḍ duʿātihi bi-khaṭṭ yadihi wa-ḥalafa fīhi biʾllāh anna
ʿilmahu hādhā lam yaʿrifhu mashāyikhuhu ʾlladhīna yantasibu ilā akhdh al-ʿilm minhum fī zaʿmihi wa-illā
fa-laysa lahu mashāyikh wa-lā ʿarafahu abūhu wa-lā ahl al-ʿĀriḍ fa-yā ʿajaban idhā lam yataʿallamhu min
al-mashāyikh wa-lā ʿarafahu abūhu wa-lā ahl quṭrihi fa-min ayna ʿilmuhu wa-ʿamman akhadhahu hal
ūḥiya ilayhi aw raʾāhu manāman aw ʿallamahu bihi ʾl-shayṭān wa-ḥilfuhu hādhā ashrafa ʿalayhi jamīʿ ahl
al-ʿĀriḍ, ibid., 1:345-46.
35
See Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 3a; Āl Maḥmūd, Taḥdhīr ahl al-īmān, 34.
107
happened is that the biographers, in trying to rebut the accusation that Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb had no scholarly pedigree, went out of their way to fashion one for him. His
reputation needed to be repaired, especially if his doctrine was to be made palatable to a
larger Muslim audience accustomed to traditional structures of instruction and knowledge
transmission. Thus a number of men with whom he had studied or associated were
identified as his teachers. Over time, the list of teachers grew longer, and the influence
imputed to them grew as well.
The earliest biographers, Ibn Ghannām and Ibn Gharīb, relate information about
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s education in matter-of-fact fashion, but one can already detect that
they are concerned by the accusation that he had no teachers. Ibn Ghannām’s account is
the barest. It states that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb studied with a group (jamāʿa) of teachers in
the Ḥijāz, Basra, and al-Aḥsāʾ, naming just one: ʿAbdallāh ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Sayf (d.
1140/1727f), a Ḥanbalī who lived in Medina but whose roots lay in al-Majmaʿa in
Sudayr.36 As documentary evidence for this relationship, Ibn Ghannām provides the
transmission chains for two ḥadīths that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb narrated on Ibn Sayf’s
authority.37 He also notes that Ibn Sayf provided his student with two ijāzas (wa-ajāzahu
min ṭarīqayn).38 Ibn Ghannām’s motive for providing this information may have been
merely biographical, but it is worth bearing in mind that he was aware of the accusations
being levelled against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s scholarly credentials, and he includes Ibn
Suḥayam’s letter in his history.
36
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:210. On Ibn Sayf, see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 1:44; Āl Bassām,
ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:6-10; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:425.
37
38
Ibid., 1:210.
108
Ibn Gharīb goes further in showcasing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s links with teachers.
His biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was written directly in response to the charge that
he failed to study with teachers who could have led him to the right path.39 Ibn Gharīb
produces the full text of the two ijāzas from Ibn Sayf mentioned by Ibn Ghannām,40 and
he names three other teachers with whom Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb studied in addition to Ibn
Sayf.41 These are one in Medina, the Ḥanafī ʿAlī Afandī ibn Ṣādiq al-Dāghistānī (d.
1199/1785),42 and two in in al-Aḥsāʾ—whose names are mangled somewhat—ʿAbdallāh
ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf43 and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAfāliq, both of whom we met in Chapter 1
as early refuters of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.44 The name mangling and the absence of
documentary evidence leave one to wonder how much of this is true.
In view of the evidence presented by Ibn Ghannām and Ibn al-Gharīb, it is clear
enough that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb studied with Ibn Sayf in Medina. Even so, it is doubtful
that Ibn Sayf had any influence on his doctrine, as he was also the teacher the fiercely
anti-Wahhābī Ibn ʿAfāliq.45 It is also clear that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb briefly met Ibn ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf, since Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb mentions their meeting in a letter. But Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s description of their encounter suggests mutual learning, not a student-teacher
relationship.46 As for Ibn ʿAfāliq, there is no record of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s studying
39
Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:163.
40
Ibid., 1:167-72.
41
Ibid., 1:166-67.
42
On him see al-Murādī, Silk al-durar, 3:215
43
Rendered “Abd al-Laṭīf al-Aḥsāʾī al-ʿAfāliqī.” I assume Ibn Gharīb to mean Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf for several
reasons: (1) Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb recalls meeting him in al-Aḥsāʾ; (2) the names are close, and Ibn Gharīb
tends to get names slightly wrong; (3) al-Ḥaddād describes Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf as a teacher (shaykh) of Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s (Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 3); and (4) so does ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh (al-
Maqāmāt, ed. ʿAbdallāh al-Muṭawwaʿ (Riyadh: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 1426/2005), 68).
44
Rendered “Muḥammad al-ʿAfāliqī al-Aḥsāʾī.”
45
Ibn Fayrūz, Tarājim, f. 77a.
46
wa-tadhākartu anā wa-iyyāka fī shayʾ min al-tafsīr waʾl-ḥadīth, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:246 (letter to
Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf).
109
with him. On the contrary, it was Ibn ʿAfāliq who asseverated, in Tahakkum al-
muqallidīn, that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb “has no chain [of knowledge transmission] and no
teachers” (lā sanada lahu wa-lā mashyakha).47 It is thus ironic that Ibn Gharīb would cite
Ibn ʿAfāliq as one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s teachers, since Ibn ʿAfāliq himself accused
him of having none.
Two later biographers are the historian Ibn Bishr and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan
Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1285/1869), a grandson of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s. They would add to
the list of teachers as well as amplify their role in shaping his doctrine. In his history, Ibn
Bishr describes three teachers as, if not influences on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, at least allies
in his doctrinal venture. He does so by means of vignettes. The first teacher is Ibn Sayf,
who is said to have shown Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb a collection of books in Medina that he
was preparing as weapons (silāḥan) to be used against his town of origin, al-Majmaʿa.48
Though the books are not specified, the suggestion is clear: Ibn Sayf, like Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb, believed in imposing a proper understanding of Islam on the people of Najd.
The next two teachers mentioned by Ibn Bishr are the Ḥanafī Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī
(1163/1750), encountered in Medina, and the more mysterious Muḥammad al-Majmūʿī,
encountered in Basra, neither of whom is mentioned in the earlier biographies.49 Ibn
Bishr presents the two as sharing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrinal views. Al-Sindī is seen,
in the company of his pupil, condemning visitors to the Prophet’s tomb calling on the
Prophet and seeking his help (yadʿūna wa-yastaghīthūna).50 The implication is that al-
47
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, f. 42b.
48
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:83; noted in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 192.
49
On al-Sindī, see Basheer M. Nafi, “A Teacher of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī and
the Revival of Aṣḥāb al-Ḥadīth’s Methodology,” Islamic Law and Society 13 (2006): 208-41.
50
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:83. The condemnation is made in the words of the Qurʾānic Moses (Q.
7:139), as noted in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 192.
110
Sindī’s view of such visitors is the same as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s—that they are
engaging in polytheistic acts. Al-Majmūʿī’s support is presented in clearer terms.
According to Ibn Bishr, when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb condemned certain forms of unbelief
and innovation (ashyāʾ min al-shirkiyyāt waʾl-bidaʿ) in Basra, al-Majmūʿī approved of
this (istaḥsana … qawlahu). But for his support al-Majmūʿī would pay a price (laḥiqa …
baʿḍ al-adhā) at the hands of the Basrans.51
These stories, however, have the look of tall tales; none of the Wahhābī sources
refers to al-Sindī or al-Majmūʿī before Ibn Bishr. In the case of al-Sindī, however, there
is evidence from outside the Wahhābī tradition that he was indeed a teacher of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s. The Yemeni opponent of Wahhābism ʿAlawī al-Ḥaddād, author of the
refutation Miṣbāḥ al-anām (completed in 1215/1801), relates that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
frequented al-Sindī’s study circle in Medina (yataraddadu ʿalā ʾl-shaykh Muḥammad
Ḥayāt). This information came from al-Ḥaddād’s relative who was living in Mecca at the
time.52 Al-Sindī, however, as was seen in Chapter 1, was known to have written a
refutation of his former student, so it is a stretch to portray him as an ally of Wahhābism.
As for al-Majmūʿī, there is no reference to him in any other source, so the story may very
well be fictitious.53 It is also important to point out that the Basran refuters of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb make no reference to the latter’s presence in the city, let alone any trouble that
he may have stirred up while there.
In 1283/1866, some thirty years after Ibn Bishr completed his biography, Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s grandson, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan, authored a fresh account of his
51
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:83-84.
52
al-Ḥaddād, Miṣbāḥ al-anām, 10.
53
Majmūʿa was at least a real place, as noted in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 193.
111
grandfather’s life in the course of refuting an enemy.54 Countering the enduring charge
that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had failed to study with teachers (lam yatakharraj ʿalā ashyākh
fī ʾl-ʿilm),55 he asserts that his grandfather belonged to a prominent scholarly family in
Najd and studied with some of the leading scholars of the day, both in Najd and beyond.
Among the scholars of al-Aḥsāʾ (mashāyikh al-Aḥsāʾ), he mentions Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
and, for the first time in these biographies, ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, the
father of the more famous Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz.56 Whether Ibn Fayrūz père could
accurately be described as a teacher of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s is difficult to say. Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb does suggest that the two met in al-Aḥsāʾ in one of his letters,57 so it is
possible. But one wonders why it took so long—nearly a century from the time of Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s death—for ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayrūz’s name to appear in the list of
teachers. In all likelihood, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan is simply padding his grandfather’s
résumé by namedropping big-name scholars with whom Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had some
interaction.
Yet unlike the other biographers, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan seems to have
wanted it both ways with regard to his grandfather’s teachers. He suggests that Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb’s studying with them was important, but he also emphasizes his grandfather’s
unique, God-given knowledge. After identifying the teachers in al-Aḥsāʾ and elsewhere,
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan goes on to highlight his grandfather’s willingness to
challenge these men, suggesting that he was their intellectual superior. Ibn ʿAbd al-
54
Āl al-Shaykh, Maqāmāt, 63-70. For the completion date of this work, see ibid., 140. The enemy in
question is ʿUthmān ibn Manṣūr (d. 1282/1865), on whom see below, ch. 5.
55
Āl al-Shaykh, Maqāmāt, 62.
56
Ibid., 68.
57
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:251 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf).
112
Wahhāb was not afraid, he says, to dispute with some of the scholars in al-Aḥsāʾ on
certain issues (baḥatha maʿahum fī masāʾil wa-nāẓara).58 The provenance of this
superior knowledge was divine, as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had received his understanding
of theology not from any of these teachers but from God himself (aẓhara ʾllah lahu min
uṣūl al-dīn mā khafiya ʿalā ghayrihi).59 The latter point of course echoes Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s own claim concerning the source of his doctrine.
There is one further influence on his grandfather’s thinking of which ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan takes note: the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. In al-
Aḥsāʾ, according to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb encountered some of their
works with ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayrūz and found them to his liking.60 Remarkably, this is the
first reference in any of the biographies surveyed here that draws attention to the role of
the two eighth/fourteenth-century scholars—remarkable as their influence on him was no
secret to anyone involved in the early Wahhābī controversy, and was in fact frequently
discussed and widely debated.
Summoning Ibn Taymiyya
Though he may have come across certain texts there for the first time, Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s encounter with the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Aḥsāʾ
cannot have been his first exposure to the men’s writing. This is because Najd was
Ḥanbalī territory—it had been since the eighth/fourteenth century61—and these two
58
59
Ibid., 65-66.
60
wa-wajada ʿindahu min kutub shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya waʾbn al-Qayyim mā surra bihi, ibid., 68.
61
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shuqayr, “al-Madhhab al-Ḥanbalī fī Najd: dirāsa tārīkhiyya,” al-Dāra 28
(1423/2002): 71-102, esp. 92-93.
113
Ḥanbalī scholars had considerable standing in the Ḥanbalī community of Najd and al-
Aḥsāʾ in the twelfth/eighteenth century. This is evidenced by the passion with which Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Ḥanbalī opponents rushed to the defense of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-
Qayyim in their refutations, quoting them liberally and accusing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of
misusing their ideas. The two scholars could not be conceded to the Wahhābīs. Even Ibn
ʿAfāliq, the Ḥanbalī luminary in al-Aḥsāʾ who in his first refutation criticized Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb for drawing on Ibn Taymiyya’s minority views concerning the cult of saints,
subsequently joined the Ḥanbalī chorus in defense of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.
The refuters from both the Ḥanbalī- and Shāfiʿī-led camps, as was seen in Chapter
1, paid great attention to the question of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s dependence on Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. In general, the Shāfiʿīs complained that Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb was imitating the two scholars and reviving their ideas, while the Ḥanbalīs
complained that he had misunderstood the two men. A more systematic examination of
the views of both camps highlights the centrality of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim to
the religious debate attending the rise of Wahhābism.
The Shāfiʿīs
Two representative Shāfiʿī refuters are al-Qabbānī in Basra and Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf in al-
Aḥsāʾ. In all three of his refutations, al-Qabbānī lays the blame for the Wahhābī heresy
squarely on Ibn Taymiyya. In Faṣl al-khiṭāb, addressing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he refers
to Ibn Taymiyya as “your leader and your guide” (imāmuka wa-muqtadāka),62 accusing
the Najdī of adopting his views on asking the dead for help (istighātha) and using them as
62
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 104a.
114
a means to God (tawassul). The recurrent phrase used to describe this reliance on Ibn
Taymiyya is “reprehensible emulation” (al-taqlīd al-radīʾ).63 As al-Qabbānī writes in
Faṣl al-khiṭāb:
It is absolutely clear that you have emulated Ibn Taymiyya in what the most
distinguished scholars counted among his faults and his fictions. You have
followed him in this abominable doctrine of his that the scholars of Islam declared
to be unmentionable.64
He writes to the same effect in Kashf al-ḥijāb: “It is absolutely clear that you have
emulated Ibn Taymiyya in disapproving of seeking the intercession and help of the dead
or absent.”65 The scholars are agreed, he asserts, that Ibn Taymiyya’s position on these
issues is “one of his unmentionable faults … because of it they called for his
excommunication.”66 No one ought to be emulating such fringe, unacceptable views. As
al-Qabbānī puts it in Faṣl al-khiṭāb, speaking of Ibn Taymiyya, “Did any of the scholars
of Islam, who are followed in matters of religion, before this man declare to be
unbelievers those who use the dead as a means to God and who ask the dead for help?”67
It is without question his “reprehensible emulation” of Ibn Taymiyya on these matters,
according to al-Qabbānī, that has led Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to excommunicate the entire
Muslim community.68
63
See, for example, ibid., f. 52b (four instances); idem, Kashf al-ḥijāb, ff. 107b (two instances), 109b (two
instances).
64
Idem, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 52b; for the transliteration, see above, p. 96, note 1.
65
fa-min al-maʿlūm alladhī lā miryata fīhi annaka qad qalladta ʾbn Taymiyya fī ʿadam jawāz al-tashaffuʿ
waʾl-istighātha bi-makhlūq mayyit aw ghāʾib, idem, Kashf al-ḥijāb, f. 108b.
66
min hafawātihi ʾllatī lā yanbaghī dhikruhā … qālū bi-kufrihi bi-sababihi, ibid., ff. 108b-109a; cf. idem,
Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 52b.
67
hal sabaqa hādhā ʾl-rajul ilā ʾl-qawl bi-kufr al-mutawassil waʾl-mustaghīth aḥad min ʿulamāʾ al-Islām
mimman yuqtadā bihi fī umūr al-dīn, idem, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 53a.
68
wa-ḥukmuka ʿalayhim biʾl-kufr waʾl-ḍalāla huwa ʿayn al-taqlīd al-radīʾ bilā mirya, idem, Kashf al-
ḥijāb, f. 109a; cf. idem, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, ff. 52b-53a.
115
In Faṣl al-khiṭāb and Kashf al-ḥijāb, al-Qabbānī even accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb of plagiarizing one of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Kalimāt
epistle looked to al-Qabbānī suspiciously like a fatwā of Ibn Taymiyya’s. As he writes in
the introduction to Faṣl al-khiṭāb,
Know that this epistle [i.e., the Kalimāt] is taken from the words of the scholar
Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥarrānī. When I was starting this commentary, I
came across a work of his on this [i.e., istighātha and tawassul] that was a
response to a question about asking the help of one buried in a grave, and
concerning one who makes votive offerings to mosques, shrines, and scholars … I
saw that this epistle was taken from its words and its proofs.69
Al-Qabbānī quotes this fatwā later in Faṣl al-khiṭāb, so it is easy to identify; it is included
in the standard collection of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings, Majmūʿ fatāwā.70 Yet as will be
seen in the next chapter, al-Qabbānī was wrong to make too much of this particular
fatwā, for the Kalimāt epistle bears a greater resemblance to other works of Ibn
Taymiyya’s. Al-Qabbānī does not seem to have been terribly familiar with Ibn
Taymiyya’s oeuvre, and indicates that he knows of Ibn Taymiyya’s other works only
through the refutations of Ibn Taymiyya (kalām al-rāddīn ʿalayhi).71 Throughout Faṣl al-
khiṭāb and Kashf al-ḥijāb, al-Qabbānī quotes extensively from these refutations,
including ones by the Shāfiʿīs Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 756/1355),72 Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī
(d. 973/1566),73 and ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al-Munāwī (d. 1031/1622),74 and one by the Ḥanafī
69
iʿlam anna hādhihi ʾl-risāla maʾkhūdha min kalām al-ʿālim Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥarrānī wa-
qad waqaftu lahu ḥāl shurūʿī fī hādhā ʾl-sharḥ ʿalā risāla fī dhālika wa hiya jawāb suʾāl ʿan al-istinjād
biʾl-maqbūr wa-fī man yandhuru lil-masājid waʾl-zawāyā waʾl-mashāyikh … fa-raʾaytu anna hādhihi ʾl-
risāla maʾkhūdha min kalāmihā wa-min adillatihā, ibid., ff. 23a-23b.
70
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn
Qāsim, 37 vols. (Riyadh: Maṭābiʿ al-Riyāḍ, 1381-86/1961f-66f), 27:64-105. Compare al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-
khiṭāb, ff. 31b, 45a and Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 27:77, 82, respectively.
71
72
Ibid., ff. 23b-24a.
73
Idem, Kashf al-ḥijāb, ff. 48a-58a, 165b.
74
Ibid., f. 61a.
116
Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī (d. 1069/1658).75 Of this multitude of criticisms al-Qabbānī
writes, “He [i.e., Ibn Taymiyya] deserves it” (wa-huwa ḥaqīq bi-dhālika).76 The
invocation of all these earlier refutations shows the extent to which al-Qabbānī saw Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as a kind of Taymiyyan clone. Reprising the refutation of Ibn
Taymiyya, he believed, served well to delegitimize his modern-day Najdī follower.
Two other observations of al-Qabbānī’s concerning Ibn Taymiyya are worth
highlighting here. The first is his recognition that Ibn Taymiyya was not alone in his
views, but rather had transmitted them to a number of his students. Al-Qabbānī refers to
this group of scholars by such phrases as “Ibn Taymiyya and his students” (Ibn Taymiyya
wa-talāmidhatuhu),77 and “Ibn Taymiyya and his emulators” (Ibn Taymiyya wa-man
qalladahu).78 In one contemptuous remark, he suggests that if Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb were
right that istighātha and tawassul amount to unbelief, then on the Day of Judgment the
only Muslims to reach heaven would be Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb, and nine other persons (tisʿat rahṭ) from al-ʿUyayna—twelve men (ithnā ʿashar
rajulan) in all.79 The second observation is that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was even more
extreme than Ibn Taymiyya in the application of takfīr. Al-Qabbānī no doubt saw Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine as an outgrowth of Taymiyyan thought. “The branch extends
75
Ibid., ff. 166b-167a.
76
Ibid., f. 215b.
77
Ibid., f. 122a.
78
Idem, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 122.
79
Ibid., f. 108a. Why the number twelve is not clear to me. The comment is surrounded by quotations from
several ḥadīth describing how the Prophet will lead mankind to Paradise on the Day of Judgment. Al-
Qabbānī accuses Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of seeing himself in this prophetic role. For these ḥadīth, see Abū
Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī, Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, ed. Muḥammad Rawwās Qalʿajī and ʿAbd al-Barr ʿAbbās, 2
vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1406/1986), 1:65-66, nos. 23-25. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb seems to refer to this
comment in one of his letters, saying of al-Qabbānī, “He writes in his work that he only opposes in his
work Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, and ten others, I being the tenth of them, and the total being twelve”
(wa-yaqūlu fī taṣnīfihi innahu lam yukhālif fī taṣnīfihi illā ʾbn Taymiyya waʾbn al-Qayyim wa-ʿashara anā
ʿāshiruhum waʾl-jamīʿ ithnā ʿashar). See Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:425 (letter to Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm). The
comment is noted in Cook, “Origins of Wahhābism,” 200n87.
117
from the root” (al-farʿ tābiʿ lil-aṣl), he says of the relationship between the two.80 But he
also says, addressing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb at one place in Kashf al-ḥijāb, that “you have
surpassed him in making tawassul and istighātha an act of unbelief terminating one’s
Islam.”81 This is a lone remark, but it is a prescient one. To dwell on the differences
between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and Ibn Taymiyya would not have served al-Qabbānī’s
polemical purposes. But his comment shows that he did detect some differences between
the two men.
The Shāfiʿī Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf likewise portrays Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s heresy as
rooted in the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya. In his second refutation, a letter to the people of
Kuwait, he says of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb:
One should not be misled by those relied on by this ignorant man, who laps up
follies in the bitterest pools, such as Ibn Taymiyya and those following him …
Eminent scholars unleashed their tongues against him … The scholars of his time,
and the leading lights and stars of his time, prevailed upon the sultan either to kill
or coerce him, and he was imprisoned till his death.82
In short, the memory of Ibn Taymiyya was alive and well for Shāfiʿīs such as al-Qabbānī
and Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, and the memory was dark.
The exception to this Shāfiʿī pattern is al-Ṭandatāwī in Mecca. Al-Ṭandatāwī
mentions Ibn Taymiyya, along with Ibn al-Qayyim, in a list of revered scholars who
adhered to the traditional requirement of taqlīd.83 For some reason, the name of Ibn
Taymiyya did not provoke immediate revulsion in al-Ṭandatāwī’s mind, as it did in those
of his Shāfiʿī colleagues in Basra and al-Aḥsāʾ. Or perhaps he included their names in
80
81
zidta ʿalayhi bi-kawn al-tawassul waʾl-istighātha kufran qāṭiʿan lil-Islam, idem, Kashf al-ḥijāb, f. 108b.
82
wa-lā yughtarra bi-man istanada ilayhi hādhā ʾl-jāhil al-kāriʿ min al-jahālāt fī murr [read: amarr] al-
manāhil mithl Ibn Taymiyya wa-man naḥā naḥwahu … fa-aṭlaqa aʾimma aʿlām fīhi ʾl-alsina …
ʿulamāʾ ʿaṣrihi wa-maṣābīḥ al-wujūd wa-nujūm ʿaṣrihi alzamū ʾl-sulṭān bi-qatlihi aw qahrihi fa-ḥubisa ilā
mawtihi, quoted in al-Nuwayṣir, Muʿāraḍa, 221.
83
118
this list as a conciliatory gesture to his Ḥanbalī peers. The later Shāfiʿī refuters, namely,
al-Rāwī and al-Ḥaddād, likewise did not stress the malign influence of Ibn Taymiyya, but
this was likely a result of their having read the Ḥanbalī refutations of Wahhābism.
The Ḥanbalīs
Some representative voices of the Ḥanbalī-led camp of anti-Wahhābī refuters are Ibn
ʿAfāliq, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Razīnī, and Ibn Dāwūd. In one of his letters to
ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, Ibn ʿAfāliq writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb falsely attributed
things to the scholars of Islam (iftarā ʿalā ahl al-ʿilm), pointing to Ibn al-Qayyim in
particular.84 In his other letter to Ibn Muʿammar, he argues that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has
read Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim selectively, picking and choosing from their views
as he sees fit:
What brought this man into this terrible abyss is that he looks at the books of Ibn
al-Qayyim and takes from them what suits his fancy, disregarding what
contradicts it; he takes from the beginning of a chapter and disregards the end of
it. We will relate for you the entirety of Ibn al-Qayyim’s words and those of his
teacher, Ibn Taymiyya, so that you know that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has gone
astray and led [others] astray.85
Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb makes the same point about selective reading. Addressing
the Wahhābīs in general, he writes, “You have taken from their words [i.e., Ibn
Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s] what is agreeable to you to the exclusion of what is
not.”86 Al-Razīnī, one of Ibn Fayrūz’s students from Najd, similarly contends that Ibn
84
Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla II, f. 54b.
85
waʾlladhī awqaʿa hādhā ʾl-rajul fī hādhihi ʾl-warṭa al-ʿaẓīma annahu yanẓuru fī kutub Ibn al-Qayyim fa-
yaʾkhudhu minhā mā wāfaqa hawāhu wa-yatruku mā khālafahu wa-yaʾkhudhu min awwal al-faṣl wa-
yatruku ākhirahu wa-nadhkuru lakum jumlat kalām Ibn al-Qayyim wa-shaykhihi ʾbn Taymiyya li-taʿlamū
anna ʾbn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ḍalla wa-aḍalla, idem, Risāla I, ff. 45b-46a.
86
akhadhtum min qawlihim mā jāza lakum dūn ghayrihi, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-
ilāhiyya, 6; it is clear from the context that the plural pronoun refers only to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-
Qayyim.
119
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has distorted the words of the two scholars. He writes in his letter to the
people of Uthayfiya,
O servants of God, this ṭāghūt misled a number of people with the words of these
two shaykhs early on. He would find words of theirs that were uttered in respect
of Jahm ibn Ṣafwān and Bishr al-Marīsī,87 and their followers from among the
Jahmiyya and the Muʿtazila, reciting this to those ignorant commoners round
about him so they would think that the Sunnīs were intended by it. Thus he led
them away from their religion, causing their words to carry a meaning that they
do not bear.88
There is a problem with al-Razīnī’s argument, however, as shall be seen in the discussion
of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought below: Ibn Taymiyya did cast his Sunnī opponents as the
followers of Jahm ibn Ṣafwān.
One ought to point out a subtle difference between the views expressed by Ibn
ʿAfāliq and those of al-Razīnī. They appear to disagree as to whether Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb deliberately misread Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, or whether he read them
in good faith but came away with the wrong conclusions. Al-Razīnī suggests that Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb knowingly distorted their words to suit his purposes, while Ibn ʿAfāliq
appears to say that he merely misapprehended their words. The latter view was the more
common among the Ḥanbalīs. It was also expressed by Ibn Dāwūd, who wrote that while
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim were in one wādī and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was in
another (innahumā fī wādin wa-huwa fī wādin),89 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s reading of the
two men was nevertheless crucial to his doctrine:
87
Jahm ibn Ṣafwān (d. 128/745f) and Bishr al-Marīsī (d. 218/833) are prominent heretics in Sunnī Muslim
heresiography. Jahm is described below, p. 130. Bishr, who belonged to the Murjiʾa, is known best for
promoting the doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān during the miḥna of the third/ninth century.
88
fa-yā ʿibād Allāh hādhā ʾl-ṭāghūt fatana baʿḍ al-nās bi-kalām hādhayn al-shaykhayn fī awwal amrihi
yajidu lahumā min al-kalām mā huwa madhkūr fī ʾl-Jahm ibn Ṣafwān wa-Bishr al-Marīsī wa-atbāʿihimā
min al-Jahmiyya waʾl-Muʿtazila wa-yaqraʾuhu ʿalā hāʾulāʾi ʾl-juhhāl al-ʿawāmm ʿindahu fa-yaẓunnūna
annahu yaʿnī ahl al-sunna fa-fatanahum bihi ʿan dīnihim fa-yuḥammilu kalāmahumā mā lā yaḥtamilu, al-
Bassām, “Min asbāb al-muʿāraḍa,” 39 (transcription), 74 (manuscript photo).
89
120
The thing that most blinded him and caused him to fall into his perversion and his
confusion was the books of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. He read them
without knowledge or discernment, and without a teacher or clear understanding.
Thus he would take from them what he imagined to be in accord with his fancies
and leave aside what went against them.90
The Yemeni Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī reached a similar conclusion. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
he says, “read some of the works of the Shaykh Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyya, and [some
of] the works of his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and emulated them poorly, despite
the fact that both prohibit emulation.”91 For both Ibn Dāwūd and Ibn al-Amīr, it was Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s independent reading (muṭālaʿa) of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim
that led him astray.
Ibn Taymiyya’s words as proof-text, Ibn Taymiyya as a model
As all of the above demonstrates, there was a broad consensus among Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s detractors that the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim were central to
his doctrine. Whether his critics believed that he was applying these ideas correctly or
not, they all acknowledged that Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s words were proof-
texts of a sort for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. They would all have agreed with the
thirteenth/nineteenth-century Ḥanbalī muftī of Mecca, Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd (d.
1295/1878), who accused Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of elevating the words of Ibn Taymiyya
and Ibn al-Qayyim to the level of scripture. In his Ḥanbalī biographical dictionary, Ibn
Ḥumayd writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb “saw their words as a proof-text not admitting
90
wa-ghālib mā aʿmā ʿayn baṣīratihi wa-awqaʿahu fī zayghihi wa-ḥayratihi kutub Ibn Taymiyya waʾbn al-
Qayyim fa-innahu ʾntaḥala ʾl-muṭālaʿa fīhā min ghayr ʿilm wa-lā baṣīra wa-lā shaykh wa-lā dirāya munīra
fa-kāna yaʾkhudhu minhā mā yatakhayyaluhu muwāfiqan li-hawāhu wa-yatruku mā khālafahu, ibid., f.
35b.
91
al-Amīr, Irshād, 108; for the transliteration, see above, ch. 1, p. 84, note 253.
121
of variant interpretation” (yarā kalāmahumā naṣṣan lā yaqbalu ʾl-taʾwīl), i.e., not
admitting of any interpretation besides his own.92
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb himself made no secret of the fact that Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn
al-Qayyim were formative to his thought. Not only did he adopt some of their language
and ideas—a topic covered in detail in Chapter 3—he also appealed directly to their
historical example as fearless champions of the truth who stood up to the mainstream
scholars of their day. In one of his letters he writes that, though he is not calling people to
follow the school of any particular scholar (wa-lastu … adʿū ilā madhhab ṣūfī aw faqīh
aw mutakallim aw imām), those he most reveres (al-aʾimma alladhīna uʿaẓẓimuhum)
include Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Dhahabī, and Ibn Kathīr—all students of Ibn Taymiyya’s.93 He
follows this by saying that among the scholars of the later generations (al-
mutaʾakhkhirīn), the best in term of knowledge and piety (sādatuhum wa-aʾimmatuhum
wa-aʿlamuhum wa-aʿbaduhum wa-azhaduhum) include Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Dhahabī, Ibn
Kathīr, and Ibn Rajab—again, students of Ibn Taymiyya’s—for they were severe in
condemning the people of their day (qad ishtadda nakīruhum ʿalā ahl ʿaṣrihim).94
Similarly, in another early letter he claims that his doctrine is in accord with the views of
the best scholars of the later generations (sādāt al-mutaʾakhkhirīn wa-qādatuhum),
including Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Rajab, al-Dhahabī, and Ibn Kathīr, all of
whom wrote prolifically in condemnation of polytheism (wa-kalāmuhum fī inkār hādhā
akthar min an yuḥṣara).95 While Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not harp on the fact of his
dependence on Ibn Taymiyya and his followers, it is clear that he saw himself as heeding
92
Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:678.
93
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:248 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf).
94
Ibid., 1:248-49.
95
Ibid., 1:446 (letter to ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿĪsā).
122
their example—such as he understood it—in condemning the people of their own time.
Of what, we must ask, did their example consist?
Ibn Taymiyya and Ḥanbalī Theology
Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya (661-728/1263-1328), a Ḥanbalī theologian and jurist
who lived most of his life in Damascus, was a controversial figure in the Mamlūk
Sultanate (1250-1517) of Egypt and Syria.96 Widely admired, even by his enemies, for
the extraordinary breadth of his knowledge, Ibn Taymiyya was a prodigious author who
contributed monumental tomes in several fields. Many of these works were written as
polemics in the tradition of the refutation (radd), directed against such targets as the Shīʿa
and the philosophers as well as the prevailing currents and institutions of contemporary
Sunnī Islam. It was because of these polemics, and several contrarian legal opinions, that
he aroused the ire of the leading Sunnī scholars of Cairo and Damascus, including fellow
Ḥanbalīs, and spent more than a decade on trial or in prison. To these prevailing currents
and institutions he counterposed his own unique approach to Islamic theology and law,
cast as an attempt to recover “the doctrine of the ancestors” (madhhab al-salaf) by
returning to the Qurʾān, the sunna, and the words and deeds of the salaf.
Traditional Ḥanbalī theology
To a large extent, Ibn Taymiyya’s religious thought was consistent with the principles
that had underlain Ḥanbalism for centuries, particularly in the realm of theology or creed
96
For a detailed biography, see Laoust, Essai, 7-150; and for a succinct account of his life with references
to further sources, see Jon Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical
History, ed. David Thomas and Alex Mallet, multiple vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2009-), 4:824-33.
123
(ʿaqīda, iʿtiqād, uṣūl al-dīn). The Ḥanbalī approach to theology was a distinctive one.
Unlike their Sunnī counterparts in the Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, and Ḥanafī schools of law, the
Ḥanbalīs were nearly unanimous in their rejection of what is often called speculative
theology (ʿilm al-kalām, or simply kalām), a rationalist school of thought that employed a
dialectical technique in investigating the meaning of the foundational Islamic texts (with
particular focus on the meaning of God’s attributes) and that came to prevail in Sunnī
Islam from about the eleventh century onward.97 The practitioners of kalām were known
as the mutakallimūn. In earlier Islamic history they were identified with several
theological schools, one of the most successful being Muʿtazilism, which gradually died
out in Sunnī Islam. However, the kalām approach regained strength among Sunnīs in the
form of two new theological schools, Ashʿarism and Māturīdism, named for Abū ʾl-
Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935f) and Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), respectively.
The opponents of kalām were usually described as “the people of ḥadīth” (ahl al-ḥadīth)
by Muslim scholars writing in Arabic, or as “traditionalists” by Western scholars.98
Unlike the mutakallimūn, the traditionalists sought to ground Islamic belief in nothing
more than the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth, and precedents of the salaf. Their statements of creed
thus consisted largely of basic affirmations followed by quotations from these sources.
The three dominant legal schools of Shāfiʿism, Mālikism, and Ḥanafism still counted
among themselves a number of traditionalists, but for the most part each of these came to
be associated with one of the main schools of kalām—Ashʿarism for the Shāfiʿīs and
97
This date is suggested in Oliver Leaman, “The Developed Kalām Tradition (Part I),” in The Cambridge
Companion to Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 81.
98
For the traditionalists as the ahl al-ḥadīth, see Makdisi, “Hanbalite Islam,” 239.
124
Mālikīs, Māturīdism for the Ḥanafīs.99 The Ḥanbalīs, representing the smallest of the four
Sunnī legal schools, remained staunch traditionalists, uncorrupted, in their view, by
kalām.100
Ḥanbalism was thus “alone,” as George Makdisi observed, “in being at the same
time both a legal and a theological school.”101 This was to say, it united the Ḥanbalī legal
tradition with theological traditionalism. Ḥanbalism was accordingly recognized as the
preserve of traditionalist theology by the members of other Sunnī legal schools; non-
Ḥanbalīs by legal orientation often identified as Ḥanbalīs in theology.102 One famous
example is the Moroccan ruler Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAlawī (d. 1204/1790), who
describes himself in the opening lines of his lengthy ḥadīth compendium as “Mālikī in
law, Ḥanbalī in theology” (al-Mālikī madhhaban al-Ḥanbalī iʿtiqādan).103 At the end of
the book, explaining this self-appellation, he remarks that the Ḥanbalīs embody the pure
Islamic creed and have long been strong opponents of kalām: “The way of the Ḥanbalīs
in theology is simple, free of fancies and consistent with the theology of the imāms [i.e.,
Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ibn Ḥanbal] and before them the pious ancestors.”104
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), the eponym of the Ḥanbalī school, he affirms, “blocked
99
Law school affiliation, however, remained more important to one’s social identity than theological
affiliation. On this point see Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, 339; Heidrun Eichner,
“Handbooks in the Tradition of Later Eastern Ashʿarism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology,
ed. Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 494-514, at 496.
100
There were some exceptions, however, including such eminent Baghdādī Ḥanbalīs as Abū Yaʿla Ibn al-
Farrāʾ (d. 458/1066), Abū ʾl-Wafāʾ Ibn ʿAqīl, (d. 513/1119), and Abū ʾl-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201),
all of whom applied kalām argumentation to varying degrees. See Jon Hoover, “Ḥanbalī Theology,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, 625-46, at 630-33.
101
Makdisi, “Hanbalite Islam,” 239.
102
Hoover, “Ḥanbalī Theology,” 627.
103
al-ʿAlawī, al-Futūḥāt al-ilāhiyya fī aḥādīth khayr al-bariyya, 2nd ed. (Rabat: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Malakiyya,
1400/1980), 1.
104
ṭarīq al-Ḥanābila fī ʾl-iʿtiqād sahlat al-marām munazzaha ʿan al-takhayyulāt waʾl-awhām muwāfiqa li-
ʿtiqād al-aʾimma kamā sabaqa maʿa ʾl-salaf al-ṣāliḥ, ibid., 457-58.
125
the path [that leads to] plunging into the science of kalām” (sadda ṭarīq al-khawḍ fī ʿilm
al-kalām).105
Ibn Taymiyya’s Ḥanbalī theology
Like many Ḥanbalīs before him, Ibn Taymiyya was extremely hostile to kalām, the
particular target in his case being the Ashʿarī kalām of the Damascene Shāfiʿīs. The salaf,
Ibn Taymiyya argued, along with the eponyms of the four schools of law, categorically
abjured speculative inquiry in matters of theology, and had harsh words for those who
dabbled in it. “Whoso seeks [knowledge of] religion by means of kalām has become a
heretic” (man ṭalaba ʾl-dīn biʾl-kalām tazandaqa), goes a phrase that he frequently cited,
attributed to the proto-Ḥanafī jurist Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798).106 For Ibn Taymiyya, the use
of kalām in theology was a terrible innovation, among the other terrible innovations of
the Ashʿarīs.
But to the traditional Ḥanbalī approach to theology Ibn Taymiyya made several
important emendations—conceived of, of course, as abiding in the madhhab al-salaf. For
this reason, it is correct to say, with Jon Hoover, that Ibn Taymiyya “introduced a new
current of theology unprecedented in the Ḥanbalī school and not found elsewhere in
medieval Islam.”107 Three of his most important emendations, noted by Hoover and
others, were crafted partly in response to certain Ashʿarī positions that he opposed. All of
these would manifest in Wahhābism.
105
Ibid., 458.
106
See, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 16:473.
107
126
One of his emendations is the insistence on the necessary congruence of
revelation (naql) and reason (ʿaql), a notion that permeates Ibn Taymiyya’s writings and
lends a distinctively rationalist character to his theological argumentation.108 Ibn
Taymiyya’s lengthiest treatment of this subject is found in his massive Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-
ʿaql waʾl-naql (“Averting Conflict between Reason and Revelation”), which he wrote in
refutation of the Ashʿarī “Universal Principle” (al-qānūn al-kullī), particularly as
formulated by the scholar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209).109 The gist of this principle
is that rational proofs ought to take precedence over revealed proofs in the case of
perceived conflict. For Ibn Taymiyya, it was this principle from which sprang many of
the Ashʿarīs’ theological errors, such as the metaphorical interpretation of God’s
attributes. In refuting it, he asserts that reason and revelation, properly understood, never
conflict. Thus, unlike most Ḥanbalī theologians before him, he was not opposed to
engaging in reason-based arguments, and did so frequently. Shahab Ahmed has described
this method well as it was applied to the case of the Satanic Verses: “In effect, what Ibn
Taymiyyah is doing is first to say, ‘This is what the salaf said on such-and-such an issue’;
and then to say ‘Here is the rationale behind what they said, even if they did not say so
themselves.’”110 Related to Ibn Taymiyya’s notion of the agreement of reason and
revelation was that of the natural constitution (fiṭra), which he understood as mankind’s
inherent inclination to monotheism.111 It is on account of fiṭra, he says, that human beings
108
See M. Sait Özervarlı, “The Qur’ānic Rational Theology of Ibn Taymiyya and His Criticism of the
Mutakallimūn,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, 78-100; and see further Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s
Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 29-32.
109
For a detailed analysis of this work, see Yasir Qadhi, “Reconciling Reason and Revelation in the
Writings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328): An Analytical Study of Ibn Taymiyya’s Darʾ al-taʿāruḍ,” Ph.D.
dissertation, Yale University, 2013. A translation of al-Rāzī’s formulation of the Universal Principle is
found ibid., 88-89.
110
Shahab Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses,” Studia Islamica 87 (1998): 67-124, at 112.
111
See EI3, s.v. “Fiṭra” (Jon Hoover).
127
may come to know about God by means of the faculty of reason.112 Likewise, it is fiṭra
that obviates the need to prove the existence of God by means of kalām, since knowledge
of God is innate.113
That Ibn Taymiyya’s use of reason was at odds with the preceding Ḥanbalī
theological tradition is suggested by a comment from a slightly later Damascene Ḥanbalī
scholar, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rajab (d. 795/1393), in a short work on the importance of
adhering to one of the four Sunnī law schools. Ibn Rajab, himself a traditionalist who
authored refutations of alleged innovators, offers a critique of the people of disputation
and arguments (ahl al-jidāl waʾl-khuṣūmāt):
The imām Aḥmad [ibn Ḥanbal] and the leaders of the ahl al-ḥadīth detested …
refuting the innovators by partaking of their opponent’s discourse, that is, the use
of kalām-like analogies and rational proofs … They deemed refutation
appropriate only by the texts of the Qurʾān and the sunna, and by the words of the
pious ancestors, if such were to be found. Otherwise they deemed silence to be
preferable.114
Ibn Taymiyya, while not explicitly named here, is almost certainly one of the people
whom Ibn Rajab has in mind, as Caterina Bori has suggested.
A second emendation is Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of divine creation as
purposive and accommodating of free will. This stands in contrast to both the Ashʿarī and
traditionalist views. The Ashʿarīs, with their doctrine of voluntarism, rejected the view
112
Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 39-44.
113
M. Sait Özervarlı, “Divine Wisdom, Human Agency and the fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya’s Thought,” in
Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law, 37-60, at 45-54; Livnat Holtzman, “Human Choice, Divine
Guidance and the Fiṭra Tradition: The Use of Hadith in Theological Treatises by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, 163-88, at 165-78. These studies also discuss the
relationship between fiṭra on the one hand and predestination and free will on the other.
114
al-taṣaddī li-radd kalām ahl al-bidaʿ bi-jins kalāmihim min al-aqyisa al-kalāmiyya wa-adillat al-ʿuqūl
… yakrahuhu ʾl-imām Aḥmad wa-aʾimmat ahl al-ḥadīth … wa-innamā yarawna al-radd ʿalayhim bi-nuṣūṣ
al-kitāb waʾl-sunna wa-kalām salaf al-umma in kāna mawjūdan wa-illā raʾaw al-sukūt aslam, Ibn Rajab,
Majmūʿ rasāʾil al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, ed. Ṭalʿat ibn Fuʾād al-Ḥulwānī, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (Cairo: Dār
al-Fārūq al-Ḥadītha 1434/2012), 2:637-38; translation borrowed from Caterina Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-
Jamā‘atu-hu: Authority, Conflict and Consensus in Ibn Taymiyya’s Circle,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His
Times, 23-52, at 36, with minor changes.
128
that God creates for the sake of a purpose or cause (ʿilla), arguing that this would imply
the existence of a purpose or cause prior to that subsisting in God. They thus spurned the
idea that one can ascribe a purpose to God’s acts. Emphasizing God’s omnipotence, they
held that God creates all things, good and bad, including human acts (afʿāl). To play
down the determinism implied by this, they posited the doctrine of acquisition (kasb)
whereby human beings acquire their good or bad acts just before carrying them out.115
The traditionalist approach to divine creation, in contrast, involved affirming the literal
meaning of the relevant passages of the Qurʾān without inquiring into their meaning.116
Traditionalist creeds thus address the subject of creation and predestination with such
words as “He wills what people do” (arāda mā ʾl-ʿālam fāʿilūhu), “He creates creatures
and their acts” (khalaqa ʾl-khalāʾiq wa-afʿālahum), and “He guides whom He wills”
(yahdī man yashāʾu; cf. Q. 2:272, among other verses).117
Ibn Taymiyya found both the Ashʿarī and the traditionalist positions too
deterministic. In his view, God necessarily acts on behalf of a wise purpose (ḥikma), a
fact that requires that human beings be responsible for their acts.118 Thus, while still
affirming God’s creation of human acts, he makes room for human agency in their
execution, positing a golden mean (wasaṭ) between the exponents of free will (al-
115
On these Ashʿarī views, see Özervarlı, “Divine Wisdom,” 38-39; Jon Hoover, “God’s Wise Purposes in
Creating Iblīs: Ibn Qayyim al-Ǧawziyyah’s Theodicy of God’s Names and Attributes,” Oriente Moderno,
Nuova Serie, Anno 90 (2010): 113-34, at 117-18.
116
Daniel Gimaret, “Théories de l’acte humain dans l’école ḥanbalite,” Bulletin d’études orientales 29
(1977): 157-78, at 157-61; Livnat Holtzman, “Debating the Doctrine of jabr (Compulsion): Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya Reads Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī,” in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law, 61-93, at 63.
117
These excerpts are drawn from Ibn Qudāma’s Lumʿat al-iʿtiqād. See Ṣāliḥ ibn Fawzān al-Fawzān, Sharḥ
Lumʿat al-iʿtiqād al-hādī ilā sabīl al-rashād (n.p.: n.p., 1425/2004), 157-58.
118
Hoover, “God’s Wise Purposes,” 118. This view led Ibn Taymiyya, as well as Ibn al-Qayyim, to reason
that hellfire, unlike paradise, cannot be eternal, since eternal punishment would be inconsistent with God’s
wise purpose. See idem, “Islamic Universalism: Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Salafī Deliberations on the
Eternity of Hell-Fire,” The Muslim World 99 (2009): 181-201, at 189. This idea does not appear to have
entered Wahhābism.
129
qadariyya) and the exponents of determinism (al-jabriyya).119 But he leans heavily in
favor of free will, arguing that God creates man’s ability to choose freely (ikhtiyār). As
he writes, “God made the servant someone who chooses what he does; he thus freely
chooses and desires, God being his Creator and the Creator of his choice.”120
A third emendation is Ibn Taymiyya’s novel approach to the interpretation of
God’s attributes. The standard approach in Ashʿarī kalām was to engage in metaphorical
interpretation (taʾwīl), thus interpreting God’s hand (yad) as His power (qudra) and His
sitting upon the throne (istiwāʾ) as His dominion (istīlāʾ), etc. Ibn Taymiyya described
the practitioners of such taʾwīl as the Jahmiyya and the muʿaṭṭila. The first term,
“Jahmites,” refers to Jahm ibn Ṣafwān (d. 128/745f), an anti-Umayyad activist and
theologian remembered for spreading the doctrine of nafy or taʿṭīl—the denial or
stripping away of God’s attributes—among other alleged innovations.121 Hence the
muʿaṭṭila, “those who strip God of His attributes.” For Ibn Taymiyya, the Ashʿarīs were
engaging in the same innovation as Jahm by allegorically interpreting God’s attributes.
The standard traditionalist position was not to engage in taʾwīl but rather to accept the
Qurʾānic descriptions of God without inquiring into their modality (bi-lā kayf). This is the
position known as tafwīḍ, meaning leaving knowledge of the meaning of the attributes to
119
Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 173. The golden mean, an idea frequently espoused by Ibn Taymiyya
in his theological writings, has been discussed in Merlin L. Swartz, “A Seventh-Century (A.H.) Sunnī
Creed: The ‘Aqīda Wāsiṭīya of Ibn Taymīya,” Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 91-131, at 95-97, 115n31. I
disagree with Swartz’s characterization of this principle as one aimed at fostering “conciliation” and
“openness” with other sects. It is unmistakably a polemical device used to cast other sects as deviant. The
Wahhābīs would employ it as well.
120
waʾllāh subḥānahu jaʿala ʾl-ʿabd mukhtāran li-mā yafʿaluhu fa-huwa mukhtār murīd waʾllāh khāliquhu
wa-khāliq ikhtiyārihi, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:374; translation borrowed from Hoover, Ibn
Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 174.
121
On Jahm and his theology, see Cornelia Schöck, “Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745-6) and the ‘Jahmiyya’
and Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (d. 200/815),” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, 55-80, esp. 56-67.
130
God. The tafwīḍ approach was espoused by numerous Ḥanbalīs, including the leading
Ḥanbalī scholar Muwaffaq al-Dīn Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223).122
Ibn Taymiyya rejected both taʾwīl and tafwīḍ, adopting an approach more
literalist than Ashʿarī taʾwīl but less agnostic than traditionalist tafwīḍ. His position was
to affirm the literal or apparent (ẓāhir) sense of the attributes while not suspending
judgment as to the attributes’ meaning. In his view, one was not to question the fact that
God has a hand or sits upon the throne; this is literally true, and so it cannot be
interpreted away (taʾwil) or left to God (tafwīḍ). One must affirm it as such, while
refraining from attempting to ascertain what it means for God to have a hand or sit upon
the throne.123
Ibn Taymiyya and Ṣūfism
The most significant feature of Ibn Taymiyya’s theology, however, insofar as the
Wahhābīs are concerned, was his approach to Ṣūfism, the mystical dispensation in Islam.
As is now well known, Ibn Taymiyya was not an opponent of Ṣūfism as such; there is
even some evidence that he was initiated into the Qādirī Ṣūfī order, as George Makdisi
has shown.124 Furthermore, his writings do not betray a categorical hostility to Ṣūfism. In
122
See his statement endorsing tafwīḍ in al-Fawzān, Sharḥ Lumʿat al-iʿtiqād, 38 (wa-mā ashkala min
dhālika wajaba ithbātuhu lafẓan wa-tark al-taʿarruḍ li-maʿnāhu wa-naruddu ʿilmahu ʿalā qāʾilihi). The
modern Wahhābī editor notes regretfully that this sentence is not accepted (ghayr musallama), and
proceeds to spell out the Taymiyyan view. Examples of other Ḥanbalīs who endorsed tafwīḍ may be found
in Sayf ibn ʿAlī al-ʿAṣrī, al-Qawl al-tamām bi-ithbāt al-tafwīḍ madhhaban lil-salaf al-kirām (Beirut: Dār
al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2009).
123
The differences between taʾwīl and tafwīḍ, including Ibn Taymiyya’s position relative to both, are
treated in Khaled El-Rouayheb, “From Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 1566) to Khayr al-Dīn al-Ālūsī (d. 1899):
Changing Views of Ibn Taymiyya among Non-Ḥanbalī Sunni Scholars,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,
269-318, at 275-83. See further idem, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly
Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 275-
77.
124
Makdisi, “Ibn Taimīya: A Ṣūfī of the Qādiriya Order,” American Journal of Arabic Studies 1 (1973):
118-29. This claim has been disputed in Gavin Picken, “The Quest for Orthodoxy and Tradition in Islam:
131
one of his fatwās he praises what he calls “the Ṣūfism of truths” (ṣūfiyyat al-ḥaqāʾiq),
which he holds to be that form of Ṣūfism faithful to the tradition of Islamic mysticism
originating in Basra—a tradition associated with those who follow the path of worship
and asceticism (man yasluku ṭarīq al-ʿibāda waʾl-zuhd).125 Yet Ibn Taymiyya was by no
means wildly enthusiastic about Ṣūfism; he was critical of those who lavished excessive
praise on Ṣūfīs and considered the Ṣūfī path superior to all others.126 And he was highly
intolerant of two aspects of Ṣūfism, polemicizing against them at great length.
The first of these is the monistic cosmology associated with the Andalusian-born
Ṣūfī Muḥyī ʾl-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). Ibn ʿArabī’s system, as it developed later,
centered on the doctrine of the oneness of being (waḥdat al-wujūd), whereby all of
creation is understood as a mirror to the Creator, all created things being manifestations
(tajalliyāt) of the divine. Related to this was an antinomian tendency to trivialize the
divine law and the daily acts of worship. Ibn Taymiyya stigmatized the partisans of Ibn
ʿArabī’s form of Ṣūfism as the people of indwelling and union (ahl al-ḥulūl waʾl-ittiḥād,
al-ḥulūliyya waʾl-ittiḥādiyya), that is, the people of God’s indwelling in His creatures and
His union with them.127 He regretted how prominent this system of thought had become
(hādhā ʾl-madhhab shāʾiʿ fī kathīr min al-mutaʾakhkhirīn),128 noting that it predominated
among the modern-day Jahmiyya (inna ʾl-ḥulūl aghlab ʿalā ʿubbād al-Jahmiyya), which
was to say among the Ashʿarī mutakallimūn.129 He claimed that the partisans of this
Ḥanbalī Responses to Sufism,” in Fundamentalism in the Modern World, 2 vols., ed. Ulrika Mårtensson, et
al. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 2:237-63, at 247, 257-58.
125
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 11:19, 16.
126
yughlūna fīhim wa-yajʿalūna hādhā ʾl-ṭarīq min akmal al-ṭuruq wa-aʿlāhā, ibid., 11:13-14.
127
See, for example, ibid., 2:295, 414.
128
Ibid., 2:296.
129
Ibid., 2:298.
132
system “permit polytheism and the worshipping of idols unrestrictedly” (yujawwizūna ʾl-
shirk wa-ʿibādat al-aṣnām muṭlaqan).130
The second aspect of Ṣūfism condemned by Ibn Taymiyya was the cult of saints,
i.e., the practices associated with visiting the tombs and shrines of saints or prophets,
using them as a means to God (tawassul)—usually in the form of seeking their
intercession (istishfāʿ)—and asking for their help (istighātha) in mundane matters—such
as asking a saint to cure a disease or protect a traveler.131 These visitation rites, captured
by the Arabic word ziyāra (“visitation”),132 were a prominent feature of Ṣūfī ritual—and
so of mainstream Islamic ritual—across the Islamic world of Ibn Taymiyya’s day. In his
eyes, they were innovations smacking of polytheism. He considered the visitation of
graves permissible in principle, only so long as the visitor’s purpose was to beseech God
on behalf of the dead (al-duʿāʾ lil-mayyit), as the Prophet and his companions had
done.133 But the visitation rites that had become institutionalized in Ṣūfism were, he
believed, of another kind entirely. It had become customary for visitors to make requests
not of God on behalf of the dead but of the dead themselves: to appeal to them to
intercede with God on the Day of Judgment, and to call upon them for help in worldly
affairs.134 According to Ibn Taymiyya, making these requests of the dead amounted to
assigning partners to God (shirk), as such requests implied that the dead shared in God’s
divine power. Such requests, in other words, violated the oneness of God (tawḥīd). Ibn
Taymiyya’s opposition to ziyāra even extended to the Prophet’s tomb in Medina. His
130
Ibid., 2:296.
131
For his views on the cult of saints, see ibid., 1:142-357; see also Bernard Haykel, Revival and Reform in
Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkānī (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 136-37.
132
See EI3, s.v. “Grave Visitation/Worship” (Richard McGregor).
133
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:165.
134
Ibid., 1:166.
133
view was that one should not set out on trips (shadd al-riḥāl, lit. “fasten the saddles”) for
the purpose of visiting the Prophet’s tomb, and he dismissed as forgeries the ḥadīths
encouraging Muslims to visit it.135 He regretted that the Prophet’s grave had become part
of the mosque.136
So adamant was Ibn Taymiyya in his opposition to the cult of saints that he even
called for demolishing the physical structures associated with visitation, namely, the
elevated graves and the tombs built around them. “These places of worship built upon the
graves of prophets, righteous men, kings, and others,” he writes in one of his polemical
works, “it is an individual duty to eliminate them by knocking them down or otherwise.
On this I know of no disagreement among the reputable scholars.”137 The reason Ibn
Taymiyya was so harsh on shrines was that he considered them a means or avenue
(dharīʿa) to shirk.138 He thus justified their destruction in terms of the legal principle of
sadd al-dharāʾiʿ, or “blocking the means.” One had to be especially careful in guarding
against this means, he wrote, as the great sin of the people of Noah (qawm Nūḥ) was
taking the graves of righteous men as places of worship.139
While these views on monism and the cult of saint certainly constituted a part of
Ibn Taymiyya’s theology, it is not quite right to describe them as emendations to
traditional Ḥanbalī theology. For the Ḥanbalī school admitted of a range of opinion on
these matters. Certain Ḥanbalī scholars had taken a similarly harsh stance on the cult of
saints. These included the Baghdad-based scholars Ibn Baṭṭa al-ʿUkbarī (d. 387/997) and
135
Ibid., 1:233-35.
136
Ibid., 27:26.
137
hādhihi ʾl-masājid al-mabniyya ʿalā qubūr al-anbiyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥīn waʾl-mulūk wa-ghayrihim
yataʿayyanu izālatuhā bi-hadm aw bi-ghayrihi hādhā mimmā lā aʿlamu khilāfan bayn al-ʿulamāʾ al-
maʿrūfīn, idem, Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm, 2:187.
138
Idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:164, 179
139
Ibid., 1:167-68.
134
Abū ʾl-Wafāʾ Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 513/1119). Ibn Baṭṭa considered the building of structures
upon graves and the setting out on trips to visit them to be blameworthy innovations.140
Likewise, Ibn ʿAqīl objected to the veneration of graves (taʿẓīm al-qubūr), setting out on
trips to them (shadd al-riḥāl ilayhā), and asking the buried to fulfill worldly needs
(khiṭāb al-mawtā biʾl-ḥawāʾij), deeming such practices to be contrary to God’s law
(sharʿ) and those engaged in them to be unbelievers (wa-hum ʿindī kuffār).141 One of Ibn
ʿAqīl’s Ḥanbalī students in Baghdad, Abū ʾl-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200), was
critical not only of those engaging in visitation but also of those who advocated Ṣūfī
monism (man qāla biʾl-ḥulūl … man qāla biʾl-ittiḥād).142 He thus anticipated Ibn
Taymiyya’s approach, the difference being that Ibn al-Jawzī was categorically hostile to
Ṣūfism, considering it to be a school that had gone beyond mere ascetiscm (waʾl-
taṣawwuf madhhab maʿrūf yazīdu ʿalā ʾl-zuhd); its adherents, he said, had come to adopt
such innovative practices as listening to music and dancing (tarakhkhaṣa ʾl-muntasibūn
ilayhā biʾl-samāʿ waʾ-raqṣ).143 On the other end of the spectrum was Ibn Qudāma al-
Maqdisī in Damascus (d. 620/1223), who took a favorable view of popular Ṣūfism,
including the cult of saints. In one of his works he praises saints and righteous persons
(al-awliyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥūn) who are visited by those seeking to procure blessings by calling
on them and seeking their intercession with God on the Day of Judgment, noting that
140
wa-min al-bidaʿ al-bināʾ ʿalā ʾl-qubūr … wa-shadd al-riḥāl ilā ziyāratihā, Ibn Baṭṭa, al-Sharḥ waʾl-
ibāna ʿalā uṣūl al-sunna waʾl-diyāna, 2nd ed., ed. ʿĀdil ibn ʿAbdallāh Āl Ḥamdān (Riyadh: Dār al-Amr al-
Awwal, 1433/2011f), 273.
141
Quoted in Ibn al-Qayyim, Ighāthat al-lahfān fī maṣāyid al-shayṭān, ed. Muḥammad ʿUzayr Shams, 2
vols. (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1432/2010f): 1:352-53.
142
Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs, ed. Ayman Ṣāliḥ (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth 1415/1995), 169.
143
Ibid., 170, 166, 169.
135
such appeals shall be answered and that adversity shall thereby be lifted.144 In his
monumental work on jurisprudence, al-Mughnī, Ibn Qudāma cites Ibn ʿAqīl’s view that
visiting tombs and shrines is prohibited (lā yubāḥu), but notes that the correct view is that
it is permitted (al-ṣaḥīḥ ibāḥatuhu).145
Controversies and polemics
As can be seen, Ibn Taymiyya was particularly interested in issues of theology, the
domain of first principles, of correct beliefs and practices. This is a contentious field,
since matters of theology only admit of one correct position, unlike the more
latitudinarian domain of jurisprudence, which makes room for multiple positions on
questions when the answers are not known with absolute certainty. While theology was
not Ibn Taymiyya’s only concern, it was, to be sure, his primary one: it was here that he
expended the better part of his literary efforts and created the most trouble for himself.
The reason for this was that he felt, as Jon Hoover has put it, “that God was no longer
worshipped and spoken of correctly” in his time.146 In other words, he saw the
mainstream beliefs and practices of contemporary Sunnī Islam as having been
corrupted—by the Ashʿarīs, the Ṣūfīs, the Shīʿa, the philosophers, the Christians and
Jews, and the Mongols, among others. And so he authored a seemingly ceaseless series of
theological polemics, provoking an uproar thereby.
144
yaqṣidūna ziyārātahum wa-yatabarrakūna bi-duʿāʾihim wa-yastashfiʿūna ilā ʾllāh subḥānahu wa-taʿālā
bihim … wa-yustajābu ʾl-duʿāʾ wa-yukshafu ʾl-balāʾ, Ibn Qudāma, Taḥrīm al-naẓar fī kutub al-kalām, ed.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad Dimashqiyya (Riyadh: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1410/1990), 40.
145
Idem, al-Mughnī sharḥ mukhtaṣar al-Khiraqī, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī and ʿAbd al-
Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥilw, 3rd ed., 15 vols. (Riyadh: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1417/1997), 3:117.
146
136
His most extensive polemics include the above-mentioned Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql
waʾl-naql (against the Ashʿarīs), Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya fī naqḍ kalām al-Shīʿa
waʾl-Qadariyya (against the Imāmī Shīʿa), al-Radd ʿalā ʾl-manṭiqiyyīn (against the
philosophers), and al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-Masīḥ (against the
Christians). The last of these, it should be noted, is as much a critique of the state of
Sunnī Islam as it is a polemic against Christianity. The doctrines and practices of the
Christians are held up as the kinds of things that innovators and heretics are introducing
into Islam, distorting it as the Christians before them distorted the revelation given them
by the Prophet Jesus. “By knowing the reality of the Christian religion and its falsity,”
Ibn Taymiyya writes, “the falsity of what resembles their views is also known, that is, the
views of the heretics and innovators.”147 Here he likens Ṣūfī monism to the Christian
deification of Christ on the grounds that both hold that God is incarnated in this world.
Another of Ibn Taymiyya’s polemics in this spirit is Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm li-
mukhālafat aṣḥāb al-jaḥīm, a protracted admonition against imitating unbelievers (al-
tashabbuh biʾl-kuffār), particularly Christians and Jews. Here again, Ibn Taymiyya
accuses his contemporary Sunnī Muslims of following the path of the Christians in
adopting certain innovations in belief and practice. For example, heretical Ṣūfīs (ḍullāl
al-mutaʿabbida waʾl-mutaṣawwifa) are accused of imitating the Christians in their
excessive devotion to the prophets and righteous persons (al-ghuluww fī ʾl-anbiyāʾ waʾl-
ṣāliḥīn), an allusion to the cult of saints.148 They are also accused of imitating the Jews in
147
bi-maʿrifat ḥaqīqat dīn al-Naṣārā wa-buṭlānihi yuʿrafu bihi buṭlān mā yushbihu aqwālahum min aqwāl
ahl al-ilḥād waʾl-bidaʿ, Ibn Taymiyya, al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-Masīḥ, ed. ʿAlī ibn Ḥasan
ibn Nāṣir, et al., 7 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1419/1999), 1:98; translation borrowed from Hoover, “Ibn
Taymiyya,” 4:835.
148
Ibn Taymiyya, Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāt al-mustaqīm, 1:89.
137
worshipping at graves, God having cursed the Jews for taking the graves of prophets as
places of worship.149 Ibn Taymiyya’s polemical oeuvre also comprises personal
refutations of fellow Sunnī scholars. One of the most famous of these was written against
an Egyptian Ṣūfī and Shāfiʿī named Nūr al-Dīn al-Bakrī (d. 724/1324), who attacked Ibn
Taymiyya for his position on istighātha, particularly istighātha of the Prophet. Ibn
Taymiyya returned fire in al-Istighātha fī ʾl-radd ʿalā al-Bakrī (known by other titles as
well). A similar exercise was carried out with another Egyptian scholar, the Mālikī Ṣūfī
Taqī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī (d. 750/1349), who decried Ibn Taymiyya’s stance on the
impermissibility of visiting graves. The response came in a work known as al-Ikhnāʾiyya,
or al-Radd ʿalā ʾl-Ikhnāʾī.
As one of his biographers, al-Dhahabī, would note, Ibn Taymiyya’s predilection
for theological polemic had a polarizing effect on the scholarly community to which he
belonged: some hated and even anathematized him; others admired and celebrated him.
Opinion was divided (ʿalā alwān):
To one group of scholars he was a devil, a liar, and an unbeliever. To other

learned and esteemed men he was an excellent and skilled innovator. To others he
was a dark and sinister figure. To the great majority of his followers he was the
guardian of the realm of the religion, the bearer of the banner of Islam, and the
protector of the prophetic sunna.150
Among the many scholars whom Ibn Taymiyya alienated were some of the
leading Sunnī ʿulamāʾ of the day, and they did not shy away from refuting him. The most
prolific in this regard was the Shāfiʿī chief judge in Damascus, Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d.
149
Ibid., 2:185-87.
150
fa-ʿind jamāʿa min al-ʿulamāʾ huwa dajjāl affāk kāfir wa-ʿind ākharīn min ʿuqalāʾ al-afāḍil huwa
mubtadiʿ fāḍil bāriʿ wa-ʿind ākharīn huwa muẓlim al-amr maksūf wa-ʿind ʿawāmm aṣḥābihi huwa ḥāmī
ḥawzat al-dīn wa-ḥāmil rāyat al-Islām wa-ḥāmī ʾl-sunna al-nabawiyya, al-Dhahabī, Bayān zaghl al-ʿilm,
ed. Muḥammad Abū ʿAbdallāh Aḥmad (Medina: Dār al-Maymana, 1434/2013), 87; cf. Bori, “Ibn
Taymiyya wa-Jamā‘atu-hu,” 38.
138
756/1355).151 Some of the latter’s criticisms anticipate those that would be leveled
against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb some four-hundred years later. Ibn Taymiyya, according to
al-Subkī, failed to acquire knowledge from a teacher (lam yajid shaykhan yahdīhi, lam
yatahadhdhab bi-shaykh),152 deviated from the community of Muslims (shadhdha ʿan
jamāʿat al-Muslimīn),153 distorted proper Islamic belief (shawwasha ʿaqāʾid al-
Muslimīn),154 and encouraged the masses to excommunicate those of different theological
persuasions (ḥaml al-ʿawāmm ʿalā takfīr kull man siwāhu wa-siwā ṭāʾifatihi).155
Furthermore, much as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s critics saw his doctrine as having deeper
roots in the pernicious thought of Ibn Taymiyya, al-Subkī saw Ibn Taymiyya’s doctrine
as rooted in the deeper iconoclastic tradition of the Ḥashwiyya (wa-huwa ʿalā
madhhabihim).156 Ḥashwiyya was a pejorative term used by some of the mutakallimūn to
stigmatize traditionalists in theology.157 Al-Subkī would also defend the cult of saints, as
in hisShifāʾ al-saqām fī ziyārat khayr al-anām.158
Yet it was not only in the theological arena that Ibn Taymiyya courted
controversy. He also caused a disturbance in the realm of law, issuing peculiar judgments
on legal issues that put him at odds with the consensus views of all four Sunnī law
schools. His willingness to do so stemmed from his legal methodology. As Yossef
151
On him see Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī and
ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥilw, 10 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat ʿĪsā ʾl-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1964-1976), 10:139-
339.
152
Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī, al-Rasāʾil al-Subkiyya fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾbn Taymiyya wa-tilmīdhihi ʾbn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya, ed. Kamāl Abū ʾl-Munā (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1403/1983), 195, 85.
153
Ibid., 151.
154
Ibid., 85.
155
Ibid. This particular comment is actually directed at Ibn al-Qayyim, whom al-Subkī accuses of
perpetuating Ibn Taymiyya’s views.
156
Ibid., 84-84.
157
On the term Ḥashwiyya, possibly meaning “those who stuff things,” see EI3, s.v. “Ḥashwiyya” (Jon
Hoover).
158
This was refuted in turn by one of Ibn Taymiyya’s students, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 744/1343), in a work
known as al-Ṣārim al-munkī fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Subkī.
139
Rapoport has shown, Ibn Taymiyya played down the importance of law school affiliation
and strongly opposed the passive imitation (taqlīd) of the legal judgments of any one
scholar or school.159 He did not oppose taqlīd as such, but held that every judgment ought
to be buttressed by reference to the revealed sources of the Qurʾān and sunna. Relatedly,
he rejected as a source of law the consensus (ijmāʿ) of any group or generation of
scholars after the companions of the Prophet, and showed no qualms about engaging in
ijtihād, or independent legal reasoning, which many Muslim jurists viewed, at least in its
more absolute form (al-ijtihād al-muṭlaq), as no longer possible or possible only for a
very select few.160 His most controversial legal rulings had to do with divorce oaths (i.e.,
oaths sworn on pain of divorce) and the triple repudiation (i.e., the pronunciation of three
divorce repudiations at once). He held that violating a divorce oath should not entail
divorce, and that the triple repudiation did not constitute irrevocable divorce.161
His polemics and his legal judgments earned him not only notoriety but also
prosecution and multiple stints in prison, both in Egypt and in Syria. Ibn Taymiyya’s
various trials (miḥan, sing. miḥna) could be said to have begun in 698/1298 when he was
summoned before the chief judge in Damascus to defend one of his creeds (al-
Ḥamawiyya al-kubrā); but the three principal miḥan that would define his career started a
few years later.162 The first lasted from 705/1306 to 709/1310 and involved numerous
159
Rapoport, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Radical Legal Thought: Rationalism, Pluralism and the Primacy of
Intention,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, 191-226
160
On the relationship between ijtihād and taqlīd in Islamic law, see Mohammad Fadel, “The Social Logic
of Taqlīd and the Rise of the Mukhtaṣar,” Islamic Law and Society 3 (1996): 193-233.
161
On these rulings, see Yossef Rapoport, “Ibn Taymiyya on Divorce Oaths,” in The Mamluks in Egyptian
and Syrian Politics and Society, ed. Michael Winter and Amalia Levanoni (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 191-217.
162
For an overview of these trials, see Hasan Qasim Murad, “Ibn Taymiyya on Trial: A Narrative Account
of His Miḥan,” Islamic Studies 18 (1979): 1-32. The following account is based on this source and Ibn
Rajab, al-Dhayl ʿalā Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila, ed. Sulaymān ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUthaymīn, 5 vols. (Riyadh:
Maktabat al-ʿUbaykān, 1425/2005), 4:491-529.
140
trials in Damascus and in Cairo, the contentious subject being at first Ibn Taymiyya’s
statements about God’s attributes in a creedal work known as al-ʿAqīda al-Wāsiṭiyya.163
Ibn Taymiyya spent some 18 months in prison in Cairo. After another court proceeding
concerning his views on Ibn ʿArabī, he spent another 16 months or so in prison, partly in
Cairo and partly in Alexandria. The second miḥna, which took place in Damascus,
centered on the question of divorce oaths. It lasted from 718/1318 to 721/1321 and saw
Ibn Taymiyya imprisoned for five months. The third miḥna, which also took place in
Damascus, began in 726/1326 and ended with Ibn Taymiyya’s death in the Damascus
citadel in 728/1328, where he had been imprisoned for approximately two years and three
months. The subject this time was the cult of saints.
Ibn Taymiyya’s Circle
Al-Subkī, in the introduction to one of his refutations, notes that while he would have
preferred not to refute Ibn Taymiyya, he found himself compelled to do so because Ibn
Taymiyya still had followers (atbāʿ) who kept his ideas alive.164 Indeed, during his
lifetime Ibn Taymiyya attracted a close circle of disciples, described in contemporary
sources as his jamāʿa.165 This was a group of men who studied with him, collected his
works, and to varying degrees adhered to his controversial religious views, particularly in
theology. The notoriety of Ibn Taymiyya’s circle persisted into the later eighth/later
fourteenth century. As the Mamlūk sultan wrote in a decree in 784/1382, “It has reached
us that in Damascus there is a group of Shafiʿīs, Mālikīs, and Ḥanbalīs manifesting
163
On the proceedings in Damascus, see Sherman A. Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial in Damascus,”
Journal of Semitic Studies 39 (1994): 41-85.
164
al-Subkī, al-Rasāʾil al-Subkiyya, 195.
165
Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-Jamā‘atu-hu,” 24
141
innovations and the doctrine of the Taymiyyans.”166 As is seen here, while many of the
circle’s members were Ḥanbalīs, some belonged to other legal schools of Sunnī Islam.
Their allegiance to Ibn Taymiyya transcended the legal school boundaries, something that
was probably made easier by the fact that Ibn Taymiyya’s concerns were more
theological than legal. One could adopt his more important views on proper belief and
practice without needing to agree with his every legal judgment.
Ibn Taymiyya’s closest disciple was the Ḥanbalī Shams al-Dīn Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya (d. 751/1350), a prolific author who elaborated his teacher’s thought in a
variety of fields.167 Ibn al-Qayyim was Ibn Taymiyya’s only pupil to be imprisoned with
him, serving time in the Damascus citadel from 726/1326 till his master’s death for
expressing the same critical view of the cult of saints. After his release, he would be
flogged and paraded on a donkey as further punishment.168 One of his works, al-Kāfiya
al-shāfiya fī ʾl-intiṣār lil-firqa al-nājiya, is a versified Taymiyyan creed of nearly 6,000
lines rhyming in the letter nūn.169 Both an allegory for his master’s trials and “a raging
attack against the Ashʿarīs,”170 it elicited a refutation by al-Subkī titled al-Sayf al-ṣaqīl fī
ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾbn Zafīl.171 Like many of Ibn al-Qayyim’s works, al-Kāfiya al-shāfiya
would be greatly popular among the Wahhābīs.
166
wa-balaghanā anna bi-Dimashq jamāʿa min al-Shāfiʿiyya waʾl-Mālikiyya waʾl-Ḥanābila yuẓhirūna ʾl-
bidaʿ wa-madhhab al-Taymiyyīn, Abū Bakr ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, Tārīkh Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, ed. ʿAdnān
Darwīsh, 4 vols. (Damascus: al-Maʿhad al-ʿIlmī al-Faransī lil-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabiyya, 1977), 1:89.
167
For his biography, see Caterina Bori and Livnat Holtzman, “A Scholar in the Shadow,” Oriente
Moderno, Nuova Serie, Anno 90 (2010): 11-42, at 13-31. His name can be rendered either Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya (“the son the superintendent of the Jawziyya”) or Ibn al-Qayyim (“the son of the
superintendent”), but not Ibn Qayyim.
168
Bori and Holtzman, “A Scholar in the Shadow,” 21.
169
On the poem, see Livnat Holtzman, “Accused of Anthropomorphism: Ibn Taymiyya’s Miḥan as
Reflected in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s al-Kāfiya al-Shāfiya,” The Muslim World 106 (2016): 561-87;
eadem, “Insult, Fury, and Frustration: the Martyrological Narrative of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah’s Al-
Kāfiyah al-Shāfiyah,” Mamlūk Studies Review 17 (2013): 155-98.
170
Eadem, “Accused of Anthropomorphism,” 585.
171
See al-Subkī, al-Rasāʾil al-Subkiyya, 81-147.
142
Among Ibn Taymiyya’s other disciples who authored important works was ʿImād
al-Dīn Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373), a traditionalist Shāfiʿī whose famous exegesis of the
Qurʾān begins with a long excerpt from Ibn Taymiyya’s essay on the principles of
Qurʾānic exegesis.172 Other members of the circle included Ibn Taymiyya’s two brothers
Badr al-Dīn (d. 717/1318) and Sharaf al-Dīn (d. 727/1327); his Ḥanbalī biographers Ibn
ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 744/1343) and ʿUmar al-Bazzār (d. 749/1349); the Ḥanbalīs Aḥmad ibn
Ibrāhīm al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311), Sharaf al-Dīn Ibn al-Munajjā (d. 724/1324), Shihāb al-
Dīn Ibn Murrī (d. 725/1324f), Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Shuqayr (d. 744/1343), and Shams al-Dīn
Ibn Mufliḥ (d. 763/1362); the Shāfiʿīs ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339) and Ibn
Shākir al-Kutubī (d. 764/1362); and the Mālikī Ibn Rushayyiq (d. 749/1348). Some of
these disciples transmitted Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings to the next generation of students.
Thus the Ḥanafī Damascene scholar Ibn Abī ʾl-ʿIzz (d. 792/1390) was taught by Ibn al-
Qayyim and Ibn Kathīr.173 His commitment to Ibn Taymiyya’s theology is on full display
in his commentary on the early Ḥanafī creed of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933), a
commentary that would be hailed by the Wahhābīs.
In addition to these stalwart followers, a number of scholars occupied a position
on the outer rim of Ibn Taymiyya’s circle, having been his early disciples but later
172
Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed. Sāmī ibn Muḥammad al-Salāma, 2nd ed., 8 vols. (Riyadh: Dār
Ṭayba, 1420/1999), 1:7-14 (=Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 13:363-75). Ibn Kathīr does not attribute the
excerpted text, perhaps out of fear of being associated with Ibn Taymiyya. On Ibn Taymiyya’s ḥadīth-
centered approach to exegesis, see Walid A. Saleh, “Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics:
An Analysis of An Introduction to the Foundations of Qurʾānic Exegesis,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,
123-62. See further Younus Y. Mirza, “Ibn Taymiyya as Exegete: Moses’ Father-in-Law and the
Messengers in Sūrat Yā Sīn,” Journal of Qurʾānic Studies 19 (2017): 39-71; idem, “Was Ibn Kathīr the
‘Spokesperson’ for Ibn Taymiyya? Jonah as a Prophet of Obedience,” Journal of Qurʾānic Studies 16
(2014): 1-19.
173
For their influence on him, see the editors’ introduction in Ibn Abī ʾl-ʿIzz, Sharḥ al-ʿAqīda al-
Ṭaḥāwiyya, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī and Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Beirut:
Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1433/2012), 1:63-64.
143
distancing themselves from him to some degree. In this group may be counted the two
famous Shāfiʿī ḥadīth scholars al-Mizzī (d. 742/1341f) and al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348),
both traditionalists in theology who were persecuted for their association with Ibn
Taymiyya. By contrast, Ibn Rajab, a Ḥanbalī from the next generation, was quite critical
of Ibn Taymiyya, despite his admiration for him.174 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was perhaps
unaware of this fact when he included Ibn Rajab in his list of scholars associated with Ibn
Taymiyya.175
Conclusion
It has been necessary here to dwell on Ibn Taymiyya’s religious thought at some length,
since the relationship between Taymiyyan thought and Wahhābism is a close one. The
Wahhābīs would, perhaps more than any Muslim group in the centuries that went before,
adopt Ibn Taymiyya’s theology wholesale.176 While some of the issues covered may
seem obscure—such as the difference between taʾwīl and tawfīḍ—some of them would
play an important role in the Wahhābīs’ debates with other Muslims.
But if there is one aspect of his religious thought that most captivated Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb, and that is most crucial to understanding his religious struggle in
174
Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-Jamā‘atu-hu,” 33-36.
175
See above, p. 122.
176
An example of a movement that adhered more selectively to Taymiyyan thought is the Qāḍīzādeli
movement in Anatolia in the tenth-eleventh/sixteenth-seventeenth centuries. The Qāḍīzādelis drew on Ibn
al-Qayyim in opposing the cult of saints, yet remained Māturīdī in theology and Ḥanafī in fiqh. On the role
of Taymiyyan thought in the Qāḍīzādeli movement, see Caterina Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya (14th to 17th
Century): Transregional Spaces of Reading and Reception,” The Muslim World 108 (2018): 87-123, at 117-
121, and see the references therein. It has been suggested that the Qāḍīzādeli movement and Wahhābism
share “common origins,” even that “their political, religious and militant visions were virtually identical”;
see James Muhammad Dawud Currie, “Kadızadeli Ottoman Scholarship, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
and the Rise of the Saudi State,” Journal of Islamic Studies 26 (2015): 265-88, at 283. However,
Wahhābism was a more thoroughly Taymiyyan phenomenon than was the Qāḍīzādeli movement. While
there is a possibility of Qāḍīzādeli influence on Wahhābism, as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb may have encountered
Qāḍīzādeli hostility to the cult of saints in his travels, I have seen no evidence of this.
144
twelfth/eighteenth-century central Arabia, it is Ibn Taymiyya’s criticism of the cult of
saints. This was to be Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s wedge issue—the one that he made central
to his preaching and his activism. The saints of Najd, both dead and alive—men such as
Shamsān, Idrīs, Ḥusayn, and Tāj, about whom we know little apart from that they lived in
al-Kharj—would be pilloried by him as ṭawāghīt (sing. ṭāghūt), meaning those
worshipped apart from God. He considered both them and their followers to be
polytheists (mushrikūn), while deeming himself and his followers to be monotheists
(muwaḥḥidūn). The struggle was similar, he believed, to the one that the Prophet himself
was engaged in against the polytheists of his own time. As will be seen in the next
chapter, in his campaign against shirk and on behalf of tawḥīd, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
made his case in undisguisedly Taymiyyan terms.
Excursus: Ibn Taymiyya’s Legacy before the Wahhābīs
During his lifetime Ibn Taymiyya’s following was small, and within a generation or so it
was mostly confined to the Ḥanbalī school. Until the rise of Wahhābism, the influence of
Ibn Taymiyya and his circle, even within Ḥanbalism, was limited. This point has been
made well in two recent studies by Khaled El-Rouayheb and Christopher Melchert. El-
Rouayheb, in an article questioning the perceived impact of Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings on
intellectual trends in pre-modern Islam generally, describes him as having been “a little-
read scholar with problematic and controversial views.”177 His appeal may also have been
limited among the Ḥanbalīs themselves, El-Rouayheb suggests, as the thabat (i.e., the
text listing the books one is authorized to teach) of Abū ʾl-Mawāhib ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-
177
El-Rouayheb, “Changing Views of Ibn Taymiyya,” 305.
145
Ḥanbalī (d. 1126/1714), a prominent Damascene Ḥanbalī, does not include any works by
Ibn Taymiyya or Ibn al-Qayyim.178 Similarly, Christopher Melchert, in a brief study of
Ibn Taymiyya’s influence on Ḥanbalī legal doctrine, concludes that “the Ḥanbalī school
… regarded Ibn Taymiyya as a significant figure but less than some others.”179 This
conclusion is based mainly on the number of citations of Ibn Taymiyya in a
ninth/fifteenth-century work on the divergence of opinion in Ḥanbalī jurisprudence, ʿAlāʾ
al-Dīn al-Mardāwī’s (d. 885/1480) al-Inṣāf fī maʿrifat al-rājiḥ min al-khilāf. In this work,
says Melchert, “Ibn Taymiyya appears as a relatively minor figure, less often cited than
many other Ḥanbalī jurisprudents.”180
While one should indeed be careful not to overstate the influence of Ibn
Taymiyya’s ideas on pre-modern Islam, as some Western scholars have been inclined to
do, at the same time it would be a mistake to go too far in the other direction, reducing
Ibn Taymiyya to an obscure and insignificant thinker. After all, Ibn Taymiyya did come
to be seen, in the centuries following his death, as the chief authority figure in Ḥanbalism.
Mūsā al-Ḥajjāwī (d. 968/1560), the Ḥanbalī muftī of Damascus, refers to Ibn Taymiyya
throughout his legal manual al-Iqnāʿ as “the Shaykh” (al-shaykh), an appellation reserved
for Ibn Taymiyya alone.181 As was noted in Chapter 1, al-Ḥajjāwī’s Iqnāʿ was the most
important legal manual in Najd at the time of the rise of Wahhābism, and was frequently
cited by both Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his Ḥanbalī enemies. Abdul Hakim Al-Matroudi
178
Ibid., 299.
179
Melchert, “The Relation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya to the Ḥanbalī School of Law,”
in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law, 146-61, at 147.
180
Ibid., 153.
181
For the identification of “the Shaykh” as Ibn Taymiyya, see al-Ḥajjāwī, Iqnāʿ, 1:4. For Ibn Taymiyya’s
influence on al-Ḥajjāwī, see Abdul Hakim Al-Matroudi, The Ḥanbalī School of Law and Ibn Taymiyya
(New York: Routledge, 2006), 151-153.
146
has described how the practice of referring to Ibn Taymiyya as al-shaykh became
standard:
In the Ḥanbalī School of law, this term [i.e., al-shaykh] had been commonly used
to refer to the leading Ḥanbalī scholar, Ibn Qudāmah [d. 620/1223]. Since the
appearance of Ibn Taymiyyah, however, Ḥanbalī scholars began to associate this
term with Ibn Taymiyyah as well. Later on, particularly in the time of al-Ḥajjāwī
and the following period, the Ḥanbalī scholars have employed this term to denote
Ibn Taymiyyah exclusively.182
If Ibn Taymiyya were marginal to Ḥanbalism, it is unlikely he would have achieved such
a revered status. Melchert’s conclusion, furthermore, pertains only to the realm of
juridical discourse, saying nothing about the importance that Ḥanbalīs might have
attached to Ibn Taymiyya’s views in theology. The question thus remains: How much
influence did the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya wield over the Ḥanbalī school in the period
before the rise of Wahhābism, namely, the eighth-twelfth/fourteenth-eighteenth
centuries? While this question warrants a serious study in its own right, a preliminary
answer may be ventured on the basis of some of the early Ḥanbalī refutations of Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb.
It will be recalled that Muḥammad ibn ʿAfāliq, the leading Ḥanbalī scholar in al-
Aḥsāʾ, initially criticized Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for relying on Ibn Taymiyya’s views on
the cult of saints. In Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, he complains that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was
quoting an opinion of Ibn Taymiyya against the taking of intercessors (wasāʾiṭ) with God.
The opinion, as was mentioned before, appears in al-Ḥajjāwī’s Iqnāʿ in the section bāb
ḥukm al-murtadd in the following words: “[Whoso] sets up intermediaries between
himself and God, relying on them, calling on them, and asking [things] of them [has
182
Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School of Law and Ibn Taymiyya, 151.
147
disbelieved] as a matter of consensus.”183 Ibn ʿAfāliq argues that this opinion was a
minority one that got Ibn Taymiyya into a lot of trouble, and that al-Ḥajjāwī deliberately
attributed it to Ibn Taymiyya so as not to endorse it (khurūjan min tabiʿatihi). Here, then,
was one way a Ḥanbalī contemporary of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s dealt with a controversial
opinion of Ibn Taymiyya’s—rejecting it outright.
Another Ḥanbalī approach to Ibn Taymiyya’s phrase in the Iqnāʿ was to read it in
a restrictive sense. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s brother, Sulaymān, exemplified this approach,
claiming in his letter to Ḥasan ibn ʿĪdān that the Wahhābīs were surely misunderstanding
the meaning of Ibn Taymiyya’s words: “If you consider the phrase fully you will know
that you have interpreted the phrase incorrectly.”184 Sulaymān posits that one has to
commit all three acts stipulated in Ibn Taymiyya’s phrase (tawakkul, duʿāʾ, suʾāl;
reliance, supplication, request) in order to have fallen into disbelief.185 Similarly, Aḥmad
al-Ṭandatāwī, the Shāfiʿī scholar in Mecca, writes in Kitāb raḍʿ al-ḍalāla that the phrase
(qawl) ought not be interpreted literally but rather “should be taken to mean whoso sets
up intermediaries between himself and God in the sense that they are gods apart from
God [emphasis added]” (fa-maḥmūl ʿalā annahu man jaʿala baynahu wa-bayn Allāh
wasāʾiṭ ʿalā annahum āliha dūn Allāh); and this, he says, is something that no Muslim is
guilty of (wa-maʿlūm annahu laysa aḥad min al-Muslimīn ʿāmmatan wa-khāṣṣatan
yaʿtaqidu dhālika). Indeed, al-Ṭandatāwī suggests, the phrase is by no means an attack on
those who make tawassul of the dead.186
183
[man] jaʿala baynahu wa-bayn Allāh wasāʾiṭ yatawakkalu ʿalayhim wa-yadʿūhum wa-yasʾaluhum
[kafara] ijmāʿan, al-Ḥajjāwī, Iqnāʿ, 4:285.
184
law taʾammaltum al-ʿibāra taʾammulan tāmman la-ʿaraftum annakum taʾawwaltum al-ʿibāra ʿalā
ghayr taʾwīlihā, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya, 9.
185
Ibid.
186
148
Ibn ʿAfāliq’s and Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s approaches to this phrase are
likely indicative of how Ḥanbalīs after Ibn Taymiyya handled his legacy, that is, either
rejecting or downplaying its more controversial elements. Ibn ʿAfāliq was not ashamed to
denounce Ibn Taymiyya’s opposition to the rites of ziyāra. Simply put, Ibn Taymiyya
was not an infallible scholar in his eyes; it was not necessary to adhere to his every
theological position. A similar view must have prevailed among a group Syrian Ḥanbalī
scholars associated with the Khalwatī Ṣūfī order in the eleventh/seventeenth to
twelfth/eighteenth centuries. As El-Rouayheb has shown, many of these scholars studied
the works of Ibn ʿArabī and seemed to have no difficulty accepting the monist concept of
waḥdat al-wujūd so vehemently condemned by Ibn Taymiyya.187 These men too did not
feel compelled to adopt Ibn Taymiyya’s theology wholesale.
Sulaymān’s approach, by contrast, was to soften the apparent severity of Ibn
Taymiyya’s words. This was, however, an all too charitable reading of Ibn Taymiyya. It
is simply wrong to suggest that he intended his words about intermediaries to be read
restrictively. The phrase in question was of a piece with his full-on attack on the cult of
saints. The phrase as worded in the Iqnāʿ is derived from a fatwā by Ibn Taymiyya
responding to the question whether one may take intermediaries between oneself and
God.188 Ibn Taymiyya comes down hard against those who would use an intermediary
(wāsiṭa) to derive benefits and alleviate harms (fī jalb al-manāfiʿ wa-dafʿ al-maḍārr),
saying that this is among the greatest forms of polytheism (min aʿẓam al-shirk).189 He
sums up the matter thus:
187
El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 263-65.
188
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:121-38.
189
Ibid., 1:123.
149
Whoso sets up the angels and prophets as intermediaries, calling on them, relying
on them, and asking them to bestow benefits and alleviate harms, such as asking
them to pardon a sin, to guide hearts, to relieve hardships, and to relieve poverty,
he is an unbeliever according to the consensus of the Muslims.190
Though he talks explicitly here about angels and prophets, Ibn Taymiyya’s criticism is
directed at any kind of intermediary, including and especially dead holy men. The phrase
was reproduced in shortened form by one of Ibn Taymiyya’s students, the Ḥanbalī Ibn
Mufliḥ (d. 763/1362), in his legal text Kitāb al-furūʿ,191 and it appears in the same form
in a compilation of Ibn Taymiyya’s legal opinions by the Ḥanbalī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Baʿlī
(d. 803/1401).192 Eventually, it found its way into al-Ḥajjāwī’s Iqnāʿ.
The Ḥanbalī community after Ibn Taymiyya thus exhibited at least two
approaches to his controversial theological views. Surely a third option was also
available, which was to follow Ibn Taymiyya’s views to the letter. But the number of
Ḥanbalīs who took this path seems to have been few; by and large, the Ḥanbalī school
after Ibn Taymiyya was not as combative and provocative as he had been. The Ḥanbalīs
sought to maintain their position within the framework of the four Sunnī schools of law,
not to drive a wedge between different factions of Sunnī Muslims as Ibn Taymiyya had
done. In other words, mainstream Ḥanbalism after Ibn Taymiyya did not embody the
controversial and aggressive Taymiyyan spirit. The Ḥanbalism of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
however, would do so. And yet, in reviving the Taymiyyan spirit, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
modified it substantially, as will be seen in the following chapter.
190
fa-man jaʿala ʾl-malāʾika waʾl-anbiyāʾ wasāʾiṭ yadʿūhum wa-yatawakkalu ʿalayhim wa-yasʾaluhum jalb
al-manāfiʿ wa-dafʿ al-maḍārr mithl an yasʾalahum ghufrān al-dhanb wa-hidāyat al-qulūb wa-tafrīj al-
kurūb wa-sadd al-fāqāt fa-huwa kāfir bi-ijmāʿ al-Muslimīn, ibid., 1:124.
191
Ibn Mufliḥ, Kitāb al-furūʿ, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, 12 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-
Risāla, 1424/2003), 10:188.
192
al-Baʿlī, al-Akhbār al-ʿilmiyya min al-ikhtiyārāt al-fiqhiyya li-shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya, ed. Aḥmad
ibn Muḥammad al-Khalīl (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1418/1998), 443.
150
Chapter 3
The Doctrine of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb II: The Key Components
“He read some of the works of the Shaykh Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyya, and [some of]
the works of his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and emulated them poorly, despite the
fact that both prohibit emulation” – Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 1182/1768)1
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would seek, like Ibn Taymiyya before him, to enforce the
boundaries between belief and unbelief, between tawḥīd and shirk, in provocative
fashion. The preceding chapter sought to highlight the perceptions among Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s contemporaries of his dependency on Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, as
well as some of his own appeals to these scholars. It then aimed to account for these
perceptions and appeals by examining the main lines of the religious thought of Ibn
Taymiyya and his circle. It was suggested that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would, some four-
hundred years later, in a way reanimate the controversial Taymiyyan spirit. The present
chapter looks more precisely at what exactly he reanimated, the ways in which he did so,
and what new or different ideas he brought to bear on Taymiyyan thought. It examines
carefully what I consider to be the five key components of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
doctrine, or doctrinal stance:2 (1) disregard for contemporary religious authority, (2) the
division of tawḥīd into two kinds, (3) takfīr (excommunication), (4) al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ
(association and dissociation), and (5) jihād (armed struggle). For each of these I assess
the degree of Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s influence and/or the level of departure
from their teachings. In a concluding section, I suggest how the foregoing might help to
1
ṭālaʿa baʿḍan min muʾallafāt al-shaykh Abī ʾl-ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyya wa-muʾallafāt tilmīdhihi ʾbn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya wa-qalladahumā min ghayr itqān maʿa annahumā yuḥarrimāni ʾl-taqlīd, al-Amīr, Irshād, 108;
see above, ch. 1, p. 84.
2
The first may be regarded as more a matter of doctrinal stance more than of doctrinal substance.
151
inform the debate over how to situate Wahhābism among the various revivalist Islamic
movements of the twelfth-thirteenth/seventeenth-eighteenth centuries.
As will be seen here, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, in summoning the Taymiyyan spirit,
also altered it considerably, carrying some of Ibn Taymiyya’s views to new extremes.
This is why Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī’s remark in the epigraph above is so pertinent. Unlike
some of his Ḥanbalī contemporaries writing against Wahhābism, Ibn al-Amīr understood
just how seriously Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb took the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-
Qayyim. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s appeals to these scholars, he understood, were not merely
expedient. There were no illusions here about the centrality of Taymiyyan thought to Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine. What Ibn al-Amīr questioned was Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
fidelity to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. His statement that the Najdī emulated them
poorly (min ghayr itqān) is his verdict. My purpose is not to pronounce such a judgment,
but rather to show how, in the five key components of his doctrine, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
seized on certain ideas of Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s, adopting them,
reworking them, and/or taking them in a more radical direction.
Authority
It will be clear by now that Ibn Taymiyya was by no means deferential to the authority of
his fellow Sunnī ʿulamāʾ, many of whom were partial to the kind of kalām-based
theological inquiry and Ṣūfī ritual of which he so harshly disapproved. Ibn Taymiyya
stubbornly refused to compromise his beliefs, even when these scholars pressured him to
do so in official trials. For example, during the Damascus trials of 705/1306,3 convened
3
On which see Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial in Damascus.” For Ibn Taymiyya’s account of these
trials, translated here by Jackson, see Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:160-93.
152
to consider a creed of his known as al-ʿAqīda al-Wāsiṭiyya (so named for the Iraqi town
of Wāsiṭ),4 he displayed a confidence bordering on arrogance as he defended himself
before a jury of scholars. Rejecting the notion that his creed should be understood as
merely the creed of the Ḥanbalī school, he insisted that it was no less than “the creed of
the ancestors” (ʿaqīdat al-salaf) and “the creed of Muḥammad” (ʿaqīdat Muḥammad).5
He brazenly challenged the jury to find a single consonant (ḥarf wāḥid) in the words of
the salaf at odds with what he had written, saying that in that event he would gladly
rescind the creed. He proposed that they be given three years to try.6
Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, and Q. 9:31
Ibn Taymiyya’s testimony here is a good illustration of his views on religious authority—
namely, that his colleagues had none over him. He had a strong preference for drawing
directly from scripture (istidlāl, ittibāʿ al-nuṣūs) rather than emulating (taqlīd) living or
dead authorities. His view was that, while not all taqlīd was bad, in a given matter one
should go directly to the proof-texts (nuṣūṣ), rather than to the previous opinion of any
person or group, so long as was capable of doing so. In one of his fatwās on the subject of
taqlīd and ijtihād, he invokes the Qurʾānic verse 9:31, in which God condemns those
Christians who “have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords apart from God, and the
Messiah, Mary's son—and they were commanded to worship but One God.”7 No
religious leader (imām) should be elevated to the status of the Prophet (manzilat al-nabī),
4
See Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:129-159.
5
Ibid., 3:169 (=Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial,” 64).
6
Ibid.
7
ittakhadhū aḥbārahum wa-ruhbānahum arbāban min dūni ʾllāhi waʾl-Masīḥa ʾbna Maryama wa-mā
umirū illā li-yaʿbudū ilāhan wāḥidan.
153
Ibn Taymiyya writes, for that would be to commit the same error as the Christians who
took their religious leaders as lords.8 In other words, Muslims should refrain from blind
obedience to the ʿulamāʾ and seek to interface directly with scripture as much possible. In
his work Kitāb al-īmān, Ibn Taymiyya again quotes Q. 9:31, this time in a passage
warning against obeying human authorities when it comes to following God’s commands
and prohibitions. Citing certain traditions related to the verse, he states that the
Christians’ deference to their religious authorities amounted to worship (ʿibāda), for they
followed their leaders in permitting the prohibited and prohibiting the permissible (fī
taḥlīl al-ḥarām wa-taḥrīm al-ḥalāl).9
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would also invoke Q. 9:31 in the context of religious
authority. In two of his letters, he refers to or quotes Ibn Taymiyya’s use of the verse in
Kitāb al-īmān.10 In one of these, he tells a fellow Najdī that the verse is among Ibn
Taymiyya’s proofs (min adillatihi) showing the errancy of deferring to living religious
authorities, to “those whom you think are scholars” (alladhīna taẓunnūna annahum
ʿulamāʾ).11 In typical fashion, however, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb employs this proof in
pursuit of a more radical conclusion than the one reached by Ibn Taymiyya. He uses it to
inveigh against the entire educational institution surrounding Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh),
which he takes as emblematic of the sad state of learning in Islam. Quoting the verse, he
says, “The Messenger of God and the imāms after him understood it [i.e., the verse] to be
referring to this that you call jurisprudence, which is what God called polytheism and the
8
9
Ibid., 7:67.
10
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:444 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĪsā), 1:446 (letter to ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿĪsā).
11
Ibid., 1:446.
154
taking of them as lords.”12 Indeed, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb considered the institution of fiqh
as a kind of factory for the production of slavish emulators. The real task of a scholar, he
argued, is to return to the texts of revelation, not to the opinions of men, especially
jurisprudents.
And yet, it was Ibn Taymiyya—a human being, not a source of divine
revelation—on whom Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb drew in making this argument. Ibn Taymiyya
was delving into the sources to reach his own unique conclusions and formulate his own
unique understanding of the religion. It is not so clear that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was
doing the same.
The red herring of ijtihād
Despite the accusations of his opponents, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb never claimed the ability
to practice ijtihād, and in fact always denied that he was a mujtahid. In one of his letters,
he describes his position with respect to scholarly authority as neither taqlīd nor ijtihād,
but rather ittibāʿ (“following”), which is to say, following the opinions and methods of
those scholars worthy of reverence (wa-innī muttabiʿ li-ahl al-ʿilm ghayr mukhālif
lahum).13 In his letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, he puts the issue in these terms:
Where latter-day scholars are agreed, I of course follow them; but where they are not
agreed, “I submit the matter to God and His prophet, following the example of the
[earlier] scholars” (wa-aruddu ʾl-masʾala ilā ʾllāh wa-rasūlihi muqtadiyan bi-ahl al-
12
fa-qad fassarahā rasūl Allāh ṣ waʾl-aʾimma baʿdahu bi-hādhā ʾlladhī tusammūnahu ʾl-fiqh wa-huwa
ʾlladhī sammāhu ʾllāh shirkan waʾttikhādhahum arbāban, ibid.
13
al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:58 (letter to the ʿulamāʾ of Mecca).
155
ʿilm).14 To do otherwise, he says in the same letter, invoking Q. 9:31, would be “to take
the scholars as lords” (ittikhādh al-ʿulamāʾ arbāban).15
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb disputes the argument, which Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf appears to
have made, that a Muslim must meet the specified qualifications of ijtihād in order to
consult the texts of revelation directly:
You are saying, “We are not capable of it [i.e., following the path of the
Messenger and his companions], and only the mujtahid is capable of it.” You
have decided that only the mujtahid can benefit from the words of God and the
words of His Messenger. You are saying, “It is prohibited for someone else to
seek guidance from the words of God, the words of His Messenger, and the words
of his companions.”16
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb describes this position as a specious argument (shubha)—indeed, as
one of the greatest by far of his enemies’ specious arguments (min akbar shubahihim ʿalā
ʾl-iṭlāq).17 “Your shubha that has been cast into your hearts,” he says to Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf,
“is that you are incapable of understanding the words of God, His Prophet, and the pious
ancestors.”18 Nowhere, he retorts, does the Qurʾān stipulate that one must be an
omnicompetent mujtahid to refer directly to God’s words. On the contrary, it condemns
in the plainest terms the slavish emulation of one’s forefathers. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
compares Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s position to that of the unbelievers who say, in Q. 43:22,
“We found our fathers upon a community, and we are guided upon their traces.”19
14
15
Ibid., 1:255.
16
wa-taqūlūna mā naqduru ʿalayhā wa-lā yaqduru ʿalayhā illā ʾl-mujtahid fa-jazamtum annahu lā
yantafiʿu bi-kalām Allāh wa-kalām Rasūl Allāh illā ʾl-mujtahid wa-taqūlūna yaḥrumu ʿalā ghayrihi an
yaṭluba ʾl-hudā min kalām Allāh wa-kalām Rasūlihi wa-kalām aṣḥābihi, ibid., 1:256.
17
Ibid., 1:250.
18
wa-shubhatakum allatī ulqiyat fī qulūbikum annakum lā taqdurūna ʿalā fahm kalām Allāh wa-rasūlihi
waʾl-salaf al-ṣāliḥ, ibid., 1:257.
19
innā wajadnā ābāʾanā ʿalā ummatin wa-innā ʿalā āthārihim muhtadūn, ibid., 1:250.
156
In the letter to Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb brings up the name of Ibn
al-Qayyim as well, referring to his book Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn ʿan Rabb al-ʿālamīn.20 This
work, it should be noted, offers even more support for an irreverent attitude toward
scholarly authority than anything written by Ibn Taymiyya. Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn is a
lengthy treatise on the proper conduct of muftīs.21 While works in this genre of adab al-
muftī22 typically counsel taqlīd and caution against ijtihād (except for those with supreme
knowledge of the sources and the legal tradition), Ibn al-Qayyim’s book is distinguished
by its numerous broadsides against taqlīd. God, he writes, “did not enjoin us to practice
taqlīd” (lam yukallifnā biʾl-taqlīd);23 rather, He explicitly prohibited it in numerous
Qurʾānic verses, such as Q. 9:31, that censure the taqlīd of our fathers and leaders (taqlīd
al-ābāʾ waʾl-ruʾasā).24 It is the muftī’s duty to issue rulings on the basis of the
foundational Islamic texts, namely, the Qurʾān and sunna, not to imitate his
predecessors.25 And this applies, Ibn al-Qayyim says, even if the muftī is alone in his
judgment and the weight of the world is against him; for the one with true knowledge is
the real consensus, the real proof, and the real majority.26 What is more, he says—and
this does not seem to appear in any of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings—it is the duty of all
Muslims, not just those with scholarly training, to seek knowledge in the sources of
20
See ibid., 1:251, 255.
21
On this book, see Birgit Krawietz, “Transgressive Creativity in the Making: Ibn Qayyim al-Ǧawziyyah’s
Reframing within Ḥanbalī Legal Methodology,” Oriente Moderno, Nuova Serie, Anno 90 (2010): 47-66.
For some of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s references to it, see Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:251-55, 443-44.
22
See EI3, s.v. “Adab al-muftī” (Muhammad Khalid Masud).
23
Ibn al-Qayyim, Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn, ed. Abū ʿUbayda Mashhūr Āl Salmān, 6 vols. (al-Dammām: Dār
Ibn al-Jawzī, 1423/2002), 2:569.
24
Ibid., 2:452.
25
wajaba ʾl-taslīm lil-uṣūl allatī yajibu ʾl-taslīm lahā wa-hiya ʾl-Qurʾān waʾl-sunna, ibid., 2:453.
26
al-ijmāʿ waʾl-ḥujja waʾl-sawād al-aʿẓam huwa ʾl-ʿālim ṣāḥib al-ḥaqq wa-in kāna waḥdahu wa-in
khālafahu ahl al-arḍ, ibid., 4:388.
157
revelation, insofar as they are able.27 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would share this view,
preaching the importance of lay Muslims’ learning the basics of the religion.28 He would
thus seem to have adopted this view from Ibn al-Qayyim.
While Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is citing literature concerned with ijtihād and taqlīd in
this letter, his argument is for the most part that the question of ijtihād and taqlīd is
beside the point: that those who are accusing him of claiming to be a mujtahid have failed
to grasp what his message is really about, namely, tawḥīd. In referring to Ibn Taymiyya
and Ibn al-Qayyim here, his purpose is two-fold: first, to criticize fiqh (a discipline that
he believes is fundamentally corrupt, its practitioners having come to take the dons of the
academy as lords), and second, to show that it is permissible, indeed obligatory, to get
directly in touch with the foundational texts of revelation. None of this, however, was in
his view an argument about ijtihād, for his central concern was not law but rather
theology, and more specifically, tawḥīd. One of the early opponents of Wahhābism, Ibn
Dāwūd, rightly noted that it was tawḥīd, not ijtihād or anything else, that was the
Wahhābīs’ primary concern. “All they talk about,” he writes, “is tawḥīd, to the point that
nine tenths of what they say is tawḥīd! tawḥīd!”29
It was another early Wahhābī scholar, Ibn Gharīb, who best captured the place of
ijtihād in early Wahhābism. In the Tawḍīḥ he writes, “Tawḥīd is not a matter of ijtihād:
taqlīd in it, and opposition to it, are not allowed” (waʾl-tawḥīd laysa huwa maḥall al-
27
faʾl-wājib ʿalā kull ʿabd an yabdhila jahdahu fī maʿrifat mā yattaqīhi mimmā amarahu ʾllāh bihi wa-
nahā ʿanhu, ibid., 3:13. The apparent difference between Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim on this score is
noted in Haykel, “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action,” 45-46.
28
al-wājib ʿalā kull Muslim an yaṭluba ʿilm mā anzala ʾllāh ʿalā rasūlihi wa-lā yuʿdharu aḥad fī tarkihi al-
batta, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:250 (letter to Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf).
29
fa-innahum lā yatakallamūna illā fī ʾl-tawḥīd ḥattā anna tisʿat aʿshār kalāmihim al-tawḥid al-tawḥīd,
158
ijtihād fa-lā taqlīda fīhi wa-lā ʿinād).30 In other words, tawḥīd is not a legal issue but
rather a theological one. The proper conception of tawḥīd is not up for debate, as things
often are in the case of ijtihād, for in matters of theology there can be no room for
disagreement and one need not meet the set qualifications of ijtihād in order to discuss
them. One of the implications of Ibn Gharīb’s statement is that ijtihād is but a red herring,
as it distracts from the real issue of tawḥīd.
Strangers
It is a near certainty that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was influenced by Ibn al-Qayyim—not Ibn
Taymiyya—in viewing himself and his followers as the strangers, or aliens, (ghurabāʾ)
prophesied to return at a time when Islam has been corrupted. The word ghurabāʾ, which
evokes the minority status of the early Muslims (i.e., their estrangement and alienation
from society at large), appears in the following ḥadīth: “Islam began as a stranger and
will return as a stranger as it began, so blessed be the strangers.”31 In Iʿlām al-
muwaqqiʿīn, Ibn al-Qayyim cites the ḥadīth in arguing that religious knowledge is
contracting (al-ʿilm yaqillu) as God had prophesied, and this because the books of the
emulators (kutub al-muqallidīn) are steadily gaining in popularity (narāhā kull ʿām fī
ʾzdiyād wa-kathra).32 In another of his works he describes the ghurabāʾ as those who
remain committed to the sunna and tawḥīd in the face of the majority (akthar al-nās),
who consider the ghurabāʾ to be deviants and innovators (yaʿuddūnahum ahl shudhūdh
30
Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:491 (=al-Hadiyya al-saniyya, 7).
31
badaʾa ʾl-Islām gharīban wa-sa-yaʿūdu gharīban kamā badaʾa fa-ṭūbā lil-ghurabāʾ, Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ,
1:130 (Kitāb al-īmān, bāb bayān anna ʾl-Islām badaʾa gharīban, no. 232).
32
Ibn al-Qayyim, Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn, 2:526.
159
wa-bidʿa).33 We can infer that Ibn al-Qayyim is referring to himself and his fellow
scholars in Ibn Taymiyya’s circle. Islam, in his view, has returned to being strange: “True
Islam as practiced by the Prophet and his companions is more a stranger today than it was
at the time of its first appearance.”34 “True Islam,” he reiterates, “is very strange, and its
adherents are strangers among people.”35
Like Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also invokes the ḥadīth of the ghurabāʾ
to justify being in the minority. In his letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, he mentions
Ibn al-Qayyim’s discussion of the ḥadīth in Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn, saying, “If Islam is
supposed to return as it began, then how ignorant is one who appeals to the majority of
people as evidence!”36 In another letter, using language similar to Ibn al-Qayyim’s, he
writes that “the religion of Islam is today among the strangest of things,” adding, “I mean
true Islam.” 37
Ibn Taymiyya does not, in his own writings, appear to have applied the notion of
al-ghurabāʾ to his own time in such a way.38 Like Ibn al-Qayyim, however, he made little
of contemporary religious authority and much of the authority of revealed texts and the
individual’s obligation to access them. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb drew on both Ibn Taymiyya
and Ibn al-Qayyim to say much the same thing, and indeed there was much to draw on.
33
Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn bayn manāzil iyyāka naʿbudu wa-iyyāka nastaʿīn, ed. Nāṣir ibn
Sulaymān al-Saʿwī, et al., 6 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣumayʿī, 1432/2011), 4:3167.
34
al-Islām al-ḥaqq alladhī kāna ʿalayhi rasūl Allāh ṣ wa-aṣḥābuhu al-yawm ashadd ghurbatan minhu fī
awwal ẓuhūrihi, ibid., 4:3168.
35
faʾl-Islām al-ḥaqīqī gharīb jiddan wa-ahluhu ghurabāʾ bayn al-nās, ibid.
36
idhā kāna ʾl-Islām yaʿūdu kamā badaʾa fa-mā ajhala man istadalla bi-kathrat al-nās, Ibn Ghannām,
Tārīkh, 1:251.
37
dīn al-Islām al-yawm min aghrab al-ashyāʾ aʿnī dīn al-Islām al-ṣirf, ibid., 1:351 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn
Suḥaym).
38
See his discussion of the ḥadīth of the ghurabāʾ in Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 18:291-305.
160
Yet neither of them wrote off the entire field of jurisprudence as irredeemable, as Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did.39
In spurning authority, it is evident that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s main source of
inspiration—or at least justification—is Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. The same
holds true for the next component of his doctrine.
Tawḥīd
Of the ideas adopted from Ibn Taymiyya, none features more prominently in Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s writings than the division of tawḥīd into two forms. The literal meaning of
tawḥīd is “making God one,” and depending on context it can be translated as God’s
oneness (or unity or unicity), as monotheism, or as worshipping God as one. In his
theological polemics, Ibn Taymiyya frequently speaks of tawḥīd as being of two kinds:
tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya (“the oneness of God’s lordship”) and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya (or tawḥīd
al-ilāhiyya, “the oneness of God’s divinity”).40 According to Ibn Taymiyya, one must
meet the conditions of both to satisfy the requirements of Islam.
39
Curiously, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s corpus exhibits greater respect for the textual fiqh tradition than his
comments in his letters. He wrote an abridgement (mukhtaṣar) of two Ḥanbalī law books, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-
Mardāwī’s (d. 885/1480) al-Inṣāf fī maʿrifat al-rājiḥ min al-khilāf and Abū ʾl-Faraj Ibn Qudāma al-
Maqdisī’s (d. 682/1283) al-Sharḥ al-kabīr ʿalā ʾl-Muqniʿ. See Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh,
qism 2, vol. 2 (Mukhtaṣar al-Inṣāf waʾl-Sharḥ al-kabīr).
40
For earlier treatments of Ibn Taymiyya’s division of tawḥīd, see Laoust, Essai, 472-73, 531-32; Hoover,
Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 27-39; idem, “Ḥanbalī Theology,” 635. This section is based on my own reading
of the relevant Arabic sources.
161
The two tawḥīds
This schema of two tawḥīds almost certainly originated with Ibn Taymiyya, and was
designed with a polemical purpose in mind.41 For Ibn Taymiyya, the requirements of
tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya are easily met, while those of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya are not. To confess
tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya is to espouse a basic monotheism: it is to confess that God alone is
the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, to recognize that there is only one god. To
confess tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya is more involved: it is to worship God properly as per the
dictates of Islam—that is, exclusively and without partner. Put otherwise, tawḥīd al-
rubūbiyya is the belief in monotheism, and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya is the practice of it in
accordance with the Islamic revelation. For Ibn Taymiyya, tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya is not
something to be applauded on its own, as the existence of a single god is self-evident.
Tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya is the true measure of a Muslim. It is, as he puts it one of his
polemics, “the salvific tawḥīd” (al-tawḥīd al-munjī), as opposed to that tawḥīd that
“saves one not from hellfire” (lā yunjī min nār).42
In his exegesis of the opening chapter of the Qurʾān, al-Fātiḥa, Ibn Taymiyya
derives the terms al-rubūbiyya and al-ulūhiyya from the pairing of the words Rabb
(“Lord”) and Allāh (“God”) in the second verse: “Praise belongs to God, Lord of the
worlds” (al-ḥamdu lillāhi Rabbi ʾl-ʿālamīn). Here as elsewhere in the Qurʾān, says Ibn
Taymiyya, the word Rabb indicates “the Fosterer” (al-Murabbī), “the Creator” (al-
Khāliq), “the Sustainer” (al-Rāziq), “the Bringer of Victory” (al-Nāṣir), and “the Guide”
41
Modern Saudi theologians are at pains to show that it does not begin with Ibn Taymiyya, but there is
hardly any precedent that they can point to. One example of this kind of effort is ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Badr,
al-Qawl al-sadīd fī radd man ankara taqsīm al-tawḥīd (Riyadh: Dār Ibn al-Qayyim, 1423/2003). In my
view, the only plausible precedent that he cites is a certain statement by the Ḥanbalī Ibn Baṭṭa al-ʿUkbarī
(d. 387/997), who distinguished between God’s rabbāniyya and waḥdāniyya (ibid., 32).
42
Ibn Taymiyya, al-Istighātha fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Bakrī, ed. ʿAbdallāh ibn Dujayn al-Sahlī, 4th ed. (Riyadh:
Maktabat Dār al-Minhāj, 1436/2014f), 163.
162
(al-Hādī), while the word Allāh refers to “the God who is worshipped” (al-ilāh al-
maʿbūd).”43 Ibn Taymiyya thus associates the word rubūbiyya with the divine power to
create and direct the affairs of the world, the word ulūhiyya with man’s duty to worship
God as one. In his writings, he defines tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya as, variously, “the affirmation
that there is no creator and no sustainer, no giver and no withholder, but God alone”;44
that “God is the Lord of all things and their Possessor, and that there is no creator and no
sustainer but Him”;45 that “He is the Master and the Determiner, the Enabler and the
Preventer, the One Who Inflicts Harm and the One Who Confers Benefits, the Lowerer
and the Raiser, the Empowerer and the Humbler.”46 Put most simply, it is the affirmation
“that God alone created the Heavens and the Earth” (bi-anna ʾllāh khalaqa ʾl-samāwāt
waʾl-arḍ).47 Tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya he defines, with far less variation, as “the worship of
Him alone without partner” (ʿibādatuhu waḥdahu lā sharīka lahu)48 and “that God be
worshipped alone with no partner” (an yuʿbada ʾllāh waḥdahu lā sharīka lahu).49
In his many polemics, Ibn Taymiyya repeatedly accuses those whose Islam he
considers flawed of satisfying tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya but falling short in terms of tawḥīd al-
ulūhiyya, thus failing to meet the full requirements of Islam. The speculative theologians,
being engrossed in establishing the existence of God by means of rational proofs, are
concerned only with tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya.50 The Ṣūfīs of the Ibn ʿArabī variety are
43
Idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 14:12-13.
44
al-iqrār bi-annahu lā khāliqa wa-lā rāziqa wa-lā muʿṭiya wa-lā māniʿa illā ʾllāh waḥdahu, ibid., 14:379.
45
Rabb kull shayʾ wa-Malīkuhu wa-lā khāliqa wa-lā rāziqa illā huwa, ibid., 14:380.
46
huwa ʾl-Mālik al-Mudabbir al-Muʿṭī al-Māniʿ al-Ḍārr al-Nāfiʿ al-Khāfiḍ al-Rāfiʿ al-Muʿizz al-Mudhill,
ibid., 1:92.
47
Ibid., 1:155.
48
Ibid., 10:669.
49
Ibid., 3:101.
50
wa-lam yaʿrifū min al-tawḥīd illā tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, idem, Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya fī naqḍ
kalām al-Shīʿa al-Qadariyya, ed. Muḥammad Rashād Sālim, 9 vols. (Riyadh: Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muḥammad
bin Suʿūd al-Islāmiyya, 1406/1986), 3:289. Cf. idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:101, 14:15.
163
engrossed in the mystical experience of God (shuhūd), which is only concerned with
tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya.51 “A man does not become a Muslim by virtue of this tawḥīd
alone,” he writes in an attack on these Ṣūfīs, referring to tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya.52 Both
groups neglect the proper worship of God that is captured by the idea of tawḥīd al-
ulūhiyya. Those engaged in the cult of saints are similarly deficient in terms of tawḥīd al-
ulūhiyya, having introduced a host of polytheistic activities notwithstanding their
confession of tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya.53 Even outside of a strictly polemical context, it is not
unusual to find Ibn Taymiyya digressing into a discussion of the two tawḥīds, reminding
his reader that “whoso fails to satisfy it [i.e., tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya] is one of the polytheists
eternally.”54
A key point in Ibn Taymiyya’s tawḥīd dichotomy concerns the unbelievers in
Arabia at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. These pagan Arabs were, in Ibn
Taymiyya’s view, not really pagans at all. Polytheists in respect of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya,
they were actually monotheists in respect of tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya. He draws on several
verses of the Qurʾān, in particular Q. 31:25, 29:61, and 23:84-89, to demonstrate the truth
of this claim.55 In the first of these verses, God says to the Prophet about the pagan Arabs,
“If you ask them, ‘Who created the Heavens and the Earth?’ they will say, ‘God.’”56 This
verse and the others, Ibn Taymiyya states, show that the earlier unbelievers professed a
belief in one God, but that nonetheless their belief in Him failed to bring them into the
51
ghāyat mā ʿindahum min al-tawḥīd huwa shuhūd hādhā ʾl-tawḥīd, idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:101. Cf.
idem, Istighātha, 156-57 (wa-yaʿuddūna nihāyat al-ʿārifīn al-fanāʾ fī tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya wa-shuhūd al-
qaymūmiyya).
52
wa-lā yaṣīru ʾl-rajul bi-mujarrad hādhā ʾl-tawḥīd Musliman, idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:103.
53
aḥdathū min al-shirk waʾl-ʿibādāt mā lam yaʾdhan bihi ʾllāh, ibid., 1:159.
54
fa-man lam yaʾti bihi kāna min al-mushrikīn al-khālidīn, ibid., 14:380.
55
See, for example, ibid., 1:155.
56
wa-la-in saʾaltahum man khalaqa ʾl-samāwāti waʾl-arḍa la-yaqūlunna ʾllāh.
164
fold of Islam. Where they went wrong was in ascribing partners to God in worship,
partners they took as intermediaries (wasāʾiṭ) in seeking nearness to God or as
intercessors (shufaʿāʾ) in seeking their intercession with God on the Day of Judgment.57
As evidence that the pagan Arabs took these partners as only intermediaries and
intercessors, not as creator gods, Ibn Taymiyya appeals to such verses as Q. 10:18 and Q.
39:3.58 In the first of these, the pagan Arabs say, “These are our intercessors with God”
(hāʾulāʾi shufaʿāʾunā ʿinda ʾllāh); and in the second, they say, “We only worship them
that they may bring us nigh in nearness to God” (mā naʿbuduhum illā li-yuqarribūnā ilā
ʾllāhi zulfā). That the pagan Arabs affirmed tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya is a point that Ibn
Taymiyya makes frequently in his works.59 He is particularly emphatic about it when
discussing the cult of saints, arguing that those engaged in it are taking dead saints and
prophets as intermediaries and intercessors with God just as the pagan Arabs did before
them.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s main grievance against the professed Muslims of his day
was their participation in the cult of saints. This was not the only thing for which he took
them to task, but it was certainly his principal grievance. Others included the seeking of
blessings from trees and stones, the wearing of rings and strings to ward off evil, and
sorcery and astrology. A run-down of all the polytheistic practices to which he objected is
found in his Kitāb al-tawḥīd,60 likely his earliest written work. This book is not, however,
the epitome of Wahhābism, as it is sometimes made out to be. It is more of a reference
57
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:155, 311, 3:105.
58
Ibid., 1:155-56.
59
For some examples, see ibid., 1:91, 155, 311, 3:96-98, 101, 289, 7:77, 14:377, 380; idem, Minhāj al-
sunna, 3:289, 330-31. Ibn al-Qayyim also elaborates Ibn Taymiyya’s tawḥīd dichotomy and makes the
same point concerning the pagan Arabs; see, for instance, Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, 1:328.
60
A good edition is Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, 5th ed., ed. Daghash ibn Shabīb al-ʿAjmī
(Kuwait: Maktabat Ahl al-Athar, 1345/2014).
165
work or teaching text than anything else, being composed of long quotations from the
ḥadīth and the Qurʾān arranged by subject.61 It does not reflect his activism as his letters
and epistles do. When one examines his letters and epistles, what one finds is that that
they frequently deploy Ibn Taymiyya’s schema of the two tawḥīds in order to berate
those engaged in the cult of saints. This is done so often, in fact, that the schema ought to
be seen as the centerpiece of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine. It is the principal means by
which he distinguishes between true and false Muslims, between monotheists and
polytheists. In putting it to use, sometimes he employs the terminology of tawḥīd al-
rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, and sometimes he does not. But in both cases his
reliance on Ibn Taymiyya is clear.
The Kalimāt epistle
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Kalimāt epistle, which arrived in Basra in mid-1155/mid-1742, is
an example of a work that elaborates Ibn Taymiyya’s schema of tawḥīd without
introducing the terms tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. It begins with a
rehearsal of some of Ibn Taymiyya’s (and Ibn al-Qayyim’s) arguments for why God must
be worshipped exclusively.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb starts off by staying that the phrase there is no god but God
(lā ilāha illā ʾllāh) “is that for which created things were created … and that for which
the messengers were sent.”62 That is, it is the purpose of creation and revelation. In this
regard he quotes two verses from the Qurʾān: “I have not created the jinn and mankind
61
An excellent summary of Kitāb al-tawḥīd is Commons, Wahhabi Mission, 12-16.
62
wa-hiya ʾllatī khuliqat li-ajlihā ʾl-makhlūqāt … wa-li-ajlihā ursilat al-rusul, al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb,
f. 28a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:102).
166
except to worship me” (Q. 51:56); “Indeed, We sent forth among every nation a
messenger, saying, ‘Worship you God, and eschew idols’” (Q. 16:36).63 In a fatwā on the
subject of worship (ʿibāda), Ibn Taymiyya says much the same thing. He writes that God
“created creation for it [i.e., worship]” (khalaqa ʾl-khalq lahā) and “sent all of the
messengers because of it” (wa-bihā arsala jamīʿ al-rusul), and he quotes Q. 51:56 and Q.
16:36, among other verses.64
Next, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb states that “the phrase [i.e., lā ilāha illā ʾllāh]
comprises negation and affirmation: the negation of the divinity of all but God, and the
affirmation of it entirely for God alone without partner.”65 Then he notes that the
meaning of God is that which is worshipped (al-ilāh huwa ʾl-maʿbūd), in this way tying
the concept of divinity (ilāhiyya) to worship (ʿibāda).66 Worship, he says, is owed to God
entirely and to God alone. After this, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb proceeds to enumerate some of
the forms of worship (anwāʿ al-ʿibāda), all of which should be directed to God alone.
These include slaughter (dhabḥ), prostration (sujūd), and, most important for his
argument, supplication (duʿāʾ). It is not permissible, he says, for one to slaughter for
other than God, prostrate to other than God, or supplicate to than God.67 All of this is
likewise Taymiyyan in inspiration. In the same fatwā as before, Ibn Taymiyya goes
through some of the forms of worship (khaṣāʾiṣ ilāhiyyat Allāh), writing that they are
“the fulfillment of the confession that there is no god but God” (taḥqīq shahādat an lā
63
wa-mā khalaqtu ʾl-jinna waʾl-insa illā li-yaʿbudūnī (Q. 51:56), wa-la-qad baʿathnā fī kulli ummatin
rasūlan ani ʿbudū ʾllāha waʾjtanibū ʾl-ṭāghūt (Q. 16:36), ibid (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:102)
64
65
al-kalima nafy wa-ithbāt nafy lil-ilāhiyya ʿammā siwā ʾllāh wa-ithbātuhā kullahā lillāh waḥdahu lā
sharīka lahu, al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 28b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:1, with the addition of tabāraka
wa-taʿālā after ʿammā siwā ʾllāh).
66
Ibid., f. 29a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:103).
67
Ibid., ff. 29a, 30b-31a, 33a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:103-4).
167
ilāha illā ʾllāh).68 And he states that the confession of faith requires that a believer negate
the divinity of all but God and affirm the divinity of God.69
So far, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has spoken of the importance of lā ilāha illā ʾllāh; he
has construed lā ilāha illā ʾllāh as the affirmation of God’s divinity and the negation of
the divinity of all else; he has linked the concept of divinity (ilāhiyya) to worship (ʿibāda)
and said that all forms of worship are owed exclusively to God; and he has presented
supplication (duʿāʾ) as one of these forms of worship. It is the last of these points—that
duʿāʾ is a form of ʿibāda—that he now seizes on in advancing his argument. The duʿāʾ of
other than God, he claims, has become widespread:
So reflect, may God have mercy on you, on the supplication (duʿāʾ) to other than
God, in times of hardship and in times of comfort, that has afflicted mankind.
Such-and-such a person intends to travel, so he goes to the grave of a prophet or
someone else and enters there with his property to prevent being robbed; and
such-and-such a person is afflicted by hardship on land or on sea, so he seeks the
help of ʿAbd al-Qādir [al-Jīlānī] or Shamsān, or a prophet or a saint, that he may
relieve him of this hardship.70
The suspect practices that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is referring to here were common in the
cult of saints, both in Najd (Shamsān was buried in al-Kharj) and beyond (ʿAbd al-Qādir
was buried in Baghdad). Ibn Taymiyya, in numerous places, also complains about them.
In one relevant fatwā, he condemns supplicating to the dead, seeking their intercession
with God, and asking things of them (duʿāʾ al-mayyit waʾl-istishfāʿ bihi waʾl-istighātha)
in the context of prophets and saints (al-anbiyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥīn).71 This particular fatwā,
68
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 10:225; duʿāʾ appears as one of the forms of worship ibid., 10:149.
69
fa-innahu yanfī ʿan qalbihi ulūhiyyat mā siwā ʾl-ḥaqq wa-yuthbitu fī qalbihi ulūhiyyat al-ḥaqq, ibid.
70
fa-tafakkar raḥimaka ʾllāh fīmā ḥadatha fī ʾl-nās min duʿāʾ ghayr Allāh taʿālā fī shidda wa-rakhāʾ
hādhā yurīdu safaran fa-yaʾtī ʿind qabr nabī aw-ghayrihi fa-yadkhulu ʿalayhi bi-mā lahu ʿan nahbihi wa-
hādhā yulḥiquhu shidda fī ʾl-barr aw al-baḥr fa-yastaghīthu bi-ʿAbd al-Qādir aw-Shamsān aw-nabī aw-
walī annahu yunjīhi min hādhihi ʾl-shidda, al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, ff. 33b-34a (=al-Durar al-saniyya,
2:104, with several minor differences).
71
168
known as Qāʿida jalīla fī ʾl-tawassul waʾl-wasīla, may in fact have been the source of Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s arguments that come in the next part of the Kalimāt epistle.
After lamenting the ubiquity of the duʿāʾ of other than God, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
entertains the objections of a hypothetical polytheist (mushrik). The polytheist contends
that his calling upon a righteous person does not amount to shirk but rather saves him
from shirk. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb instructs his reader to respond by saying that the pagan
Arabs likewise believed in a single deity but failed to worship Him exclusively; they
went astray in seeking the intercession (shafāʿa) of other beings with God. In other
words, the pagan Arabs confessed tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya:
The idol-worshippers whom the Messenger of God fought and whose property,
sons, and women he seized all believed that God is the One Who Inflicts Harm,
the One Who Confers Benefits, and the One Who Arranges the Affair; all that
they sought is what you [i.e., the hypothetical polytheist] have sought, namely,
intercession with God.72
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb follows this with four quotations from the Qurʾān: 10:18, 39:3, and
10:31, and 23:84-89.73 Together, they are meant to show that the pagan Arabs confessed
tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and worshipped their idols only to achieve intercession with and
nearness to God. The first two verses are those in which the pagan Arabs say, “These are
our intercessors with God,” and “We only worship them that they may bring us nigh in
nearness to God.” They illustrate the points of intercession and closeness, respectively.
The second two show the pagan Arabs affirming that Allāh is the one almighty God. Q.
10:31 reads: “Say: ‘Who provides you out of heaven and earth, or who possesses hearing
72
fa-ʿubbād al-aṣnām alladhīna qātalahum rasūl Allāh wa-nahaba amwālahum wa-abnāʾahum wa-
nisāʾahum kulluhum yaʿtaqidūna anna ʾllāh huwa ʾl-Nāfiʿ al-Ḍārr alladhī yudabbiru ʾl-amr wa-innamā
arādū mā aradta min al-shafāʿa ʿind Allāh, al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, ff. 34a-34b (=al-Durar al-saniyya,
2:104, which has ghanama instead of nahaba).
73
Ibid., ff. 39a-40a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:105, which quotes two more verses to the same effect, Q.
29:61 and Q. 29:63).
169
and sight, and who brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the dead from
the living, and who directs the affair?’ They [i.e., the pagan Arabs] will surely say,
‘God.’”74 And Q. 23:84-85: “Say: ‘Whose is the earth, and whoso is in it, if you have
knowledge?’ They [i.e., the pagan Arabs] will say, ‘God’s.’”75
The Qāʿida jalīla is remarkably similar in content and structure. Ibn Taymiyya
remarks, in similarly lurid language, that the pagan Arabs affirmed tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya:
The polytheists of Quraysh and others, whose polytheism the Qurʾān relates,
whose blood and property the Prophet deemed licit, whose women he enslaved,
and for whom He prescribed hellfire—they affirmed that God alone created the
heavens and the earth.76
He then quotes three of the same Qurʾānic verses: 10:18, 39:3, and 23:84-89.77 It is
likely, then, that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had access to this or a similar work. The same set
of three verses is found in other of Ibn Taymiyya’s discussions of tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya.78
The very next part of the Kalimāt also follows the Qāʿida jalīla to some extent.
Here Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb anticipates the objection of the hypothetical polytheist, who
says that the pagan Arabs “believed in idols of stone and wood, while we have believed
only in righteous persons.”79 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb tells the reader to respond by saying,
“Among the unbelievers there were also those who believed in righteous persons, such as
the angels and Jesus son of Mary, and in saints such as al-ʿUzayr [sic] and some of the
74
qul man yarzuqukum mina ʾl-samāʾi waʾl-arḍi a-man yamluku ʾl-samʿa waʾl-abṣāra wa-man yukhriju ʾl-
ḥayya mina ʾl-mayyiti wa-yukhriju ʾl-mayyita mina ʾl-ḥayyi wa-man yudabbiru ʾl-amra fa-sa-yaqūlūna
ʾllāh.
75
qul li-mani ʾl-arḍu wa-man fīhā in kuntum taʿlamūna sa-yaqūlūna lillāh.
76
waʾl-mushrikūn min Quraysh wa-ghayruhum alladhīna akhbara ʾl-Qurʾān bi-shirkihim waʾstaḥalla ʾl-
nabī dimāʾahum wa-amwālahum wa-sabā ḥarīmahum wa-awjaba lahum al-nār kānū muqirrīn bi-annā
ʾllāh waḥdahu khalaqa ʾl-samāwāt waʾl-arḍ, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:155.
77
Ibid., 1:155-56 (more precisely, he quotes Q. 10:18, Q. 39:1-3, and Q. 23:84-91; two other verses cited
here are Q. 31:25 and Q. 29:61).
78
E.g., idem, Minhāj al-sunna, 3:330.
79
yaʿtaqidūna fī ʾl-aṣnām wa-hiya ḥijāra wa-khashab wa-naḥnu lam naʿtaqid illā fī ʾl-ṣāliḥīn, al-Qabbānī,
Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 40a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:106, which has wa-naḥnu naʿtaqidu fī ʾl-ṣāliḥīn).
170
jinn.”80 As evidence of this, he quotes Q. 34:40-41, in which the angels tell God that there
were men who worshipped the jinn. And he quotes Q. 17:57, in which God explains that
the pagan Arabs called upon people who were themselves God-fearing: “Those they call
upon are themselves seeking the means to come to their Lord, which of them shall be
nearer; they hope for His mercy, and fear His chastisement.”81 This is followed by a
tradition attributed to a party of the ancestors (ṭāʾifa min al-salaf), which has it that “there
were groups who called upon the angels, Jesus, and al-ʿUzayr [sic], and God said to
them: ‘Those are my servants, as you are my servants.’”82 Ibn Taymiyya, in a passage in
the Qāʿida jalīla about the different kinds of polytheism, also quotes, Q. 34:40-41, Q.
17:57, and the same tradition attributed to a party of the ancestors.83
Recapitulating the main argument of his epistle, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb asks his
reader to ponder the fact that the pagan Arabs only worshipped those they worshipped in
order to achieve nearness to God and intercession with him (al-taqarrub ilā ʾllāh waʾl-
shafāʿa).84 This is a point that Ibn Taymiyya made frequently, including in the Qāʿida
jalīla. There he writes, “And the polytheists, who took other gods alongside Him,
affirmed that their gods were created, but they took them as intercessors and sought to be
near to Him by worshipping them.”85
80
waʾl-kuffār ayḍan minhum man yaʿtaqidu biʾl-ṣāliḥīn mithl al-malāʾika wa-ʿĪsā ʾbn Maryam wa-fī ʾl-
awliyāʾ mithl al-ʿUzayr [sic] wa-nās min al-jinn, ibid. (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:106, which also mentions
al-Lāt waʾl-ʿUzzā).
81
ulāʾika ʾlladhīna yadʿūna yabtaghūna ilā rabbihimu ʾl-wasīlata ayyuhum aqrabu wa-yarjawna
raḥmatahu wa-yakhāfūna ʿadhābahu, ibid., f. 50b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:107).
82
kāna aqwām yadʿūna ʾl-malāʾika waʾl-Masīḥ waʾl-ʿUzayr [sic] fa-qāla ʾllāh hāʾulāʾi ʿabīdī kamā antum
ʿabīdī, ibid. (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:107, which has yadʿūna ʾl-malāʾika wa-ʿUzayran waʾl-Masīḥ).
83
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:157-58.
84
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f. 51a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:107).
85
wa-kāna ʾl-mushrikūn alladhīna jaʿalū maʿahu āliha ukhrā muqirrīn bi-anna ālihatahum makhlūqa wa-
lākinnahum kānū yattakhidhūnahum shufaʿāʾ wa-yataqarrabūna bi-ʿibādatihim ilayhi, Ibn Taymiyya,
Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:155.
171
In this epistle, then, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is closely following Ibn Taymiyya’s
argumentation as regards the two tawḥīds—from the basics down to the very evidence
selected and the language used. He does this without even mentioning the two tawḥīds.
The schema on display
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also made the same arguments against the cult of saints using the
terms tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. Here, for example, is an excerpt from
an epistle in which he outlines his doctrine:
Tawḥīd is of two kinds: tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. As for

tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, it is what the unbelievers affirmed and were not thereby
Muslims. It is the affirmation that God is the Creator and the Sustainer, the Giver
of Life and the Bringer of Death, the One Who Arranges All Affairs … As for
tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, it is directing worship in all its forms exclusively to God.86
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is both explaining the distinction between the two tawḥīds and
urging his readers to take note of it. Nearly identical language is found throughout his
epistles and letters. In a letter to an unidentified correspondent, for instance, he writes,
“Tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya is what the unbelievers affirmed … As for tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, it is
directing worship exclusively to God.”87
In some of his correspondence, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb insists that the people of
Najd learn and understand the difference between the two tawḥīds. In some cases, he is
seen desperately trying to convey the distinction and to get people to recognize and act
upon it. One letter shows him responding to a certain Ḥasan, who says he has found it
86
waʾl-tawḥīd nawʿān tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya wa-tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya ammā tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya fa-huwa
ʾlladhī aqarrat al-kuffār bihi wa-lam yakūnū bihi Muslimīn wa-huwa ʾl-iqrār bi-anna ʾllāh al-Khāliq al-
Rāziq al-Muḥyī ʾl-Mumīt al-Mudabbir li-jamīʿ al-umūr … wa-ammā tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya fa-huwa ikhlāṣ al-
ʿibāda kullihā bi-anwāʿihā lillāh, al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:137.
87
tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya huwa ʾlladhī aqarra bihi ʾl-kuffār … wa-ammā tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya fa-huwa ikhlāṣ
al-ʿibāda lillāh waḥdahu, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:480.
172
difficult (yushkilu ʿalayya) to accept the idea that the pagan Arabs confessed tawḥīd al-
rubūbiyya (kawn mushrikī ʾl-ʿArab aqarrū bihi).88 In another letter, addressed to a certain
preacher in Tharmadāʾ, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is seen to have been successful in conveying
the distinction, but unsuccessful in getting his correspondent to act upon it. He praises the
correspondent for writing that “the polytheists whom the Prophet fought affirmed tawḥīd
al-rubūbiyya … he fought them only on behalf of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. One does not enter
into Islam by virtue of tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya unless it is joined with tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya.”89
But he complains that the correspondent has not been showing enmity (ʿadāwa) to those
who refuse to acknowledge this.90 “Why have you not shown enmity to them,” he asks,
“and [stated that] they are apostate unbelievers?”91 In this letter, the entire religious
struggle in Najd is depicted as one that revolves around the distinction between the two
tawḥīds.92
Far less frequently, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb speaks of a third form of tawḥīd, which
subsequently became popular as tawḥīd al-asmāʾ waʾl-ṣifāt (“the oneness of God’s
names and attributes”). This is little more than a byword for the Taymiyyan approach to
God’s attributes. While Ibn Taymiyya himself does not appear to have written about
God’s attributes as a form tawḥīd, at least one member of his circle, the Ḥanafī Ibn Abī
88
Ibid., 1:488.
89
inna ʾl-mushrikīn alladhīna qātalahum rasūl Allāh qad aqarrū bi-tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya … wa-innamā
qātalahum rasūl Allāh ʿan tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya wa-lam yadkhul al-rajul fī ʾl-Islām bi-tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya
illā idhā ʾnḍamma ilayhi tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, ibid., 1:335 (letter to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbbād).
90
Ibid., 1:335-36.
91
li-ayy shayʾ lam tuẓhir ʿadāwatahum wa-annahum kuffār murtaddūn, ibid., 1:336.
92
Only one of the early refuters seems to have taken exception to the two tawḥīds thesis. Ironically, this
was the Ḥanbalī Ibn Dāwūd al-Zubayrī, who was attempting to show how Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was
distorting the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. Here is what Ibn Dāwūd says: “If Muḥammad
were sent to us to explain to us the meaning of the two tawḥīds, then he would have explained it clearly, not
he who claims [to know its meaning]” (in kāna Muḥammad ursila ilaynā li-yubayyina maʿnā ʾl-tawḥīdayn
la-bayyanahu ʿalayhi ʾl-salām bayānan lā man yaddaʿīhi, Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 101a).
173
ʾl-ʿIzz, did. Ibn Abī ʾl-ʿIzz may have been the first to enumerate the forms of tawḥīd as
three rather than two.93 On one occasion, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does the same, writing that
“tawḥīd is three principles (thalāthat uṣūl): tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, and
tawḥīd al-dhāt waʾl-asmāʾ waʾl-ṣifāt (“the oneness of the essence, the names, and the
attributes”).”94 Even in this epistle, however, he devotes far more space to the first two
than to the third. Indeed, in his preaching, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not attach much
importance to tawḥīd al-asmāʾ waʾl-ṣifāt. In one of his letters, responding to a question
about the three forms of tawḥīd, his only comment on the third is this: “As for the tawḥīd
of the attributes, tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya are not sound without the
affirmation of the attributes. But the unbelievers are wiser than those who deny the
attributes.”95 While it gradually became standard in Wahhābism to define tawḥīd as
three—as a trio, not as a duo—and to inveigh against both taʾwīl and tafwīḍ as Ibn
Taymiyya does, this was not the case early on.
The flourishes
In what has been seen thus far, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not fundamentally distort Ibn
Taymiyya’s schema of the two tawḥīds. In fact, he brings it to bear against one of Ibn
Taymiyya’s own targets—the participants in the cult of saints. There are, however,
several differences between the two scholars in the content and presentation of the
schema. In terms of content, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb adds a few new ideas, or flourishes,
93
See Ibn Abī ʾl-ʿIzz, Sharḥ al-ʿAqīda al-Ṭaḥāwiyya, 1:140 (fa-innā ʾl-tawḥīd yataḍammanu thalāthat
anwāʿ …)
94
al-Durar al-saniyya: 2:67-68.
95
wa-ammā tawḥīd al-ṣifāt fa-lā yastaqīmu tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya wa-lā tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya illā biʾl-iqrār
biʾl-ṣifāt lākin al-kuffār aʿqal mimman ankara al-ṣifāt, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:481.
174
that magnify the schema’s polemical effect. And in terms of presentation, he condenses
the main ideas about the two tawḥīds, along with the flourishes, into neat, enumerable
points, producing catechisms to be read and memorized by scholars and laymen alike.
The flourishes that he adds are twofold. The first is to state that the pagan Arabs
took different types of intermediaries and intercessors, both objects and people, and that
the Prophet fought them all without distinction—that is, without regard to the nature of
the intermediary or intercessor taken.96 The first half of the flourish builds on what Ibn
Taymiyya distinguishes, in his Qāʿida jalīla and elsewhere, of two broad categories of
shirk corresponding to the shirk of the people of Noah (qawm Ṇūḥ) and the shirk of the
people of Abraham (qawm Ibrāhīm). The shirk of the people of Noah manifested in their
cleaving to the graves of righteous persons (al-ʿukūf ʿalā qubūr al-ṣāliḥīn), while that of
the people of Abraham manifested in their worshipping the stars, the sun, and the moon
(ʿibādat al-kawākib waʾl-shams waʾl-qamar).97 Ibn Taymiyya’s distinction is thus
between terrestrial things and celestial things. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, however, while
occasionally bringing up the terrestrial-celestial dichotomy,98 more often distinguishes
between shirk regarding objects—stone (ḥajar), trees (shajar), wood (khashab)—and
shirk regarding people—prophets (anbiyāʾ), righteous persons (ṣāliḥīn), saints
(awliyāʾ).99 He would appear to have originated this distinction in response to his
enemies’ argument that they believed in saints while the pagan Arabs believed in idols.100
To show that this distinction was meaningless—it was, in his words, a shubha101—Ibn
96
For examples of this flourish, see al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:25, 34, 39, 41, 106; Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh,
1:268-69,
97
98
See, for example, al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:25.
99
100
See, for the typical argument of the hypothetical enemy, ibid., 2:88, 106.
101
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:268-69 (Kashf al-shubuhāt).
175
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb emphasizes that in the Prophet’s time there were those who believed in
objects and those who believed in persons. The second part of this flourish, that the
Prophet opposed and fought equally those who took these different intermediaries, does
not appear in Ibn Taymiyya’s works.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s second flourish is to assert that the polytheists of the
present day (al-mushrikūn fī zamāninā)—that is, those Muslims deemed polytheists by
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb—are qualitatively worse than the polytheists of Arabia whom the
Prophet fought.102 This is not a charge that Ibn Taymiyya brought against his
contemporaries. For Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the polytheists of his day are worse for two
reasons, though sometimes only one is given. The first is that the shirk of the earlier
polytheists was intermittent, whereas that of the present-day polytheists is constant. The
earlier polytheists committed shirk only sometimes: in times of ease (fī ʾl-rakhāʾ), they
would call upon their intermediaries, but in times of hardship (fī ʾl-shidda), they would
leave their intermediaries and direct worship squarely to God. The polytheists of today,
on the other hand, are always committing shirk, calling upon their intermediaries in times
of both ease and hardship. The second reason why the earlier polytheists are worse,
according to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, is that while they worshipped righteous men who were
truly righteous, the present-day polytheists worship the most contemptible of persons:
people who commit adultery, steal, and neglect prayer, among other things.103 Those he
has in mind here are the Najdī saints of al-Kharj, such as Tāj, Shamsān, and Yūsuf, whom
he accuses of accepting money from devotees.
102
For examples of this flourish, see al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:167, 160, 2:26, 120; Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh,
1:319-20.
103
The flourish appears most clearly, with both parts, in Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:272-72 (as part of Kashf
al-shubuhāt), and al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:31.
176
The origins of the Arbaʿ Qawāʿid epistle
Whatever one may think of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s intellectual abilities (and he was
certainly not on the same plane as Ibn Taymiyya), he was clearly a gifted communicator,
probably more so than Ibn Taymiyya, a wildly disorganized writer. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
had a talent for breaking down his ideas into memorable units of thought. In his writings,
these are variably termed qawāʿid (sing. qāʿida), masāʾil (sing. masʾala), kalimāt (sing.
kalima), and uṣūl (sing. aṣl), or “principles,” “matters,” “phrases,” and “foundations,”
respectively. In practice, these terms mean the same thing—points. In his anti-Wahhābī
poem, al-Risāla al-marḍiyya, Ibn Fayrūz ridicules Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s habit of
condensing his doctrine into these points: “You established a religion on nine matters
(masāʾil) / and foundations (uṣūl) also, the principles (qawāʿid) being seven.”104
The Kalimāt epistle provides us with the earliest dateable example of this kind of
enumeration in the context of the two tawḥīds. Toward the end of it, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
states that all of this (wa-hādhā kulluhu) revolves around two points (kalimatayn). The
first is that the pagan Arabs affirmed that God alone is the Creator and the Sustainer, and
that all that they sought from the intermediaries they believed in was nearness to God; the
second is that while some of the pagan Arabs took people for their intermediaries and
some took objects, the Prophet fought them all without distinction.105 In other words, the
first kalima is that the pagan Arabs confessed tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, but in taking
104
wa-assastumū dīnan bi-tisʿi masāʾilin / wa-ayḍan uṣūlin waʾl-qawāʿidu sabʿatī, Āl Maḥmūd, Taḥdhīr
ahl al-īmān, 40. The number of points he mentions is arbitrary.
105
al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, ff. 52b-53b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:107-8).
177
intermediaries to achieve nearness to God failed to satisfy tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. The
second kalima is the first flourish.
In another early piece of writing, a letter addressed to several preachers in various
towns, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb again breaks down his main ideas into two points
(qāʿidatayn). However, the distribution of ideas is different: the two points cover
everything mentioned in the first point of the Kalimāt epistle. The first qāʿida is that the
pagan Arabs recognized that God is the Creator and the Sustainer; the second is that that
they sought intermediaries to God in order to achieve nearness to Him. After enumerating
the two qāʿidas, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb expounds the second flourish: that the present-day
unbelievers are worse than the earlier unbelievers on account of the constancy of their
unbelief and the inferiority of their intermediaries.106
At some point in the course of his preaching, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb settled on four
points (qawāʿid) as the ideal number for communicating his ideas concerning the two
tawḥīds. There were to be numerous versions of this four-point epistle elaborating the
distinction between the two tawḥīds and the attending flourishes, an epistle later referred
to as Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn, or “Four Principles Concerning Religion.” While the
different versions admit of some variation, they mostly cover the same territory.107
The earliest version of this epistle that we have is the one that arrived in Basra in
1158/1745 and that al-Qabbānī refuted in Naqd qawāʾid al-ḍalāl. This version is unique
in that it comprises two sets of four points, the first set pertaining to the pagan Arabs, the
second to the present-day polytheists. To achieve numeric symmetry, Ibn ʿAbd al-
106
107
The four-point epistle, including the early eight-point variant, is discussed in Cook, “Early Wahhābī
Epistle.”
178
Wahhāb draws out the ideas of the first set in more points than might seem necessary
(points two and three are very similar, and point four is related to point one of the second
set). In the first set, point one is that the pagan Arabs confessed tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya;
point two is that they believed in angels, prophets, and saints because these were close to
God; point three is that they believed in these intermediaries in order to get close to God
and to obtain intercession with Him; and point four is that they were part-time in their
unbelief (i.e., the first half of the second flourish).108 In the second set, point one is that
the present-day polytheists are worse than the pagan Arabs (for the reasons related to the
second flourish); point two is that the idols (ṭawāghīt) in al-Kharj approve of and even
invite the polytheistic behavior of those supplicating to them and giving them votive
offerings; point three is that relations have been severed and a state of enmity has set in
between the monotheists (muwaḥḥidīn) and the polytheists (mushrikīn) in Najd, each side
declaring the other to be unbelievers; and point four is that some in al-ʿĀriḍ are claiming
that the monotheists are in error and have declared Muslims to be unbelievers.109
This eight-point epistle, as Michael Cook has argued, was likely an early
experiment, one eventually discarded in favor of a single set of four points.110 One of the
extant versions of the four-point epistle is almost identical to the first half of the eight-
point version.111 The version that was to become the most common has a somewhat
different structure.112 Here, point one remains the same as before; points two and three
are merged to form a new point two; a new point three, consisting of the first flourish, is
108
al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍālāl, ff. 42a-45a.
109
Ibid., ff. 47a-47b, 57a, 58b, 62a.
110
Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle 174.
111
See al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:27-30; Cook calls this the “rare version” (“Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 169).
112
See the three similar versions in al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:23-26, 33-35, 36-39; the first of these is the most
common of all.
179
added; and the fourth point remains as before, except that the contrast with today’s
polytheists is made explicit. The four points of the common four-point epistle are thus as
follows: first, the earlier polytheists recognized that God is the one Creator and Sustainer;
second, they gave partners to God only in seeking nearness to and intercession with Him;
third, they worshipped different kinds of things, but the Prophet fought them all equally;
and fourth, the present-day polytheists are worse than the earlier polytheists, since the
shirk of the earlier polytheists was intermittent whereas that of today’s polytheists is
constant.
This version, with some variations in wording but not in the basic structure,
would circulate widely during the first Saudi state and after. In his chronicle, the Yemeni
historian Luṭf Allāh Jaḥḥāf (d. 1243/1827f) records that it was being transmitted orally in
early-thirteenth/late-eighteenth-century ʿAsīr.113 In his entry for the year 1212/1797f,
Jaḥḥāf describes how ʿAsīr’s ruler, Abū Nuqṭa, adopted Wahhābism and solicited from
the ruler in al-Dirʿiyya a text to instruct his people in the Wahhābī creed. The text he
received was the four-point epistle. The scholars of ʿAsīr were expected to study and
teach it, and the masses were expected to memorize it. Not long after this, the four-point
epistle was put to similar use during the initial Wahhābī conquest of Mecca in 1218/1803.
In a brief memoir about the conquest and the subsequent occupation, one of the sons of
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ʿAbdallāh (d. 1242/1826f), records that the Wahhābīs provided the
scholars in Mecca with some works on tawḥīd by his father, including a shorter work to
113
Jaḥḥāf, Durar nuḥūr al-ḥūr al-ʿīn, 653-56; discussed in Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 168, 170, 172,
176.
180
be taught to the masses (risāla mukhtaṣara lil-ʿawāmm).114 This latter, which ʿAbdallāh
reproduces, was the four-point epistle.115
It is thanks to the two Wahhābī epistles preserved by al-Qabbānī, the Kalimāt and
the eight-point version of the Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn, that we can attempt to trace the
genesis of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s four-point epistle—and to some extent the doctrine
underlying it. What started in the Kalimāt as a two-point summary of Ibn Taymiyya’s
ideas concerning the two tawḥīds was reworked, along with a couple of flourishes, into a
four-point summary of the basis for distinguishing between true and false Muslims. Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not, it is fair to say, distort Ibn Taymiyya’s schema; rather, he
supplemented it and recast it in didactic form. The main difference between his and Ibn
Taymiyya’s use of the schema is that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb applied it to a much larger set
of targets, and that is because of his more expansive approach to takfīr.
Takfīr
It is almost certainly with Ibn Taymiyya’s circle in mind that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
speaks, in one of his letters, of “the scholars [who] in their time pronounced a judgment
114
al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:225-26. See further Esther Peskes, “ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb
und die wahhabitische Besetzung von Mekka 1803,” in Islamstudien ohne Ende: Festschrift für Werner
Ende zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rainer Brunner, et al., Würzburg: Ergon, 2002, 345-53.
115
See Appendix III for the text and translation. For some reason, the version of ʿAbdallāh’s account in al-
Durar al-saniyya omits the text of the Arbaʿ qawāʿid. Two complete copies of his account survive in
manuscript form, and both of these include the epistle. The first is ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb Āl al-Shaykh, Risālat ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ms. Mecca, Maktabat al-
Ḥaram al-Sharīf, ʿAqāʾid 1349, on which see Muṭīʿ al-Raḥmān and ʿĪd, al-Fihris al-mukhtaṣar, 1:376 (no.
1518). The second is ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Āl al-Shaykh, Risālat al-shaykh ʿAbdallāh Āl al-
Shaykh ʿindamā dakhalū Makka, ms. London, British Library, Or. 6631, on which see Ellis and Edwards,
Descriptive List, 14. The latter manuscript belonged to a British official in India named James O’Kinealy,
who composed a translation of it; see O’Kinealy, “Translation of an Arabic Pamphlet on the History and
Doctrines of the Wahhábís,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 43 (1874): 68-82.
181
of kufr and shirk on many of the people of their time.”116 Indeed, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
argues that his approach to takfīr is no different from Ibn Taymiyya’s. As will be seen,
however, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was forced to contend with numerous accusations that his
approach was in fact less nuanced and less discriminating than Ibn Taymiyya’s. A careful
look at the two approaches bears these accusations out. While Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
rationale for takfīr—failure to meet the conditions of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya by participating
in the cult of saints—was borrowed from Ibn Taymiyya, the latter was much more
reluctant actually to engage in it.
Ibn Taymiyya’s restraint
Before stressing the differences in their approaches, it is important first to recognize the
apparent similarities. Ibn Taymiyya could be severe in his condemnation of those he
deemed innovators in religion. When speaking of the participants in the cult of saints, for
example, he was given to distinguishing large groups of “innovators,” using such phrases
as “the innovators from among the Muslims” (mubtadiʿat al-Muslimīn, al-mubtadiʿūn
min al-Muslimīn) and “the innovators of this community” (mubtadiʿat hādhihi ʾl-
umma).117 In many places, he describes such innovators as having fallen into unbelief.
Here are two examples from the Qāʿida jalīla: “Whoso calls on created beings among the
dead and the absent and seeks their help … is an innovator in religion, an ascriber of
partners to the Lord of the Worlds, a follower not of the path of the believers”;118 “Those
116
ahl al-ʿilm fī zamānihim ḥakamū ʿalā kathīr min ahl zamānihim biʾl-kufr waʾl-shirk, Ibn Ghannām,
Tārīkh, 1:397 (letter to Sulaymān ibn Suḥaym).
117
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 1:179, 161, 174.
118
man daʿā ʾl-makhlūqīn min al-mawtā waʾl-ghāʾibīn waʾstaghātha bihim … kāna mubtadiʿan fī ʾl-din
mushrikan bi-rabb al-ʿālamīn muttabiʿan ghayr sabīl al-muʾminīn, ibid., 1:312.
182
who call upon the prophets and righteous men after their death, at their graves and
elsewhere, are among the polytheists who call upon other than God.”119 These do not
seem like the words of a man reluctant to engage in takfīr.
Ibn al-Qayyim, for his part, appears even more prone to takfīr in his work. Several
statements of his contain sweeping condemnations of the majority of people in the world.
For instance, in his book Ighāthat al-lahfān fī maṣāyid al-shayṭān, he repeatedly states
that the majority of humankind (akthar al-nās, akthar ahl al-arḍ) are idol-worshipping
unbelievers:
In sum, most people on earth have been captivated by the worship of idols, and
only the ḥunafāʾ [sing. ḥanīf], the followers of the Religion of Abraham, are safe
from of it … Adequate for knowing their multitude and that they are most people
on earth is what is related as sound from the Prophet that “the number of those who
will be resurrected to hellfire is, for every thousand, nine hundred ninety nine.” And
He says, “But most people refuse but unbelief” (Q. 17:89); and He says, “If you
obey most people on earth they will lead you astray from the path of God” (Q.
6:116); and He says, “But most people though you earnestly desire it, are not
believers” (Q. 12:103).120
Ibn al-Qayyim’s words here seem to apply to the professed Muslims of his age. Shortly
after this passage, he writes, “They [i.e., idol-worshippers] hear the reports about the
nations who were captivated by worshipping them [i.e., idols] and their immediate
119
alladhīna yadʿūna ʾl-anbiyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥīn baʿd mawtihim ʿind qubūrihim wa-ghayr qubūrihim hum min
al-mushrikīn alladhīna yadʿūna ghayr Allāh, ibid., 1:178.
120
wa-biʾl-jumla fa-akthar ahl al-arḍ maftūnūn bi-ʿibādat al-aṣnām waʾl-awthān wa-lam yatakhallaṣ
minhā illā ʾl-ḥunafāʾ atbāʿ millat Ibrāhīm … wa-yakfī fī maʿrifat kathratihim wa-annahum akthar ahl al-
arḍ mā ṣaḥḥa ʿan al-nabī ṣ anna baʿth al-nār min kull alf tisʿ miʾa wa-tisʿa wa-tisʿūn wa-qad qāla taʿālā
fa-abā aktharu ʾl-nāsi illā kufūran wa-qāla taʿālā wa-in tuṭiʿ akthara man fī ʾl-arḍi yuḍillūka ʿan sabīli
ʾllāhi wa-qāla taʿālā wa-mā aktharu ʾl-nāsi wa-law ḥaraṣta bi-muʾminīna, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ighāthat al-
lahfān, 2:976-77. For the ḥadīth, see al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1251 (Kitāb al-riqāq, bāb qawlihi ʿazza wa-jalla
anna zalzalat al-sāʿa shayʾ ʿaẓīm, no. 6530); Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:201 (Kitāb al-īmān, bāb qawlihi yaqūlu
ʾllāh li-Ādam akhrij baʿth an-nār, no. 379). For the understanding of baʿth al-nār as “the number of those
who will be resurrected to hellfire” (miqdār mabʿūth al-nār), see Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-Bārī bi-
sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-imām Abī ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, ed. Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb, 13
vols. (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1380/1960f), 11:389 (no. 6530).
183
punishment that this led to, and yet this dissuades them not from worshipping them.”121
One can infer that he is talking about those Muslims who worship human beings as idols.
They have heard the reports (akhbār) in the Qurʾān of the nations who took to themselves
idols, but these stories have failed to dissuade them from persisting in their error.
Such statements by Ibn al-Qayyim are consistent with his portrayal, noted above,
of himself and his fellow travelers as the ghurabāʾ struggling on behalf of true Islam. In
one passage of his book Zād al-maʿād fī hady khayr al-ʿibād, Ibn al-Qayyim draws
together his condemnation of the majority with the notion of the alienation (ghurba) that
has afflicted Islam in his age. Speaking of the execrable practices associated with the cult
of saints, he writes:
Polytheism has taken possession of most people, on account of the appearance of

ignorance and the disappearance of knowledge. Right has become wrong, and
wrong has become right; normative practice has become innovation, and
innovation has become normative practice. The young are raised admist this, and
the old grow decrepit amidst it. The guideposts have been obliterated; the
strangeness of Islam has grown in severity.122
Yet when it came to issuing specific judgments of kufr against individuals, Ibn
Taymiyya (and, it would seem, Ibn al-Qayyim) exhibited restraint. For all that he was
inclined to point out the presence of shirk in everyday beliefs and practices, he was
hesitant to excommunicate individuals without due process. His position was that those
committing polytheistic acts, especially lay people, should be excused their errors on the
basis of their not knowing better, a principle known as al-ʿudhr biʾl-jahl (“excusing on
121
wa-hum yasmaʿūna akhbār al-umam allatī futinat bi-ʿibādatihā wa-mā ḥalla bihim min ʿājil al-ʿuqūbāt
wa-lā yathnīhim dhālika ʿan ʿibādatihā, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ighāthat al-lahfān, 2:977
122
wa-ghalaba ʾl-shirk ʿalā akthar al-nufūs li-ẓuhūr al-jahl wa-khafāʾ al-ʿilm fa-ṣāra ʾl-maʿrūf munkaran
waʾl-munkar maʿrūfan waʾl-sunna bidʿa waʾl-bidʿa sunna wa-nashaʾa fī dhālika ʾl-ṣaghīr wa-harima
ʿalayhi ʾl-kabīr wa-ṭumisat al-aʿlām waʾshtaddat ghurbat al-Islām, idem, Zād al-maʿād, ed. Shuʿayb al-
Arnaʾūṭ and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnaʾūṭ, 5 vols., revised ed. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1435/2014), 3:443.
184
the basis of ignorance”). If the innovators continue in their polytheistic rites after the
evidence that these constitute polytheism has been presented to them—a process called
iqāmat al-ḥujja (“presenting the proof”)—then, and only then, are they to be judged
unbelievers. The principles of al-ʿudhr biʾl-jahl and iqāmat al-ḥujja thus functioned as
powerful restraints on the takfīr of individuals.
In one of his fatwās, Ibn Taymiyya explains how an ignorant person may be
excused for saying something that otherwise constitutes unbelief:
[As for] statements that one commits unbelief by uttering, it may be that a man has
not received the proof-texts necessary for knowing the truth; it may be that he has
them but that they have not been confirmed for him, or he has not been able to
understand them; and it may be that he has been presented with specious arguments
that God will use to excuse him.123
Here Ibn Taymiyya shows himself to be much more careful in the practice of takfīr than
some of his other comments might suggest. An ignorant person is not to be declared an
unbeliever before that person has been presented with the evidence showing that his or
her actions—or words, in this case—are tantamount to unbelief. And even if that
evidence has reached the person in question, it has to be explained to him or her; the
person must be able to understand it. In another discussion of the principles of al-ʿudhr
biʾl-jahl and iqāmat al-ḥujja, Ibn Taymiyya explains why exercising restraint in takfīr is
so important:
This shirk, if the proof of it is presented to him [i.e., the person committing it] and
he does not desist, then he must be killed, as the likes of him among the
polytheists are killed. He is not to be buried in the cemeteries of Muslims and he
is not to be prayed over. But if he is ignorant, knowledge not having reached him,
and he does not know the truth about the shirk on account of which the Prophet
123
al-aqwāl allatī yakfuru qāʾiluhā qad yakūnu ʾl-rajul lam tablughhu ʾl-nuṣūs al-mūjaba li-maʿrifat al-
ḥaqq wa-qad takūnu ʿindahu wa-lam tuthbat ʿindahu aw lam yatamakkan min fahmihā wa-qad yakūnu qad
ʿuriḍat lahu shubuhāt yaʿdhiruhu ʾllāh bihā, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 23:346.
185
fought the polytheists, then he is not to be judged an unbeliever, especially since
this shirk has become widespread among those who affiliate with Islam.124
The key point here is that Ibn Taymiyya justifies his restraint on the grounds that shirk
“has become widespread” (kathura). The ubiquity of shirk is thus the reason for
discretion. While Ibn al-Qayyim does not appear to have cautioned restraint in the same
way as Ibn Taymiyya in these excerpts, he does acknowledge the importance of al-ʿudhr
biʾl-jahl and iqāmat al-ḥujja in some places.125 It is likely, then, that when he says that
the majority of the world has sunken into polytheism, what he means is that the majority
exhibit polytheism but are not necessarily to be judged polytheists on an individual basis.
But the sweeping nature of both men’s condemnations surely lent themselves to
unnuanced interpretation.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s lack of restraint
From his perception that shirk had spread widely in the Muslim community, Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb drew the opposite conclusion to that of Ibn Taymiyya. For him, the diffusion of
shirk was justification not for discretion but for urgent action in the all-important pursuit
of eliminating polytheism. Thus Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not display the same qualms
about excommunicating everyday wayward Muslims that Ibn Taymiyya does.126
124
wa-hādhā ʾl-shirk idhā qāmat ʿalā ʾl-insān al-ḥujja fīhi wa-lam yantahi wajaba qatluhu ka-qatl
amthālihi min al-mushrikīn wa-lam yudfan fī maqābir al-Muslimīn wa-lam yuṣalla ʿalayhi ammā idhā kāna
jāhilan lam yablughhu ʾl-ilm wa-lam yaʿrif ḥaqīqat al-shirk alladhī qātala ʿalayhi ʾl-nabī al-mushrikīn fa-
innahu lā yuḥkamu bi-kufrihi wa-lā siyyamā wa-qad kathura hādhā ʾl-shirk fī ʾl-muntasibīn ilā ʾl-Islām,
idem, Jāmiʿ al-masāʾil, ed. Muḥammad ʿUzayr Shams, 8 vols., (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid,
1422/2001f), 3:151.
125
See, for instance, Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, 1:909-10; idem, Ṭarīq al-hijratayn wa-bāb al-
saʿādatayn, ed. Muḥammad Ajmal al-Iṣlāḥī, 2 vols (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1429/2008), 2:896ff.
126
An excellent account of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s approach to takfīr is Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 61-
66. Some of my conclusions are drawn from here.
186
In making the case that the majority of the world’s Muslims of his day were in
fact unbelievers and polytheists, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb borrows from Ibn al-Qayyim. Both
of Ibn al-Qayyim’s quotations above, from Ighāthat al-lahfān and Zād al-maʿād, are
found in his epistles.127 Yet Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb could be even more explicit in his
condemnations. In one of his epistles, he writes, “The beliefs in righteous persons and
others that most people profess today is shirk.”128 In one version of the Arbaʿ qawāʿid
epistle, he writes, “Know, may God guide you, that polytheism is what has filled the
earth, and people call it belief in righteous persons.”129 Toward the end of the fourth
qāʿida, he states, “If you know this, and you know what most people are doing, you will
know that they are greater in unbelief and polytheism than the polytheists whom the
Prophet fought.”130 Here, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is saying not only that most Muslims are
in fact polytheists, but that they are worse polytheists than those whom the Prophet was
facing off against.
Ibn Ghannām, in his history, goes even further in depicting the majority of the
Islamic world as lapsed. The book’s first section (faṣl) describes in detail the alleged
polytheistic rites that were practiced in Najd, al-Aḥsāʾ, the Ḥijāz, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq,
and Syria, among other places, before the rise of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s movement.131 For
Ibn Ghannām, the majority of the people in these lands are without question unbelieving
127
See al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:89-90 and Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:359 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn Suḥaym),
respectively.
128
alladhī ʿalayhi ghālib al-nās min al-iʿtiqādāt fī ʾl-ṣāliḥīn wa-ghayrihim huwa ʾl-shirk, Ibn Ghannām,
Tārīkh, 1:409.
129
iʿlam arshadaka ʾllāh anna ʾl-shirk huwa ʾlladhī malaʾa ʾl-arḍ wa-yusammūnahu ʾl-nās al-iʿtiqād fī ʾl-
ṣāliḥīn, al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:159.
130
idhā ʿalimta hādhā wa-ʿalimta mā ʿalayhi akthar al-nās ʿalimta annahum aʿẓam kufran wa-shirkan min
al-mushrikīn alladhīn qātalahum rasūl Allāh, ibid., 1:160.
131
187
polytheists on account of their participation in the cult of saints. In his characteristically
florid language, he begins by saying,
The majority of the people in his [i.e., Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s] time were smeared
with filth, and covered with the dirt of impurities, such that they had become
engrossed in shirk … They turned to the worship of saints and righteous persons
and cast off the tie of tawḥīd and religion.132
In early Wahhābism, then, there was a presumption that the majority of the Islamic world
were unbelievers who should be treated as such.
This more expansive approach to takfīr was in part rooted in a different approach
to al-ʿudhr biʾl-jahl and iqāmat al-ḥujja. In short, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not appreciate
the restraining power on takfīr of these concepts.
To iqāmat al-ḥujja he paid only lip service. In his view the Qurʾān is the ḥujja—
the evidence—and nearly everyone claiming to be Muslim has received it. In one of his
letters, he draws on some of the ideas—and even the words—of Ibn Taymiyya, but
departs radically from Ibn Taymiyya’s conclusion. First, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb tells his
correspondents that the only person “who has not had the proof presented to him”
(alladhī lam taqum ʿalayhi ʾl-ḥujja) is one who is “new to Islam” (ḥadīth ʿahd biʾl-Islām)
or “grew up in a remote desert” (nashaʾa bi-bādiya baʿīda), adding that for those not new
to Islam the only errors that can be excused are those in an “obscure matter” (masʾala
khafiyya).133 Similarly, Ibn Taymiyya writes in one of his works that “a man who is new
to Islam or grew up in a remote desert, or something like this, the like of him does not
132
kāna ghālib al-nās fī zamānihi mutaḍammikhīn biʾl-arjās mutalaṭṭikhīn bi-waḍar al-anjās ḥattā qad
inhamakū fī ʾl-shirk … fa-ʿadalū ilā ʿibādat al-awliyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥīn wa-khalaʿū ribqat al-tawḥīd waʾl-dīn,
ibid, 1:171.
133
Ibid., 1:457-58 (letter to ʿĪsā ibn Qāsim and Aḥmad ibn Suwaylim).
188
become an unbeliever by rejecting what he rejects until the proof is presented to him.”134
In another place, Ibn Taymiyya writes that “if [the matter] concerns obscure doctrines, in
respect of which it can be said that he is errant and wayward, then the proof that would
make its bearer an unbeliever has not been presented to him.”135
So far, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb seems to be following Ibn Taymiyya’s views on
iqāmat al-ḥujja to the letter. But the next point that he makes in his letter admits of no
Taymiyyan precedent. He writes that “when it comes to matters of theology (uṣūl al-dīn),
which God has clarified and established in His book, God’s proof is the Qurʾān, so
anyone whom the Qurʾān has reached, the proof has reached.”136 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
then adds that it does not matter whether one understands the Qurʾān or not. “The source
of your confusion,” he tells his correspondents,
is that you have not distinguished between presenting the proof and understanding
the proof. Most of the unbelievers and hypocrites [mentioned in the Qurʾān] did not
understand God’s proof, despite its being presented to them. As God says, “Or do
you think that most of them listen and understand? They are but as cattle; nay, they
are further astray from the way” (Q. 25:44). Being presented with the proof and
being reached by the proof are one thing; their understanding it is another. Their
unbelief occurs upon its reaching them; if they do not understand it, that is another
matter.137
Thus for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the requirement of iqāmat al-ḥujja is really no impediment
to takfīr at all. If one has been exposed to the Qurʾān—as all people in the Arabian
134
qad yakūnu ʾl-rajul ḥadīth ʿahd bi-Islām aw nashaʾa bi-bādiya baʿīda wa-mithl hādhā lā yakfuru bi-
jaḥd mā yajḥaduhu hattā taqūma ʿalayhi ʾl-ḥujja, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:231.
135
idhā kāna fī ʾl-maqālāt al-khafiyya fa-qad yuqālu innahu fīhi mukhṭiʾ ḍāll lam taqum ʿalayhi ʾl-ḥujja
allatī yakfuru ṣāḥibuhā, ibid., 4:54.
136
ammā uṣūl al-dīn allatī awḍaḥahā ʾllāh wa-aḥkamahā fī kitābihi fa-inna ḥujjat Allāh hiya ʾl-Qurʾān fa-
man balaghahu fa-qad balaghathu ʾl-ḥujja, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:458.
137
wa-lākin aṣl ishkālikum annakum lam tufarriqū bayna qiyām al-ḥujja wa-bayna fahm al-ḥujja fa-inna
akthar al-kuffār waʾl-munāfiqīn lam yafhamū ḥujjat Allāh maʿa qiyāmihā ʿalayhim kamā qāla taʿālā am
taḥsabu anna aktharahum yasmaʿūna aw yaʿqilūna in hum illā kaʾl-anʿāma bal hum aḍallu sabīlan wa-
qiyām al-ḥujja wa-bulūghuhā nawʿ wa-fahmuhum iyyāhā nawʿ ākhar wa-kufruhum bi-bulūghihā iyyāhum
wa-in lam yafhamūhā nawʿ ākhar, ibid.
189
Peninsula presumably had been—then iqāmat al-ḥujja has taken place. This was not Ibn
Taymiyya’s view at all. As was seen above, he explicitly states that one should not be
excommunicated if one is unable to understand the proof.
As for al-ʿudhr biʾl-jahl, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb speaks of it occasionally but
ultimately pays it little heed. In one of his letters, for example, he refers to hypothetical
persons who could be excused on the basis of ignorance.138 But more often than not he is
highly dismissive of the concept. Typically he speaks of ignorance as something that
cannot possibly stand in the way of takfīr. As he says in one epistle, “Someone can
become an unbeliever by a word he emits from his mouth, saying it while he is ignorant;
he is not excused on the basis of ignorance.”139
The differences between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s and Ibn Taymiyya’s approaches
to takfīr were an issue raised early on in the controversy over Wahhābism. Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s letters and epistles reveal that some of his supporters came across Ibn
Taymiyya’s writings on takfīr—writings that counsel restraint—and wrote to him with
their concern that he was taking takfīr to another level. One of these supporters was a
certain Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm in al-Aḥsāʾ. In a letter, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb tells him
that he has misunderstood Ibn Taymiyya, and quotes three passages from Ibn Taymiyya’s
works that show the latter at his most unrestrained in takfīr.140 The first of these urges one
not to eat animals slaughtered by certain ignorant persons (jāhilūn) in Mecca, since they
are apostates (murtaddīn);141 the second contains a statement branding some unnamed
138
Ibid., 1:429 (letter to Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm).
139
anna ʾl-insān yakfuru bi-kalima yukhrijuhā min lisānihi wa-qad yaqūluhā wa-huwa jāhil fa-lā yuʿdharu
biʾl-jahl, al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:71.
140
141
Ibid., 1:437 (=Ibn Taymiyya, Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm, 2:64-65).
190
leaders of the mutakallimūn as apostates (murtaddīn);142 and the third argues that tawḥīd
in word only, not supported by action, fails to save one from damnation.143
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also combats the accusation that Ibn Taymiyya held a more
moderate position on takfīr in his epistle Mufīd al-mustafīd. He describes this claim as
“the specious argument that the enemies are relating” (al-shubha allatī yadhkuruhā ʾl-
aʿdāʾ).144 He identifies the source of the shubha—some lines from Ibn Taymiyya’s
account of one of his trials—and quotes it. In the quote, Ibn Taymiyya says,
I am one of those most against subjecting an individual to a declaration of unbelief,

a declaration of innovation, a declaration of great sin, or [a declaration of]
disobedience to God, unless it is known that the scriptural proof whose
contravention makes one an unbeliever sometimes, a great sinner other times, has
been presented.145
In response to this, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quotes the same three passages from Ibn
Taymiyya’s works cited in the letter to Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm,146 along with a few
others. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s contemporaries had indeed identified a significant
difference between the Wahhābī founder and Ibn Taymiyya. But Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did
well in showing that Ibn Taymiyya sometimes seemed to share his presumption of kufr.
Generalized takfīr
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb evinced no qualms in condemning the majority of the Muslims of
his day as unbelievers. And yet, in a seeming contradiction, he fought back against the
142
Ibid., 1:438 (=Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 4:54-55).
143
Ibid., 1:439 (=Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 9:35-37).
144
Ibid., 2:704.
145
annī min aʿẓam al-nās nahyan ʿan an yunsaba muʿayyan ilā takfīr aw-tabdīʿ aw-tafsīq aw-maʿṣiya illā
idhā ʿulima annahu qad qāmat al-ḥujja al-risāliyya allatī man khālafahā kāna kāfiran tāratan wa-fāsiqan
ukhrā, ibid., 2:703 (=Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:229, which differs mostly in the absence of tabdīʿ).
Elsewhere, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb identifies another passage of Ibn Taymiyya’s as the source of the shubha;
see ibid., 1:458 (=Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 3:331).
146
Ibid., 2:700, 703-4, 711-12.
191
accusation that he was engaged in generalized takfīr (al-takfīr biʾlʿumūm), wishing to
avoid the perception that he was declaring Muslims to be unbelievers. To reconcile these
apparently contradictory positions—that most professed Muslims are unbelievers and that
he does not engage in generalized takfīr—he resorted to a kind of lexical sleight of hand.
This was to say that the only people he ever excommunicates are polytheists, not
Muslims; thus he never excommunicates Muslims. For example, he writes in his letter to
the people of Riyadh and Manfūḥa, “We have not excommunicated Muslims; rather, we
have only excommunicated polytheists.”147 This statement, however, is built on a self-
serving logic: all those we declare to be unbelievers are just that—unbelievers—and so
we cannot possibly be accused of having excommunicated Muslims.148 Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb advances the same tautological argument in his eight-point version of the Arbaʿ
qawāʿid epistle when he complains that some people claim “that we have declared
Muslims to be unbelievers” (annā kaffarnā ʾl-Muslimīn).149 This verbal trick was a
source of frustration for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s enemies. Ibn Fayrūz takes note of it in
one of his refutations, writing, “It is known that if one criticizes Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and
his followers for excommunicating Muslims, they will say: ‘We have not
excommunicated a Muslim!’”150
It is important to bear this logic in mind when considering Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
more moderate-sounding statements on the subject of takfīr. In one of these comments—
a statement seized upon by some modern Wahhābīs—he states that “most of the Muslim
147
lam nukaffir al-Muslimīn bal mā kaffarnā illā ʾl-mushrikīn, ibid., 1:404.
148
Crawford describes this sort of response as “glib” (Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 61).
149
al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, f. 62a. Cf. Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle,” 168.
150
wa-min al-maʿlūm anna ʾbn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wa-atbāʿahu idhā ankara ʿalayhim aḥad bi-takfīr al-
Muslimīn qālū mā kaffarnā Musliman, Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ, 60.
192
community are not [unbelievers]” (akthar al-umma laysū kadhālika).151 This may seem
out of step with his statements deeming most professed Muslims unbelievers, but one
must remember that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is not talking about professed Muslims; the
umma, in his mind, consists only of the ghurabāʾ. He has reduced the umma to those few
Muslims whose views accord with his own.152
Secondary takfīr and takfīr as a duty
Two further aspects of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s approach to takfīr are noteworthy. The first
is the importance that he attaches to what Michael Crawford has called “secondary
takfīr.”153 This is the requirement that Muslims excommunicate not only those guilty of
polytheism, but also those who fail or hesitate to excommunicate them. Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s famous statement in this regard comes in his epistle Nawāqiḍ al-Islām (“The
Nullifiers of Islam”), a list of ten things that eject one from the faith.154 The third nullifier
(nāqiḍ) reads thus: “Whoso does not excommunicate the polytheists, or is doubtful about
their unbelief, or affirms the validity of their doctrine, he is an unbeliever by
consensus.”155
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was insistent on this point because he wanted to enforce a
sharp boundary between his followers and all others. Many in Arabia, however, even
151
152
His great-grandson ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1293/1876) says
something to this effect in a refutation completed in 1289/1872: al-murād biʾl-umma ahl al-istiqāma waʾl-
mutābaʿa waʾl-ijāba lā jamīʿ ummat al-daʿwa. See Āl al-Shaykh, Miṣbāḥ al-ẓalām fī ʾl-radd ʿalā man
kadhaba ʿalā ʾl-shaykh al-imām, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Zīr Āl Ḥamad (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima,
1434/2013), 223. The idea here is that the umma is equivalent to the ghurabāʾ.
153
Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 66.
154
See al-Durar al-saniyya, 10:91-93.
155
man lam yukaffir al-mushrikīn aw shakka fī kufrihim aw ṣaḥḥaḥa madhhabahum kafara ijmāʿan, ibid.,
10:91.
193
those sympathetic to Wahhābism, appear to have looked skeptically upon this principle,
and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is found defending it repeatedly. In most cases he does so by
referring to a single passage in al-Ḥajjāwī’s Iqnāʿ, a passage that is a quote from Ibn
Taymiyya.156 Here Ibn Taymiyya says of anyone claiming that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the
fourth caliph in Sunnī Islam, is a god or prophet, “there is no doubt about his unbelief;
nay, there is no doubt about the unbelief of those who temporize in excommunicating
him.”157 Unlike some of Ibn Taymiyya’s other ideas, the principle of secondary takfīr is
one that al-Ḥajjāwī endorses. In fact, a statement in the Iqnāʿ—in al-Ḥajjāwī’s own
words, not Ibn Taymiyya’s—is almost identical to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s third
nullifier.158 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb therefore seems to have taken this principle from al-
Ḥajjāwī. It is not an innovation, though Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s emphasis on it may be
counted as one.159
The second noteworthy aspect of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s approach to takfīr is his
imposition of it as a duty on his followers. Declaring the opponents of Wahhabism to be
unbelievers was not just a practice in Wahhābism; it was a stated requirement. One had to
do it in order to qualify as a Muslim, as is seen in nullifier number three of the Nawāqiḍ
al-Islām (“Whoso does not excommunicate the polytheists…”). The requirement of takfīr
is often linked in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s works to Q. 2:256, which reads, “So whoever
156
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:393, 417.
157
fa-lā shakka fī kufr hādhā bal lā shakka fī kufr man tawaqqafa fī takfīrihi, al-Ḥajjāwī, Iqnāʿ, 4:289 (=Ibn
Taymiyya, al-Ṣārim al-maslūl ʿalā shātim al-Rasūl, ed. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥalwānī and
Muḥammad Kabīr Shawdrī, 3 vols. (al-Dammām: Ramādī lil-Nashr, 1417/1997), 3:1108).
158
al-Ḥajjāwī, Iqnāʿ, 4:286: [wa-man] lam yukaffir man dāna bi-ghayr al-Islām kaʾl-Naṣārā aw shakka fī
kufrihim aw ṣaḥḥaḥa madhhabahum … fa-huwa kāfir.
159
Recent debates within the Islamic State over Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s third nullifier have yielded
numerous quotations of Muslim scholars who endorsed some version of secondary takfīr, including Abū
Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh (d. 193/809), al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149), and al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277). See Abū
Yaʿqūb al-Maqdisī, al-Bāʿith ʿalā itmām al-nāqiḍ al-thālith, Maktab al-Buḥūth waʾl-Dirāsāt, 1439/2017,
10ff. The origins and history of this doctrine bear further investigation.
194
disbelieves in idols (ṭāghūt) and believes in God has lain hold of the firmest bond.”160
The word ṭāghūt, translated here as “idols,” has a more specific signification for Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb. In an epistle on the word, he defines ṭāghūt as “anything that is worshipped
apart from God” (kull mā ʿubida min dūn Allāh), and identifies five chief forms (ruʾūs):
Satan (al-shayṭān), a tyrannical ruler (al-ḥākim al-jāʾir), one who judges by other than
what God has revealed (alladhī yaḥkumu bi-ghayr mā anzala ʾllāh), one who claims
knowledge of the unseen (alladhī yaddaʿī ʿilm al-ghayb), and one who is willingly
worshipped apart from God (alladhī yuʿbadu min dūn Allāh wa-huwa rāḍin biʾl-
ʿibāda).161 This last form of ṭāghūt is that which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb accuses some of his
contemporaries, such as the saints of al-Kharj, of being. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb invokes Q.
2:256 to argue that God has mandated the excommunication of ṭāghūt and its partisans.
In his epistle on ṭāghūt, he describes al-kufr biʾl-ṭāghūt in these terms: “that you believe
in the wrongness of worshipping other than God and eschew it and hate it, and that you
declare its partisans to be unbelievers and show them enmity.”162
As is seen here, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb mixes the duty of takfīr with that of showing
enmity to the objects of takfīr—in other words, with the duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ,
which will be treated next. In this formulation, the enemies of Wahhābism are to be
declared unbelievers and shown enmity and hated as such. A good example of the mixing
of the duties of takfīr and al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ comes in the following short statement in
which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb summarizes his doctrine as two commands:
The foundation of Islam and its principle are two commands. The first is the
command to worship God alone without partner, to agitate for this, to show loyalty
160
fa-man yakfur biʾl-ṭāghūti wa-yuʾmin biʾllāhi fa-qadi ʾstamsaka biʾl-ʿurwati ʾl-wuthqā.
161
al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:161-62.
162
an taʿtaqida buṭlān ʿibādat ghayr Allāh wa-tatrukahā wa-tubghiḍahā wa-tukaffira ahlahā wa-
tuʿādiyahā, ibid., 1:161.
195
for the sake of it, and to excommunicate those who do not practice it. The second is
to warn against the association of other beings in the worship of God, to be harsh in
this, to show enmity for the sake of it, and to excommunicate those who practice
it.163
While takfīr comes at the end of this list of duties, it is best understood as prior to
showing enmity. Takfīr is what defines the targets of enmity.
Al-Walāʾ waʾl-Barāʾ
In Ibn Taymiyya’s writings, takfīr does not often appear as a duty incumbent upon
Muslims; al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, however, does. Most typically, it is presented as one of the
conditions of the proper worship of God—in other words, as one of the constituent
elements of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya.
The requirements of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya
Statements to the effect that al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ is a part of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya abound in
Ibn Taymiyya’s works. In one place, for example, he writes, “This tawḥīd [i.e., tawḥīd al-
ulūhiyya] is the worship of God alone without partner … It comprises obeying Him and
obeying His Messenger, and showing loyalty to His allies and showing enmity to His
enemies.”164 The words “showing loyalty” (muwālāt) and “showing enmity” (muʿādāt)
are indicative of the duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ. Ibn Taymiyya states similarly elsewhere
that “al-tawḥīd al-ilāhī [i.e., tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya] … is the worship of Him alone without
163
aṣl dīn al-Islām wa-qāʿidatuhu amrān al-awwal al-amr bi-ʿibādat Allāh waḥdahu lā sharīka lahu waʾl-
taḥrīḍ ʿalā dhālika waʾl-muwālāt fīhi wa-takfīr man tarakahu waʾl-thānī al-indhār ʿan al-shirk fī ʿibādat
Allāh waʾl-taghlīẓ fī dhālika waʾl-muʿādāt fīhi wa-takfīr man faʿalahu, ibid., 2:202, 204-5 (broken up
because it is being commented upon). For another version of this statement, see ibid., 1:153.
164
wa-hādhā ʾl-tawḥīd huwa ʿibādat Allāh waḥdahu lā sharīkha lahu … fa-huwa mutaḍammin li-ṭāʿatihi
wa-ṭāʿat rasūlihi wa-muwālāt awliyāʾihi wa-muʿādāt aʿdāʾihi, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 14:378.
196
partner, obeying Him and obeying His Messenger, commanding what he commanded and
forbidding what he forbade, and loving for His sake and hating for His sake.”165 The
words “loving” (ḥubb) and “hating” (bughḍ) likewise point to the duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-
barāʾ.166
Not all the duties described here as constituent elements of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya
were to be central to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine. The duty of commanding right and
forbidding wrong (al-amr biʾl-maʿrūf waʾl-nahy ʿan al-munkar), for instance, though it
would play a big role in later Wahhābism, was not front and center in Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s preaching. As Michael Cook has observed, it “was not a major theme in the
writings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb” and “had little bearing on the integrity of his
mission”;167 for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, “the idea of forbidding wrong was at once too
general in conception, and too modest in its associations.”168 The same could be said, it
would seem, for the duty of obeying God and His Messenger (ṭāʿat Allāh wa-rasūlihi)—
it was too general and too modest. The duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, on the other hand,
was a perfect fit: the right tool for enforcing the boundary between Islam and polytheism.
It was a tool that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wielded endlessly.
Love, hate, and Millat Ibrāhīm
The phrase al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, meaning “association and dissociation,” or “loyalty and
disavowal,” is not typically found in the writings of pre-modern Sunnī scholars;
165
al-tawḥīd al-ilāhī … huwa ʿibādat Allāh waḥdahu lā sharīka lahu wa-ṭāʿatuhu wa-ṭāʿat rasūlihi waʾl-
amr bi-mā amara bihi waʾl-nahy ʿammā nahā ʿanhu waʾl-ḥubb fīhi waʾl-bughḍ fīhi, ibid., 2:457.
166
Ibn al-Qayyim similarly associates al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ with tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. See his Madārij al-
sālikīn, 1:511-12.
167
Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, 169, 170.
168
Ibid., 175.
197
nonetheless, a concept of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ has long obtained in Sunnism.169 The Sunnī
aversion to the phrase and its variants (e.g., al-walāya waʾl-barāʾa) likely stems from the
fact that these were closely identified with Khārijism and Imāmī Shīʿism. Both of these
sects developed a doctrine of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ related to the outcome of the first
Islamic civil war in 37/657, which pitted the followers of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān (d.
60/680) against those of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661). For the Khārijites, who rejected
both Muʿāwiya and ʿAlī and claimed Islamic rule for themselves, the phrase signified
association with the Khārijite imāms and fellow Khārijites, on the one hand, and
dissociation from all non-Khārijite Muslims, particularly the followers of Muʿāwiya and
ʿAlī, on the other.170 For the Shīʿa, who remained loyal to ʿAlī, deeming him the first true
caliph of Islam, al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ entailed association with the Shīʿī imāms and
dissociation from all perceived enemies of the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt).171 The
Sunnī movement (ahl al-sunna waʾl-jamāʿa), as it emerged in the early centuries of
Islam, condemned these versions of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, and even took issue with the
associated phraseology. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal is reported to have said that the term
dissociation (barāʾa) is a religious innovation (bidʿa).172 It is only in the last century or so
that the phrase al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ came to be widely adopted by Sunnīs, including the
Wahhābīs.
169
More research on the history of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ in Sunnī Islamic thought is needed. The Sunnī form
of the concept does not begin with Ibn Taymiyya, as is sometimes assumed. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī (d.
505/1111), for example, though without using the phrase, devotes several pages to it in his Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-
dīn. See al-Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1402/1982), 2:157-72.
170
On the duty in Khārijism, and in the Ibāḍī subsect in particular, see ‘Amr K. Ennāmi, Studies in Ibāḍism
(Benghazi, University of Libya, 1972), 193-225.
171
On the duty in Shīʿism, see Etan Kohlberb, “Barā’a in Shīʿī Doctrine,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam 7 (1986): 139-175.
172
Joas Wagemakers, “The Transformation of a Radical Concept: al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ in the Ideology of
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi,” in Global Salafism, 81-106, at 85.
198
Yet while Ibn Taymiyya did not employ the phrase al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ173—nor,
for that matter, did Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb174—he wrote about the concept at length, and his
emphasis on it seems to have been unusual. For him, al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, in its most
basic sense, is the duty to associate with and show loyalty to fellow Muslims, and to
dissociate from and show enmity to unbelievers. He wrote about it under various
headings, including al-walāya waʾl-ʿadāwa (“association and enmity,” or “loyalty and
enmity”)175 and al-maḥabba (“love”).176 The key words in his conception of the duty are
muwālāt/walāya/walāʾ ( “association” or “loyalty”), muʿādāt/ʿadāwa/ʿadāʾ ( “enmity”),
ḥubb/maḥabba (“love”), and bughḍ (“hatred”). Muwālāt corresponds to and is rooted in
ḥubb, while ʿadāwa corresponds to and is root in bughḍ177 As he explains, “Association
is against enmity. The origin of association is love and nearness, while the origin of
enmity is hatred and distance.”178 All of these words come together in a ḥadīth: “The
firmest of the bonds of faith is showing loyalty for the sake of God and showing enmity
for the sake of God, and loving for the sake of God and hating for the sake of God.”179
From ḥadīths like this one and certain Qurʾānic verses comes the distinctive language of
al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ. Such phrases as “association for the sake of God” (al-muwālāt fī
ʾllāh) and “love for the sake of God” (al-ḥubb fī ʾllāh), on the one side, and “enmity for
173
Ibn al-Qayyim uses the phrase at least once (Madārij al-sālikīn, 1:513). Ibn Taymiyya nearly uses it in
his statement, fa-lā walā’a lillāh illā biʾl-barāʾa min ʿaduww Allāh wa-rasūlihi. See Ibn Taymiyya, Qāʿida
fī ʾl-maḥabba, ed. Fawwāz Aḥmad Zamurlī (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1420/1999), 163.
174
The phrase is found in an epistle attributed to him (al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:117), but al-ʿUthaymīn casts
doubt on the epistle’s attribution (Buḥūth wa-taʿlīqāt, 37).
175
176
Idem, Qāʿida fī ʾl-maḥabba.
177
aṣl al-muwālāt huwa ʾl-maḥabba wa-aṣl al-muʿādāt huwa ʾl-bughḍ, ibid., 273.
178
waʾl-walāya ḍidd al-ʿadāwa wa-aṣl al-walāya al-maḥabba waʾl-qurb wa-aṣl al-ʿadāwa al-bughḍ waʾl-
buʿd, idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 11:161-62.
179
awthaq ʿurā ʾl-īmān al-muwālāt fī ʾllāh waʾl-muʿādāt fī ʾllāh waʾl-ḥubb fī ʾllāh waʾl-bughḍ fī ʾllāh. For
the ḥadīth as worded, see Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, Silsilat al-aḥādīth al-ṣaḥīḥa wa-shayʾ min
fiqhihā wa-fawāʾidihā, 7 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1415-22/1995-2002), 2:698-700 (no. 998).
The more common phrasing is awthaq ʿurā ʾl-īmān al-ḥubb fī ʾllāh waʾl-bughḍ fī ʾllāh.
199
the sake of God” (al-muʿādāt fī ʾllāh) and “hate for the sake of God” (al-bughḍ fī ʾllāh),
on the other, all point in one way or another to the duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ. The term
barāʾ/barāʾa, meaning “dissociation” or “disavowal,” also appears in the company of
hatred and enmity and is close in meaning.
According to Ibn Taymiyya, what al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ requires in practical terms
is that Muslims love that which God loves and associate with that with which God
associates; contrariwise, it requires them to hate that which God hates and show enmity
to that to which God shows enmity.180 Ibn Taymiyya speaks harshly of those neglecting
these requirements. As he notes in a fatwā, “One should know that a believer must be
shown loyalty even if he wrongs you and oppresses you, and an unbeliever must be
shown enmity even if he gives to you and is kind to you.”181 Ibn al-Qayyim’s language in
this regard could be equally severe. In Madārij al-sālikīn, after condemning the
polytheism of the cult of saints, he writes:
None is saved from the snare of this greater polytheism but he who devotes his
tawḥīd exclusively to God, shows enmity to the polytheists for the sake of God,
draws near to God by hating them, takes God as his sole protector and deity and
object of worship, and thus devotes his love exclusively to Him.182
When it comes to flawed Muslims, however, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim are far
less harsh. As Ibn Taymiyya says, a sinner deserves loyalty “in proportion to the good
that is in him” (bi-qadr mā fīhi min al-khayr), and enmity “in proportion to the bad that is
in him” (bi-qadr mā fīhi min al-sharr).183
180
Ibn Taymiyya, Qāʿida fī ʾl-maḥabba, 162.
181
wa-l-yaʿlama anna ʾl-muʾmin tajibu muwālātuhu wa-in ẓalamak waʾʿtadā ʿalayka waʾl-kāfir tajibu
muʿādātuhu wa-in aʿṭāka wa-aḥsana ilayka, idem, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 28:209.
182
wa-mā najā min sharak hādhā ʾl-shirk al-akbar illā man jarrada tawḥīdahu lillāh wa-ʿādā ʾl-mushrikīn
fī ʾllāh wa-taqarraba bi-maqtihim ilā ʾllāh waʾttakhadha ʾllāh waḥdahu waliyyahu wa-ilāhahu wa-
maʿbūdahu fa-jarrada ḥubbahu lillāh, Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, 2:929.
183
200
Another key phrase in Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ is
Millat Ibrāhīm (“the Religion of Abraham”), a Qurʾānic term that he associates with the
negative aspect of the duty—that is, the duty to dissociate from the unbelievers, hate
them, and show them enmity.184 In the Qurʾān, Abraham appears as the paradigmatic
example of this behavior. The most oft-cited verse in this regard is Q. 60:4, in which God
declares,
You have had a good example in Abraham, and those with him, when they said to
their people, “We dissociate from you and that which you serve apart from God.
We disbelieve in you, and between us and you enmity and hatred have shown
themselves forever, until you believe in God alone.”185
Since the Prophet Abraham was a good example (uswa ḥasana) of the duty to dissociate
from, hate, and show enmity to the unbelievers, Ibn Taymiyya often uses the phrase
Millat Ibrāhīm as a shorthand for it. “God commanded him,” Ibn Taymiyya writes of
Abraham, “to dissociate from everything that is worshipped apart from Him. This is the
Religion of Abraham, the friend [of God].”186 Ibn Taymiyya would also stress that Millat
Ibrāhīm entails not just dissociation from what is worshipped, but also dissociation from
the worshippers, as Q. 60:4 suggests (“We dissociate from you and that which you serve
apart from God”). He writes that “this dissociation from it [i.e., polytheism] includes the
polytheists” (wa-tabarrīhi hādhā yatanāwalu ʾl-mushrikīn), not just polytheism.187
Because dissociation formed a part of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, Ibn Taymiyya would write that
Abraham “fulfilled,” or put into action, “this tawḥīd” (ḥaqqaqa hādhā ʾl-tawḥīd).188
184
See, for example, ibid., 16:546, 28:32; idem, Qāʿida fī ʾl-maḥabba, 158.
185
qad kānat lakum uswatun ḥasanatun fī Ibrāhīma waʾlladhīna maʿahu idh qālū li-qawmihim innā
buraʾāʾu minkum wa-mimmā taʿbūdūna min dūni ʾllāhi kafarnā bikum wa-badā baynanā wa-baynakumu
ʾl-ʿadāwatu waʾl-baghḍāʾu abadan ḥattā tuʾminū biʾllāhi waḥdahu.
186
wa-qad amarahu ʾllāh biʾ-l-barāʾa min kull maʿbūd siwāhu wa-hādhihi millat Ibrāhīm al-khalīl, Ibn
Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 16:546.
187
Ibid.
188
Idem, Minhāj al-sunna, 5:350.
201
“It is necessary to hate them”
Like Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also includes the duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ as
a requirement stemming from tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya. But he is even more adamant in this
regard. He frequently states that those failing to engage in al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, and
particularly its negative aspect, have failed to meet the conditions of Islam. For Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, the requirement to show enmity was typically an
abstraction; they were not calling out specific peoples or communities for coming up
short in respect of it. For Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, however, it was something concrete, a
means of distinguishing and separating true from false Muslims. He preached in no
uncertain terms that true Muslims must dissociate from, hate, and show enmity to the
polytheists around them.
The earliest dateable articulation of this doctrine in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
writings is found in the Kalimāt epistle. Here, after explaining the ideas related to tawḥīd
al-ulūhiyya and tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, and suggesting that the present-day polytheists are
worse than the earlier ones, he demands action. It is not sufficient, he says, to agree with
what I am saying; rather you must demonstrate your agreement by showing hatred and
enmity to the polytheists in your midst:
Do not think that if you say, “This is the truth. I follow it and eschew all else, but
I will not confront them and I will say nothing concerning them,” do not think that
that will profit you. Rather, it is necessary to hate them, to hate those whom they
love, to revile them, and to show them enmity.189
189
lā taẓunna annaka idhā qulta hādhā huwa ʾl-ḥaqq wa-anā muttabiʿuhu wa-tārik mā siwāhu lākin lā
ataʿarraḍuhum wa-lā aqūlu fīhim shayʾan lā taẓunna anna dhālika yaḥṣulu laka bal lā budda min
bughḍihim wa-bughḍ man yuḥibbuhum wa-masabbatihim wa-muʿādātihim, al-Qabbānī, Faṣl al-khiṭāb, f.
65a (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:109, where lā atʿarraḍuhum is lā atʿarraḍu lil-mushrikin, and yaḥṣulu laka is
yaḥsulu laka bihi ʾl-dukhūl fī ʾl-Islām).
202
This statement is immediately followed by Q. 60:4, in which the Prophet Abraham
announces his separation from his polytheistic community by saying there will remain
enmity and hatred (al-ʿadāwa waʾl-baghḍāʾ) between himself and them until they believe
in God alone.190 Like Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is also looking upon the “good
example” of Abraham as paradigmatic of barāʾ, ʿadāwa, and bughḍ.
Exactly what sort of confrontation Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had in mind in the epistle
is not fully spelled out, but one can ascertain that it was verbal—that is, not physical—
confrontation. Slightly later in the epistle, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb describes the desired
confrontation in terms of what the Prophet Muḥammad called on his supporters to do in
the Meccan period of his preaching. This was before the Prophet took refuge in Medina
in 1/622, and before God, according to the standard evolutionary view of jihād, revealed
those verses first permitting warfare, then prescribing it against the pagan Arabs of
Quraysh.191 As Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb says to his reader, “If a man said [during the early
period of Islam], ‘I follow Muḥammad, and he has the truth, but I will not confront al-
Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, Abū Jahl, and the likes of them; I have no obligation with respect to them,’
then his Islam would not be not sound.”192 Al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā were pagan deities
worshipped by Quraysh; Abū Jahl (d. 2/624), a leader of Quraysh, is stigmatized in the
Islamic tradition chiefly for his opposition to the Prophet in Mecca. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
is telling his followers to confront the present-day polytheists in the way that the early
Muslims confronted the pagan Arabs of Mecca. This did not involve violence, for jihād
190
Ibid., f. 65b (=al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:109).
191
On this evolution, see further below, ch. 4.
192
wa-law yaqūlu rajul anā attabiʿ Muḥammadan wa-huwa ʿalā ʾl-ḥaqq lākin lā ataʿarraḍu ʾl-Lāt waʾl-
ʿUzzā wa-Abā Jahl wa-amthālahu mā ʿalayya minhum lam yaṣiḥḥa Islāmuhu, ibid. (=al-Durar al-saniyya,
2:109, where Muḥammadan is al-nabī).
203
in the sense of warfare had not yet been allowed or prescribed. In the Wahhābism of al-
ʿUyayna, therefore, it was verbal harassment, not violent jihād, that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
was enjoining on his followers.
Another of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s epistles seems to reflect the concerns of
Wahhābism in al-ʿUyayna. This short work, known as Sittat mawāḍiʿ min al-sīra (“Six
Episodes from the [Prophetic] Biography”),193 recounts six stories about the Prophet
meant to show his emphasis on distinguishing between monotheists and polytheists. The
second episode (al-mawḍiʿ al-thānī) is concerned with the Prophet’s preaching in
Mecca— specifically, the moment he started to preach openly. As the Islamic tradition
has it, after the Prophet received his first revelation, he preached his message in Mecca in
a secretive fashion for approximately three years. Then he came out openly with his
message. In doing so, he began to disparage the religion of the pagan Meccans:
The second episode is that when he [i.e., the Prophet] began to warn them [i.e., the
people of Mecca] against shirk and commanded that they do the contrary of it,
namely, tawḥīd, they were not upset by this. They deemed it to be fine, speaking
among themselves about converting, until he openly reviled their religion and
declared their learned ones to be ignorant. It was then that they rose against him and
his supporters in enmity, and said, “He has belittled our minds, disparaged our
religion, and reviled our gods.”194
What this story shows, says Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, is that it is necessary for Muslims to be
hostile to the polytheists around them just as the Prophet was hostile to the polytheists
around him in Mecca. “When you have come to know this matter,” he writes, “then you
will know that a person’s religion and Islam are not sound, even if he professes
193
194
al-mawḍiʿ al-thānī annahu ṣ lammā qāma yundhiruhum ʿan al-shirk wa-yaʾmuruhum bi-ḍiddihi wa-
huwa ʾl-tawḥīd lam yakrahū dhālika waʾstaḥsanūhu wa-ḥaddathū anfusahum biʾl-dukhūl fīhi ilā an
ṣarraḥa bi-sabb dīnihim wa-tajhīl ʿulamāʾihim fa-ḥīnaʾidhin shammarū lahu wa-li-aṣḥābihi ʿan sāq al-
ʿadāwa wa-qālū saffaha aḥlāmanā wa-ʿāba dīnanā wa-shatama ālihatanā, ibid., 8:113
204
monotheism and eschews polytheism, until he bears enmity to the polytheists and openly
professess enmity and hatred of them.”195 This line is followed by a part of Q. 58:22,
which reads, “You will not find any people who believe in God and the Last Day who
love those who oppose God and His Messenger.”196 The meaning of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s statement is that one cannot truly be a Muslim—one’s Islam “is not sound”—
until one gets in the faces of the unbelievers and berate them for their polytheism.
It is likely that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, in relating this episode, was influenced by
Ibn al-Qayyim, who tells the same story in similar language in Zād al-maʿād.197 We
know that the latter book was dear to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, as he composed an
abridgment of it,198 and because he quotes from it abundantly in his biography of the
Prophet.199 Unlike Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, bn al-Qayyim draws no activist lesson from this
episode. However, in another part of Zād al-maʿād, Ibn al-Qayyim describes the
Prophet’s initial act of public preaching in Mecca as a display of enmity, saying, “And so
he came out openly with his mission, and openly confronted his people with enmity.”200
Thus Ibn al-Qayyim may have cued Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to see the Prophet’s behavior in
Mecca as paradigmatic of ʿadāwa. In Ibn al-Qayyim’s and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
reading, this is not a story first and foremost about persecution, as it is often made out to
195
fi-idhā ʿarafta hādhihi ʾl-masʾala ʿarafta anna ʾl-insān lā yastaqīmu lahu dīn wa-lā Islām wa-law
waḥḥada ʾllāh wa-taraka ʾl-shirk illā bi-ʿadāwat al-mushrikīn waʾl-taṣrīḥ lahum biʾl-ʿadāwa waʾl-
baghḍāʾ, ibid.
196
lā tajidu qawman yuʾminūna biʾllāhi waʾl-yawmi ʾl-ākhiri yuwāddūna man ḥādda ʾllāha wa-rasūlahu,
ibid.
197
See Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:19 (fa-ḥīnaʾidhin shammarū lahu wa-li-aṣḥābihi ʿan sāq al-
ʿadāwa).
198
See Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh, qism 4.
199
See idem, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl, ed. Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Sunna al-
Muḥammadiyya, 1375/1956). For further below, ch. 4, pp. 231ff.
200
fa-aʿlana ṣ biʾl-daʿwa wa-jāhara qawmahu biʾl-ʿadāwa, Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 1:84.
205
be. It is a story, rather, about the obligation to be provocative and uncompromising in
professing Islam.
Prohibiting muẓāhara, promoting hijra
Two additional features of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching
should be highlighted. The first is the prohibition on showing loyalty to and supporting
the polytheists, meaning the opponents of the Wahhābīs. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was keen
to point out that one need not commit polytheism to be classified as an unbeliever;
showing support for the polytheists, even if one commits no act of polytheism (wa-law
lam yushrik), was enough to put one beyond the pale.201 As he warns Sulaymān ibn
Suḥaym in a letter, “Association with the unbelievers constitutes unbelief” (muwālāt al-
kuffār kufr).202 The point is emphasized repeatedly in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s writings.203
The most famous example comes in the Nawāqiḍ al-Islām, where nullifier number eight
is “supporting the polytheists and helping them against the Muslims” (muẓāharat al-
mushrikīn wa-muʿāwanatuhum ʿalā ʾl-Muslimīn), the word “Muslims” here referring to
the Wahhābīs.204 In this way, the duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ functions as a mechanism
for enforcing a sharp boundary between the Wahhābīs and all others. It was impossible to
be neutral; one had to pick a side.205
201
202
203
Confusingly, as pointed out by Crawford (Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 66), Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb sometimes
denies engaging in takfīr on the basis of muwālāt (e.g., wa-ammā mā dhakara ʾl-aʿdāʾ ʿannī annī ukaffiru
biʾl-ẓann aw biʾl-muwālāt … fa-hādhā buhtān ʿaẓīm, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh: 1:338). My sense is that
muwālāt in these phrases refers only to political or personal muwālāt (i.e., loyalty to the Saudi state or to
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), not muwālāt in the sense of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ.
204
205
This is the point underlined by Crawford in his treatment of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ (Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab,
58-60).
206
The second feature is the duty of emigration (hijra) to the domain of Islam (dār
al-Islām).206 In traditional Islamic jurisprudence, Muslims are required to emigrate from
the domain of unbelief (dār al-kufr) to the domain of Islam (dār al-Islām), the former
defined as those lands in which the laws of unbelief (aḥkām al-kufr) predominate, the
latter as those in which the laws of Islam (aḥkām al-Islām) predominate.207 As was seen
in Chapter 1, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was frequently accused of equating the territory of the
first Saudi state with the dār al-Islām, considering all other lands to be the dār al-kufr,
and requiring his followers to perform hijra accordingly. The accusation was not entirely
fair. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not make hijra a sticking point in his preaching; in fact, he
states in his epistles and letters that one can be a true Muslim while residing outside the
borders of the Saudi state.208 However, it is clear that many of his followers did undertake
hijra in the sense of leaving lands dominated by polytheists, and one finds Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb encouraging this in his letters. For example, in one letter he chides a
correspondent in al-Aḥsāʾ for harboring doubts about leaving “the land of the polytheists”
(balad al-mushrikīn).209
According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the condition under which one must leave
one’s land is the inability to perform al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ. If one could not show hatred
and enmity to the unbelievers in one’s vicinity, one had to perform hijra. Subsequent
generations of Wahhābī scholars would call this condition manifesting the religion (iẓhār
al-dīn). In a short exegesis of Q. 10:105-6, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb says that “it is necessary
206
See Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 65-69.
207
These were the dominant views of hijra and dār al-kufr/dār al-Islām in Islamic jurisprudence. For a
detailed treatment of these views and their variants, see Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Islamic Law and Muslim
Minorities: The Juristic Discourse on Muslim Minorities from the Second/Eighth to the
Eleventh/Seventeenth Centuries,” Islamic Law and Society 1 (1994): 141-87.
208
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh, 5:58.
209
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:432 (letter to Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm).
207
for him [i.e., a Muslim] to state clearly [to the ṭawāghīt] … that he is from this group that
is at war with them … even if he cannot carry out this obligation but by leaving the lands
of many of the ṭawāghīt.”210 The only acceptable excuse for not leaving, as Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb says in his letter to the man in al-Aḥsāʾ, is compulsion (ikrāh), and the
compulsion must be truly onerous to acquit one of the obligation.211
Ibn Taymiyya underlined the importance of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, and Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb adopted his understanding of the concept. But Ibn Taymiyya did wielded it as a
weapon against those Muslims seen to be afflicted by shirk. Since he did not
excommunicate them tout court, he did not call for separating from them and showing
them hatred and enmity. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, however, having adopted a more
expansive approach to takfīr, accordingly adopted a more expansive approach to al-walāʾ
waʾl-barāʾ—and likewise to jihād.
Jihād
Much of what Ibn Taymiyya said about jihād was merely conventional. Consistent with
the prevailing theory in Sunnī Islam,212 he posited two kinds of jihād: offensive jihād
(jihād al-ṭalab), a collective duty (farḍ kifāya) on the community of Muslims to extend
the realm of the faith, and defensive jihād (jihād al-dafʿ), an individual duty (farḍ ʿayn)
210
fa-lā budda min taṣrīḥihi … bi-annahu min hādhihi ʾl-ṭāʾifa al-muḥāriba lahum … wa-law lam yaqḍi
hādhā ʾl-farḍ illā biʾl-harab min bilād kathīr min al-ṭawāghīt, ibid., 1:597-98.
211
Ibid., 1:432-33.
212
On which see Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004), 297-98, 363-73.
208
on all Muslims to defend Muslim territory from invading unbelievers. Ibn Taymiyya
refers to both types in his writings,213 as does Ibn al-Qayyim.214
Jihād against the Mongols
The way in which Ibn Taymiyya’s approach to jihād was distinctive concerns the way he
authorized it against the Mongol Īlkhānid dynasty, a nominally Muslim empire that
staged three invasions of Syria between 699/1299 and 702/1303.215 In response to these
invasions, Ibn Taymiyya wrote several fatwās calling for jihād against the invaders on the
basis that they were not sufficiently Islamic.216 Since the Mongol campaigns were being
carried out in the name of Islam, and since most of the Mongols, including their leader
Ghāzān Khān (r. 694-703/1295-1304), had adopted Islam, many people in the Mamlūk
sultanate had qualms about taking up arms against them.217 Therefore, in order to justify
the war as jihād, Ibn Taymiyya had to downgrade the Mongols’ Islamic status. In doing
so, he argued that they did not uphold the laws of Islam (sharāʾiʿ al-Islām): “They do not
wage jihād against the unbelievers, they do not impose on the People of the Book the
213
See, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 28:358-59.
214
See, for instance, Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Furūsiyya al-Muḥammadiyya, ed. Zāʾid ibn Aḥmad al-Nushayrī
(Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1428/2007f), 121-24.
215
Another distinctive aspect of his (and Ibn al-Qayyim’s) approach to jihād was the characterization of
jihād al-ṭalab as defensive warfare. See Ibn Taymiyya, Qāʿida mukhtaṣara fī qitāl al-kuffār wa-
muhādanatihim wa-taḥrīm qatlihim li-mujarrad kufrihim, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Zīr Āl Ḥamad
(Riyadh: n.p., 1425/2004). On this text, whose attribution has been contested, see Muhammad Qasim
Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 265-66, 304-5; Patricia Crone, “‘No Compulsion in Religion’: Q.
2:256 in Mediaeval and Modern Interpretation,” in Le Shi’isme Imamite quarante ans après: hommage à
Etan Kohlberg, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 131-78, at 141-42; and
see further Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī, Aqwāl al-ʿulamāʾ fī ʾl-risāla al-mansūba ilā shaykh al-Islām
Ibn Taymiyya fī ʾl-jihād, Ṣayd al-Fawāʾid, 1424/2003.
216
For the fatwās, see Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 28:501-8, 28:509-43, 28:544-53. A useful
introduction to the text and context of these fatwās is Jon Hoover, “Jihad and the Mongols,”
https://sites.google.com/site/jhoover363/taymiyyan-studies/jihad-against-the-mongols, n.d.
217
See Denise Aigle, “The Mongol Invasions of Bilād al-Shām by Ghāzān Khān and Ibn Taymīyah’s Three
‘Anti-Mongol’ Fatwas,” Mamlūk Studies Review 11 (2007): 89-120, at 97-98.
209
poll-tax or humiliation, and they do not prohibit any of their soldiers from worshipping
what they please of the sun, the moon, or anything else.”218 “They are not fighting on
behalf of Islam” (wa-lā yuqātilūna ʿalā ʾl-Islām), he writes; rather, “they are waging war
against the Muslims and confronting them with the greatest of enmity” (yuḥāribūna ʾl-
Muslimīn wa-yuʿādūnahum aʿẓam muʿādāt).219 What makes the Mongols even worse, he
adds, is that they have allied with such heterodox sects as the Imāmī Shīʿa (al-Rāfiḍa),
the Ismāʿīlīs, and the ʿAlawites (al-Nuṣayriyya).220 In sum, a victory for the Mongols in
the region of greater Syria (arḍ al-Shām) would mean not a victory for Islam, but rather
“the decline of Islam and the obliteration of its laws” (zawāl dīn al-Islām wa-durūs
sharāʾiʿhi).221
In more technical legal terms, Ibn Taymiyya’s argument zeroed in on an analogy
with two groups of professed Muslims in early Islam against whom warfare had been
deemed legitimate. These were the withholders of the zakāt (māniʿū ʾl-zakāt) and the
Khārijites. In one of his anti-Mongol fatwās, Ibn Taymiyya describes the Mongols as
being “in revolt against Islam, in the category of those who withheld the zakāt and in the
category of the Khārijites against whom ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib fought.”222 The term māniʿū
ʾl-zakāt refers to the nominal Muslims who, during the wars of apostasy immediately
following the death of the Prophet, refused to deliver the zakāt, the alms tax, to the new
head of the Muslim community, Abū Bakr. Abū Bakr argued that it was necessary to
218
fa-lā yujāhidūna ʾl-kuffār wa-lā yulzimūna ahl al-kitāb biʾl-jizya waʾl-ṣaghār wa-lā yanhawna aḥadan
min ʿaskarihim an yaʿbuda mā shāʾa min shams aw qamar aw ghayr dhālika, Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ
fatāwā, 28:505.
219
Ibid., 28:521, 522.
220
Ibid., 28:527-28.
221
Ibid., 28:531.
222
khārijūn ʿan al-Islām bi-manzilat māniʿī ʾl-zakāt wa-bi-manzilat al-Khawārij alladhīn qātalahum ʿAlī
ibn Abī Ṭālib, ibid., 28:503-4.
210
fight them as the zakāt was essential to the profession of faith (min ḥaqqihā); they were,
says Ibn Taymiyya, apostates (murtaddīn), since they did not have a valid excuse (shubha
sāʾigha) for refusing to fulfill this crucial obligation.223
Though the Khārijites are mentioned here as well, it is the analogy with the
withholders of the zakāt that was more important in Ibn Taymiyya’s argument, for he
considered the Mongols a similarly recalcitrant group (ṭāʾifa mumtaniʿa)—that is, a
group refraining from fulfilling one or more of the manifest legal obligations of the faith
(ṭāʾifa mumtaniʿ ʿan iltizām sharīʿa min sharāʾiʿ al-Islām al-ẓāhira).224 This was his
purpose in asserting that the Mongols failed to uphold the laws of Islam by not waging
jihād against the unbelievers or imposing the poll-tax. They were refraining from many
legal obligations, if not most of them (kathīr min sharāʿi al-Islām aw aktharihā).225 This
was because they observed not the Sharīʿa but rather the laws of the polytheists (aḥkām
al-mushrikīn), in particular the law code of Genghis Khan, the yāsā.226
Invoking the anti-Mongol jihād
Occasionally, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refers to Ibn Taymiyya’s justification of jihād against
the Mongols in justifying his own jihād against the presumed polytheists of Arabia. The
first dateable instance of this is in Mufīd al-mustafīd, in which he quotes, or rather
paraphrases, one of Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-Mongol fatwās.227 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not
223
Ibid., 28:519.
224
Ibid., 28:502.
225
Ibid., 28:505.
226
Ibid., 28:530. For the correct reading of the Arabic text (as ka-yāsā, not kanāʾis), see Yahya Michot,
“Un important témoin de l’histoire et de la société mameloukes à l’époque des Ilkhans et de la fin des
croisades: Ibn Taymiyya,” in Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk Eras, ed. Urbain
Vermeulen and Daniel de Smet (Louvain: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1995), 335-353, at 346.
227
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:712-13. This is presented as a quotation but is really a paraphrasing. Compare
ibid., 2:712 (waʾl-ṣaḥāba lā yaqūlūna hal anta muqirr bi-wujūbihā [al-zakāt] aw jāḥid laha) and Ibn
211
mention the Mongols here, but highlights Ibn Taymiyya’s example of Abū Bakr’s
fighting the withholders of the zakāt.228 He presents this as the first episode in Islamic
history in which the true adherents of the faith fought those claiming to belong.229 This
invocation of Abū Bakr’s precedent was frequent in his writings.230
Elsewhere, in an epistle on the subject of apostasy, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refers
explicitly to the episode of the Mongols (qiṣṣat al-Tatār).231 He relates that though the
Mongols “pronounced the testimony of faith and prayed” (yatakallamūna biʾl-
shahādatayn wa-yuṣallūna), nonetheless “the scholars excommunicated them and fought
them” (kaffarahum al-ʿulamāʾ wa-qātalūhum).232 The “scholars” in question, of course,
included Ibn Taymiyya. Similarly, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. 1233/1818), Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s grandson and one of the leading Wahhābī scholars of his day, refers to Ibn
Taymiyya and the Mongols in his commentary on Kitāb al-tawḥīd. There he quotes
approvingly from one of Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwās drawing the analogy between the
withholders of the zakāt and the Mongols.233
There is, of course, one ostensible difference between Ibn Taymiyya’s jihād
against the Mongols and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s against the people of Arabia. While both
were conceived of as legitimate religious war against pretenders to Islam, Ibn
Taymiyya’s jihād was mostly conceived as defensive—the Mongols were invaders—
Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 28:519 (wa-qad ittafaqa ʾl-ṣaḥāba waʾl-aʾimma baʿdahum ʿalā qitāl māniʿī ʾl-
zakāt … wa-hum yuqātalūnu ʿalā manʿihā wa-in aqarrū biʾl-wujūb). The fact that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
drew on Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-Mongol fatwās seems to have been overlooked in studies of Wahhābism.
228
229
awwal qitāl waqaʿa fī ʾl-Islām ʿalā man iddaʿā annahu min al-Muslimīn, ibid., 2:713
230
For another example, see al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:98 (letter from Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
ibn Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd to Aḥmad al-Bakbalī).
231
Ibid., 9:394.
232
Ibid.
233
Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh Āl al-Shaykh, Taysīr al-ʿazīz al-ḥamīd fī sharḥ Kitāb al-tawḥīd, ed. Usāma ibn
ʿAṭāyā al-ʿUtaybī, 2 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣumayʿī, 1428/2007), 1:342-43.
212
while Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s was mostly conceived as offensive—a jihād for the purpose
of spreading true Islam. The Mongols were, according to Ibn Taymiyya, aggressors and
invaders (muʿtadūn ṣāʾilūn).234 Thus fighting them counted as defensive jihād. In the
earlier period of his preaching, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did portray his jihād as defensive,
claiming that it was his enemies who initiated hostilities.235 Sometimes he accused them
of being the first to engage in both jihād and takfīr.236 Yet is much more common to find
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others in the first Saudi state justifying jihād in offensive
terms.237
Eradicating shirk
The way that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his allies justified offensive jihād was to say that
they were fighting to eradicate shirk. For this they drew on verse 8:39 of the Qurʾān,
which reads, “And fight them till there is no fitna and the religion is God’s entirely.”238
The word fitna has a number of meanings, including trial and temptation; but the one that
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his followers emphasized is shirk. As Ibn Kathīr relates in his
exegesis of the Qurʾān, a number of the early exegetes understood the phrase “till there is
no fitna” (ḥattā lā takūna fitna) to mean “till there is no shirk” (ḥattā lā yakūna shirk).239
In line with this view, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb frequently glosses fitna as shirk, interpreting
Q. 8:39 as license to wage jihād for the purpose of eliminating polytheism as he perceives
234
Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 28:541. It is clear, however, that jihād against the Mongols was not
exclusively defensive in Ibn Taymiyya’s conception (see ibid., 28:551).
235
See, for example, al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:73 (wa-ammā ʾl-qitāl fa-lam nuqātil aḥadan ilā ʾl-yawm illā
dūn al-nafs waʾl-ḥurma).
236
See, for example, ibid., 4:294 (bal hum alladhīna badaʾūnā biʾl-takfīr waʾl-qitāl).
237
See further below, ch. 4, pp. 244ff.
238
wa-qātilūhum ḥattā lā takūna fitnatun wa-yakūna ʾl-dīnu kulluhū lillāh.
239
Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, 4:56.
213
it. An example of this comes in his answer to a question about what the Wahhābīs are
prohibiting. He responds, “We have barred them [i.e., our enemies] from shirk … and we
are fighting them for the sake of it, as God says, ‘And fight them till there is no fitna,’
that is, shirk, ‘and the religion is God’s entirely’ (Q. 8:39).”240 In his commentary on
Kitāb al-tawḥīd, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh also interprets the word fitna as shirk in the
course of a brief explanation of the purpose of jihād.241 Interestingly, this Wahhābī
reading of fitna as shirk in Q. 8:39 does not seem to have derived from Ibn Taymiyya,
who was inconsistent in his reading of this verse.242
The Wahhābī conception of jihād as a war on shirk corresponds to the traditional
form of offensive jihād in Sunnī Islam (the difference being that traditional offensive
jihād was not designed to be waged against apostates). Accordingly, the Wahhābīs
acknowledged the traditional rule that the targets of offensive jihād were to be presented
with a summons (daʿwa) to Islam before the commencement of hostilities. This is spelled
out in a fatwā attributed to some of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s sons, who state that the
summons, while not mandatory, is preferred.243 In the same fatwā, they claim that the
summons has been delivered far and wide: “Everyone we have fought has received our
summons. Indeed, what we are certain of and what we believe is that the people of
Yemen and al-Tihāma, of the Ḥijāz, al-Shām, and Iraq, they have received our
summons.”244 This was to say that the people of these adjacent lands were fully aware
240
nahaynāhum ʿan al-shirk … wa-nuqātiluhum ʿalayhi kamā qāla taʿālā wa-qātilūhum ḥattā lā takūna
fitnatun ay shirk wa-yakūna ʾl-dīnu kulluhu lillāh, al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:95-96.
241
Āl al-Shaykh, Taysīr al-ʿazīz al-ḥamīd, 1:338.
242
In some places he acknowledges the interpretation of fitna as shirk (e.g., Ibn Taymiyya, Qāʿida fī ʾl-
maḥabba, 158-59), but elsewhere he studiously avoids it (e.g., idem, Qāʿida mukhtaṣara, 92-94).
243
244
wa-kull man qātalnāhu fa-qad balaghathu daʿwatunā bal alladhī nataḥaqqaqu wa-naʿtaqiduhu anna
ahl al-Yaman wa-Tihāma waʾl-Ḥaramayn waʾl-Shām waʾl-ʿIrāq qad balaghathum daʿwatunā, ibid.
214
that the Wahhābīs were accusing them of partaking in shirk and were fighting them
because of it.
The escalation of enmity
Another feature of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s jihād was his linking it to ʿadāwa, an
association that became common in classical Wahhābism. In his Kalimāt epistle, Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb describes the kind of confrontation required of true Muslims as that
which the Prophet’s early followers in Mecca engaged in—that is, verbal confrontation.
But as the first Saudi state expanded across Arabia, the confrontation sought by Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb assumed a more physical aspect. The ideal confrontation grew into a violent
one—jihād in the sense of armed struggle. As engaging these polytheists in jihād became
the normative encounter between Wahhābīs and non-Wahhābīs, the duty of showing the
unbelievers ʿadāwa became mixed up with the duty of waging jihād.
The earliest dateable evidence of this comes in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Mufīd al-
mustafīd, which presents al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, takfīr, and jihād as complementary duties.
Stressing the importance of showing the unbelievers enmity, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
remarks, “Consider what Muḥammad brought from God of [the command] to show
enmity to those who commit polytheism, near or far, to excommunicate them, and to
fight them ‘till the religion is God’s entirely’ (Q. 8:39).”245 He also states, in Mufīd al-
mustafīd, that “the essence of the divine revelation” (zubdat al-risāla al-ilāhiyya)
includes “the breaking of idols” (kasr al-awthān), and that this “is not sound without
displaying severe enmity and drawing the sword” (lā yastaqīmu illā bi-shiddat al-ʿadāwa
245
wa-tafakkar fīmā jāʾa bihi Muḥammad min ʿind Allāh bi-muʿādāt man ashraka biʾllāh min qarīb aw
baʿīd wa-takfīrihim wa-qitālihim ḥattā yakūna ʾl-dīnu kulluhu lillāh, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:711.
215
wa-tajrīd al-sayf).246 What he was beginning to say is that jihād, like ʿadāwa and takfīr,
is a fundamental component of faith.
The clearest example of his merger of ʿadāwa and jihād is found in an undated
epistle from the al-Dirʿiyya period.247 Outlining the duties incumbent on a Muslim, he
quotes Q. 60:4, the verse concerning Abraham’s dissociation from his people, and puts a
violent spin on it:
One should know that if [a believer] is to follow the Prophet, then incumbent on
him are dissociating from this [i.e., shirk], directing worship exclusively to God,
rejecting it and excommunicating those who commit it, condemning those who
practice it, showing them hatred and enmity, and waging jihād against them until
the religion becomes God’s entirely, as He says, “You have had a good example
in Abraham, and those with him, when they said to their people, ‘We dissociate
from you and that which you worship apart from God’” (Q. 60:4).248
Here Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb reads into the “good example” of Abraham a call to arms; the
line between showing the unbelievers enmity and waging jihād against them is blurred.
The early enemies of Wahhābism seem to have picked up on this militant
interpretation of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ. Ibn Fayrūz, in one of his refutations, complains that
the Wahhābīs invoke Q. 60:4 and Q. 58:22, two of the most common verses for al-walāʾ
waʾl-barāʾ, to endorse violence. After citing the verses, he mimics the Wahhābīs, saying,
“You must, O people, show them enmity, oppose them, and wage jihād against them, by
the tongue and the spear! You will not attain faith except with this!”249
246
Ibid., 2:699.
247
248
fa-yuʿlam in kāna muttabiʿan lil-rasūl anna ʾl-wājib ʿalayhi ʾl-tabarrī min hādhā wa-ikhlāṣ al-dīn lillāh
waʾl-kufr bihi wa-bi-man ʿamilahu waʾl-inkār ʿalā man faʿalahu waʾl-bughḍ waʾl-ʿadāwa lahu wa-
mujāhadatuhu ḥattā yaṣīr al-dīn kulluhu lillāh kamā qāla qad kānat lakum uswatun ḥasanatun fī Ibrāhīma
waʾlladhīna maʿahu idh qālū li-qawmihim innā buraʾāʾu minkum wa-mimmā taʿbūdūna min dūni ʾllāhi,
ibid., 1:146.
249
wa-yajibu ʿalaykum ayyuhā ʾl-nās tuʿādūnahum wa-tuḥāddūnahum wa-tujāhidūnahum biʾl-lisān waʾl-
sinān wa-lā yatimmu bikum al-īmān illā bi-dhālika, Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ, 65
(there is vernacular language throughout this refutation, as with some of the verbs here).
216
This violent interpretation of ʿadāwa would remain standard among Wahhābī
scholars for decades to come (though, to be sure, they did not always give it a violent
interpretation).250 In his commentary on Kitāb al-tawḥīd, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh
explains the meaning of showing enmity for the sake of God (al-muʿādāt fīhi) as
“manifesting enmity in deed, such as jihād against the enemies of God and dissociation
from them.”251 Another grandson of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan
(d. 1285/1869), would say much the same thing. In a brief commentary on one of his
grandfather’s epistles, he explains the requirement of showing enmity around tawḥīd (al-
muʿādāt fīhi) in the following terms:
His words, “and showing enmity for the sake of it”: As God says, “then kill them
wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them
at every place of ambush” (Q. 9:5). The verses concerning this are many in number,
such as His words, “And fight them till there is no fitna and the religion is God’s
entirely” (Q. 8:39), fitna meaning shirk.252
Tellingly, for ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan, it was the Qurʾānic verses calling for jihād
against the enemies of Islam that came to mind when trying to explain the duty of
showing enmity. His statement is the quintessential expression of Wahhābī jihād: fitna
glossed as shirk, and ʿadāwa glossed as warfare.
It should be noted that Ibn Taymiyya does anticipate this escalation of enmity to
the level of jihād in at least one of his works, which was published under the title Qāʿida
250
The relationship between al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and jihād in traditional Wahhābī thought has been
discussed in ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad al-Sanad, Juhūd ʿulamāʾ Najd fī taqrīr al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ fī ʾl-
qarn al-thālith ʿashar al-hijrī, master’s thesis, Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd al-Islāmiyya,
1417/1996f, 334-431.
251
iẓhār al-ʿadāwa biʾl-fiʿl kaʾl-jihād li-aʿdāʾ Allāh waʾl-barāʾa minhum, Āl al-Shaykh, Taysīr al-ʿazīz al-
ḥamīd, 2:962.
252
qawluhu raḥimahu ʾllāh taʿālā waʾl-muʿādāt fīhi kamā qāla taʿālā faʾqtulū ʾl-mushrikīna ḥaythu
wajadtumūhum wa-khudhūhum waʾḥṣurūhum waʾqʿudū lahum kulla marṣad waʾl-āyāt fī hādhā kathīra
jiddan ka-qawlihi wa-qātilūhum ḥattā lā takūna fitnatun wa-yakūna ʾl-dīnu kulluhu lillāh waʾl-fitna al-
shirk, al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:202.
217
fī ʾl-maḥabba (“A Principle concerning Love”). He writes that “jihād is a requirement of
loving God and His Messenger” (al-jihād min mūjab maḥabbat Allāh wa-rasūlihi), and
that “the love of God requires jihād in the way of Him as a matter of certainty”
(maḥabbat Allāh tūjibu ʾl-mujāhada fī sabīlihi qaṭʿan).253 The surrounding context makes
it clear that the jihād in question is warfare.254 However, Qāʿida fī ʾl-maḥabba is a rare
text,255 and Ibn Taymiyya does not seem to have drawn this connection elsewhere.256
Therefore it is likely that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb came to connect ʿadāwa to jihād on his
own, not having seen it done before. Perhaps it was not such a great conceptual leap.
As in the case of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb departs from Ibn
Taymiyya in his approach to jihād in large part because of his more expansive approach
to takfīr. His approach to jihād is more aggressive because the target range of takfīr is so
much greater. A further point of divergence is the principal interpretative basis for jihād,
namely, fitna as shirk, which Ibn Taymiyya did not always acknowledge. While Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb certainly found some inspiration in Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-Mongol fatwās,
especially with regard to the example of Abū Bakr’s willingness to fight the withholders
of the zakāt, on balance he was not merely reciting Ibn Taymiyya’s views on jihād.
Conclusion
To sum up the foregoing, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb drew heavily on the thought of Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in formulating the key components of his doctrine. At the
253
Ibn Taymiyya, Qāʿidat fī ʾl-maḥabba, 165, 162.
254
See in particular ibid., 158, where Ibn Taymiyya quotes Q. 2:193 and 8:39 to explain Abraham’s barāʾa
from the polytheists and their shirk.
255
See the editor’s comments ibid., 59-60.
256
As far as I have been able to tell, Ibn al-Qayyim did not make this connection, though Ibn Rajab did. See
Ibn Rajab, Majmūʿ rasāʾil, 3:322 (al-jihād fī sabīl Allāh … min tamām muʿādāt aʿdāʾ Allāh alladhī
tastalzimuhu ʾl-maḥabba); noted in al-Sanad, Juhūd, 334.
218
same time, in some ways his doctrine was at odds with Taymiyyan thought, or not much
informed by it at all, and where there are departures they are all in a more extremist
direction. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb considered Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s brash
disregard for contemporary religious authority as worthy of emulation, but he was more
contemptuous still of established authority than these scholars. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
adopted Ibn Taymiyya’s division of tawḥīd into two forms as the means for
distinguishing between true and false Muslims, but he added to this schema certain
polemical flourishes of his own and presented all of this in catechisms fit for
memorization. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb adhered to some of Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas on the
subject of takfīr, but mostly superficially; he espoused a far more expansive approach to
takfīr the upshot of which was that most of the world’s professed Muslims were not
really so and must be treated as such. Like Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb regarded
al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ as a constituent element of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, articulating the
concept in similar language. But he brandished it at a much larger set of targets than Ibn
Taymiyya did. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb appealed to Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwās authorizing jihād
against the Mongols to justify waging jihād against the people of Arabia. But the more
significant factor was the reading of fitna as shirk in Q. 8:39, which was likely not
inherited from Ibn Taymiyya. Again, the targets of this concept were far greater than in
the case of Ibn Taymiyya on account of the more expansive approach to takfīr. Therefore,
while Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine cannot be understood without reference to Ibn
Taymiyya, it should also be seen as departing from the latter’s thought in these
significant ways.
219
It should also be emphasized that in certain ways Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was
influenced—or at least appears to have been influenced—by Ibn al-Qayyim alone. These
include Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s conception of himself and his followers as the ghurabāʾ,
his view that the masses (ʿāmma) ought to learn the basics of the religion from the
sources of revelation directly, and his understanding of the Prophet’s initial foray into
public preaching in Mecca as an exhibition of enmity.
Excursus: Wahhābism and Early Modern Islamic Revivalism
In scholarly treatments of Wahhābism, it is common to see the movement associated with
the various other revivalist or reformist movements of the early modern period, namely,
the twelfth-thirteenth/seventeenth- eighteenth centuries. Questions typically addressed in
such discussions include: Was the rise of Wahhābism a unique development or part of a
broader revivalist trend? Did these other movements share traits with Wahhābism? The
above analysis of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine helps to shed some light on these
questions.
In the debate over Wahhābism’s relationship to these other movements, the
prevailing view has shifted dramatically over the last few decades. Previously, it was
common for academics to assume that Wahhābism belonged to a broader revivalist trend,
one that it both inaugurated and typified. Marshall Hodgson (d. 1968), for example, the
great American historian of Islam, writes to this effect in his three-volume The Venture of
Islam. Wahhābism, he claims, “inspired a number of other movements in other areas.
Numerous pilgrims who came to Arabia during its ascendancy learned of its principles
220
and were enthused by its militancy.”257 Such assertions, however, were based more on
inference than on evidence, and though almost entirely groundless, they were widely held
for decades.
In the 1970s, historian John Voll sought to give more substance to these
prevailing views, but his efforts were problematic.258 The starting-point of his work was
the alleged existence of a network of ḥadīth-oriented scholars in the Ḥijāz, one of whose
members, Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī, was a teacher of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s in Medina.
Voll argued that many of the revivalist movements in the eighteenth century shared an
intellectual pedigree in this group of scholars. As he put it, “one can place the founder of
the Wahhābī movement in a world of Islamic revivalism that stretches from Indonesia to
Africa.”259 He discerned a link between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and the Indian reformer
Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1176/1762) based on the fact that the latter studied with one of al-
Sindī’s teachers.260
In the 1990s, the conventional wisdom began to shift. In 1993, Voll’s ideas came
under attack by the historian Ahmad Dallal, who deemed it regrettable that such views
had “gained wide currency among scholars of modern Islam.”261 In a detailed study of the
ideas of four reformist thinkers—Walī Allāh, ʿUsman dan Fodio (d. 1232/1817),
Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Sanūsī (d. 1276/1859), and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb—Dallal showed that
each man represented a more-or-less distinct intellectual trend. He rightly dismissed the
257
Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1974), 3:161.
258
See, in particular, Voll, Muḥammad Ḥayyā [sic] al-Sindī and Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb: An
Analysis of an Intellectual Group in Eighteenth-Century Madīna,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 38 (1975): 32-39.
259
Ibid., 39.
260
Ibid.
261
Dallal, “The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought, 1750-1850,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 113 (1993): 341-59, at 342n12.
221
idea that common links among teachers and pupils are necessarily indicative of
intellectual affinities; teachers and students, of course, do not always agree.
In the years since, the work of several others has strengthened Dallal’s critique.
Bernard Haykel, in a book on the Yemeni reformer Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Shawkānī (d
1250/1839), warned against lumping together different reformist thinkers as part of a
single phenomenon, emphasizing that broader conclusions about early modern Islam first
require understanding these thinkers in their own particular contexts.262 Khaled El-
Rouayheb has shown that al-Sindī represented not a broader revivalist movement but
rather a distinct a group of ḥadīth-oriented Ṣūfīs working to upset the “established
tradition of jurisprudence and theology.”263 Dallal himself reaffirmed his argument in a
chapter in The New Cambridge History of Islam, adding to his previous analysis studies
of Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī and al-Shawkānī.264 It was not the intention of these studies to
deny that there were similarities and overlaps between the ideas of the various reformist
thinkers around the eighteenth century. As Haykel observes, both Ibn al-Amīr and al-
Shawkānī were initially sympathetic to Wahhābism, only later coming to the conclusion
that its excesses in the areas of takfīr and jihād were a bridge too far.265
Dallal, for his part, acknowledged similarities between the various revivalist
movements, with the exception of one—Wahhābism. Wahhābism, according to Dallal,
was in a category all its own, having nothing in common with the other movements
whatsoever. Wahhābism was narrow and unsophisticated, lacking “intellectual
262
Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam, esp. 12-15.
263
264
Dallal, “The Origins and Early Development of Islamic Reform,” in The New Cambridge History of
Islam, ed. Michael Cook, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 6:107-47.
265
Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam, 127-38.
222
complexity” and thus “not lend[ing] itself to much intellectual analysis.”266 “Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb,” he claimed, “shared none of the concerns of other eighteenth-century
thinkers.”267
These conclusions go too far in the other direction. However different Wahhābism
was from other contemporary Islamic movements—and it certainly was—it is a stretch to
say that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb shared none of the concerns of contemporary revivalist
thinkers. In fact, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb shared many of their concerns. For example, he
shared with Ibn al-Amīr and al-Shawkānī a concern over the cult of saints (and to a lesser
extent a concern over legal school partisanship). What is more, Ibn al-Amīr and al-
Shawkānī took issue with the cult of saints on the same grounds as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb:
they both adopted Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas concerning tawḥīd and shirk and compared the
participants in the cult of saints (al-qubūriyyūn) to the pagan Arabs of Quraysh, arguing
that the latter were in reality monotheists.268 Ibn al-Amīr, like Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, even
uses Ibn Taymiyya’s two forms of tawḥīd.269
Another near contemporary whose concerns overlapped with Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s was the Indian reformer Shāh Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Shahīd (d.
1246/1831), a grandson of Shāh Walī Allāh’s and the intellectual founder of the Ṭarīqa-yi
Muḥammadiyya in India.270 The Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya, led by Sayyid Aḥmad
266
Dallal, “Origins and Early Development of Islamic Reform,” 6:111.
267
Ibid., 6:113. The claim is reiterated in Dallal’s book-length treatment of early modern revivalism; see
Dallal, Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 24ff.
268
al-Amīr, Taṭhīr al-iʿtiqād ʿan adrān al-ilḥād, ed. Muḥammad ibn Jibrīl al-Shaḥrī (Dammāj: Maktabat
al-Imām al-Wādiʿī, 1430/2009), 35-38; al-Shawkānī, al-Durr al-naḍīd fī ikhlāṣ kalimat al-tawḥīd, ed. Abū
ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥalabī (Riyadh: Dār Ibn Khuzayma, 1414/1993f), 65-71.
269
al-Amīr, Taṭhīr al-iʿtiqād, 34-35. He calls them tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ʿibāda.
270
On Shāh Ismāʿīl, see Marc Gaborieau, Le Mahdi incompris: Sayyid Ahmad Barelwî (1786-1831) et le
millénarisme en Inde (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2010), 93-115; and on the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya
223
Barelwī (d. 1246/1831), was labelled by Indians and British administrators alike as
“Wahhābī.”271 It would wield significant influence on the greater Ahl-i Ḥadīth movement
that took shape in nineteenth-century India. Like Wahhābism, the Tarīqa-yi
Muḥammadiyya was highly critical of perceived saint worship, and employed Ibn
Taymiyya’s terms and argumentation in criticizing it. In his Urdu manifesto Taqwiyat al-
īmān, Shāh Ismāʿīl, like Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Ibn al-Amīr, and al-Shawkānī, compares
those participants in the cult of saints to the pagan Arabs, arguing that the latter were in
fact monotheists.272
The French historian Marc Gaboriaeu has argued that Shāh Ismāʿīl came to these
views through exposure to the works of al-Shawkānī, not those of the Wahhābīs.273
Nevertheless, the similarities between the Tarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya and Wahhābism,
including the shared view that shirk had spread far and wide in the Muslim
community,274 led contemporaries of the movements to see a connection. Muslim
scholars in the Ḥijāz, for example, made a direct comparison between the Tarīqa-yi
Muḥammadiyya and the Wahhābī movement. In a little-known Arabic refutation of Shāh
Ismāʿīl’s Taqwiyat al-īmān, written in 1240/1824f or shortly thereafter and surviving in a
manuscript in Mecca, an obscure Indian author accuses Shāh Ismāʿīl of following “the
Najdī Khārijites” (al-Khawārij al-Najdiyya) in the practice of takfīr.275 Following the
generally, see Harlon Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-Century India: The Tarīqah-i
Muhammadīyah (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2008).
271
On him see EI3, s.v. “Barelwī, Sayyid Aḥmad,” (Marc Gaborieau). He is not to be confused with Aḥmad
Rizā Khān Barelwī (d. 1340/1921).
272
al-Shahīd, Risālat al-tawḥīd, trans. Abū ʾl-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Nadwī (Medina: Wizārat al-Shuʾūn al-
Islāmiyya waʾl-Awqāf waʾl-Daʿwa waʾl-Irshād, 1417/1996f), 20.
273
Gaborieau, Mahdi incompris, 112-13.
274
al-Shahīd, Risālat al-tawḥīd, 16.
275
ʿAbd al-Waḥīd, Hidāyat ʿawāmm al-muʾminīn fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ḍalāl al-mubtadiʿīn, ms. Mecca, Maktabat
al-Ḥaram al-Makkī, ʿĀmm 2283, f. 4a. The manuscript is undated, but one of the encomia is dated 1240
(ibid., f. 40b). On the manuscript, see Muṭīʿ al-Raḥmān and ʿĪd, al-Fihris al-mukhtaṣar, 1:494 (no. 2049).
224
refutation is a series of encomia by eight prominent scholars in Mecca and Medina.276
The collective effort is reminiscent of al-Ṭandatāwī’s anti-Wahhābī refutation back in
1156/1743, which also acquired the encomia of several prominent Ḥijāzī scholars.
All this is simply to show, in preliminary fashion, that Wahhābism should not be
seen as sui generis, as having nothing whatsoever in common with the other revivalist
movements of the early modern period, particularly as some of these movements also
drew on the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. Wahhābism did not necessarily
inspire these other movements; nor did they share an intellectual origin in a network of
ḥadīth-oriented scholars in the Ḥijāz. The Wahhābīs’ approach to takfīr and jihād was
indeed unique: they were far quicker to excommunicate and fight professed Muslims than
the adherents of other movements. But the similarities between Wahhābism and other
contemporary Islamic reform movements should not be dismissed, and indeed bear
further study. Acknowledging these similarities is crucial to understanding how later
generations of Wahhābīs could form intimate ties with scholars in such places as India
and Iraq beginning in the thirteenth/nineteenth century.
276
ʿAbd al-Waḥīd, Hidāyat ʿawāmm al-muʾminīn, ff. 40a-45b.
225
Chapter 4
In the Footsteps of the Prophet:

The Warpath of Early Wahhābism (1153-1233/1741-1818)
“I know of nothing better for drawing close to God than adhering to the path of God’s
Messenger in a time of alienation. And should jihād upon it against the unbelievers and
the hypocrites be added, that is the fulfillment of faith” – Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb1
“He imitates the Messenger of God in numerous, countless things” – ʿAbdallāh ibn
Dāwūd al-Zubayrī (d. 1212/1797f)2
The preceding two chapters were focused on the doctrine of Wahhābism—the distinct set
of religious ideas conceived and promoted by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his
followers. The present chapter is devoted to Wahhābism as a social and political
movement, that is, as the implementation of those ideas across time and space. It
examines the development of the Wahhābī movement from the first signs of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s activism in 1153/1741 all the way through to the destruction of the first Saudi
state in 1233/1818 at the hands of Egyptian forces. The question it seeks to answer is how
the irreverent preaching of a single man in Najd in the 1150s/1740s grew into a broad-
based movement culminating in a vast empire spanning most of the Arabian Peninsula in
the mid-1210s/early 1800s.
The emergence of Wahhābism was in many ways an improbable occurrence;
there was no indication that anything like it was on the horizon. For centuries the basic
patterns of social, political, and economic life in Najd had not undergone significant
change, or at least any that can be reliably detected.3 The religious landscape, almost
1
lā aʿrifu shayʾan yutaqarrabu bihi ilā ʾllāh afḍal min luzūm ṭarīqat rasūl Allāh ṣ fī ḥāl al-ghurba fa-in
inḍāfa ilā dhālika ʾl-jihād ʿalayhā lil-kuffār waʾl-munāfiqīn kāna dhālika tamām al-īmān, Ibn Ghannām,
Tārīkh, 1:422 (letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn Suwaylim).
2
wa-yatashabbahu bi-rasūl Allāh ṣ fī ashyāʾ kathīra lā tuḥṣaru, Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 49a.
3
Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 29-63; Cook, “Expansion of the First Saudi State,” 675-79.
226
uniformly Ḥanbalī, did not suggest that religious revolt was likely; the political scene
remained highly undeveloped, as described in the Introduction, which would seem to rule
out the possibility of large-scale state formation in the area. Indeed, the last time Najd
played host to a large-scale state-building enterprise was in the third-fifth/ninth-eleventh
centuries, during the rule of an ʿAlid dynasty in southern Najd known as the Banū ʾl-
Ukhayḍir.4
It should be mentioned that this rather static picture of Najd has been challenged
in recent years. A pair of Saudi academics, Uwaidah Al Juhany and Khalid Al-Dakhil,
have argued that the settled population of Najd underwent significant growth over a
period of centuries, and that gradually this stimulated greater levels of state formation.5
Attractive as this theory might be—it allows us to see the first Saudi state as not coming
out of nowhere—it unfortunately relies to a large degree on extrapolation from meager
and ambiguous sources.6 But what is really troubling about this sociological explanation
for the rise of Wahhābism is its tendency to downplay religion—in particular, to make
light of what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb brought to the table in terms of doctrine and charisma.
Al-Dakhil writes, “the rise of the movement was the result of a state formation process
that had been in operation for a long time … the movement was not an immediate or a
coincidental response to its immediate moment.”7 Elsewhere, he asserts, “The historical
4
Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement, 45-47.
5
Ibid., 159-63; Al-Dakhil, “Social Origins of the Wahhabi Movement,” Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 1998,
esp. 13-19. Cf. the discussion in Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 89-91. A related argument concerns the
process of alleged “detribalization” among the settled (ḥaḍarī) population of Najd; see Abdulaziz H. Al-
Fahad, “The ‘Imama vs. the ‘Iqal: Hadari-Bedouin Conflict and the Formation of the Saudi State,” in
Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, ed. Madawi
Al-Rasheed and Robert Vitalis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 35-75.
6
Cook, “Expansion of the First Saudi State,” 675-79 (Cook’s argument, which is addressed to Al Juhany,
applies equally well to Al-Dakhil).
7
Al-Dakhil, “Social Origins,” 18. Cf. the more modest claims in Al Juhany, Najd Before the Salafi Reform
Movement, 162.
227
roots of the movement do not have anything to do with religion.”8 Wahhābism, in other
words, ought to be seen as the product of impersonal, longue durée forces.
Yet the conviction and determination of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb himself—conviction
that his understanding of tawḥīd was correct and determination to impose it at all costs—
must not be underestimated, and certainly cannot be dismissed. To all appearances,
Wahhābism during this period was a highly ideological project, and the Saudi political
leadership, as will be seen, was no less committed to it than were the scholars.
A religious explanation for the rise of Wahhābism remains persuasive, but such
an explanation calls for refinement. To that end, in this chapter I intend to show that one
cannot begin to make sense of the way Wahhābism developed without recognizing that
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was following in the footsteps of the Prophet Muḥammad. Here was
a man preaching the message of tawḥīd in what was, in his eyes at least, a benighted
world of polytheism, much as the Prophet had done. A successful outcome would
naturally have meant coming together with his supporters in a religio-political
community, and an even more successful outcome would have involved that
community’s expansion, including its fighting and conquering those deemed recalcitrant
polytheists. Indeed, the main outlines of early Wahhābī history track carefully, if
imperfectly, the origin story of Islam. If the fundamental proposition of the previous two
chapters was that the doctrine of early Wahhābism cannot be understood in isolation
from the religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, the
fundamental proposition of this chapter is that the development of early Wahhābism
8
Al-Dakhil, “Wahhabism as an Ideology of State Formation,” in Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia:
Wahhabism and the State, ed. Mohammed Ayoob and Hasan Kosebalaban (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009),
23-38, at 24.
228
cannot be understood in isolation from the prophetic narrative, particularly as Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb and his comrades understood it.
It is worth recalling that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s mimicry of the Prophet was
repeatedly flagged by his scholarly opponents. In 1157/1744, al-Qabbānī described him
as “the pretender-prophet of al-ʿUyayna calling to the religion of Islam” (mutanabbī ʾl-
ʿUyayna dāʿiyan ilā dīn al-Islām).9 Some years later, after Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had
moved to al-Dirʿiyya and the Wahhābīs were waging jihād against their enemies, another
of his scholarly adversaries, Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, complained that he was mimicking
the Prophet in yet more ways: “He has placed himself and the people of his country who
have followed him and accepted his words in the position of the Messenger of God and
his Companions, whom God commanded to fight the unbelievers.”10 Significantly, al-
Qabbānī and Ibn Fayrūz were complaining about different behavior—peaceful preaching
in the first case, violent preaching and state-building in the second—yet both were
accusing him of imitating the Prophet. Evidently, prophetic imitation admitted of more
than one mode. In the intervening period, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s movement had
progressed toward greater assertiveness and belligerency. In both his and his enemies’
eyes, he was following the path trodden earlier by the Prophet, a path that ultimately
became a warpath. As he writes in the letter quoted above, “I know of nothing better for
drawing close to God than adhering to the path of God’s Messenger in a time of
strangeness. And should jihād upon it against the unbelievers and the hypocrites be
9
al-Qabbānī, Kashf al-ḥijāb, f. 236a.
10
wa-aqāma nafsahu wa-ahl buldānihi ʾlladhīna naḥawhu wa-qabilū qawlahu maqām rasūl Allāh ṣ wa-
aṣḥābihi ʾlladhīna amarahum Allāh bi-qitāl al-kuffār, Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ,
26.
229
added, that is the fulfillment of faith.”11 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb denied being a prophet; and
yet, he did see himself as entrusted with a mission similar to that of Muḥammad. As we
saw in Chapter 2, he saw his knowledge of tawḥīd as a blessing (khayr) entrusted to him
by God;12 it was his duty to share this blessing with those around him.13
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s supporters, including Ibn Ghannām, depicted him in
pseudo-prophetic terms. In his little-known creedal work al-ʿIqd al-thamīn, completed in
1216/1801, Ibn Ghannām gives a short account of the rise of Wahhābism, which is
prefaced by an account of the rise of Islam.14 He describes the Prophet’s career, including
his call to tawḥīd in an environment afflicted by shirk, the hostility that this engendered,
and the warfare and political success that followed. Next, he explains how things went
wrong with the introduction of change (taghyīr) and innovations (bidaʿ) in the religion,
especially after the sixth/twelfth century. The situation continued to deteriorate until, in
the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth century, God “expanded the breast of one whom He won
over to Islam and whom He guided, lay bare to him the ways of His instruction and His
guidance, and made clear to him the path of guidance.”15 In the Qurʾān, the Prophet is the
one whose breast was expanded by God (a-lam nashraḥ laka ṣadraka; Q. 94:1), but here,
of course, it is Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of whom Ibn Ghannām is speaking. It was by means
11
12
See above, ch. 2, p. 106.
13
Of course, prophetic mimicry is not unique to Wahhābism; traditionally, imitating the Prophet is highly
commendable and meritorious in Islam. Furthermore, Wahhābism is not the only Islamic revivalist
movement that has sought to imitate certain aspects of early Islam. For example, as Murray Last has written
of ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad Fūdī (d. 1232/1817), the leader of a revivalist movement in present-day
northern Nigeria, “ʿUthmān’s policy was to imitate closely the actions of the Prophet. Even the major
battles that ʿUthmān’s forces fought were compared with Muḥammad’s: their Tabkin Kwotto was the
Prophet’s Badr (a first major battle against the Meccans, in 2/624), and their Tsuntsua was his Uḥud (a
second battle against the Meccans, in 3/625)”; see EI3, s.v. “Fūdī, ʿUthmān b. Muḥammad (Last).
14
Ibn Ghannām, al-ʿIqd al-thamīn, 17-28.
15
fa-sharaḥa ʾllāh ṣadr man waffaqahu lil-Islām wa-hadāhu wa-abāna lahu sunan rushdihi wa-hudāhu
wa-awḍaḥa lahu sabīl al-hudā, ibid., 24.
230
of him that “God erased the darkness of polytheism and skepticism and doubt” that had
overtaken the world.16 Ibn Ghannām proceeds to describe his activities in the same terms
that he used to describe the Prophet’s—preaching, then hostility, and finally warfare and
political success. The message here is clear: Wahhābism is the revival of early Islam, as
well as its reenactment.
While Ibn Ghannām’s words should of course be read with caution, his basic
point about prophetic reenactment is instructive. Wahhābism, as the following argues,
developed according to four distinct stages in the direction of greater confrontation and
aggressiveness—four stages that the Prophet and his followers can also be seen to have
traversed. That trend continued following the death of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in 1206/1792,
as the first Saudi state pursued an expansionary course reminiscent of that of the early
caliphate.17
The Prophet’s Path
To understand how early Wahhābism developed, then, it is necessary first to become
acquainted with the narrative of early Islam as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb understood it. The
most valuable source in this regard is his brief biography of the Prophet, Mukhtaṣar sīrat
al-rasūl.18 While in large part based on the well-known sīra by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150/767f) in
the recension of Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833), Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s book also draws on a
number of other sources, including Ibn al-Qayyim’s Zād al-maʿād, a book of prophetic
16
azāla ʾllāh taʿālā bihi ẓalām al-shirk waʾl-shakk waʾl-irtiyāb, ibid.
17
For a comprehensive treatment of the first Saudi state, see Vasilliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 83-155.
18
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl. Two valuable studies of this work are Martin Riexinger,
“Rendering Muḥammad Human Again: The Prophetology of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1703–
1792),” Numen 60 (2013): 103-18; idem, “‘Der Islam begann als Fremder, und als Fremder wird er
wiederkehren’: Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhābs Prophetenbiographie Muḫtaṣar sīrat ar-rasūl als
Programm und Propaganda,” Die Welt des Islams 55 (2015): 1-61.
231
guidance. This is a particularly important text, as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb portrays the career
of the Prophet Muḥammad with reference to Zād al-maʿād.
In Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s portrayal, the Prophet’s career exhibits a multi-stage
progression. The first stage was in Mecca and lasted three years, during which the
Prophet preached in a secretive fashion. He proceeded cautiously, delivering his message
only among a small circle of individuals. After three years of this, he was commanded by
God to preach in an open and provocative fashion. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quotes the
following statement from Zād al-maʿād: “The Messenger of God called to God furtively
for three years. Then it was revealed to him, ‘Come out with what you are commanded
and turn away from the polytheists (Q. 15:94).’”19 The passage continues, in the original
of Zād al-maʿād, “And so he came out openly with his mission, and openly confronted
his people with enmity” (fa-aʿlana ṣ biʾl-daʿwa wa-jāhara qawmahu biʾl-ʿadāwa).20
This was the beginning of the second stage, that of open as opposed to secretive
preaching. It was to last some 10 years. The Prophet was still in Mecca, but no longer
was he tolerated by Quraysh, the town’s dominant tribe, which perceived his new
approach as highly antagonistic. In Zād al-maʿād, in another passage quoted by Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb, the Prophet’s preaching is said to have involved the disparagement of the
Meccans’ religion and their gods. When the Prophet was preaching secretively in his first
three years, Quraysh did not object; but when he began to speak ill of their religion and
gods, they grew upset:
People were joining the religion of God one after the other, and Quraysh did not
condemn this until he started to denounce their religion and revile their gods, and
19
daʿā rasūl Allāh ṣ ilā ʾllāh mustakhfiyan thalāth sinīn thumma nazala ʿalayhī faʾṣdaʿ bi-mā tuʾmaru wa-
aʿriḍ ʿani ʾl-mushrikīn, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl, 60 (=Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād,
1:84, with minor differences).
20
Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 1:84.
232
[state] that they neither inflict harm nor confer benefits. It was then that they rose
against him and his supporters in enmity.21
This was, in Ibn al-Qayyim’s telling, a period of mutual enmity between the Muslims and
the pagan Quraysh. It was also a period of trial and suffering for the formative Muslim
community, whose leader refused to cease insulting the religion and gods of Quraysh.
During this second stage, Muḥammad was not yet allowed to use force, either to
promote or to protect his community. Violent action was in fact forbidden by God. On
this subject, Ibn al-ʿAbd al-Wahhāb again quotes Zād al-maʿād: “He [i.e., the Prophet]
spent ten and some years warning by means of calling without fighting and without
[taking] the poll-tax, God commanding him to refrain and to be patient.”22 The original of
Zād al-maʿād is slightly different: “… he being commanded to refrain, to be patient, and
to turn away (wa-yuʾmaru biʾl-kaff waʾl-ṣabr waʾl-ṣafḥ).23 Two of these commands are
references to particular Qurʾānic verses, namely, Q. 43:89 (“And turn away from them,
and say, ‘Peace’”)24 and Q. 73:10 (“And bear with patience what they say, and forsake
them graciously”).25 Several more verses are traditionally held to counsel similar
behavior. They include Q. 16:125 (“Call you to the way of your Lord with wisdom and
good admonition, and dispute with them in the better way”)26 and Q. 25:52 (“And obey
not the unbelievers, but struggle against them thereby [i.e., with the Qurʾān] to the
21
wa-dakhala ʾl-nās fī dīn Allāh wāḥidan baʿd wāḥid wa-Quraysh lā tunkiru dhālika ḥattā bādaʾahum bi-
ʿayb dīnihim wa-sabb ālihatihim wa-annahā lā taḍurru wa-lā tanfaʿu fa-ḥīnaʾidhin shammarū lahu wa-li-
aṣḥābihi ʿan sāq al-ʿadāwa, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl, 58-59 (=Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād
al-maʿād, 3:19, with fī ʾl-dīn instead of fī dīn Allāh).
22
fa-aqāma biḍʿat ʿashar sana yundhiru biʾl-daʿwa min ghayr qitāl wa-lā jizya wa-yaʾmuruhu ʾllāh biʾl-
kaff waʾl-ṣabr, ibid., 57 (=Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:143).
23
Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:143
24
faʾṣfaḥ ʿanhum wa-qul salāmun.
25
waʾṣbir ʿalā mā yaqūlūna waʾhjurhum hajran jamīlan.
26
udʿu ilā sabīli rabbika biʾl-ḥikmati waʾl-mawʿiẓati ʾl-ḥasanati wa-jādilhum biʾllatī hiya aḥsan.
233
utmost”).27 The vocabulary of forbearance associated with this stage (e.g., kaff, ṣabr,
ṣafḥ, al-jidāl biʾllatī hiya aḥsan, jihādan kabīran) is important to bear in mind as it
reappears in the accounts of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.
After these ten years of non-violent but assertive preaching in Mecca, the Prophet
and his followers relocated to the town of Medina in a move known as the hijra. It was
there that jihād in the sense of warfare was introduced. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s quotation
of Zād al-maʿād continues:
then he was permitted to emigrate, and he was permitted to fight. Then [God]
commanded him to fight those fighting him, and to refrain from those not fighting
him. Then God commanded him to fight the polytheists “until the religion is
God’s entirely” (Q. 8:39).28
According to Ibn al-Qayyim, the initial granting of permission to fight, or to wage jihād,
occurred in Medina, and was revealed in Q. 22:39: “Permission is granted to those who
are fought against in that they were wronged.”29 As he explains, the jihād spoken of in
the Qurʾān before this verse was revealed, as in Q. 25:52, was jihād in the sense of verbal
struggle (jihād al-ḥujja), and was synonymous with conveying the divine message
(tablīgh). The jihād spoken of here, by contrast, is warfare (al-jihād biʾl-sayf).30 Initially,
this jihād was only permissible, not obligatory, but this soon changed with the revelation
of Q. 2:190: “And fight in the path of God those who fight you.”31 This period of jihād as
fighting in self-defense came to an end with the revelation of verses calling for offensive
27
fa-lā tuṭiʿi ʾl-kāfirīna wa-jāhidhum bihi jihādan kabīran.
28
thumma udhina lahu fi ʾl-hijra wa-udhina lahu fī ʾl-qitāl thumma amarahu an yuqātila man qātalahu wa-
yakuffa ʿamman lam yuqātilhu thumma amarahu bi-qitāl al-mushrikīn ḥatta yakūna ʾl-dīnu kullu lillāh, Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl, 57 (=Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:143, which has ʿamman
iʿtazalahu wa-lam yuqātilhu instead of ʿamman lam yuqātilhu).
29
udhina lilladhīna yuqātalūna bi-annahum ẓulimū, ibid., 106 (=Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:63). The
variant reading (yuqātilūna) appears to be irrelevant here.
30
Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:63.
31
wa-qātilū fī sabīli ʾllāhi ʾlladhīna yuqātilūnakum, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl, 106
(=Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:64).
234
jihād. As Ibn al-Qayyim indicates in the statement quoted above, the operative Qurʾānic
verse here is Q. 8:39: “And fight them till there is no fitna and the religion is God’s
entirely.”32 In Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb cites Q. 9:36 to similar
effect: “And fight the polytheists altogether, as they fight you altogether.”33
Ibn al-Qayyim succinctly captures the progressive legitimation of jihād, or
fighting the polytheists (qitāl al-mushrikīn), thus: “It was forbidden, then permitted, then
prescribed against those initiating hostilities against them, then prescribed against all the
polytheists.”34 In one of his books, Ibn Taymiyya similarly sums up the stages of the
Prophet’s career as relates to jihād:
In the beginning, the Prophet was commanded to struggle against the unbelievers
with his tongue, not his hand … he was commanded to refrain from fighting them
on account of his and the Muslims’ inability to do so. When he emigrated to
Medina and acquired supporters, jihād was made permissible for him. When they
gathered strength, fighting was prescribed for them … When God conquered
Mecca … God commanded him to fight all the unbelievers.35
On this telling, then, there were five stages through which the Prophet’s career
passed: (1) secretive preaching, (2) public preaching, (3) public preaching with defensive
jihād allowed, (4) public preaching with defensive jihād prescribed, and (5) public
preaching with offensive jihād prescribed.36 The trend is in the direction of greater
confrontation and the greater use of force. If one collapses stages three and four into one
32
wa-qātilūhum ḥattā lā takūna fitnatun wa-yakūna ʾl-dīnu kulluhū lillāh.
33
wa-qātilū ʾl-mushrikīna kāffatan kamā yuqātilūnakum kāffatan, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-
rasūl, 106.
34
wa-kāna muḥarraman thumma maʾdhūnan bihi thumma maʾmūran bihi li-man badaʾahum biʾl-qitāl
thumma maʾmūran bihi li-jamīʿ al-mushrikīn, Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:64.
35
fa-kāna ʾl-nabī fī awwal al-amr maʾmūran an yujāhida ʾl-kuffār bi-lisānihi lā bi-yadihi … wa-kāna
maʾmūran biʾl-kaff ʿan qitālihim li-ʿajzihi wa-ʿajz al-Muslimīn ʿan dhālika thumma lammā hājara ilā ʾl-
Madīna wa-ṣāra lahu aʿwān udhina lahu fī ʾl-jihād thumma lamma qawū kutiba ʿalayhim al-qitāl … fa-
lammā fataḥa ʾllāh Makka … amarahu ʾllāh taʿālā bi-qitāl al-kuffār kullihim, Ibn Taymiyya, al-Jawāb al-
ṣaḥīḥ, 1:237.
36
For a somewhat different set of stages as interpreted by one Western scholar, see Reuven Firestone,
“Disparity and Resolution in the Qurʾānic Teachings on War: A Reevaluation of a Traditional Problem,”
Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56 (1997): 1-19.
235
stage of defensive jihād, one arrives at a simpler four stages: (1) secretive preaching, (2)
public preaching, (3) public preaching with defensive jihād, and (4) pubic preaching with
offensive jihād. It is these four stages that one observes in the development of
Wahhābism.
The Prophet died in the year 11/632. By that time the city-state of Medina, over
which he ruled, had begun to expand into an ever-larger polity. The Islamic state
expanded to Mecca in the year 8/630, and thereafter the Arab tribes sent delegations to
Medina recognizing Muḥammad as their prophet and ruler. There was no expansion into
the neighboring empires during the Prophet’s lifetime, but tradition holds that he
entertained designs beyond Arabia. This is brought out in a series of letters that the
Prophet is said to have sent to the kings of neighboring lands, including Heraclius
(Hiraql) of the Byzantine Empire. Ibn al-Qayyim reproduces these letters in Zād al-
maʿād.37 The one to Heraclius is as follows:
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. From Muḥammad, the
Messenger of God, to Heraclius, the ruler of the Romans. Peace be upon whoever
follows right guidance (cf. Q. 20:47)! To proceed: I summon you with the
summons of Islam. Submit, and you shall be safe, and God shall reward you twice
over. But, if you turn away, the sin of the husbandmen shall be upon you. 38
As will be seen below, at the height of the first Saudi state, its ruler sent letters to nearby
governors calling them to Islam, quoting the Prophet’s words to Heraclius.
37
Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:600-9.
38
bismillāhi ʾl-raḥmāni ʾl-raḥīm min Muḥammad rasūl Allāh ilā Hiraql ʿaẓīm al-Rūm salām ʿalā man
ittabaʿa ʾl-hudā ammā baʿd fa-innī adʿūka ilā diʿāyat al-Islām aslim taslam yuʾtika ʾllāh ajraka marratayn
fa-in tawallayta fa-inna ʿalayka ithm al-arīsiyyīn, Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-maʿād, 3:600-1. This version is
based on those found in al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 656 (Kitāb al-jihād waʾl-siyar, bāb daʿwat al-Yahūd waʾl-
Naṣārā, no. 2941); Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 3:1396 (Kitāb al-jihād waʾl-siyar, bāb kitāb al-nabī ṣ ilā Hiraql
yadʿūhu ilā ʾl-Islām, no. 1773). Cf. al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-Ṭabarī, ed. Muḥammad Abū ʾl-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, 10
vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1960-69), 2:649. My translation is partly borrowed from The History of al-
Ṭabarī, vol. 8, trans. Michael Fishbein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 104. On the
historicity of this letter, see Suliman Bashear, “The Mission of Diḥya al-Kalbī and the Situation in Syria,”
Der Islam 74 (1997): 64-91.
236
From Basra and Ḥuraymilāʾ to al-ʿUyayna
Our discussion of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s biography in Chapter 2 ended at the point at
which he returned from Basra to Najd, taking up residence in Ḥuraymilāʾ where his
father had moved. Not much is known about his activities in Basra and Ḥuraymilāʾ, and it
is not at all clear when he left the one and arrived in the other. But there is evidence to
suggest that he was engaged in limited preaching in both towns—the kind of limited
preaching corresponding to the first stage of the Prophet’s career.
In Basra, according to Ibn Ghannām, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was spreading his
message only among a select few (wa-qad nashara lil-tawḥīd fīhā ladā baʿḍ al-nās
aʿlāmahu).39 He was not trying to cause a stir. His preaching is described as having taken
place in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s personal gathering space (majlis).40 People in Basra
would visit him and engage him in debate over the matter of visiting the graves of saints
and holy men and supplicating to them. Ibn Ghannām quotes him as saying, “Some of the
polytheists of Basra would come to me and relate their specious arguments to me. As
they were seated before me, I would say, ‘Worship is not valid unless directed to God
alone.’ All of them would be astonished, and no mouth would make a sound.”41
What further supports the view that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was preaching on a
limited scale in Basra and Ḥuraymilāʾ is Kitāb al-tawḥīd. Perhaps his best-known work,
it is the only one in his oeuvre known to have been written before his move to al-
ʿUyayna. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh says it was written in Basra; Ibn
39
40
Ibid.
41
wa-kāna nās min mushrikī ʾl-Baṣra yaʾtūna ilayya bi-shubuhāt yulqūnahā ʿalayya fa-aqūlū wa-hum
quʿūd ladayya lā taṣluḥu ʾl-ʿibāda kulluhā illā lillāh fa-yabhatu kull minhum fa-lā yanṭuqu fāh, ibid.
237
Ghannām claims it was in Ḥuraymilāʾ.42 Whichever the case, Kitāb al-tawḥīd is unusual
in that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrine is presented in oblique fashion. The book is mostly
a collection of ḥadīth and Qurʾānic verses divided into sections with minimal
commentary. It lacks the polemical quality of his letters and epistles that he began to pen
in al-ʿUyayna. It is possible to discern the main tenets of Wahhābism here—e.g., the
importance of worshipping God alone and the danger of shirk,43 the prohibition on
supplicating (duʿāʾ) and seeking the help of (istighātha) saints and prophets,44 and the
duty of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ,45 among others—but it would be impossible to know from
its contents what its author was trying accomplish. There is almost no overt criticism of
the religious environment of Najd or elsewhere.46 Kitāb al-tawḥīd should thus be seen as
a reflection of the limited preaching that its author was engaged in in Basra and
Ḥuraymilāʾ.
Another indication that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching was limited at this time
is that, as was shown in Chapter 2, he and his father are said to have butted heads in
Ḥuraymilāʾ over the nature of his activities. To some extent his father seems to have
restrained him. One of his enemies, Ibn Dāwūd al-Zubayrī, claims that he did not speak
of takfīr until after his father’s death,47 in Dhū ʾl-ḥijja 1153/February-March 1741.48 Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb appears to have begun preaching openly in Ḥuraymilāʾ shortly
afterward. Ibn Ghannām states that it was in Ḥuraymilāʾ that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began
to amass a following, ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, the ruler of al-ʿUyayna, being one of
42
Āl al-Shaykh, Maqāmāt, 66; Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:215.
43
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, 111-17.
44
Ibid., 165-68.
45
Ibid., 139.
46
Two minor exceptions are ibid., 172, 261.
47
48
Ibn Laʿbūn, Tārīkh, 406; al-Fākhirī, Tārīkh, 129.
238
those attracted by his preaching.49 But he did not remain in the town much longer. In
mid-1155/mid-1742, his Kalimāt epistle arrived in Basra, and the man who refuted it
there described its author as the qāḍī of al-ʿUyayna.50
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching at the end of his time in Ḥuraymilāʾ, and
throughout his time in al-ʿUyayna, corresponds to the second stage of the Prophet’s
career—public preaching without violence. Exactly why he chose to move to al-ʿUyayna
is not clear, but one can assume that the conversion of Ibn Muʿammar was key. The latter
was willing to support him in propagating his mission, and it helped that al-ʿUyayna was
a larger and more powerful town than Ḥuraymilāʾ. The only description we have of Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s move to al-ʿUyayna is provided by the anti-Wahhābī scholar
Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, who claims that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was invited there to
exorcise an evil spirit (mārid) possessing Ibn Muʿammar’s sister.51 When the spirit fled
upon encountering Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the town became enamored of him and wished
for him to stay. Ibn Muʿammar offered him the judgeship, as well as his paternal aunt,
Jawhara bint ʿAbdallāh ibn Muʿammar, in marriage. While Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did
indeed marry Jawhara,52 the rest of the story is a bit hard to believe. What ought to be
taken away from it is the fact that the people of al-ʿUyayna were being won over to
Wahhābism. As Ibn Fayrūz writes, “his falsehood became firmly established in the hearts
of most of them” (waʾstaqarra bāṭiluhu fī qulūb ghālibihim).53 This portrayal agrees with
Ibn Ghannām’s.
49
50
See above ch. 1, pp. 43-44.
51
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 2a-2b.
52
53
Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, f. 3a.
239
Another detail in Ibn Fayrūz’s account that accords with what is known elsewhere
is that it was in al-ʿUyayna that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began sending out epistles to nearby
lands, calling their inhabitants to Islam.54 As was seen in Chapter 3, in the first of these
letters that can be dated, the Kalimāt epistle, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb urged his followers to
show enmity (ʿadāwa) to the polytheists around them, and in support of this requirement
he adduced the example of the Prophet’s reviling the gods of Quraysh in Mecca.55 This
was the message of the Kalimāt—do to the people around you as the early Muslims did to
the people around them, by showing them enmity and denouncing their false gods. There
was no threat of violence here. The epistolary evidence thus supports the conclusion that
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching was at this point similar to the Prophet’s in the second
stage of his career.
The accounts of Wahhābism provide further evidence of this. Ibn Ghannām, in al-
ʿIqd al-thamīn, writes that there came a point when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began publicly
to excommunicate those who assign partners to God (wa-aʿlana bi-takfīr man jaʿala min
dūn rabbihi niddan). In doing so, Ibn Ghannām continues, he was calling to the path of
guidance and disputing the people of vileness in the better way (yadʿū ilā minhāj al-hudā
wa-yujādilu biʾllatī hiya aḥsan ahl al-radā).56 The phraseology here is borrowed from Q.
16:125, which, as will be recalled, pertains to the Prophet’s non-violent preaching in
Mecca. A similar description is found in the Tawḍīḥ of Ibn Gharīb. The latter writes that
when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb returned to Najd from Basra, he came out with the truth and
turned away from the polytheists (fa-lam yasaʿhu illā ʾl-ṣadʿ biʾl-ḥaqq waʾl-iʿrāḍ ʿan al-
54
Ibid. Cf. Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:92, where it is said that this began in al-Dirʿiyya.
55
See above, ch. 3, pp 202-3.
56
Ibn Ghannām, al-ʿIqd al-thamīn, 24-25.
240
mushrikīn), a reference to Q. 15:94 and the beginning of the Prophet’s public preaching
in Mecca.57 Like Ibn Ghannām, Ibn Gharīb states that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was calling to
the way of his Lord with wisdom and good admonition (yadʿū ilā sabīl rabbihi biʾl-ḥikma
waʾl-mawʿiẓa al-ḥasana).58
In al-ʿUyayna, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not have to deal with the hostile
environment that the Prophet encountered during his time in Mecca. At this stage, he was
already beginning to form a community in accordance with his religious vision. As Ibn
Ghannām has it, Ibn Muʿammar ordered his people to obey Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (wa-
amara ʾl-nās lahu biʾl-ittibāʿ).59 Ibn Muʿammar appears to have obeyed him as well. Ibn
Ghannām writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb commanded (amara) Ibn Muʿammar to
destroy the domes and mosques atop the graves of the Prophets’ companions in al-
Jubayla, an area near Riyadh, and to destroy certain trees that were visited by the people
of Najd. The two men, along with a group, set out to accomplish the task. Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb cut down one of the trees himself,60 an act that recalls the Prophet’s toppling of
the idols in Mecca. These events must have taken place by Rajab 1157/September 1744,
since Ibn Suḥaym complains about them in his epistle written no later than this.61
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also sought to enforce certain standards of religious practice
in al-ʿUyayna. After Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s arrival, according to Ibn Ghannām, Ibn
Muʿammar made communal prayer mandatory and levied the zakāt.62 Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb was supporting God’s law (naṣara ʾl-sharīʿa),63 and indeed he showed a
57
Ibn Gharīb, Tawḍīḥ, 1:175.
58
Ibid., 1:229.
59
60
Ibid., 1:215-16.
61
See above, ch. 1, pp. 51ff.
62
63
Ibid., 2:670.
241
commitment to enforcing some of its harsher provisions that apparently had fallen out of
favor. The most provocative act in this regard was his judgment concerning the stoning of
an adulteress who confessed to her crime. After confirming the woman’s sanity and
giving her four days to retract her confession, he ordered her to be stoned. Ibn Muʿammar
threw the first stone.64 A similar episode is found in a ḥadīth in which the Prophet orders
an adulterer stoned after four days of repeated confession.65
From al-ʿUyayna to al-Dirʿiyya
Wahhābism’s success at this time was not limited to al-ʿUyayna. According to Ibn
Ghannām, the movement had begun to catch on in all the major towns of al-ʿĀriḍ (fa-
fashā ʾl-dīn fī buldān al-ʿĀriḍ al-maʿrūfa).66 This is likely what made it difficult for Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to stay where he was. Ibn Ghannām relates that his local enemies wrote
to the powerful leader of the Banū Khālid tribe in al-Aḥsāʾ, Sulaymān Āl Muḥammad,
warning him that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb intended to remove him from power and change
the way he conducted his affairs, including preventing him from levying of non-canonical
taxes (mukūs).67 Whatever the real content of the warning conveyed to Sulaymān, the
tribal chief was evidently concerned by the movement that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was
forming under the protection of Ibn Muʿammar. He ordered Ibn Muʿammar either to kill
or expel the troublesome preacher, and Ibn Muʿammar chose the second of these
options.68
64
Ibid., 2:669. This story is not apocryphal as some have argued. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refers to it in a fatwā
(ibid., 1:503).
65
See Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 3:1323 (Kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb man iʿtarafa ʿalā nafsihi biʾl-zinā, no. 1695).
66
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:215
67
Ibid., 2:670.
68
Ibid.
242
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb took refuge in al-Dirʿiyya, where he had already gained
some followers, including two brothers of the town’s ruler, Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd (r.
1139-79/1726-65).69 Ibn Ghannām records that Ibn Suʿūd immediately embraced the
refugee, pledging to protect him so long as he promised not to abandon al-Dirʿiyya for
another town. The pledge, which was made around (fī ḥudūd) 1157/1744f, can be taken
as the starting point of the first Saudi state.70 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb resumed preaching in
al-Dirʿiyya, to which many of his followers emigrated along with him.
During the next two years, he seems to have proceeded in the same non-violent
manner as before. This changed around (fī ḥudūd) 1159/1746f, when war broke out
between al-Dirʿiyya and Riyadh.71 The ruler of the latter town, Dahhām ibn Dawwās (fl.
1187/1773), had rejected Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching. The war began, Ibn Ghannām
tells us, when Dahhām attacked the nearby town of Manfūḥa, whose people had
converted to Wahhābism (qad dakhalū fī hādhā ʾl-dīn) and acknowledged Muḥammad
ibn Suʿūd as their overlord (wa-lil amīr Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd min al-muttabiʿīn).72 It
would appear that as Wahhābism spread among the people of Najd, the various rulers of
its towns tendered their allegiance to Ibn Suʿūd. Pledging support to the center of a
religious movement growing in popularity would have made sense for these leaders.
Their allegiance may have involved little at first, but an attack on one town could be
portrayed as an attack on all. In addition to Manfūḥa, al-ʿUyayna appears to have given
over to al-Dirʿiyya as well, since it is seen taking part in the early military response to
69
Thunayyān ibn Suʿūd (d. 1186/1772) and Mishārī ibn Suʿūd (d. 1189/1775f) are described as
participating in the felling of trees in al-ʿĀriḍ (ibid., 1:216).
70
Ibid., 2:670-71. The more elaborate terms of this so-called “pact of al-Dirʿiyya,” which was never any
kind of written agreement, are provided by Ibn Bishr (ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:88-89). As they are not
mentioned by Ibn Ghannām, they do not appear to be entirely reliable.
71
72
Ibid., 2:675.
243
Riyadh.73 The war with Riyadh was to last, with some interruptions, nearly thirty years,
coming to an end only in 1187/1773 with the town’s final submission.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb maintained that the military operations of al-Dirʿiyya were
strictly defensive—that they were, in other words, defensive jihād. In an undated letter to
an Iraqi scholar, he writes, in response to a question about why the Wahhābīs are
fighting, “To this day we have not fought anybody but to defend ourselves and [our]
women. They are the ones who entered our lands and left [us] no choice.”74 Ibn Ghannām
similarly states that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not order the use of violence until his
enemies excommunicated him and deemed his blood licit: “He gave no order to spill
blood or to fight against the majority of the heretics and the misguided until they started
ruling that he and his followers were to be killed and excommunicated.”75 True or not, it
was the standard Wahhābī claim that the enemies of the movement were the ones who
began both the fighting and the takfīr. As Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb says, “they are the ones
who started declaring us to be unbelievers and fighting us” (hum alladhīna badaʾūnā biʾl-
takfīr waʾl-qitāl).76 The takfīr claim is dubious, unless what is meant is that Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb made only vague accusations of takfīr at the beginning of his mission, while his
enemies made specific ones. This is how Ibn Ghannām seems to justify the claim.77 But
the charge that the enemies of Wahhābism, and more specifically Dahhām ibn Dawwās,
were the first to engage in warfare is possibly true. The memory of Riyadh’s striking first
against al-Dirʿiyya was engrained in Wahhābī tradition. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl
73
Ibid., 2:677.
74
fa-lam nuqātil aḥadan ilā ʾl-yawm illā dūn al-nafs waʾl-ḥurma wa-hum alladhīna atawnā fī diyārinā wa-
lā abqaw mumkinan, ibid., 1:415 (letter to Ibn al-Suwaydī).
75
wa-lam yaʾmur raḥimahu ʾllāh taʿālā bi-safk dam wa-lā qitāl ʿalā akthar ahl al-ahwāʾ waʾl-ḍalāl ḥattā
badaʾūhu biʾl-ḥukm ʿalayhi wa-aṣḥābihi biʾl-qatl waʾl-takfīr, ibid., 1:220.
76
Ibid., 1:551.
77
Ibid., 1:221.
244
al-Shaykh describes Dahhām as the first person who launched a military attack on the
Wahhābīs (awwal man shanna ghāra ʿalayhim), an unprovoked attack by the strongest
town in the region.78 This period of defensive jihād in al-Dirʿiyya can thus be compared
to the third stage of the Prophet’s career—open preaching with defensive jihād.
What did it mean, in this early period, for a town such as Manfūḥa or al-ʿUyayna
to enter the Wahhābī fold? Ibn Ghannām provides a few clues. The first thing is that a
town’s ruler would give bayʿa, the traditional Islamic contract of allegiance between ruler
and ruled, to both Ibn Suʿūd and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.79 That it was to both men is the
significant point here. In the events of the year 1160/1747f, for example, Ibn Ghannām
describes how ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, suspected of treachery, visited al-Dirʿiyya to
renew his bayʿa to both men.80 The impression given by Ibn Ghannām is that Ibn Suʿūd
and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb functioned as co-rulers, not men with entirely separate
portfolios, one political and one religious. In 1171/1757f, for instance, the two men are
depicted as jointly installing the new ruler of the subjugated town of Ḥuraymilāʾ.81
Occasionally, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is even seen making political decision on his own. In
1163/1750, when Ibn Muʿammar was assassinated in al-ʿUyayna, it was Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb who traveled there to restore order and appoint a new ruler.82 In 1167/1753f, for
example, it was Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb who ordered the execution of a man spreading the
anti-Wahhābī writings of his brother in al-ʿUyayna.83
78
79
See EI³, s.v. “Bayʿa” (Andrew Marsham). Ibn Ghannām uses bayʿa and ʿahd interchangeably. I render
the verb bāyaʿa as “give bayʿa to,” but it should be borne in mind that the pledge is a reciprocal one.
80
wa-ʿāhada ʾl-shaykh wa-Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd … wa-yaʾkhudhu minhumā ʾl-ʿahd al-mujaddad, Ibn
Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:680-81.
81
Ibid., 2:749-50.
82
Ibid., 2:687-88.
83
Ibid., 2:695-96.
245
Joining Wahhābism also involved a town’s welcoming a Wahhābī preacher to
instruct the townspeople in the Wahhābī doctrine and to implement Islamic law. Thus in
1170/1756f, when the town of Thādiq in the subregion of al-Miḥmal was conquered, not
only did Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb appoint a new local ruler, he also sent a scholar to give
instruction in tawḥīd (yuʿallimu ʾl-tawḥīd) and to judge according to the law of Islam
(wa-yaḥkumu lahum al-sharāʾiʿ).84 Similarly, in 1167/1753f, when Dahhām temporarily
adopted Wahhābism, he requested that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb send to Riyadh a preacher
(imām) to issue judgements and impart Wahhābī dogma. The preacher was sent, and he
proceeded to judge in accordance with the rules of Islam and to provide instruction in
tawḥīd (fa-kāna bi-sharāʾiʿ al-Islām ḥākim wa-bi-taʿlīm al-tawḥīd qāʾim).85
As is seen here, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb sought not only to impose his doctrine on
subjugated territories but also to ensure a strict application of Islamic legal norms. As he
writes in one of his letters, “I have required those under my rule to perform the prayer
and pay the zakāt, among others of God’s ordinances; and I have forbidden them usury,
drinking intoxicants, and a variety of prohibited things.”86 Another imposition was to
make the five daily prayers a communal obligation—all men were expected to attend the
mosque.87 It should be reiterated, however, that the main thrust of his teaching was
doctrinal, not legal. The eschewal of saint veneration was the mark of a Wahhābī more so
than the strict observance of prayer. But instituting Islamic law certainly did figure in Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s mission to recreate an Islamic society.
84
Ibid., 2:745.
85
Ibid., 2:695 (qāʾim and ḥākim on account of the sajʿ).
86
alzamtu man taḥt yadayya bi-iqām al-ṣalāt wa-ītāʾ al-zakāt wa-ghayr dhālika min farāʾiḍ Allāh wa-
nahaytu ʿan al-ribā wa-shurb al-muskir wa-anwāʿ min al-munkarāt, ibid., 1:413 (letter to Ibn al-Suwaydī).
87
246
When a town under Wahhābī rule committed what Ibn Ghannām calls apostasy
(ridda), this meant that it annulled the bayʿa and expelled or murdered the Wahhābī
preacher or preachers.88 Such acts of apostasy were a frequent occurrence in Najd during
the first thirty years or so of the Wahhābī expansion.
The Conquest of Ḥuraymilāʾ
Exactly how long the Wahhābīs maintained a posture of defensive jihād is difficult to
know, but one can be certain that it was relinquished by the time of the conquest of
Ḥuraymilāʾ in 1168/1755. Ḥuraymilāʾ had been one of the towns to throw in its lot with
al-Dirʿiyya. This happened no later than 1160/1747, when it is described as fighting
alongside the other Wahhābī towns in that year’s hostilities with Riyadh.89 But in
1165/1752, according to Ibn Ghannām, it apostatized. A group of conspirators, inspired
by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s brother, Sulaymān, arranged a coup and installed a new ruler
opposed to the Wahhābī order. War between Ḥuraymilāʾ and al-Dirʿiyya ensued.90
The conquest of Ḥuraymilāʾ, about two and a half years later, was a significant
development in the Wahhābī expansion for two reasons. The first concerns the scale of
the fighting. The Wahhābīs’ military commander in the venture was Ibn Suʿūd’s son,
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who was emerging as the principal leader of military operations against
the opponents of Wahhābism. According to Ibn Ghannām, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz commanded a
force of 800 men, alongside an additional force of 200 under the command of the
deposed ruler of Ḥuraymilāʾ. In a surprise attack, his army quickly took control of the
88
See, for example, ibid., 2:694 (the apostasy of Manfūḥa).
89
Ibid., 2:679.
90
Ibid., 2:691-94.
247
town, killing 100 men and losing seven.91 The number of fatalities may not seem large,
but is very high compared to the numbers killed in preceding battles.92 This suggests not
only that the Wahhābīs were beginning to wield larger armies than was previously the
norm, but also that they were trying to make an example of a town at the center of the
anti-Wahhābī propaganda campaign.
The second reason for the conquest’s significance is that it came with a written
rationale, namely, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Mufīd al-mustafīd epistle. As noted in Chapter 1,
this was a letter to the people of Ḥuraymilāʾ; its main objectives were to dispute the anti-
Wahhābī arguments being circulated by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s brother and to justify the
jihād being pursued by al-Dirʿiyya and its allies. The justification for jihād here is clear a
justification for offensive jihād. The inhabitants of Ḥuraymilāʾ are described as
polytheists and apostates who must therefore be fought until they profess tawḥīd. “The
people of Ḥuraymilāʾ,” he writes, “and those beyond them openly revile the religion …
they do and say what is the greatest and most abominable apostasy.”93 They are to be
fought on the same basis on which Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq fought the apostates in the wars of
apostasy in early Islam. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quotes or alludes to several of the verses
indicative of the offensive as opposed to the defensive form of jihād. These include Q.
8:39 (“And fight them till there is no fitna and the religion is God’s entirely”)94 and Q.
9:73 (“O Prophet, fight the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh with them”).95
The matter at hand, he says, is apostasy and the duty to wage jihād against those who
91
Ibid., 2:736-37.
92
The most lethal operation before this was an assault on Tharmadāʾ led by ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, in
which some 70 from Tharmadāʾ are said to have been killed (ibid., 2:684).
93
ahl Ḥuraymilāʾ wa-man warāʾahum yuṣarriḥūna bi-masabbat al-dīn … wa-yafʿalūna wa-yaqūlūna mā
huwa min akbar al-ridda wa-afḥashuhā, ibid., 2:712
94
Ibid., 2:711 (for the transliteration, see above, p. 235, note 33).
95
yā ayyuhā ʾl-nabiyyu jāhidi ʾl-kuffāra waʾl-munāfiqīna waʾghluẓ ʿalayhim, ibid., 2:724.
248
commit it (al-kalām fī ʾl-ridda wa-mujāhadat ahlihā); and the verses in question are
among the unambiguous ones (al-āyāt al-muḥkamāt) revealed in this connection.96 As
Mufīd al-mustafīd shows, al-Dirʿiyya was at this point on an aggressive war footing. Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was no longer arguing that the Wahhābīs were fighting to defend
themselves. He had arrived at the fourth stage of the Prophet’s career—public preaching
with offensive jihād.
The conquest of Ḥuraymilāʾ in 1168/1755 meant the submission of the subregion
al-Shaʿīb. The area of al-Miḥmal fell soon after, its leading town of Thādiq being
conquered in 1170/1756f.97 Things did not proceed all that quickly from this point
onward, however; the expansion remained slow and uneven. Even in 1168/1755, the
addition of Ḥuraymilāʾ was offset by the loss of Riyadh, which apostatized after a brief
conversion.98 Indeed, the decades-long wavering of Dahhām’s Riyadh is exemplary of
the difficulties faced by the Wahhābīs in their bid to pacify the various towns of Najd.
Conquest was frequently followed by apostasy. At the time of his ultimate defeat in
1187/1773, Dahhām had embraced Wahhābism three times (c. 1158/1746f, 1167/1753f,
and 1177/1763f) and apostatized three times (1159/1746f, 1168/1755, and 1178/1764).
His conversion never lasted more than a year. Ibn Ghannām records that the nearly 30-
year war between al-Dirʿiyya and Riyadh cost 4,000 lives—1,700 Wahhābīs (Muslimīn)
and 2,300 non-Wahhābīs (ḍullāl).99 The greatest setback suffered by the Wahhābīs during
this period was the invasion of Najd in 1178/1764 by the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿa of Najrān, a
region in southwestern Arabia. A great battle took place with the Ismāʿīlīs near the town
96
Ibid.
97
Ibid., 2:745.
98
Ibid., 2:737-38.
99
Ibid., 2:799.
249
of al-Ḥāʾir, south of Riyadh, in Rabīʿ II 1178/September-October 1764. It was a decisive
defeat for the Wahhābīs, who lost some 400 men.100 In the same year, the leader of the
Banū Khālid in al-Aḥsāʾ, ʿUrayʿir ibn Dujayn, seized on the opportunity to mount his
own invasion of Najd. Most of the towns that had previously submitted to al-Dirʿiyya
now abandoned it in favor of the invaders. There followed a siege of the Wahhābī capital
in which the forces of Sudayr, al-Washm, Riyadh, and Manfūḥa all participated. The
defenders lost fifty men but managed to hold on to the town.101
Despite these difficulties, however, the Wahhābī expansion in Najd was never
permanently reversed. Al-Dirʿiyya quickly recovered and reimposed its authority on the
rebellious towns. It would take a few decades, but the expansion finally succeeded. The
area of al-Washm fell completely in 1181/1767f,102 and the entirety of al-ʿĀriḍ was
secured in 1187/1773 with the final submission of Riyadh. The conquest of Sudayr was
completed by 1196/1781f,103 and that of al-Kharj in 1199/1784f.104 To the north, in al-
Qaṣīm, opposition was stamped out by 1196/1781f,105 though it continued in ʿUnayza till
1202/1787f.106 Further north, in Ḥāʾil, a majority of the people (ghālib ahl tilka ʾl-bilād)
submitted in 1201/1786f at the behest of an army sent from al-Qaṣīm.107 The Wahhābīs
had conquered the greater part of Najd by the 1190s/1780s, and hereafter their hold
would not slacken.
100
Ibid., 2:767-71.
101
Ibid., 2:771-76.
102
Ibid., 2:784; Cook, “Expansion of the First Saudi State,” 670.
103
104
Ibid., 2:855.
105
Ibid., 2:837-45.
106
Ibid., 2:873-74.
107
Ibid., 2:865.
250
New Obligations and Clarified Roles
From the time of the outbreak of the war with Riyadh, it was clear that joining
Wahhābism carried with it a military commitment. But with the embrace of offensive
jihād, it appears that the military obligation became more specific: the towns were now
required to contribute fighters to the jihād. An indication of this is found in Ibn
Ghannām’s account of the events of the year 1188/1774f, when Ḥarma and al-Majmaʿa
submit to al-Dirʿiyya. The towns’ leaders give bayʿa to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb and request a two-year respite from being asked to participate in the jihād
(ṭalabū minhumā ʿadam al-muṭālaba biʾl-jihād).108 The implication here is that otherwise
they would be required to provide forces. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz hints at this obligation in an
undated letter to a correspondent in Yemen. When a person wishes to give bayʿa to the
Wahhābīs, he says, we give bayʿa to each other and explain to him the religion; we
command him to establish the religion in his territory, to call people to it, and to wage
jihād against those who oppose it (wa-jihād man khālafahu).109 While he does not speak
here of a specific obligation in terms of troop commitments, it is evident from what he
says that propagating the religion by means of warfare was now a requirement of being a
Wahhābī. The jihād in question is without doubt offensive jihād. In the same letter he
remarks that Wahhābī military detachments (al-juyūsh waʾl-ajnād) levied in the towns
are commanded to fight those who have received the summons to Islam and refuse to
108
Ibid., 2:804.
109
fa-idh jāʾanā man yaqūlu anā urīdu an ubāyiʿakum ʿalā dīn Allāh wa-rasūlihi wāfaqnāhu wa-bāyaʿnāhu
wa-bayyannā lahu ʾl-dīn alladhī baʿatha ʾllāh bihi rasūlahu ṣ wa-naʾmuruhu bi-dhālika wa-naḥuḍḍuhu
ʿalā ʾl-qiyām bihi fī baladihi wa-daʿwat al-nās ilayhi wa-jihād man khālafahu, al-Durar al-saniyya, 9:244-
45 (letter to Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥifẓī)
251
accept it (fa-naʾmuruhum bi-qitāl kull man balaghathu ʾl-daʿwa wa-abā ʿan al-dukhūl fī
ʾl-Islām).110
One can infer that there were also financial obligations owed by the towns to the
expanding Saudi state. Ibn Ghannām is mostly silent on the matter, but Ibn Bishr reports
that wealth in the form of the zakāt, a fifth of the war spoils, and other forms of property
were flowing to al-Dirʿiyya during the reigns of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 1179-1218/1765-1803)
and Suʿūd (r. 1218-29/1803-14).111 Previously, the Najdī towns levied non-canonical
taxes (mukūs) on their people, as the Wahhābī accounts suggest, and the more powerful
bedouin tribes extracted tribute (khuwa) from the towns.112 But these practices seem to
have been abolished by the Wahhābīs, the need for them having been obviated by
plentiful supply of war spoils attending the expansion of the state.
A brief word is in order regarding the submission of nomadic tribes as opposed to
towns. While the boundary between nomadic people, or bedouin (badw), and settled
people (ḥaḍar) was somewhat fluid in this period,113 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb reserved
particular hostility for the bedouin, regarding them as even further removed from Islam
than the typical town dwellers. In one epistle, for instance, he disputes the claim that the
bedouin are Muslim (anna ʾl-badw Islām) and describes them as many times more
unbelieving than the Jews (kufr hāʾulāʾi aghlaẓ min kufr al-Yahūd bi-aḍʿāf
muḍāʿafatan).114 And yet, as Ibn Ghannām’s account shows, a tribe, like a town, could
110
Ibid., 9:245. For more on the army of the first Saudi state, see Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 132-
35.
111
wa-kāna mā yuḥmalu ilā ʾl-Dirʿiyya fī zamanihi wa-zaman ibnihi Suʿūd min al-amwāl waʾl-zakawāt
waʾl-akhmās wa-ghayr dhālika … lā yuḥṣīhi ʾl-ʿadd, Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:269. See further
Vassiliev, History of the First Saudi State, 112-18.
112
Al-Fahad, “The ‘Imama vs. the ‘Iqal,” 41-42.
113
Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 80.
114
252
convert to Wahhābism and accept the writ of al-Dirʿiyya, and this frequently happened.
In the year 1176/1762f, for example, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Suʿūd led a raid southwards
against the Subayʿ tribe, who we are told had annulled their bayʿa (naqaḍū ʾl-ʿahd).115
This means that the tribe had previously embraced Wahhābism. In 1200/1785f, the
Wahhābīs raided the Qaḥṭān tribe with the support of the Āl Ẓafīr, who presumably had
accepted Wahhābism. 116 While it is never fully spelled out what this meant for the
tribes—were these nomads provided with a preacher?—it is evident that they could
become Wahhābī without settling. The bedouin were capable of cooperating with the
settled peoples and the settled peoples with the tribes. There is no evidence from this
period that the Wahhābīs wished for the bedouin to abandon nomadism and settle in the
towns. Such efforts at sedentarization do not emerge until the third Saudi state.
In 1179/1765, Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd died, and his son, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, was given
the bayʿa as his successor. Ibn Ghannām describes an elaborate scene with numerous
people visiting al-Dirʿiyya from across Najd to give bayʿa to the new ruler, Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb overseeing the affair.117 Gradually, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz assumed the more traditional
role of an Islamic political leader, that of an imām—something his father never did.
Throughout Ibn Ghannām’s history, Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb are referred to by the titles amīr and shaykh, respectively. But ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz,
from the time of the bayʿa ceremony in 1179/1765 onward, is described as the imām, or
the imām of the Muslims (imām al-Muslimīn).118 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb continued to
115
116
Ibid., 2:858-59.
117
Ibid., 2:780.
118
See, for instance, ibid., 2:780, 816, 866. He is also described as the imām at the beginning of the book,
where Ibn Ghannām speaks of the imām’s desire for him to write it (ibid., 1:168).
253
perform his role as religious leader—as the shaykh—and occasionally he is still seen to
be active in politics as well, receiving the bayʿa along with ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz from
conquered towns.119 But his political role recedes after the death of Muḥammad ibn
Suʿūd.120 His last major intervention in affairs of state was in 1202/1787f, when it was he,
according to Ibn Ghannām, who ordered the Wahhābīs to give bayʿa to Suʿūd, ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz’s son, as heir apparent (amara shaykh al-zamān … al-Muslimīn an yubāyiʿū
Suʿūdan ʿalā ʾl-imāra baʿd abīhi).121
When Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb died a few years later, in 1206/1792,122 at the age of
about 90, there was no longer any ambiguity as to who held the reins of power. ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz was the supreme leader of the Muslim community, the imām, and the imāmate was
vested in the Āl Suʿūd. On his death in 1218/1803, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s role passed to Suʿūd.
A dynastic form of succession had been established.123
The leadership of the religious establishment, meanwhile, became the preserve of
the family of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the Āl al-Shaykh.124 The division between the
religious and political establishments, murky during the first few decades of the Saudi
state, henceforward becomes clear.125 After Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s death, four of his sons
would play major roles as religious leaders, and two are described as successors to their
119
See, for instance, ibid., 2:810, 813, 844.
120
According to Ibn Bishr (ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:93), Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb effectively retired from politics
following the submission of Riyadh in 1187/1783, entrusting his political portfolio to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (jaʿala
ʾl-shaykh al-amr bi-ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz wa-fawwaḍa umūr al-Muslimīn wa-bayt al-māl ilayhi); noted in Rentz,
Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement, 137-38. I agree with Rentz’s conclusion that his “retirement” was
probably a more gradual process.
121
122
Ibid., 2:900-4.
123
It is worth noting that there is no basis for this in the classical theory of the imāmate, despite the fact that
it is quite common in Islamic history. Furthermore, the Āl Suʿūd do not meet the traditional qualification
for the imāmate of descent from Quraysh.
124
That a family should have a monopoly on religious leadership also has no basis in Islamic law.
125
This analysis accords with Crawford’s view that the so-called pact of al-Dirʿiyya, wherein these roles
are said to have been clarified from the start, is back projection (Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 36).
254
father. The four were Ḥusayn (d. 1224/1809),126 ʿAbdallāh (d. 1242/1826f),127 ʿAlī (d.
1245/1829f),128 and Ibrāhīm (fl. 1251/1835f).129 Ḥusayn and ʿAbdallāh stand out as the
leaders of the group. The historian Ibn Bishr, who attended a study circle with one of
these sons in al-Dirʿiyya in 1224/1809f,130 provides a contemporary description of them.
The blind Ḥusayn, he notes, was the principal judge in al-Dirʿiyya (al-qāḍī fī balad al-
Dirʿiyya) and the first successor to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (al-khalīfa baʿd abīhi).131
Following Ḥusayn’s death in 1224/1809, ʿAbdallāh took charge as successor to his
brother (al-khalīfa baʿd akhīhi Ḥusayn).132 The brothers also left behind a corpus of
writings to their name. ʿAbdallāh was the most prolific of the group, producing, in
addition to numerous fatwās, a refutation of a Zaydī critic of Wahhābism and a biography
of the Prophet.133
Patterns of Expansion
Following the submission of Najd in the 1190s/1780s, the Wahhābī expansion continued
beyond central Arabia, first to the east in al-Aḥsāʾ, then to the west in the Ḥijāz, and
finally proceeding in all directions. The expansion was not consistent in its approach, and
126
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:204, 290-91; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 43; Āl Bassām, ʿUlāmāʾ Najd,
2:63-65.
127
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:205; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 48-69; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:169-
79; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:421-24.
128
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:206; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 70-71; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 5:284-
129
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:206; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 72; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:417-18.
Both Āl al-Shaykh and Āl Bassām report that he was alive in 1251/1835f, but this is on the authority of a
rather late source, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Qāsim (d. 1392/1972).
130
131
Ibid., 1:206. This is the first example of many blind Wahhābī scholars in history.
132
Ibid., 1:205.
133
See ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Āl al-Shaykh, Kitāb jawāb ahl al-sunna al-nabawiyya fī naqḍ kalām al-
Shīʿa waʾl-Zaydiyya, in Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, 4:47-221; idem, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-
Rasūl, 2nd ed. (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Salafiyya, 1396/1976).
255
the biggest contrast is seen between east and west. In al-Aḥsāʾ, the Wahhābīs were
frequently violent and aggressive, while in the Ḥijāz they tended to show restraint and
were even conciliatory at times. The difference seems to owe to the heavy concentration
in al-Aḥsāʾ of imāmī Shīʿa, whom the Wahhābīs gave every indication of wishing to
annihilate. Such anti-Shīʿī hostility is unsurprising given Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s views on
the Shīʿa, namely, that they were the first to bring shirk into the umma (awwal man
adkhala ʾl-shirk fī hādhihi ʾl-umma al-rāfiḍa al-malʿūna)134 and had left the faith (fa-
hāʾulāʾi ʾl-imāmiyya khārijūn ʿan al-sunna bal ʿan al-milla).135 But in addition to odium
theologicum, mundane power politics also played a role. It was the rulers of al-Aḥsāʾ
who had pushed Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb out of al-ʿUyayna and who ordered the invasion of
Najd in 1178/1764. They also launched a campaign against al-Dirʿiyya in 1172/1758f.136
Al-Aḥsāʾ was thus a threat on more than one level; it was also a potential source of
revenue as a trading hub and rich date-palm oasis.
Al-Aḥsāʾ
The first of the Wahhābīs’ incursions into al-Aḥsāʾ was actually well before the
consolidation of Wahhābī power in Najd. In 1176/1762f, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz led a raid into the
area, beginning with al-Muṭayrifī, a small town north of the central oases, and making his
way south to al-Mubarraz. Ibn Ghannām describes this as a particularly bloody affair. In
the first town, the Wahhābīs attacked by surprise, entering homes and killing all the
134
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:412 (letter to Ibn al-Suwaydī).
135
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʾallafāt al-shaykh, 7:42 (Risāla fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Rāfiḍa).
136
256
polytheists (mushrikīn) they could find. The dead numbered some seventy. Turning to al-
Mubarraz, they killed a group of farmers working in the palm groves.137
The next raids in al-Aḥsāʾ, which began in 1198/1783f,138 were led by Suʿūd, and
are depicted similarly by Ibn Ghannām as merciless rampages. During a raid in
1203/1788f, the Wahhābīs killed more than 300 inhabitants of the town of al-Fuḍūl, near
al-Hufūf. The victims, described as heretics (ahl al-zaygh waʾl-shirk), are said to have
called on their gods to protect them (daʿaw ālihatahum), but to no avail: they were killed
like cattle (qutilū qatl al-naʿam).139 Far greater carnage followed in 1206/1791f during
another Suʿūd-led raid, which went all the way to the coastal city of al-Qaṭīf. The people
there, Ibn Ghannām records, “had built a lighthouse for Rejectionism” (rafaʿū lil-rafḍ
manāran) and worshipped their gods day and night (wa-aqbalū ʿalā ʿibādat ālihatihim
laylan wa-nahāran). Al-Qaṭīf held off the invaders, but the nearby town of Sayhāt was
not so lucky. In a single day, 1,500 of its inhabitants were struck down, and the Wahhābīs
destroyed Shīʿī places of worship (maʿbadāt al-shayṭān wa-kanāʾis al-rafḍ waʾl-ṭughyān)
and burned Shīʿī books (wa-aḥraqū tilka ʾl-kutub al-qabīḥa).140 These casualty figures, if
they are to be believed, are extraordinary given the population size. These would have
been highly traumatic events for the Shīʿī population of the east.
In 1207/1792f, the Wahhābīs signaled their intention to annex the province. That
year, after leading a raid that killed 600 of the Banū Khālid (presumably Sunnīs),141
Suʿūd dispatched two messengers to the people of al-Aḥsāʾ, urging them to submit to the
137
Ibid., 2:762-63. Ibn Ghannām’s tone is boastful in describing these campaigns in al-Aḥsāʾ.
138
Ibid., 2:849-50.
139
Ibid., 2:882.
140
Ibid., 2:899-900.
141
Ibid., 2:906-7.
257
rule of al-Dirʿiyya and accept Islam (yadʿūhum ilā ʾl-dukhūl fī dāʾirat al-amān wa-
yaṭlubu minhum al-Islām waʾl-īmān) and warning of the consequences of not doing so
(wa-yuḥadhdhiruhum al-ṣadd waʾl-iʿrāḍ).142 This was in mid-Shaʿbān 1207/late March
1793. Probably hoping to fend off further offensives, the inhabitants returned a favorable
response. In Ramaḍān 1207/April 1793, Suʿūd arrived in al-Aḥsāʾ and was welcomed as
ruler, the people giving him bayʿa (ʿāhadūhu ʿalā ʾl-Islām).143 He is described as
overseeing, during his short presence, a drastic religious transformation. The actions
taken included destroying grave sites (al-maʿbadāt waʾl-qubab waʾl-qubūr) and places of
Shīʿī ritual (kanāʾis al-rafḍ waʾl-bidaʿ), imposing communal prayer (iẓhār al-ṣalawāt fī
ʾl-masājid), and banning a number of practices contrary to the sharīʿa (ibṭāl mā khālafa
ʾl-sharʿ min al-aḥkām), such as usury (al-ribā) and non-canonical taxes (al-ʿushūr waʾl-
amkās).144 Subsequent events show that a number of Wahhābī preachers were brought to
impart the Wahhābī doctrine and maintain the new religious dispensation.
Yet the early imposition of Wahhābism in al-Aḥsāʾ failed miserably, and was not
successfully accomplished for several more years. Not long after Suʿūd’s departure, a
revolt broke out against the new Wahhābī masters, led by a group of Shīʿa and other
miscreants (rafaḍa wa-fujjār). In early Shawwāl 1207/mid-May 1793, they attacked and
killed the several Wahhābī preachers sent by al-Dirʿiyya (alladhīna makathū ʿindahum
lil-taʿlīm waʾl-irshād), as well as certain other representatives of the Saudi state. The total
killed was close to thirty.145 Three months later, in Muḥarram 1208/August 1793, Suʿūd
and his forces returned to the area with a vengeance. After several fierce battles, sieges,
142
Ibid., 2:908-9.
143
Ibid.
144
Ibid., 2:909-10.
145
Ibid., 2:912-13.
258
and punitive raids, including one battle that killed some 60 fighters from the town of al-
Mubarraz, the leader of the Banū Khālid, Barrāk ibn ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, sued for peace. He
assured Suʿūd that the people of al-Aḥsāʾ wished to rejoin the faith (al-dukhūl fī ʾl-dīn),
and Suʿūd agreed to return to Najd on the condition that Barrāk see to it. The agreement
reached, Barrāk set about suppressing dissent in the various towns, receiving the bayʿa—
sometimes by force—on behalf of the ruler in al-Dirʿiyya, and ordering that the religious
principles of the Wahhābīs be observed.146
There was to be one more attempt at revolt, in 1210/1796, but this time the
conspirators were thwarted before they could strike. When a Wahhābī commander caught
wind of what was afoot, he quickly put 60 of the suspected conspirators to death. It was
the beginning of a brief campaign of exceptional cruelty aimed at stamping out any last
signs of rebellion. In Dhū ʾl-ḥijja 1210/June-July 1796, Suʿūd himself arrived to lead the
effort. After having the people renew the bayʿa in public, he proceeded to retaliate by
meting out punishments (iqāmat al-qiṣāṣ waʾl-ḥudūd) to all those involved in this second
act of apostasy (ghālib man bāshara ʾl-ridda al-thāniya). He had some beheaded (afnā
ruʾūs dhawī ʾl-sharr waʾl-fasād) and exiled the rest (wa-azāḥa bāqiyahum ʿan al-bilād).
The executions continued for days as more suspects were rounded up. In addition, Suʿūd
ordered the destruction of more shrines, made the people give up their weapons on pain
of death, ordered the walls and towers surrounding the different towns of al-Aḥsāʾ torn
down, and built a massive fort with a permanent contingent of forces. Ibn Ghannām ends
his description of these events by quoting Q. 8:60, “And make ready for them what you
146
Ibid., 2:915-22.
259
can of strength and troops of forces, to strike terror” (Q. 8:60).147 The conquest of al-
Aḥsāʾ was finally complete, though challenges remained.148
The next two years saw two major efforts to expel the Wahhābīs from al-Aḥsāʾ,
neither of which would succeed. The first was a campaign led by Thuwaynī ibn
ʿAbdallāh (d. 1212/ 1797), chief of the Muntafiq tribe of southern Iraq.149 In 1211/1796f,
the Ottoman governor of Baghdad, Sulaymān Bāshā (d. 1217/1802),150 enlisted
Thuwaynī to prepare a large-scale operation to oust the Wahhābīs from al-Aḥsāʾ. As Ibn
Ghannām relates, when Thuwaynī stopped in Basra to gather additional forces, some of
the anti-Wahhābī scholars there wrote poems encouraging him in his effort. One of these
was Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz. Thuwaynī collected his army and set out in Shaʿbān
1211/February 1797; two months later, Suʿūd left Najd with his forces to meet the
enemy. Thuwaynī’s campaign came to a sudden end with his assassination at the hands of
a Wahhābī slave in Muḥarram 1212/June-July 1797. Without their leader, his army fell
into disarray and was beaten back.151
The second challenge came the following year, when Sulaymān Bāshā ordered his
deputy governor, ʿAlī Kahyā (fl. 1222/1807), to lead a second expedition against the
Wahhābī presence in al-Aḥsāʾ. ʿAlī set off from Baghdad with his forces in Rabīʿ II
1213/October 1798, but returned in Ṣafar 1214/July 1799 upon the conclusion of a
147
wa-aʿiddū lahum mā ʾstaṭaʿtum min quwwatin wa-min ribāṭi ʾl-khayli turhibūna.
148
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:931-46
149
A contemporary description of him is provided by the British traveler John Jackson, who passed through
Iraq in the late 1790s: “… Sheik Twyney, a very powerful Arab prince; having under his government the
whole of the right banks of the Euphrates, from nearly as high as Hilla down to Bussora.” See Jackson,
Journey from India, towards England, in the Year 1797 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1799), 51-52.
150
For a brief biography, see al-Karkūklī, Dawḥat al-wuzarāʾ, 218-19.
151
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:947-63, 1017-1023. Cf. Ibn Sanad, Maṭāliʿ al-suʿūd, 293-95; al-Karkūklī,
Dawḥat al-wuzarāʾ, 204-5. The date of Thuwaynī’s assassination is in Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:236.
260
truce.152 Harford Jones Brydges (d. 1847), the British resident political adviser in
Baghdad from 1798 to 1806, happened to be present when a Wahhābī envoy visited the
city to ratify the truce. Brydges was invited to attend the reception at Sulaymān Bāshā’s
palace. His account is illustrative of the Wahhābīs’ attitudes toward the Ottomans at this
time. “[T]he envoy proceeded towards the foot of the staircase which led into the room,”
Brydges writes,
and … with great gravity and dignity unsupported marched up the stairs, entered
the room, and before any further ceremony could take place, sat himself down at a
small distance immediately opposite the paçha, and addressed him in Arabic as
follows:—“Hoy Suleiman! peace be upon all those who think right. Abdul Aziz
has sent me to deliver to you this letter, and to receive from you the ratification of
an agreement made between his son, Saoud, and your servant Ally; let it be done
soon, and in good form; and the curse of God be on him who acts treacherously. If
you seek instruction, Abdul Aziz will afford it.” Thus ended, the envoy, to the
utter astonishment and apparent confusion of the paçha, rose, and departed …153
The phrase “peace be upon all those who think right” is almost certainly Brydges’s
translation of al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa ʾl-hudā (“peace be upon whoever follows right
guidance”), the phrase with which the Prophet is said to have addressed his unbelieving
adversaries, including Heraclius. The Wahhābī envoy thus strode nonchalantly into the
Ottoman governor’s palace, addressed him as an infidel, and offered to provide him
instruction in Wahhābī doctrine.
152
Al-Karkūklī, Dawḥat al-wuzarāʾ, 205-10. Cf. Ibn Sanad, Maṭāliʿ al-suʿūd, 313-21; Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān
al-majd, 1:252-55. Al-Karkūklī and Ibn Sanad provide elaborate truce terms, but a copy of the truce in the
Ottoman archive, dated 4 Jumādā II 1214 (see the text in Ibn Sanad, Maṭāliʿ al-suʿūd, 319n2), stipulates
simply that the parties not attack one another.
153
Brydes, An Account of the Transactions of His Majesty’s Mission to the Court of Persia in the Years
1807-11, 2 vols. (London: James Bohn, 1834), 2:24-26; cf. Vasilliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 95-96,
where part of this is quoted.
261
The Ḥijāz
The Wahhābī expansion in the west was preceded by scholarly overtures. As the seat of
Islam’s two holiest sites, the Ḥijāz evidently required a more delicate approach than such
an odious center of polytheism as al-Aḥsāʾ. On two occasions, in 1185/1771f and
1204/1789f, the Wahhābī scholar ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥuṣayyin (d. 1237/1822),154 a native
of al-Washm, was sent to Mecca to explain Wahhābism to the sharīf of Mecca and to
engage its scholars in debate. The first mission was preceded by correspondence between
the Sharīf Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd (r. 1184-86/1770-73) and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb. Ibn Ghannām preserves a letter, respectful in tone, from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to the sharīf.155 The debate in Mecca with al-Ḥuṣayyin, according to Ibn
Ghannām, revolved around the issues of generalized takfīr (al-takfīr biʾl-ʿumūm), the
destruction of tombs at gravesites, and supplication to righteous persons, including asking
them for worldly things (istighātha) and asking them for intercession (shafāʿa) on the
Day of Judgement. Al-Ḥuṣayyin denied that the Wahhābīs engaged in the first, but was
adamant that tombs be destroyed and that supplication was polytheism. Ibn Ghannām
claims, rather incredibly, that the scholars of Mecca were convinced by his arguments.156
Another account of this event, by the Meccan-based Shāfiʿī Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1304/1886),
has it that the Meccan scholars scoffed at the Wahhābī scholar’s performance.157
154
on him see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:414-17; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 206-211. Wahhābī tradition
preserves an essay of his on Wahhābī creed that takes the form of a polemic against tawassul (al-Durar al-
saniyya, 2:173-202)
155
156
Ibid., 2:789-91.
157
Daḥlān, Khulāṣat al-kalām, 228. He also claims that a group of Wahhābī scholars came to Mecca for the
same purpose during the first reign of the Sharīf Masʿūd ibn Saʿīd (r. 1145-65/1732-52), and that this had
similarly failed (ibid.)
262
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥuṣayyīn’s second mission to Mecca was not the smashing
success that his first was alleged to be. Ibn Ghannām relates that he was sent back when
the Sharīf Ghālib ibn Musāʿid (r. 1202-28/1788-1813) requested a scholar to explain the
truth about Wahhābism. Al-Ḥuṣayyīn arrived with a letter from Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to
the sharīf. This time, however, the scholars of Mecca refused to debate him or meet with
him.158 This kind of mission to Mecca would be repeated one more time by another
Wahhābī scholar, Ḥamad ibn Nāṣir ibn Muʿammar (d. 1225/1811),159 who arrived in
Mecca at the request of the sharīf in the year 1211/1796f. Ḥamad performed the ʿumra
and a debate was held with Mecca’s scholars. At its conclusion, they asked Ḥamad to put
his arguments into writing, which he did.160
By the time of this third mission, the Wahhābīs and the sharīf were engaged
militarily. The two sides’ forces first come to blows in 1205/1790f, when Ghālib
launched a months-long offensive against Najd.161 According to Daḥlān, this was a
preemptive attack aimed at preventing the Wahhābīs from gaining control of the Ḥijāz.162
It was not successful, however, as every year the Wahhābīs seemed to be gaining more
followers among the sharīf’s erstwhile tribal allies. In 1210/1795f, Ghālib’s forces were
defeated in the desert by the Wahhābīs and several of these tribes.163 By 1212/1797f, the
majority of the tribes in the vicinity of the Ḥijāz were allied with the al-Dirʿiyya.164
158
159
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:303-4; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 202-5; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:121-
160
Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 2:967-72. For Ibn Muʿammar’s treatise (al-Fawākih al-ʿidhāb fī ʾl-radd ʿalā man
lam yuḥkim al-sunna waʾl-kitāb), see ibid., 2:972-1016.
161
Ibid., 2:888-95.
162
Daḥlān, Khulāṣat al-kalām, 228.
163
164
Ibid., 2:1032-33. This is the point at which Ibn Ghannām’s history comes to an end; I rely mainly on Ibn
Bishr’s account for what follows.
263
During that year, after a crushing battle at al-Khurma, the sharīf and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
reached a truce. According to its terms, the Wahhābīs were allowed to participate in the
ḥajj, as they had never been previously.165 Suʿūd embarked on his first ḥajj in
1214/1800.166
Ghālib’s position had grown considerably weaker, yet the truce remained in place
till 1217/1803. That year, Ghālib was betrayed by one of his commanders, ʿUthmān ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muḍāyifī, leading to the first Wahhābī occupation of Mecca. After
visiting al-Dirʿiyya and giving bayʿa to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, ʿUthmān gathered an army and
besieged the city of al-Ṭāʾif in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1217/February-March 1803. By all accounts,
the siege ended in a massacre. Ibn Bishr says that nearly 200 were killed in the streets and
in their homes,167 while Daḥlān describes an even more gruesome scene.168 A month
later, during the ḥajj, Suʿūd and his forces appeared outside Mecca, prompting Ghālib to
fall back to Jeddah. Guaranteeing the security and safety of its people, Suʿūd entered the
city and set about destroying tombs with his followers. Before leaving, he stationed
troops in a fort outside the city walls and appointed Ghālib’s brother, ʿAbd al-Muʿīn ibn
Musāʿid, as Mecca’s ruler. Suʿūd was there only two or three weeks.169
In Rabīʿ I 1218/July 1803, Ghālib regained control over Mecca, but his hold did
not last long. After an extended blockade of the city imposed by Suʿūd’s allies, Ghālib
relented in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1220/February 1806, agreeing to terms with the Wahhābī ruler.
Wahhābism was to be instituted in Mecca: the scholars were to teach Ibn ʿAbd al-
165
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:245, 1:255.
166
Ibid., 1:256.
167
Ibid., 1:258-59.
168
Daḥlān, Khulāṣat al-kalām, 273-75
169
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:260-61 (20 days); Daḥlān, Khulāṣat al-kalām, 275-79 (14 days).
264
Wahhāb’s writings, communal prayer was to be observed, and tobacco was to be banned,
among other things. In agreeing to these terms, Ghālib was able to remain the nominal
ruler of the city.170 Earlier in the year (sc. 1220/1805), Medina fell to the Wahhābīs as
well, and a similar campaign of tomb destruction ensued.171 The Wahhābī conquest of the
Ḥijāz had taken place with far less bloodshed than that of al-Aḥsāʾ, the massacre at al-
Ṭāʾif having been the exception to the rule.
South and north
According to Ibn Bishr, al-Dirʿiyya was able to conquer Mecca in 1220/1806 only
because the surrounding areas were already under its sway. Suʿūd could effectively close
the roads leading to Mecca—from Yemen, al-Tihāma, the Ḥijāz, and Najd—because
those areas were part of his realm. When it came to Yemen and al-Tihāma (the latter
being the coastal region south of the Ḥijāz), the Wahhābī expansion proceeded much in
the same way as it did among the tribes in the Ḥijāz area: the rulers of these areas saw
momentum going the Wahhābīs’ way, and they threw in their lot accordingly. An
example of this is the case of Abū Nuqṭa (d. 1224/1809), the ruler of ʿAsīr, who adopted
Wahhābism in 1211/1796f or 1212/1797f.172 Joining the Wahhābīs made particularly
good sense for him as he and Ghālib were fierce rivals. Abū Nuqṭa would remain a
dependable ally, but al-Dirʿiyya’s influence in the southwest does not appear to have
been very strong otherwise. The ruler of Abū ʿArīsh, Abū Mismār, also embraced
Wahhābism in the early thirteenth/early nineteenth century, but this did not prevent him
170
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:279-80; Daḥlān, Khulāṣat al-kalām, 292-93.
171
172
Jaḥḥāf, Durar nuḥūr al-ḥūr al-ʿīn, 635.
265
from defying Suʿūd’s orders to attack Sanaa in 1224/1809, leading Suʿūd to launch a war
against Abū Mismār.173 Unlike in al-Aḥsāʾ and the Ḥijāz, then, in the southern regions
Wahhābī control remained mostly weak and indirect.
To the north, which is to say, north of Ḥāʾil facing Iraq and Syria, the Wahhābīs
never managed even this level of control, though they certainly wished to expand there.
In the 1210s/1790s, they started carrying out raids against the towns and tribes of lower
Iraq and Syria.
Wahhābī raiding in southern Iraq began in 1212/1798, when Suʿūd led an
expedition to the towns of Sūq al-Shuyūkh and al-Samāwa.174 Further operations were
likely held off on account of the truce reached with Sulaymān Bāshā, the governor of
Baghdad, in 1214/1799. But this did not prove a hindrance for long. Less than two years
later, Suʿūd and his forces entered the Shīʿī holy city of Karbalāʾ and committed perhaps
the most infamous atrocity of the first Saudi state. According to Ibn Bishr, Suʿūd arrived
outside the city in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1216/March-April 1802. This is what followed:
The Muslims gathered against it, climbed its walls, and entered it by force. They
killed most of its people in the markets and homes; they destroyed the tomb
erected (as claimed by those who believe in it) above the grave of al-Ḥusayn; they
took what was inside and around the shrine; and they took the monument that was
placed above the grave and studded with emeralds, rubies, and jewels. They took
all the various possessions that they found in the place—weapons, vestments,
household effects, gold, silver, heavy manuscripts, and other things—such that
cannot be counted. They remained there only one morning, leaving with all the
possessions before noon. 2,000 of its inhabitants were killed.175
173
174
Ibid., 1:244
175
fa-ḥashada ʿalayhā ʾl-Muslimūn wa-tasawwarū judrānahā wa-dakhalūhā ʿanwatan wa-qatalū ghālib
ahlihā fī ʾl-aswāq waʾl-buyūt wa-hadamū ʾl-qubba al-mawḍūʿa bi-zaʿm man iʿtaqada fīhā ʿalā qabr al-
Ḥusayn wa-akhadhū mā fī ʾl-qubba wa-mā ḥawlahā wa-akhadhū ʾl-naṣība allatī waḍaʿūhā ʿalā ʾl-qabr
wa-kānat marṣūfa biʾl-zumurrud waʾl-yāqūt waʾl-jawāhir wa-akhadhū jamīʿ mā wajadū fī ʾl-balad min
anwāʿ al-amwāl min al-silāḥ waʾl-libās waʾl-furush waʾl-dhahab waʾl-fiḍḍa waʾl-maṣāḥif al-thamīna wa-
ghayr dhālika mimmā yaʿjazu ʿanhā ʾl-ḥaṣr wa-lam yalbathū fīhā illā ḍaḥwa wa-kharajū minhā qurb al-
ẓuhr bi-jamīʿ tilka ʾl-amwāl wa-qutila min ahlihā qarīb alfay rajul, ibid., 1:257. Cf. the translation in
Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 98, and cf. al-Karkūklī, Dawḥat al-wuzarāʾ, 217 (the death toll is
266
In May 1804, the French orientalist Jean-Baptiste Louis Rousseau (d. 1831) published a
report on the sacking of Karbalāʾ in a French periodical. Two of the points that he makes
are worth underlining. The first is his view of the Wahhābīs’ religiosity, as people “who
regard death with such contempt as to go in search of it, who are animated by an
extraordinary fanaticism, who believe they are making themselves martyrs by fighting
against foreign nations.”176 The second is his perception of their territorial ambition. The
Wahhābīs were not, as he saw it, raiding for the sake of plunder and slaughter; they were
doing so in anticipation of expansion. “There is no doubt,” he writes, “that if the Wahabis
continue in the same way as they began, they will gradually subdue all of Arabia, and
even extend their possessions to Mesopotamia and part of Syria.”177 In Rajab
1218/November 1803, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Suʿūd was killed in al-Dirʿiyya by an assassin.
Rumor was it that the assassin was a Shīʿī from Karbalāʾ who came to take vengeance for
what had happened in the town.178
After the attack on Karbalāʾ, Wahhābī raids in the north continued. Two months
before Rousseau’s May 1804 report, Suʿūd was back in Iraq leading his forces against
Basra and Zubayr. The latter was besieged for 12 days, the Wahhābīs destroying the
estimated at around 1,000); Ibn Sanad, Maṭāliʿ al-suʿūd, 333 (the event is placed in the year 1216; no death
toll); Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, “Notice sur la horde des Wahabis,” Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur
Universel 243, (May 23, 1804), 1101-1102. Rousseau, whose account is the most contemporary with the
event, puts the death toll at 4,500 and dates it to April 20, 1802, which is slightly later than the date given
by Ibn Bishr and al-Karkūklī. On the authorship of this report, which is unsigned, see Bonacina, Wahhabis
Seen through European Eyes, 54.
176
“… qui méprisent assez la mort pour aller au-devant d’elle, qui sont animés par un fanatisme outré, qui
se croiraient martyrisés en combattant contre les nations étrangeres,” Rousseau, “Notice sur la horde des
Wahabis,” 1102.
177
“Il est indubitable que si les Wahabis continuent de même qu’ils ont commencé, ils parviendront
insensiblement à s’assujettir toute l’Arabie, et même de-là étendre leurs possessions jusqu’à la
Mésopotamie et une partie de la Syrie,” ibid.
178
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:261-62. Cf. al-Karkūklī, Dawḥat al-wuzarāʾ, 227; Jaḥḥāf, Durar nuḥūr
al-ḥūr al-ʿīn, 848-49.
267
shrines outside its walls, including the tombs al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ṭalḥa ibn al-
Zubayr.179 The year 1220/1805f saw another round of raiding targeting not only Basra
and Zubayr but also Najaf and al-Samāwa. Ibn Bishr describes a series of skirmishes with
minimal casualties.180 A few years later, in Jumādā I 1223/June-July 1808, Suʿūd
returned to Karbalāʾ, but, finding it better fortified than before, retreated, plundering
several villages around Basra and Zubayr along the way.181 In Rabīʿ II 1225/May-June
1810, Suʿūd led his forces into southern Syria for the first time, raiding around the towns
of Buṣrā and al-Muzayrīb and allegedly inspiring dread in the Ottoman governor of
Damascus.182
Whether these northern raids would have paved the way for the annexation of
parts of Iraq and Syria as Rousseau feared is unclear. But the letters of Suʿūd to the
governors of Baghdad and al-Shām—letters that Western scholars seem to have
overlooked—strongly suggest that this was in fact his intention.
The Letters of Suʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
One of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s signature duties during his lifetime was writing epistles
and letters calling people to Islam. After his death, these responsibilities devolved on
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who, as was noted in Chapter 1, addressed a long epistle “to whoever sees
it of the scholars and judges of the Two Holy Places, al-Shām, Egypt, and Iraq, and all
other scholars east and west,” setting out Wahhābī doctrine in detail and calling on all
179
180
Ibid., 1:281-82.
181
Ibid., 1:287.
182
Ibid., 1:298-99.
268
those addressed to accept it.183 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz would dispatch at least one more epistle
like it, this one “to whoever sees it of the people of the lands of the ʿAjam and the Rūm”
(ilā man yarāhu min buldān al-ʿAjam waʾl-Rūm).184 From the the way these epistles are
addressed, it is clear that the Wahhābī ruler believed it was necessary to bring
Wahhābism not only to the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula but to all the world’s
nominal Muslims as well. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s vision looked well beyond Arabia. His second
epistle carried an implicit threat: “God has given us victory over them [i.e., our enemies]
and bequeathed to us their land, territories, and possessions. That is God’s practice and
His custom with the Messengers and those who follow them, until the Day of
Resurrection.”185
When ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz died in 1218/1803, his Suʿūd inherited the job of writing
such letters. Yet Suʿūd’s were far more menacing than anything his father had written
and were also clearer in conveying the Wahhābīs’ designs on Iraq and Syria. Three extant
letters are most illustrative in this regard.
The first is a response to a letter received from the governor of Baghdad,
ʿAbdallāh Bāshā (r. 1225-28/1810-13), who like many governors of Baghdad during this
period enjoyed a rather short reign.186 In his letter, Suʿūd refers to many of the events that
183
al-Hadiyya al-saniyya, 4-28, at 4; see above, ch. 1, p. 90.
184
al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:258-64, at 258.
185
fa-naṣaranā ʾllāh ʿalayhim wa-awrathanā arḍahum wa-diyārahum wa-amwālahum wa-dhālika sunnat
Allāh wa-ʿādatuhu maʿa ʾl-mursalīn wa-atbāʿihim ilā yawm al-qiyāma, ibid., 1:262. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz also
wrote letters to individuals; see ibid., 1:265-84, 2:166-69, 9:244-46.
186
Ibid., 9:264-89. The letter is undated and Suʿūd identifies the correspondent only as wazīr Baghdād
(ibid., 9:286). We can identify him as ʿAbdallāh Bāshā because Suʿūd refers to his Christian birth and the
fact that he was purchased as a slave by Sulaymān Bāshā (r. 1194-1217/1780-1802; ibid. 9:287). ʿAbdallāh
Bāshā is the only governor of Baghdad from this time who fits this bill; see Stephen Hemsley Longrigg,
Four Centuries of Modern Iraq (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1925), 227. Since the letter refers to the
fact that the Ḥijāz is still under Wahhābī control (al-Durar al-saniyya, 9:285-86), we can be sure that it was
written between 1225/1810 and 1227/1812.
269
have transpired between the Saudi state and Ottoman Iraq, including the violence
perpetrated on the people of Karbalāʾ. He takes great pride in the event: “Your statement
that we took Karbalāʾ, slaughtered its people, and took its property—praise belongs to
God, Lord of the Worlds! We make no apology for this, and we say, ‘the unbelievers
shall have the likes thereof’ (Q. 47:10).”187 Speaking more generally of the Wahhābīs’
predilection for jihād, he writes,
As for what you mentioned that we kill the unbelievers, this is something for
which we make no apology, and that we do not minimize. We shall do more of it,
God willing … We abase the unbelievers, shed their blood, and make booty of
their property, by the might and power of God.”188
This statement is followed by several Qurʾānic verses connected to offensive jihād,
including Q. 9:5 and 8:39, after which Suʿūd concludes, “And we have no labor but
jihād, and no appetite save for the possessions of the unbelievers.”189
Suʿūd’s intentions regarding his correspondent’s territory are just as manifest as
his violent ardor. His hope is that God will soon replace the polytheism in ʿAbdallāh’s
lands (fī awṭānikum) with Islam, “and we will eradicate the falsehood from it, and
establish the truth in it, God willing.”190 Ridiculing ʿAbdallāh’s Christian slave origins,
Suʿūd threatens him personally, saying, “I hope that you die upon your Christian religion
and are among the pigs of hellfire,” noting how ʿAbdallāh has never performed the ḥajj
and cannot do so since the Wahhābīs are in control of Mecca.191 “If you desire salvation
187
wa-qawluka anna akhadhnā Karbalāʾ wa-dhabaḥnā ahlahā wa-akhadhnā amwālahā faʾl-ḥamdu lillāhi
rabb al-ʿālamīn wa-lā nataʿadhdharu min dhālika wa-naqūlu wa-lil-kāfirīna amthāluhā, al-Durar al-
saniyya, 9:284.
188
wa-ammā mā dhakarta anna naqtulu ʾl-kuffār fa-hādhā amr mā nataʿadhdharu ʿanhu wa-lam
nastakhiffa fīhi wa-nazīdu fī dhālika in shāʾa ʾllāh … wa-nurghimu unūf al-kuffār wa-nasfiku dimāʾahum
wa-naghnimu amwālahum bi-ḥawl Allāh wa-quwwatihi, ibid., 9:280.
189
wa-lā lanā daʾba illā ʾl-jihād wa-lā lanā maʾkala illā min amwāl al-kuffār, ibid., 9:281-82.
190
wa-naḥnu nuzīlu minhā ʾl-bāṭil wa-nuthbitu fīhā ʾl-ḥaqq, ibid., 9:282.
191
wa-arjū an tamūta ʿalā millatika ʾl-Naṣrāniyya wa-takūna min khanāzīr al-nār, ibid., 9:286.
270
and the safety of [your] realm,” he continues, “then I summon you to Islam, as [the
Prophet] said to Heraclius, king of the Rūm, ‘Submit, and you shall be safe, and God shall
reward you twice over. But, if you turn away, the sin of the husbandmen shall be upon
you.’”192 Suʿūd indicates that there can be no truce (muhādana) between al-Dirʿiyya and
Baghdad, for they are in a perpetual state of war. The only acceptable response is for
ʿAbdallāh to accept Islam, “and if you refuse, then we say to you as God says, ‘but if they
turn away, then they are clearly in schism; God will suffice you for them; He is the All-
hearing, the All-knowing’ (Q. 2:137).”193 This was to say, refuse Wahhābism and we will
fight you. We can assume that Suʿūd did not expect a positive response.
Suʿūd again quotes the Prophet’s summons to Heraclius in a letter to the Ottoman
governor of al-Shām, dated Rajab 1225/July-August 1810.194 The date is significant, as it
is around this time that the Wahhābīs began raiding in southern Syria. The letter,
addressed to Yūsuf Bāshā (r. 1222-25/1807-10), begins with the phrase, “peace be upon
whoever follows right guidance” (al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa ʾl-hudā), and proceeds, “I
summon you to God alone without partner, as the Prophet said in his letter to Heraclius,
‘Submit, and you shall be safe, and God shall reward you twice over.”195 After a brief
explanation of the Wahhābī position on shirk, Suʿūd offers to send scholars (maṭāwiʿa) to
192
fa-in aradta ʾl-najāt wa-salāmat al-mulk fa-anā adʿūka ilā ʾl-Islām kamā qāla ṣ li-Hiraql malik al-Rūm
aslim taslam yuʾtika ʾllāh ajraka marratayn fa-in tawallayta fa-inna ʿalayka ithm al-arīsiyyīn, ibid., 9:287.
193
wa-in abaytum fa-naqūlu lakum kamā qāla ʾllāh taʿālā wa-in tawallaw fa-innamā hum fī shiqāqin fa-sa-
yakfīkahumu ʾllāhu wa-huwa ʾl-samīʿu ʾl-ʿalīm, ibid., 9:288.
194
The letter is in Khalīl Mardam, ed., “Majmūʿa makhṭūṭa,” Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī 5
(1343/1925): 61-69, at 65-66. Cf. David Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late
Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 23.
195
fa-innī adʿūka ilā ʾllāh waḥdahu lā sharīka lahu kamā qāla ʾl-nabī ṣ fī risālatihi li-Hiraql aslim taslam
yuʾtika ʾllāh ajraka marratayn, ibid., 65.
271
Syria for a debate (munāẓara), or to host Yūsuf’s scholars for the same in Najd. He warns
of the consequences of rejecting the summons and remaining unbelievers.196
The reply to his letter came not from Yūsuf, however, but from his successor,
Sulaymān Bāshā (r. 1225-27/1810-12), who identifies himself as the governor of the
provinces of al-Shām (wālī aqālīm al-Shām); it is dated mid-Rajab 1225/mid-August
1810.197 Sulaymān does little to hide his contempt for the Wahhābī ruler. He is outraged
that Suʿūd should deign to address Muslims as unbelievers (wa-kayfa tukhāṭibūna ahl al-
īmān waʾl-Islām bi-mukhāṭabat al-kuffār); we are assuredly Muslims (fa-naḥnu
Muslimūn ḥaqqan), he says. He rejects the offer to debate with Wahhābīs scholars, saying
that such a futile exercise has been tried by others before. He ends by telling Suʿūd that
he and his band are ignorant Khārijites (khawārij … jāhilūn) in rebellion against the
authority of the Ottoman sultan (khawārij ʿan … al-ṭāʿa al-sulṭāniyya), and that they
ought to go back to where they came from (faʾrjaʿū ilā awṭānikum kamā kuntum).198
Several months later, in mid-Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1225/mid-December 1810, Suʿūd sent
his reply to Sulaymān.199 In this he shows even greater hostility than he did in the letter to
Yūsuf. Suʿūd disputes the claim that Sulaymān and his people are in fact Muslims,
referring to the manifestations of unbelief and polytheism that dominate the scenes of al-
Shām, Iraq, Egypt, and elsewhere, namely, tombs and the visitation practices associated
with them.200 Speaking of the tombs in al-Shām, he says, “If you are truthful in your
claim to belong to the religion of Islam and to follow the Messenger, then destroy all
196
Ibid., 65-66. The threat is again conveyed by Q. 2:137.
197
Ibid., 66-69. This Sulaymān is not to be confused with the Sulaymān Bāshā who previously ruled in
Baghdad.
198
Ibid., 67-69.
199
200
Ibid., 1:293.
272
those idols and level them to the ground and repent to God!”201 He calls on Sulaymān to
prevent his subjects from directing worship to anything apart from God and to impose the
legal obligations of Islam (shaʿāʾir al-Islām). “If you do that, then you will be our
brothers … But,” he threatens, “if you continue in this current state of yours, and do not
repent of the polytheism that you practice and do not adhere to the religion of God …
then we will continue fighting you until you return to God’s true religion.”202 Suʿūd then
quotes Q. 8:39 and 9:5, as he did in the letter to ʿAbdallāh Bāshā.203 Appended to this
letter are the endorsements of several scholars in Mecca and Medina, as well as that of
the Meccan sharīf.204
From the content of these letters, there can be little doubt that Suʿūd wished to
extend his realm beyond the northern frontier of the Arabian Peninsula. He intended for
the Saudi state to expand northward, and probably expected that it would. Such an
expectation would not have been unreasonable for the leader of the first Saudi state. In
the space of little more than fifty years, the petty oasis town of al-Dirʿiyya had grown
into the capital of a large empire controlling most of Arabia, including the holiest sites of
Islam. The next stop was naturally in Iraq and Syria, as appropriate a place as any to
exhibit the Prophet’s ultimatum to Heraclius. Yet the Ottoman Empire was not bound to
go the way Byzantium did in the early Islamic conquests. The Ottomans were fed up with
Wahhābīs, and finally determined to crush them.
201
fa-in kuntum ṣādiqīn fī daʿwākum annakum ʿalā millat al-Islām wa-mutābaʿat al-rasūl ṣ faʾhdimū tilka
ʾl-awthān kullahā wa-sawwūhā biʾl-arḍ wa-tūbū ilā ʾllāh, ibid., 1:312.
202
fa-idha faʿaltum dhālika fa-antum ikhwānunā … wa-ammā in dumtum ʿalā ḥālikum hādhihi wa-lam
tatūbū min al-shirk alladhī antum ʿalayhi wa-taltazimū dīn Allāh … lam nazal nuqātilukum ḥattā turājiʿū
dīn Allāh al-qawīm, ibid.
203
Ibid., 1:313.
204
Ibid., 1:314-17. The endorsements can also be seen in a manuscript copy of the letter held at the Dārat
al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in Riyadh; see the photo in al-Aṭlas al-tārīkhī lil-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-
Suʿūdiyya, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 1421/2000), 77.
273
Conclusion
In Basra and Ḥuraymilāʾ, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had been a cautious and restrained
preacher. Toward the end of his time in Ḥuraymilāʾ, he took his preaching public and
began forming a movement in al-ʿUyayna. In al-Dirʿiyya, he tied his movement to the
fortunes of a minor polity, the embryonic Saudi state, and justified the warfare of that
polity as defensive jihād. By the time of the capture of Ḥuraymilāʾ in 1168/1755, he
rationalized the state’s warfare as offensive jihād for the sake of eliminating polytheism.
These four stages mirror the four stages of the Prophet’s career observed in Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl. Wahhābism grew more aggressive still following the
death of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, reaching peak militancy during the reign of Suʿūd (r. 1218-
29/1803-14), who hoped to reenact even more of the script of early Islam. He was in for a
rude awakening.
In 1225/1810, the Porte entrusted Muḥammad ʿAlī, the Macedonian-born military
commander and ruler of Egypt, with recovering the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.205
The initial campaign was led by Muḥammad ʿAlī’s son, Ṭūsūn, who arrived in Yanbuʿ in
late 1226/late 1811. Within a year his army had captured Medina, and in 1228/1812
Mecca fell without a fight. Despite some military difficulties over the next two years,
including the resistance of ʿAsīr and of some of the tribes of the Ḥijāz, Ṭūsūn’s forces
were soon in control of the entirety of the Red Sea coast.
205
al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār, 4:119. For the Egyptian campaign in Arabia generally, see Vassiliev, History
of Saudi Arabia, 140-55; Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 32-39.
274
In 1229/1814, Suʿūd died of illness and was succeeded by his son ʿAbdallāh (r.
1229-33/1814-18). Meanwhile, Muḥammad ʿAlī’s military ambitions in Arabia had
grown from merely taking back the holy cities to destroying the Saudi state. Recalling
Ṭūsūn to Egypt, he entrusted the command of this larger expedition to another son,
Ibrāhīm, who began “a slow but irresistible” advance into Najd.206 The expeditionary
force had the advantage of modern European military methods and materiel—some of the
commanders had trained in France—including artillery and seemingly endless supplies
and reinforcements. By early 1233/late 1817, Ibrāhīm had penetrated into al-Qaṣīm, and
was threatening al-Washm and Sudayr. Al-Dirʿiyya finally submitted after a months-long
siege in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1233/September 1818. ʿAbdallāh gave himself up to Ibrāhīm and
was taken to Cairo and then Istanbul, where he was publicly beheaded.207 Other members
of the Āl Suʿūd were sent into exile in Cairo, as were members of the Āl al-Shaykh.
Ibrāhīm remained in Najd nine months longer, razing al-Dirʿiyya to the ground before his
departure.
One scholar of the Āl al-Shaykh who was not spared was Sulaymān ibn
ʿAbdallāh, a grandson of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s and a rising star in the Wahhābī religious
establishment before his death.208 He was executed shortly after the fall of al-Dirʿiyya. As
Ibn Bishr tells relates, after being forced to listen to music, he was brought to the
cemetery and shot by a firing squad.209
206
Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 153.
207
The execution was in Ṣafar 1234/December 1818. On ʿAbdallāh’s journey and execution, see Michael
Crawford and William Facey, “ʿAbd Allāh Al Saʿūd and Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha: The Theatre of Victory,
the Prophet’s Treasures, and the Visiting Whig, Cairo 1818,” Journal of Arabian Studies 7 (2017): 44-62.
208
On him see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:384-85; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 44-47; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ
Najd, 2:341-49; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 3:162-64.
209
275
Sulaymān is worthy of our attention as his writings on the subject of al-walāʾ
waʾl-barāʾ and jihād set the stage for Wahhābism in the coming period. As Ibrāhīm’s
army was advancing on Najd and the various towns and tribes were defecting, Sulaymān
wrote al-Dalāʾil fī ḥukm ahl al-ishrāk (“Proofs in Judgment of the Partisans of
Polytheism”), an epistle lamenting these developments and underscoring the importance
of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and jihād (al-amr bi-muʿādāt al-mushrikīn wa-bughḍihim wa-
jihādihim wa-firāqihim).210 The main purpose of this short book is to refute the view that
fear (khawf) was a legitimate excuse (ʿudhr) for abandoning jihād and allying with the
invaders. The only valid excuse for exhibiting approval of the polytheists, Sulaymān
contends, is compulsion (ikrāh), and the bar for it is much higher than that for fear: one
has not suffered compulsion until one has been subjected to torture (lā yakūnu mukrahan
ḥattā yuʿadhdhibahu ʾl-mushrikūn).211 The excuse that people are giving for abandoning
al-Dirʿiyya and accepting the authority of Ibrāhīm is therefore invalid. Until they are
tortured, Muslims have a duty to show enmity to the polytheists and fight them.
Unlike earlier Wahhābī scholars writing on the subjects of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ
and jihād, Sulaymān was writing when his movement was in retreat and under threat. His
goal was not only to keep the Saudi state afloat but also to preserve Wahhābism from
external attack internal corruption. The obligation of enmity had to be maintained, even
in the face of almost certain death. This is the theme of following chapter.
210
Sulaymān Āl al-Shaykh, Majmūʿ al-rasāʾil, ed. al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl Furayyān (Mecca: Dār
ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1420/1999f), 41-75, at 56.
211
Ibid., 44, 58.
276
Chapter 5
The Persistence of Classical Wahhābism (1238-1351/1823-1932)
After the destruction of the first Saudi state in 1223/1818, the resurrection of something
like it remained the great hope of the Wahhābī scholars in Najd for the next hundred or so
years. Rather than concluding that the religio-political enterprise of the first Saudi state
was flawed in conception—being too antagonistic and belligerent—they reached the view
instead that God had destroyed the state to punish the Wahhābīs for their sins. One of the
leading scholars of the thirteenth/nineteenth century, Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq (d. 1301/1884),
epitomized this feeling when he wrote that the empowerment of the unbelieving Turks
(al-turk al-kuffār) over Najd was the result of God’s wisdom and justice (min ḥikmat
Allāh wa-ʿadlihi) and that certain people’s sins are what allowed this unbelieving state to
have authority over them (ḥaṣala min baʿḍihim dhunūb bihā tasallaṭat hādhihi ʾl-dawla
al-kufriyya).1 The sins in question were never identified specifically, but the assumption
that they were to blame was widespread. The scholars of the next century were not given
to critical introspection, to rethinking their doctrine and recalibrating their aims according
to any newfound pragmatism. This was a period of bold reassertion in which they sought
to preserve their religious tradition from a host of enemies, both internal and external—
from within the Wahhābī tradition and from without it. Oftentimes, this involved the
rehashing of old debates over the cult of saints and the nature of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s doctrine; other times, it meant staving off the pressures of moderation and
dilution that would lead to accommodation between Wahhābism and the greater Islamic
1
Ibn ʿAtīq, Sabīl al-najāt waʾl-fikāk, ed. al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl Furayyān (Riyadh: Dār Ṭayba,
1409/1989), 26.
277
world. For most of this period, the scholars were dogged and persistent. With the rise of
the third Saudi state in the early fourteenth/early twentieth century, however, they
willfully succumbed to some of the very compromises that they had opposed for so long.
This chapter is devoted to these efforts of the scholars to defend and preserve
Wahhābism during the period from the beginning of the second Saudi state (1238-
1305/1823-87) through the rise and consolidation of the third (1319-51/1902-32)—that
is, 1238-1351/1823-1932. The intervening period (1305-19/1887-1902), when there was
no Saudi state, may reasonably be termed the Rashīdī interregnum, as the political scene
in Najd was then dominated by the Āl Rashīd dynasty ruling from the northern Arabian
town of Ḥāʾil.
The chapter is divided into three sections, each corresponding to a certain
timeframe in the larger period under consideration. The three subperiods are (1) the
second Egyptian occupation (1253-59/1837-43), (2) the Saudi civil war and the Rashīdī
interregnum (1282-1319/1865-1902), and (3) the rise of the third Saudi state (1319-
1351/1902-1932). Each of these sections begins with a brief overview of the relevant
political history, setting the stage for the discussion of the various challenges faced by the
Wahhābī scholars in that period. For the most part, these challenges were in the form of
scholarly enemies actively opposed to classical Wahhābism. The modifier “classical” is
especially necessary here as some of these opponents were themselves Wahhābīs—that
is, avowed adherents to the teachings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. However, the version of
Wahhābism that they espoused was different from the mainstream, classical form
represented by the leading scholars in Riyadh and elsewhere in Najd. These latter men,
composing the ranks of the Wahhābī scholarly establishment, included ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
278
ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh, his son ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, and his son ʿAbdallāh; and beyond the Āl
al-Shaykh Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq, ʿAbdallāh Abā Buṭayn, and Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān. All of
them will be introduced in due course.
One of the defining features of classical Wahhābism, as noted in the Introduction,
was a commitment to manifesting enmity to non-Wahhābī Muslims. This is a theme that
we will see emphasized time and again in the course this chapter. The main contention
here is that the debates and disagreements between the leading Wahhābī scholars and
their enemies throw considerable light on the character of Wahhābism during the period.
As will become clear, it remained a hidebound movement that defined itself in opposition
to nearly all other Muslim groups, and it remained deeply committed to the exclusivist
and activist principles of classical Wahhābī doctrine.
Some of the scholarly disputes covered here have been discussed previously,
including in the work of David Commins, Michael Crawford, Abdulaziz Al-Fahad, and
Guido Steinberg.2 My objective here is to provide a more comprehensive and, in some
cases, more rigorous account of the disputes and the disputants than currently exists, and
to tie these episodes together in such a way as to emphasize the persistence of classical
Wahhābism through the mid-fourteenth/early twentieth century. While occasionally we
will meet with a case of doctrinal refinement—most importantly, Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq’s
definition of manifesting the religion (iẓhār al-dīn) as the display of enmity—and while
occasionally we will encounter signs of doctrinal moderation, the main theme in what
2
See Commins, Wahhabi Mission, esp. ch. 2; idem, “Why Unayza? Ulema Dissidents and Nonconformists
in the Second Saudi State,” unpublished paper, n.d.; Crawford, “Civil War, Foreign Intervention, and the
Question of Political Legitimacy: A Nineteenth-Century Saʿūdī Qāḍī’s Dilemma,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 14 (1982): 227-48; Al-Fahad, “From Exclusivism to Accommodation: Doctrinal and
Legal Evolution of Wahhabism,” New York University Law Review 79 (2004): 485-519; Steinberg,
Religion und Staat in Saudi-Arabien, esp. ch. 3.
279
follows is persistence, not change. Contra the view that “Wahhabism partly lost its
fanatic and uncompromising character in the second Saudi state,”3 it will be seen here
that that the movement retained that character during the second state and into the third as
well.
I. The Second Egyptian Occupation (1253-59/1837-43)4
After the destruction of al-Dirʿiyya in 1223/1818, Egyptian troops continued to occupy
Arabia for several decades, their base being in the Ḥijāz. Their hold on Najd, however,
was precarious from the outset. In 1238/1823, Turkī ibn ʿAbdallāh Āl Suʿūd (r. 1238-
49/1823-34), one of Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd’s grandsons, made a bid for power. Having
escaped Egyptian detention in Cairo and returned to Najd, he arrived in Riyadh in
1240/1824, turning the town into the capital of the emergent second Saudi state (1238-
1305/1823-87). All subsequent Saudi rulers, it may be noted, have been descendants of
Turkī, including his son Fayṣal (r. 1249-54/1834-38, 1259-82/1843-65), who was
likewise sent to Cairo after the fall of al-Dirʿiyya, returning to Najd in 1243/1827f.
According to Ibn Bishr, by 1241/1825 all of Najd had submitted to Turkī’s rule, and al-
Aḥsāʾ was incorporated into the state by 1245/1830.5 In a short span of time, he had
succeeded in recovering much of the ancestral Saudi domain. The great exception was the
Ḥijāz, which would never come under the control of the second Saudi state.
At the height of his powers, in 1249/1834, Turkī was assassinated in Riyadh. The
plot was hatched by a rival member of the Āl Suʿūd, Mishārī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who
3
4
On this period, see ibid., 158-73; Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth century, 60-148.
5
Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 2:32, 60-62.
280
was killed in the ensuing turmoil. The headship of state passed to Fayṣal, whose reign
was to last some three decades interrupted by five years during which he was once again
a prisoner in Cairo (1254-59/1838-43). The Egyptians were once again occupying Najd.
The six-year period beginning just before Fayṣal’s departure has been well
described as the second Egyptian occupation (1253-59/1837-43).6 Egypt’s ruler,
Muḥammad ʿAlī, having decided to reimpose his authority over Najd, had dispatched
Khālid ibn Suʿūd, another member of the Āl Suʿūd taken to Cairo after the fall of al-
Dirʿiyya, to challenge the rule of Fayṣal. Khālid was assisted in this endeavor by the
military commander Ismāʿīl Bey, the former head of the Cairo police. Together, they
entered Riyadh in 1253/1837. Another partner of theirs was Khūrshīd Bāshā, Muḥammad
ʿAlī’s former governor in the Ḥijāz, who took up a position in al-Qaṣīm as the overseer of
military operations in Najd. The second Egyptian occupation was cut short when
Muḥammad ʿAlī’s empire started to collapse in 1255/1840, whereupon he ordered the
withdrawal of his forces from Arabia. After the withdrawal, there followed a few chaotic
years during which Khālid ibn Suʿūd fought for control of Najd with a relative, ʿAbdallāh
ibn Thunayyān Āl Suʿūd. The latter prevailed in 1257/1841, retaking Riyadh, and two
years later, in 1259/1843, Fayṣal returned and resumed his reign. During the next two
decades, he would bring most of Najd and al-Aḥsāʾ under his control as his father Turkī
had done before him.
Turkī and Fayṣal were not the only Najdīs who found their way home from Cairo
during this period. The returnees also included religious scholars, most notably ʿAbd al-
6
Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 47.
281
Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1285/1869).7 A grandson of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
born in al-Dirʿiyya in 1193/1779f, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān turned up in Riyadh in 1241/1825f,
after seven or eight years in exile. He was the chief scholarly authority for most of the
duration of the second Saudi state, living in Riyadh, where he trained the next generation
of scholars. During his time in Cairo he is said to have studied with a number of Egyptian
scholars at al-Azhar, but this experience does not seem to have engendered any
modifications concerning the main tenets of Wahhābism.
The alliance between Wahhābī scholars and Saudi rulers was reconstituted with
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān playing the leading scholarly role as the counterpart to the imāms Turkī
and then Fayṣal. As with the first Saudi state, the explicit rationale for the expansion of
the second was the spread of Wahhābism. An undated epistle by Fayṣal, ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān, and another scholar illustrates the role of jihād in the policy of the state.8 In the
epistle, the three men call on the Wahhābī faithful to direct worship exclusively to God
and to fulfill the duties of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and jihād. They write,
God has made it obligatory for the monotheists to cut off relations with the
polytheists and to wage jihād against them, as in His words, “Fight those who
believe not in God and the Last Day…”—the verse (Q. 9:29). And He says, “slay
the polytheists wherever you find them” (Q. 9:5). The verses commanding jihād
against them, and jihād against their brethren among the hypocrites, are
numerous. He makes jihād against them and dissociation from them obligatory in
most of the chapters of the Qurʾān.9
7
On him see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 2:33-42; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 78-92; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ
Najd, 1:180-201; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:269-73; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 1:173-
82; and see further Khālid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ghunaym, al-Mujaddid al-thānī: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl
al-Shaykh wa-ṭarīqatuhu fī taqrīr al-ʿaqīda (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1418/1997).
8
The third co-author is ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn Āl al-Shaykh (d. c. 1257/1841f), on whom see Āl Bassām,
ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 5:174-75.
9
awjaba ʾllāh taʿālā ʿalā ʾl-muwaḥḥidīn muqāṭaʿat al-mushrikīn wa-jihādahum ka-qawlihi qātilū ʾlladhīna
lā yuʾminūna biʾllāhi wa-lā biʾl-yawmi ʾl-ākhiri ʾl-āya wa-qāla taʿālā faʾqtulū ʾl-mushrikīna ḥaythu
wajadtumūhum waʾl-āyāt biʾl-amr bi-jihādihim wa-jihād ikhwānihim min al-munāfiqīn kathīra fa-awjaba
jihādahum waʾl-barāʾa minhum fī akthar suwar al-Qurʾān, al-Durar al-saniyya, 14:137.
282
Similarly, in an undated letter to Fayṣal, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān counsels the imām to wage
jihād against those refusing to observe tawḥīd, bedouin and settled peoples alike.10 There
is, however, a suggestion here that most of the people of Najd did not need to be fought
in order to be brought to embrace Wahhābism. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān says that most of the
bedouin merely require an instructor (wa-akthar bādiyat Najd yakfī fīhim al-muʿallim),
meaning that jihād was unnecessary.11 Unlike at the beginning of the first Saudi state, at
the beginning of the second, Wahhābism was seen as being the default form of Islam
professed by the population at large. It thus needed reinforcement, not implantation.
Another important difference between the first and second Saudi states concerns
the nature of the Āl Suʿūd. In the first state, as was seen in the previous chapter, the Āl
Suʿūd were no less ideologically charged than their scholarly counterparts. In the second,
by contrast, they appear considerably less motivated by religious concern, and hence
more disposed to realpolitik. There were no bids to conquer the Ḥijāz, let alone expand
beyond the Arabian Peninsula, and no menacing letters to the governors of Syria and
Iraq. On the contrary, there is some evidence that the Saudi rulers paid tribute to the
Ottomans and the Egyptians.12 Toward the end of his reign, Fayṣal even hosted a British
delegation in Riyadh. As R. Bayly Winder has put it, Fayṣal was “farsighted enough to
realise that he could not convert the whole world to Wahhabism, and that if he tried he
would again bring ruin on his people and himself … He was a devout Wahhabi, but,
instead of attacking Karbala, he received a British diplomat in his capital.”13
10
wa-min al-daʿwa al-wājiba waʾl-farīḍa al-lāzima jihād man abā an yaltazima ʾl-tawḥīd wa-yaʿrifahu
min al-bādiya wa-ghayrihim, ibid., 14:67.
11
Ibid.
12
Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century, 206-7; Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 163.
13
Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century, 228.
283
Ibn Nabhān and a Man from al-Kharj
During the second Egyptian occupation, the scholars in Riyadh, including ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan, took refuge in the southern areas of Najd, in particular al-Ḥawṭa and
al-Ḥarīq, where Egyptian rule did not quite reach.14 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and his allies
portrayed their flight from Egyptian-ruled territory as hijra away from territory
dominated by polytheists, encouraging their fellow Wahhābīs to do likewise and to resist
the foreign invaders by means of jihād. One of the most outspoken of his allies in this
regard was the young Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq (d. 1301/1884), who had been one of ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān’s students in Riyadh.15 Born in 1227/1812f in al-Zilfī, a town in Sudayr, Ibn
ʿAtīq was one of the most influential scholars of his generation, serving successively as
the qāḍī of al-Kharj, al-Ḥawṭa, and al-Aflāj, and tutoring numerous students in these
locales. During the second Egyptian occupation, he likewise took refuge in the south with
his teacher.
Early on in this period, Ibn ʿAtīq authored an epistle inveighing against those he
accused of giving loyalty to the unbelievers (muwālāt al-kuffār), meaning the foreign
invaders. Not long after, an obscure Najdī named Ibn Nabhān wrote a refutation of Ibn
ʿAtīq’s epistle.16 Neither of these works is extant, but we know of their existence and
content from the text of a subsequent refutation of Ibn Nabhān by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.17 It is
from this that one can make out the contours of the ordeal.
14
On their refuge in the south, see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 2:123, 148, 157.
15
On him see Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 244-54; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:84-95; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-
nāẓirīn, 1:115-17; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 1:282-87.
16
There appears to be no information about Ibn Nabhān apart from the name. His case is discussed briefly
in Al-Fahad, “From Exclusivism to Accommodation,” 499-500.
17
284
According to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, in his original refutation Ibn ʿAtīq adduced a
number of Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīth in support of hijra and jihad and against giving
loyalty to the unbelievers. Ibn Nabhān rejected his use of these proof-texts for two
principal reasons. The first was that hijra, in his view, was not binding on the people of
Najd as they were still capable of manifesting the religion (iẓhār al-dīn); the second was
that jihād was not presently legitimate as there was no recognized imām (imām
muttabaʿ).18 Responding to Ibn Nabhān, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān reprimands him for neglecting
the two duties of hijra and jihād (tark al-farḍayn) and suggests that he may have
committed apostasy (fa-lā taʾmanu nafsuka ʾl-irtidād ʿan al-dīn).19 For essentially he was
approving of the new state of affairs in Najd (istiḥsān hādhihi ʾl-ḥāla). “Who among you
is manifesting the religion?” (man huwa ʾlladhī fīkum yuẓhiru dīnahu), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
asks him, implying that the answer is of course no one. The notion of manifesting the
religion is not dealt with exhaustively, but is glossed in part as avoiding the unbelievers
in public and private (biʿtizālihim fī majālisihim wa-aswāqihim wa-majāmiʿihim).20 As
for the argument about jihād requiring an imām, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān rejects it by
underscoring the overriding nature of the duty of jihād (ʿumūm farḍ al-jihād).21
Whenever there exists a group with some strength (manʿa), he says, it is obligatory for
that group to wage jihād for the sake of God, whether there is an imām or not. To posit
that there is no jihād without an imām is to put things in exactly the wrong order, for only
through jihād does an imām emerge.22 At the end of his refutation, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān notes
18
Ibid., 8:198-99
19
Ibid., 8:197, 193.
20
Ibid., 8:197-98.
21
Ibid., 8:199.
22
Ibid., 8:202-3.
285
that the point is moot anyway, for after some time (baʿd al-farāgh) God has again blessed
the Wahhābīs with an imām who is waging jihād and calling people to Islam (aẓhara
ʾllāh imāman yujāhidu fī sabīl Allāh wa-yadʿūhum ilā ʾl-Islām).23 This is likely a
reference to ʿAbdallāh ibn Thunayyān.
After ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s refutation, Ibn ʿAtīq wrote a follow-up refutation of Ibn
Nabhān titled Sabīl al-najāt waʾl-fikāk min muwālāt al-murtaddīn waʾl-atrāk (“The Path
to Deliverance and Disengagement from Showing Loyalty to the Apostates and the
Turks”).24 In the introduction, he describes his earlier epistle and praises ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān’s excellent refutation of the unnamed opponent (hādhā ʾl-muʿāriḍ).25 Though he
says that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s epistle is sufficient,26 he felt compelled to go into greater
theological depth, as he does in the lengthy Sabīl al-najāt waʾl-fikāk. The latter is a locus
classicus for the Wahhābī doctrines of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and hijra.
Throughout the book, Ibn ʿAtīq stresses the requirement of showing enmity to
unbelievers and polytheists (muʿādāt al-kuffār waʾl-mushrikīn), a duty that he says has its
origins in the example of the Prophet Abraham.27 On the other side of the equation, he
places great emphasis on the prohibition against associating with or showing loyalty to
(al-muwālāt, al-tawallī) unbelievers and polytheists. He warns that “whoso shows loyalty
to the unbelievers belongs not to God in anything” (wa-man yuwāli ʾl-kāfirīn fa-laysa
23
Ibid., 8:203.
24
Ibn ʿAtīq, Sabīl al-najāt. The word atrāk is Ibn ʿAtīq’s term for the Egyptian-led invaders. Some modern
Saudis replace it with the euphemism ahl al-ishrāk. For the author’s rendering of the title, see ibid., 42, and
see also the titles of the various manuscripts in Khālid ibn Zayd al-Māniʿ, al-Āthār al-makhṭūṭa li-ʿulamāʾ
Najd (al-Dilam: n.p., 1426/2006), 173.
25
Ibn ʿAtīq, Sabīl al-najāt, 21-22. To my knowledge, no one has previously linked Sabīl al-najāt waʾl-fikāk
to the earlier episode concerning Ibn Nabhān. It was not written during the Saudi civil war, as has been
alleged.
26
Ibid., 22.
27
Ibid., 31.
286
min Allāh fī shayʾ) and that “whoso shows loyalty to the Turks is himself a Turk” (man
tawallā al-turk fa-huwa turkī).28 He quotes at length here from Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh’s
al-Dalāʾil fī ḥukm muwālāt ahl al-ishrāk, which admonishes Muslims for associating
with or showing support to polytheists.29
While much of this was by now standard Wahhābī doctrine, Ibn ʿAtīq makes
several additional points about both al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and hijra that would prove
enduring. The first is the point that dissociation from polytheists is more important than
dissociation from the idols that they worship—otherwise put, that dissociation from
people is more important than dissociation from false gods. He derives this view from
Abraham’s statement to his people in Q. 60:4, “we dissociate from you and what you
worship apart from God” (innā buraʾāʾu minkum wa mimmā taʿbudūna min dūni ʾillāh),
pointing out that barāʾa from the polytheists precedes barāʾa from their idols.30 The
lesson to be learned from this is that it is not sufficient to dissociate from idols alone; it is
necessary to dissociate from, and show hatred and enmity to, the idol-worshippers. “How
many are those,” he writes, “who [themselves] do not commit polytheism, yet fail to
show enmity to those who do!”31
The second point concerns the same verse, Q. 60:4. Ibn ʿAtīq reads significance
into the fact that enmity (ʿadāwa) precedes hatred (bughḍ) in Abraham’s phrase, “We
disbelieve in you, and between us and you enmity has shown itself, and hatred forever”
(kafarnā bikum wa-badā baynanā wa-baynakumu ʾl-ʿadāwatu waʾl-baghḍāʾu abadan).
For Ibn ʿAtīq, bughḍ is understood as something internal—a feeling or emotion—while
28
Ibid., 34-35.
29
Ibid., 78-83.
30
Ibid., 44.
31
fa-kam min insān lā yaqaʿu minhu ʾl-shirk wa-lākinnahu lā yuʿādī ahlahu, ibid.
287
ʿadāwa is hatred made manifest—an action, not just a feeling. “A person can hate the
polytheists but not show them enmity,” he writes, “and he would fail to meet the
obligation.”32 Enmity, he says, is more important than hatred (al-ūlā ahamm min al-
thāniya).33
On the question of hijra, Ibn ʿAtīq adds something new by clarifying the meaning
of manifesting the religion (iẓhār al-dīn). The duty of hijra, he says, is the duty to leave a
land of unbelief (balad kufr); one is only dispensed from it if one is capable of
manifesting the religion or is suffering from compulsion (ikrāh).34 But compulsion in this
case must involve severe physical agony, namely, torture (taʿdhīb)—the same view
articulated by Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh.35 As for iẓhār al-dīn, he says, it is not merely
uttering the confession of faith and performing the prayers and other ritual obligations; it
entails openly expressing enmity to the unbelieving group (ṭāʾifa) in question (al-taṣrīḥ
… lahā bi-ʿadāwatihi).36 In other words, “a man does not manifest the religion until he
dissociates from the unbelievers who are in his midst and states plainly to them that they
are unbelievers and that he is their enemy. If that has not happened, the religion has not
been manifested.”37 Seemingly all Wahhābī scholars after Ibn ʿAtīq (that is, the scholars
covered in this chapter) would follow his lead in defining iẓhār al-dīn as the
manifestation of enmity.38 Previously, Wahhābī scholars wrote of iẓhār al-dīn and
32
fa-inna ʾl-insān qad yubghiḍu ʾl-mushrikīn wa-lā yuʿādīhim fa-lā yakūnu ātiyan biʾl-wājib, ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid., 95.
35
Ibid., 91.
36
Ibid., 92.
37
anna ʾl-rajul lā yakūnu muẓhiran li-dīnihi ḥattā yatabarraʾa min ahl al-kufr alladhī huwa bayn
aẓhurihim wa-yuṣarriḥa lahum bi-annahum kuffār wa-annahu ʿaduww lahum fa-in lam yaḥsul dhālika lam
yakun iẓhār al-dīn ḥāṣilan, ibid., 95.
38
See, for instance, the fatwā by two of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s sons, Ḥusayn and ʿAbdallāh, in al-Durar al-
saniyya, 10:140-41, and the one by Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh in his Majmūʿ al-rasāʾil, 165-66. In both of
these, iẓhār al-dīn and ʿadāwa appear side-by-side and the meaning of former is not teased out.
288
evincing enmity as separate, if complementary, duties. Ibn ʿAtīq’s contribution was to
collapse any distinction between the two concepts.
During the short reign of Ibn Thunayyān (r. 1257-59/1841-43), or just after the
return to power of Fayṣal, there transpired a similar episode involving another obscure
Najdī who objected to the view that hijra and jihād were binding on him. In his book al-
Mawrid al-ʿadhb al-zulāl fī kashf shubah ahl al-ḍalāl (“The Pleasing and Pure Pool
Exposing the Specious Arguments of the People of Error”),39 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān describes
coming across an unsigned epistle (risāla) that he believes was written by a man from al-
Kharj.40 The author of the epistle complained about the conduct of Ibn Thunayyān
(namely, his seizure of property as spoils of war) and the undue influence of the Āl al-
Shaykh on the imām (who would have been either Ibn Thunayyān or Fayṣal).41 In
addition, the man argued that there was never any obligation on him to perform hijra
during the time when the Egyptians were in Najd (lammā kāna ahl Miṣr bi-bilād Najd).42
In his response, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s main concern is with the last point. This man and
those like him, he says, have been spreading specious arguments (shubuhāt) to justify
their previous inaction.43
At the beginning of al-Mawrid, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān reiterates the main themes of
Wahhābī doctrine, including the worship of God exclusively (ikhlāṣ al-ʿibāda),
dissociation from polytheism and polytheists (waʾl-barāʾa min al-shirk wa-ahlihi), and
39
See al-Durar al-saniyya, 11:298-349; Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, 4:287-318. The
only manuscript of al-Mawrid that I know of has a copy date of 1261/1845; see Āl al-Shaykh, al-Mawrid
al-ʿadhb al-zulāl, ms. Riyadh, Maktabat al-Malik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya, 568, p. 32. But I am quite certain it
was written earlier (probably a couple years earlier), as this episode preceded the next one concerning Ibn
Duʿayj, as will be seen below.
40
al-Durar al-saniyya, 11:299
41
Ibid., 11:323-35, 322.
42
Ibid., 11:328.
43
Ibid., 11:333-34.
289
fighting the latter until there is no fitna, glossed as polytheism (wa-qitāluhum ḥattā lā
takūna fitna ay shirk).44 The anonymous man from al-Kharj presumably needed to be
reminded of all this, in particular the points regarding barāʾa and qitāl. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
says of him and the other purveyors of shubuhāt (mushabbiha),
God commanded them to fight the polytheists, and they fought alongside them;
He commanded them to keep distance from them, and they gave them sanctuary
and drew near to them; He commanded them to show them enmity, and they
showed them loyalty; He commanded them to show them hatred, and they
showed them love; and He commanded them to give support to the Muslims, and
they gave support to the unbelievers against them.45
In short, these people put worldly interest above divine command and abandoned their
brethren in a time of dire need. There was no excuse (ʿudhr), says ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, for
them to remain living among the polytheists.46 Worse than their willingness to reside
among them and eschew hijra was their outright support for the invaders
(muẓāharatuhum wa-muʿāwanatuhum).47
Ibn Duʿayj
The final scholarly dispute of this period of which there is some record occurred around
1261/1845, about two years after Fayṣal’s return to power.48 It involved yet another Najdī
complaining about accusations of failing to perform hijra during the second Egyptian
occupation. Yet this time the man in question, Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Duʿayj (d.
1268/1851f), was himself a Wahhābī scholar. Ibn Nabhān and the man from al-Kharj, by
44
Ibid., 11:310
45
anna ʾllāh taʿālā amarahum bi-qitāl al-mushrikīn fa-qātalū maʿahum wa-amarahum biʾl-buʿd ʿanhum
fa-āwawhum wa-qaribū minhum wa-amarahum bi-muʿādātihim fa-wālawhum wa-amarahum bi-bughḍihim
fa-wāddūhum wa-amarahum bi-an yanṣurū ahl al-Islām fa-naṣarū ʾl-kafara ʿalayhim, ibid., 11:344-45.
46
Ibid., 11:334.
47
Ibid., 11:343.
48
One of the texts in question is dated this year, as will be seen.
290
contrast, do not appear to have belonged to the scholarly class, and the extent of their
commitment to Wahhābī doctrine is unclear. Ibn Duʿayj was born in 1190/1776f in
Marāt, al-Washm, and served as the town’s qāḍī for decades.49 After the fall of the first
Saudi state, he wrote a long poem praising the Āl Suʿūd and decrying the invasion of
Najd by the forces of Ibrāhīm Bāshā.50 His Wahhābī loyalties are therefore
unquestionable. His protest took the form of a short rhetorical fatwā—a response to a
question posed to himself. Three Wahhābī scholars saw fit to refute it: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān,
Ibn ʿAtīq, and a man of lesser renown, Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad al-Shathrī (d. 1309/1891f).51
All of them quote the offending text in full.52
In the fatwā, Ibn Duʿayj says he is inquiring about a matter (innī sāʾil ʿan
masʾala) that has been discussed far and wide and has aroused great controversy. It is the
view of certain ignorant persons (qawl al-juhhāl) that “everyone who resides in a town
that has been overcome by the forces [i.e., the forces loyal to Khālid ibn Suʿūd and
Khūrshīd Bāshā] and does not emigrate from there is an unbeliever.”53 This view is
unfounded, he says, for the new masters have not ordered any of the residents of the
towns in question to abandon their religion (al-rujūʿ ʿan dīnihi), nor have they compelled
them (akrahūhu) to act in a way contrary to the faith. Even were the opposite the case, he
49
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:497-501; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:89-90; and see further
the editor’s introduction in Ibn Duʿayj, Tārīkh Ibn Duʿayj, ed. Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī (Beirut:
Rawāfid, 1439/2008), 204-20.
50
This is the Tārīkh Ibn Duʿayj mentioned in the previous note.
51
Ibn ʿAtīq’s refutation is discussed in Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 47-49. On al-Shathrī, see Āl Bassām,
ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:533-35. I do not address his refutation as it does not say anything that the others do not;
however, the fact that it quotes al-Mawrid al-adhb al-zulāl helps with the dating of both this and the
previous episode. Al-Shathrī’s refutation survives in at least two manuscripts: Radd ʿalā ṣāḥib al-risāla al-
maʿrūf biʾbn Duʿayj, ms. Riyadh, Maktabat al-Malik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya, 58/86; Radd ʿalā ʾbn Duʿayj, ms.
Ḥāʾil, Maktabat al-Shaykh Ṣāliḥ ibn Sālim Āl Bunayyān.
52
The text is found uninterrupted in Ibn ʿAtīq, al-Difāʿ ʿan ahl al-sunna, 6-7.
53
kull man aqāma bi-balda wa-qad istawlat ʿalayhā ʾl-ʿasākir wa-lā ʿanhā yuhājiru fa-huwa kāfir, ibid., 6.
291
goes on, excommunicating those who decline to emigrate would still be wrong, as the
Prophet deemed it permissible to commit an act of unbelief in the case of compulsion
(wa-abāḥa ʾl-kufr idhā ukriha ʿalayhi). Furthermore, the people only granted these forces
access to their lands in order to protect themselves, their property, and their children
(ḥimāyatan li-nafsihi wa-mālihi wa-wuldihi). They continued to harbor hatred toward the
forces. Ibn Duʿayj finishes by warning that whoso excommunicates a Muslim has himself
become an unbeliever (wa-man kaffara Musliman fa-huwa kāfir).54
In his refutation, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān denies that anyone holds the view described by
Ibn Duʿayj, that he invented it in order to attack those who take the obligation of hijra
seriously.55 In making light of this duty, says ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ibn Duʿayj has
misrepresented one of the foundations of the religion (aṣl wa-qāʿida min qawāʿid al-
Islām) that are important for jihād and the supremacy of Islam (wa-bihā yaḥṣulu ʾl-jihād
wa-taʿlū kalimat Allāh).56 While it is true that one need not undertake hijra in the case of
compulsion, he says, the claim that Ibn Duʿayj and those like him were enduring
compulsion cannot be accepted (daʿwāhu ʾl-ikrāh mamnūʿa); they were not imprisoned
or put in shackles, and there was no police presence barring egress from their towns.57 On
the contrary, Ibn Duʿayj willingly made peace with and showed love (al-mudāhana waʾl-
muwādda) to those who sought to destroy the religion, as was also the case with many
notable men of Najd (aʿyān ahl Najd).58
54
Ibid., 6-7.
55
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh, al-Maṭlab al-ḥamīd fī bayān maqāṣid al-tawḥīd, ed. Ismāʿīl
ibn Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq (Riyadh: Dār al-Hidāya, 1411/1991), 101-50, at 123. Ibn Duʿayj is identified (as Aḥmad
ibn ʿAlī al-Marāʾī) ibid., 122. The editor of this volume titles the refutation Irshād ṭālib al-hudā li-mā
yubāʿidu ʿan al-radā. Another version is found in al-Durar al-saniyya, 8:204-72.
56
Āl al-Shaykh, al-Maṭlab al-ḥamīd, 129, 127.
57
Ibid., 131.
58
Ibid., 125; cf. ibid., 132, 140.
292
Ibn ʿAtīq makes many of the same points in his refutation, which is dated Rabīʿ I
1261/March-April 1845,59 and he repeats many of his ideas on al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and
hijra that he elaborated previously in Sabīl al-najāt waʾl-fikāk. “Manifesting the religion
means openly expressing enmity to the unbelievers” (iẓhār al-dīn huwa ʾl-taṣrīḥ lil-kuffār
biʾl-ʿadāwa), he writes, asserting that there is no way that Ibn Duʿayj was manifesting the
religion during this period.60 Though he was aligned with the Wahhābīs (inqāda li-ahlihi)
when they were in power, when the unbelievers (al-ṭāʾifa al-khārija ʿalā ʾl-Islām) took
over he inclined in their direction, ingratiating himself with Khūrshīd Bāshā (ṣāra ʿind
Khurshid yuṣabbiḥuhu biʾl-khayr wa-yumassīhi).61 As before, Ibn ʿAtīq distinguishes
between hatred and enmity, writing, “Indeed, hatred that is not accompanied by manifest
enmity is profitless” (fa-inna ʾl-bughḍ alladhī lā tuqārinuhu ʾl-ʿadāwa al-ẓāhira lā
yanfaʿu).62 When a Muslim living among infidels is truly manifesting the religion by
displaying enmity, the infidels will not leave him alone but will show him enmity in turn
if they can (lā yatrukuhu ahl al-kufr ʿalā dīnihi maʿa ʾl-qudra ʿalayhi).63 For Ibn ʿAtīq,
then, to manifest the religion in a land overrun by unbelievers inevitably entails a hostile
response from them.64 Coexisting peacefully with them as Muslims is not possible,
because manifesting the religion will elicit their hostility.
The Wahhābism promoted by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and Ibn ʿAtīq in this period was
thus a militant and political one. Membership in the community of believers did not come
easily. One could not be passively Wahhābī, accepting the rule of the Egyptian occupiers
59
Ibn ʿAtīq, al-Difāʿ ʿan ahl al-sunna, 35.
60
Ibid., 15.
61
Ibid., 18
62
Ibid., 30-31.
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid., 32.
293
and staying put; rather one had to agitate against them. These were, of course, somewhat
theoretical obligations that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and Ibn ʿAtīq were spelling out. It is difficult
to tell how many people actually heeded them, and whether those who opposed their
views were in the end punished or persecuted. In any event, with the return to power of
Fayṣal, their version of the faith—classical Wahhābism—was guaranteed victory for the
time being. Ibn Duʿayj’s views, as those of Ibn Nabhān and the man from al-Kharj, were
suppressed.
II. The Saudi Civil War and the Rashīdī Interregnum (1282-1319/1865-1902)65
The second part of Fayṣal’s reign (1259-82/1843-65) were the most stable and prosperous
years of the second Saudi state. The state’s authority was successfully reimposed over the
central districts of Najd, northward in al-Qaṣīm, southward in al-Kharj, and eastward in
al-Aḥsāʾ. North of al-Qaṣīm, however, Fayṣal held less sway, for the Shammar tribal
leaders of the Āl Rashīd of Ḥāʾil, though they acknowledged his overlordship, were
gathering strength.
Fayṣal’s death in Rajab 1282/December 1865 was followed by a protracted civil
war that slowly brought the second Saudi state to ruin. The main contestants were his two
eldest sons, ʿAbdallāh and Suʿūd. ʿAbdallāh, who was heir apparent, assumed power after
his father’s death. He ruled in Riyadh for some five years, but fled in mid-1287/late 1870
when his brother launched a campaign to take the Saudi capital with the support of
several towns and tribes. ʿAbdallāh then appealed to the Ottoman governor in Baghdad,
Midḥat Bāshā, for help against Suʿūd, leading directly to the Ottoman occupation of al-
65
On this period, see Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 174-209; Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth
Century, 229-78.
294
Aḥsāʾ in late 1287/early 1871. The province would remain under Ottoman rule until
1331/1913. Suʿūd was not in power in Riyadh for long (r. 1288-91/1871-75, with one
interruption), dying of illness in Dhū ʾl-ḥijja 1291/January 1875. Thereafter, Riyadh was
briefly ruled by Fayṣal’s fourth son, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, before ʿAbdallāh regained power
in a tenuous alliance with his surviving brothers and Suʿūd’s sons. The arrangement
lasted from 1292/1875 until 1305/1887, when Suʿūd’s sons ousted ʿAbdallāh, prompting
the intervention of the Āl Rashīd. The tribal dynasty’s ruler, Muḥammad ibn Rashīd (r.
1288-1315/1872-97), entered Riyadh with his forces, installed a man named Salīm ibn
Sabhān as ruler over the town, and returned to Ḥāʾil with ʿAbdallāh and other members
of the Āl Suʿūd in tow. Presumably, the latter were prisoners of a sort. The second Saudi
state was effectively brought to an end. The Āl Rashīd had gradually expanded their
power in Najd, beginning in al-Qaṣīm and moving south toward al-ʿĀriḍ.
ʿAbdallāh lived out the rest of his life in Ḥāʾil, though he was allowed to return to
Riyadh in the days before his death in 1307/1889. Afterwards, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Fayṣal briefly served as governor of Riyadh, following complaints about Sālim ibn
Sabhān and his heavy-handed methods (he had chased down and killed several of Suʿūd’s
sons). ʿAbd al-Raḥmān led an unsuccessful revolt against the Āl Rashīd that ended in
1308/1891 at the Battle of al-Mulaydāʾ, near al-Qaṣīm. The Āl Rashīd won a decisive
victory, and another decade would pass before the Āl Suʿūd regained control of Najd.
Ibn ʿAjlān
The first scholarly dispute of this era arose in response to ʿAbdallāh in Fayṣal’s appeal
for Ottoman assistance in the Saudi civil war. Most Wahhābī scholars saw this as an
295
illegitimate appeal to polytheists in an intra-Muslim affair. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan,
who died in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1285/February 1869, about year and a half before ʿAbdallāh’s
request, was not there to arbitrate. His son ʿAbd al-Laṭīf (d. 1293/1876), who emerged as
the most influential scholar in Riyadh in his father’s absence, took the lead in addressing
the issue.
Born in al-Dirʿiyya in 1225/1810f, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf was among the many Najdīs
exiled to Cairo in 1223/1818.66 For reasons that are unclear, he stayed in Cairo for more
than thirty years, much longer than his father, returning to Najd only in 1264/1847f.
Upon his return, he went to al-Aḥsāʾ to work as a preacher for two years before settling
permanently in Riyadh. As one might expect, his decades-long experience in Egypt,
which included studying at al-Azhar, seems to have provided him with a more broad-
ranging education and inculcated in him a more cosmopolitan outlook than was the norm
for Wahhābī scholars. There are some signs of modest doctrinal leniency in his writings,
and occasionally he draws a contrast with Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq as a more moderate thinker.
For instance, whereas Ibn ʿAtīq strongly suggests in one of his fatwās that Mecca has
become dār kufr,67 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf denies in his writings that the Ḥijāz can fall under that
designation. 68 Another example comes in a letter from ʿAbd al-Laṭīf to Ibn ʿAtīq in
which he rebukes the latter for the severity (ghilẓa) of his preaching and counsels him to
take a softer approach. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf suggests this begin with gentleness (līn) and move
66
On him see Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 93-121; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:202-14 ; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-
nāẓirīn, 1:399-403; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 1:243-57; and see further ʿAbd al-Muḥsin
ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl al-Shaykh, al-Shaykh al-imām ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan Āl al-
Shaykh: sīratuhu wa-rasāʾiluhu (Riyadh: n.p., 1434/2013).
67
68
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh, Miṣbāḥ al-ẓalām, 84.
296
toward severity only if necessary and practicable.69 Yet one must be careful not to
exaggerate the extent of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s ostensible moderation.70 He was still of the view
that most of the nominal Islamic world was not Muslim on account of the popularity of
the cult of saints. “Belief in stones and trees is the religion of most people in our times,”
he writes in a book, referring in particular to Persia and Transoxania but noting that the
same applies to all lands, both desert and sown.71
In any event, whatever moderate tendencies can be glimpsed in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s
thinking quickly fade from view with the outbreak of the Saudi civil war and the Ottoman
occupation of al-Aḥsāʾ. In these conflicts he staked out uncompromising positions on
interacting with non-Wahhābī Muslims, much as his father and Ibn ʿAtīq had done before
during the second Egyptian occupation. At one point he appears to have taken a harder
line than Ibn ʿAtīq, reminding him in a letter that the Qurʾānic verses enjoining jihād and
ghilẓa are authoritative, as they were revealed in Medina and so abrogated the verses
instructing Muslims to let the enemies of the religion be (al-ṣafḥ ʿan aʿdāʾ al-dīn).72 By
his own account, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf confronted ʿAbdallāh and chastised him for appealing to
the Ottomans against Suʿūd. “I verbally conveyed to him my condemnation and
dissociation,” ʿAbd al-Laṭīf relates in a letter, “and I told him in harsh language that this
amounted to the destruction of the foundations of Islam.”73 He gives us to believe that
69
Idem, ʿUyūn al-rasāʾil waʾl-ajwiba ʿalā ʾl-masāʾil, ed. Ḥusayn Muḥammad Bawā Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, 2
vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1420/2000), 1:474-75. This source comprises the extant letters and
epistles of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf as arranged and introduced by Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān.
70
Steinberg is likewise skeptical of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s or his father’s purported “Mäßigung,” citing the
severity (“Heftigkeit”) of their writings (Religion und Staat in Saudi-Arabien, 75).
71
al-iʿtiqād fī al-ḥajar waʾl-shajar huwa dīn ghālib al-nās fī hādhihi ʾl-awqāt … fa-laysa fī arḍ Fāris wa-
Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr illā ʿibādat qubūr al-aʾimma wa-ahl al-bayt wa-ghayrihim … wa-hākadhā kull balad
wa-kull miṣr wa-kull bādiya, Āl al-Shaykh, Miṣbāḥ al-ẓalām, 221.
72
Idem, ʿUyūn al-rasāʾil, 2:934.
73
fa-khāṭabtuhu shifāhan biʾl-inkār waʾl-barāʾa wa-aghlaẓtu lahu biʾl-qawl inna hādhā hadm li-uṣūl al-
Islām, ibid., 2:920.
297
ʿAbdallāh repented and sought his forgiveness.74 However, ʿAbdallāh was soon swept out
of power. When Suʿūd entered Riyadh with his supporters, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf duly gave him
bayʿa as the legitimate imām.75
It was likely just before this that the qāḍī of al-Kharj, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn
ʿAjlān (d. 1293/1876f), composed an epistle defending ʿAbdallāh’s appeal.76 This
provoked the ire of several scholars, including ʿAbd al-Laṭīf and Ibn ʿAtīq, wrote
refutations of the epistle. All three of these texts—Ibn ʿAjlān’s epistle and the refutations
by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf and Ibn ʿAtīq—are lost, but the arguments of both sides can be
reconstructed from the content of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s subsequent letters.77
In one of these letters, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf writes that upon encountering Ibn ʿAjlān’s
epistle, “I drew attention to the conspicuous error and the disgraceful ignorance that it
contained, and I hid from people the first copy that came to us lest it spread and circulate
among the commoners and the riffraff.”78 In short order, however, “it spread in al-Kharj
and al-Furaʿ, and [another] copy arrived in our town [i.e., Riyadh].”79 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf gives
the impression that many people in Najd were persuaded by what Ibn ʿAjlān had written.
In another letter, he castigates a fellow scholar for approvingly reading the epistle aloud
before a group.80 The epistle’s main point, as ʿAbd al-Laṭīf describes it, was that
74
Ibid.
75
Crawford, “Civil War,” 235.
76
On Ibn ʿAjlān, see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 5:469-71, but the details are sparing. His death date is
provided by ʿAbdallāh Zayd Āl Musallam, “Min ʿulamāʾ wa-quḍāt Ḥawṭat Banī Tamīm waʾl-Ḥarīq,” al-
Jazīra, February 18, 2001.
77
See, in particular, Āl al-Shaykh, ʿUyūn al-rasāʾil, 1:237-45 (letter to Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Āl Mūsā),
1:277-84 (letter to Ibn ʿAjlān), 1:436-44 (letter to Zayd ibn Muḥammad Āl Sulaymān), 2:871-81 (letter to
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ibrāhīm). Cf. the discussion in Crawford, “Civil War,” 237-38; Al-Fahad, “From
Exclusivism to Accommodation,” 501-4; Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 64.
78
wa-qad nabbahtu ʿalā mā fīhā min al-khaṭaʾ al-wāḍiḥ waʾl-jahl al-fāḍiḥ wa-katamtu ʿan al-nās awwal
nushkha waradat ʿalaynā ḥadharan min ifshāʾihā wa-ishāʿatihā bayn al-ʿāmma waʾl-ghawghāʾ, Āl al-
Shaykh, ʿUyūn al-rasāʾil, 1:438.
79
fashat fī ʾl-Kharj waʾl-Furaʿ wa-jāʾat minhā nuskha ilā baldatinā, ibid.
80
Ibid., 2:874.
298
“bringing idol-worshippers to the land of Islam, and seeking their help against one who
has rebelled against the authority [of the imām], are not a sin.”81 This was to say, there
was nothing sinful about inviting the Ottomans to Najd to help put down the activities of
a rebel. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf describes the epistle as “the devil’s snare” (ḥibālat al-shayṭān) and
“a passageway leading to the legitimization of showing loyalty to the polytheists and
seeking their support against the Muslims.”82
One can ascertain that Ibn ʿAjlān’s argument was two-fold: first, that it is every
Muslim’s duty to obey the imām and to strive for unity,83 and second, that seeking the
help of polytheists (al-istiʿāna biʾl-mushrikīn) is a matter of legitimate disagreement
among Muslim jurists (masʾala khilāfiyya).84 Therefore, ʿAbdallāh had done nothing to
void his bayʿa. It is important to point out that Ibn ʿAjlān was not arguing here that the
Ottomans were by and large Muslims. His claim was rather that it was permissible for
Muslims to seek the help of polytheists. While he describes the issue of istiʿāna as a
masʾala khilāfiyya, he clearly favored the view that it was permissible, citing a ḥadīth in
which the Prophet and Abū Bakr employed a polytheist from Quraysh during the hijra.85
As further support, he adduced the fact that Ibn Taymiyya, in his wars against the
Mongols, sought the help of the people of Egypt and al-Shām, who were, he alleges,
unbelievers at the time (istaʿāna bi-ahl Miṣr waʾl-Shām wa-hum ḥīnaʾidhin kuffār), and
81
anna jalb ʿubbād al-aṣnām ilā balad al-Islām waʾl-istiʿāna bihim ʿalā man kharaja ʿan al-ṭāʿa laysa bi-
dhanb, ibid.
82
dihlīz yufḍī ilā ʾstibāḥat muwālāt al-mushrikīn waʾl-istinṣār bihim ʿalā ʾl-Muslimīn, ibid.
83
Ibid., 1:279.
84
Ibid., 1:441.
85
Ibid., 1:279. For the ḥadīth (… wa-staʾjara rasūl Allāh ṣ wa-Abū Bakr rajulan min banī ʾl-Dīl …), see al-
Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 741-42 (Kitāb al-maghāzī, bāb hijrat al-nabī ṣ wa-aṣḥābihi ilā ʾl-Madīna, no. 3905).
299
he argued that the leaders of the invading Ottoman forces (akābir al-ʿaskar) in al-Aḥsāʾ
were pious people (ahl taʿabbud), even if the soldiers were not.86
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s refutation, as one can make out from his later letters, consisted of
four chief points. The first was that, though the question of istiʿāna was indeed a masʾala
khilāfiyya, the evidence against it is stronger than the evidence for it, since the opinion in
favor of istiʿāna is based on a mursal ḥadīth (i.e., one whose chain of transmission is
incomplete) while that against it is founded on a sound ḥadīth.87 As for the argument that
Muḥammad and Abū Bakr hired a polytheist in the course of the hijra, this was
irrelevant, for hiring (istiʾjār) and istiʿāna are not the same thing.88 The second point was
that the scholars who have deemed istiʿāna permissible did not do so tout court; rather
they stipulated conditions that must be met for it be allowed. The conditions included that
the unbelievers not possess power and strength (shawka wa-ṣawla) in the assembled
army, and that they not participate in the decision-making process with the Muslims.
Such was not the case with the Ottoman forces invited, says ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, since they had
gone on to occupy eastern Arabia.89 His third point was that the masʾala khilāfiyya was
not actually applicable, since it concerns the case of Muslims fighting polytheists
whereas the present case concerns Muslims fighting a rebel (bāghī), namely, Suʿūd. As
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf writes, while some scholars have deemed it permissible to seek the aid of
polytheists against other polytheists (al-intiṣār biʾl-mushrik ʿalā ʾl-mushrik), no reputable
86
Āl al-Shaykh, ʿUyūn al-rasāʾil, 1:280.
87
Ibid., 1:281-82, 443. For the mursal ḥadīth (… anna ʾl-nabī ṣ ashama li-qawm min al-Yahūd qātalū
maʿahu …), see al-Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:127-28 (Kitāb al-siyar, bāb mā jāʾa fī ahl al-dhimma yaghzūna maʿa
ʾl-Muslimīn hal yushamu lahum, no. 1558); and for the ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīth (… fa-lan astaʿīna bi-mushrik …), see
Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 3:1449-1150 (Kitāb al-jihād waʾl-siyar, bāb karāhat al-istiʿāna fī ʾl-ghazw bi-kāfir, no.
1817).
88
89
Ibid., 1:443, 283.
300
scholar has judged it permissible to seek the aid of polytheists against a Muslim rebel (al-
intiṣār biʾl-mushrik ʿalā ʾl-bāghī).90 The fourth and most important point was that the
whole question of ʿAbdallāh’s appeal went well beyond istiʿāna; the real issue was the
handing over of Muslim land, namely, al-Aḥsāʾ, to polytheists and their empowerment
therein (faʾl-nizāʿ … fī tawliyatihim wa-jalbihim wa-tamkīnihim min dār Islāmiyya).91
Because of ʿAbdallāh’s request, “polytheism, unbelief, and Shīʿism are being manifested
openly in those lands” (wa-ẓahara ʾl-shirk waʾl-kufr waʾl-rafḍ jahran fi tilka ʾl-amākin
waʾl-buldān).92
According to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Ibn ʿAtīq in his refutation was similarly focused on
the issue of yielding Muslim territory to polytheists (taslīm bilād al-Muslimīn ilā ʾl-
mushrikīn).93 The only other detail that we are given is that Ibn ʿAtīq accused Ibn ʿAjlān
of flagrant apostasy (ridda ṣarīḥa). This was apparently not the view of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf,
who writes that Ibn ʿAtīq went too far in his condemnation of ʿAbdallāh (ṣadara minhu
baʿḍ al-khaṭaʾ fī ʾl-taʿbīr).94
As for Ibn ʿAjlān’s other arguments, namely, those concerning Ibn Taymiyya and
the alleged piety of the Ottoman military commanders, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf finds them both
unpersuasive. The notion that the people of Egypt and al-Shām were unbelievers during
Ibn Taymiyya’s age, he says, is untrue, as is the assertion that Ottoman military leaders in
al-Aḥsāʾ are pious. Even if the latter were pious, he says, this would not confer on them
Islamic status. For Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Sabʿīn, and Ibn al-Fāriḍ were all simultaneously pious
90
Ibid.
91
Ibid., 1:281.
92
Ibid., 1:440.
93
Ibid., 1:441.
94
Ibid., 1:438.
301
and yet some of the most unbelieving people on earth (wa-hum akfar ahl al-arḍ aw min
akfar ahl al-arḍ).95
ʿAbdallāh was not the only party to the Saudi civil war who sought and received
some form of Ottoman assistance. By the end of the war, as Michael Crawford has
shown, all four sons of Fayṣal (ʿAbdallāh, Suʿūd, Muḥammad, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān)
were in some way “compromised by association with the Ottomans.”96 But these other
questionable acts were not accompanied by scholarly support in the way provided by Ibn
ʿAjlān, and so did not give rise to much controversy. The reason ʿAbdallāh’s appeal
invited so much commentary was that it was presented as legitimate by a Wahhābī
scholar. Ibn ʿAjlān, in presenting it as such, seemed to be corrupting classical Wahhābī
doctrine, and so the defenders of that doctrine immediately pounced on him, seeking to
excise this cancerous idea before it could spread.
The Opponents of Hijra in al-Aḥsāʾ
For the rest of his life after the Ottoman occupation of al-Aḥsāʾ beginning in 1287/1871,
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf championed the cause of jihād against their presence, regardless of who
was the imām in Riyadh. As it happened, most of his work in this regard took place
during the reign of Suʿūd (1288-91/1871-75). For ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, the Ottoman Empire was
“the sinful, unbelieving state” (al-dawla al-kāfira al-fājira),97 and it was empowering the
Shīʿa and other polytheists where he had once worked as a preacher. Al-Aḥsāʾ, he
declares in a letter, is “a country in which polytheism and unbelief reign supreme,
95
Ibid., 1:280.
96
Crawford, “Civil War,” 242.
97
302
Rejectionism [i.e., Shīʿism] and the religion of the Europeans are manifest … [where]
Islam and monotheism are being destroyed.”98 In two famous poems (one rhyming in rāʾ,
the other in nūn), he evokes all of these horrors and more:
The Rejectionists and polytheists have acquired power,

and by them the market of wickedness and wrong has been erected.
And by means of them centers for sodomy and fornication
have returned, to which every sinner makes his way.
The unity of the religion has come undone, its bond has been severed,
and it has become lost amid the forces of the greatest evil …
The signs of guidance and Qurʾāns are cast aside,
and villages are ruled by positive law.99
The reference here to positive law (qānūn) stands out as a new Wahhābī grievance. ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf refers to it again his second poem, saying,
Nay, the law of the Christians reigns there

apart from any proof-text found in the Qurʾān.100
In some of his letters, he similarly condemns the European laws (al-qawānīn al-
Ifranjiyya) supposedly introduced by the Ottomans in al-Aḥsāʾ.101 No doubt, it was his
experience in Egypt that made ʿAbd al-Laṭīf aware of the existence qānūn; no Wahhābī
scholar before him mentions it. In Cairo he would have become aware of the importation
of European-style legal codes in the thirteenth/nineteenth century. The charge that qānūn
was being implemented in Ottoman-controlled lands rather than Islamic law is one that
becomes common in Wahhābī writings from here on.
98
balad yaʿlū fīhā ʾl-shirk waʾl-kufr wa-yaẓharu ʾl-rafḍ wa-dīn al-Ifranj … wa-yuhdamu ʾl-Islām waʾl-
tawḥīd, ibid., 1:210-11. Cf. ibid., 1:220-21.
99
wa-ṣāra li-ahli ʾl-rafḍi waʾl-shirki ṣawlatun / wa-qāma bihim sūqu ʾl-radā waʾl-manākirī // wa-ʿāda
ladayhim lil-liwāṭi wa-lil-khanā / maʿāhidun yaghdū naḥwahā kullu fājirī // wa-shuttita shamlu ʾl-dīni
waʾnbatta ḥabluhu / wa-ṣāra muḍāʿan bayna sharri ʾl-ʿasākirī … wa-tuhjaru āyātu ʾl-hudā wa-maṣāḥifun /
wa-yuḥkamu biʾl-qānūni wasṭa ʾl-dasākirī (meter = ṭawīl), ibid., 2:571-72.
100
bal fīhi qānūnu ʾl-Naṣārā ḥākiman / min dūni naṣṣin jāʾa fī ʾl-Qurʾānī (meter = ṭawīl), ibid., 2:913.
101
Ibid., 1:256.
303
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf appears to have had difficulty mobilizing the Wahhābīs for jihād
against the Ottomans in al-Aḥsāʾ. Many Wahhābīs continued to live in and visit the
region, which for him was unquestionably prohibited. In many of his letters he is found
disputing the view that living and visiting there is permissible,102 thought he never
mentions the names of Wahhābī scholars who argued that it was.
One of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s arguments is that jihād in the current moment is an
individual obligation (farḍ ʿayn), since a group of unbelievers (i.e., the Ottomans) has
invaded and seized a Muslim territory (i.e., al-Aḥsāʾ).103 Therefore, travelling to that
territory amounts to visiting an enemy’s military encampment (muʿaskar al-ʿaduww al-
ḥarbī).104 He also deploys the more common Wahhābī arguments against traveling to
non-Wahhābī lands. “Our scholars have mentioned,” he writes in a letter, referring to the
scholars of Wahhābism, “that it is prohibited to live in and visit a land in which one is
incapable of manifesting one’s religion.”105 And in al-Aḥsāʾ, manifesting the religion is
not possible (mutaʿadhdhir ghayr ḥāṣil), as no one can go there without indulging the
unbelievers and showing them loyalty (al-rukūn waʾl-muwālāt waʾl-mudāhana).106
Following Ibn ʿAtīq, he defines iẓhār al-dīn as showing enmity to the polytheists
(ʿadāwat al-mushrikīn).107 As for those Muslims who have remained in al-Aḥsāʾ, he says,
it is incumbent on them to perform hijra to those areas under Wahhābī control.108
102
See, in particular, ibid., 1:204-19 (letter to Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Malik), 1:220-36 (letter to Ibrāhīm ibn
ʿAbd al-Malik), 1:237-45 (letter to Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Āl Mūsā), 1:246-52 (letter to Ḥasan ibn
ʿAbdallāh).
103
See, for instance, ibid., 1:223-24, 239, 276, 458.
104
Ibid., 1:239.
105
wa-qad dhakara ʿulamāʾunā taḥrīm al-iqāma waʾl-qudūm ilā balad yuʿjazu fīhā ʿan iẓhār dīnihi, ibid.,
1:214.
106
Ibid., 1:221.
107
Ibid., 1:222
108
Ibid., 1:465; cf. ibid., 2:572, where the same point is made in verse (fa-hājir ilā rabbi ʾl-bariyyati
ṭāliban / riḍāhu wa-rāghim biʾl-hudā kulla jāʾirī).
304
Just as his father, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Ibn ʿAtīq were concerned that Wahhābī
principles were being forsaken during the second Egyptian occupation, so ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
was worried that his great-grandfather’s teachings were once again being cast aside in
favor of normalization with polytheists. In one of his letters, he writes woefully of those
who have traveled to al-Aḥsāʾ only to return with a favorable impression of the
occupiers.109 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s call to worship God alone, dissociate from His
enemies, and wage jihād against them must be clung to, he says; it must not be replaced
with loyalty to the enemies of God and His messengers and taking up residence in their
state.110 The foundation of the religion is not sound, he writes in the same letter, without
cutting off relations with the enemies of the religion, making war on them, waging jihād
against them, and dissociating from them.111 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf was not playing the role of a
moderate in this conflict. His position was no different from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s and Ibn
ʿAtīq’s during the second Egyptian occupation, or from Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh’s during
the initial Egyptian invasion of Najd.
The jihād in the east never materialized. The Saudi rulers never succeeded in
unifying around a strong leader who could reestablish authority over Najd, let alone
recapture al-Aḥsāʾ. When ʿAbd al-Laṭīf died in Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1293/November-December
1876, the second Saudi state, to which he had returned thirty years earlier, was in a state
of interminable decline.
109
Ibid., 1:228-29.
110
daʿwat shaykhinā ilā tawḥīd Allāh waʾl-īmān bihi wa-ikhlāṣ al-dīn lahu waʾl-barāʾa min aʿdāʾihi wa-
jihādihim fa-yajibu … al-ʿaḍḍ ʿalayhā biʾl-nawājidh wa-an lā tustabdala bi-muwālāt aʿdāʾ Allāh wa-
rusulihi waʾl-inḥiyāz ilā dawlatihim waʾl-riḍā bi-ṭāʿatihim, ibid., 1:268.
111
anna ạsl al-uṣūl lā ʾstiqāmata lahu wa-lā thabāta illā bi-muqāṭaʿat aʿdāʾ Allāh wa-ḥarbihim wa-
jihādihim waʾl-barāʾa minhum, ibid., 1:265.
305
Ibn Jirjīs, Part I
Among the enemies of classical Wahhābism during the period of the second Saudi state,
only one captured the attention of Wahhābī scholars both before and during the Saudi
civil war. This was Dāwūd ibn Sulaymān ibn Jirjīs (d. 1299/1881), a Shāfiʿī scholar from
Baghdad and a leader of the Khālidī branch of the Naqshabandī order there.112 For the
most part, Ibn Jirjīs’s anti-Wahhābī activism did not impinge on politics and warfare—
the exception is when he allegedly accompanied Ottoman forces to al-Aḥsāʾ in
1287/1871113—but the threat that he posed was still serious enough to warrant the
sustained attention of the scholars of Najd, who authored numerous polemics against him
over more than a quarter century.
Born into a scholarly family in Baghdad in 1231/1815f, Ibn Jirjīs spent many
years studying in Iraq as well as other locales, including the Ḥijāz and Syria. At some
point in his thirties his studies brought him to ʿUnayza, one of the two main towns of al-
Qaṣīm, where he sought to earn a credential in Ḥanbalī fiqh. His teacher there was
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Abā Buṭayn (d. 1282/1865), one of the more
distinguished Wahhābī scholars of his generation alongside ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ibn ʿAtīq,
and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf.114 Born in Sudayr in 1194/1780, Abā Buṭayn served as the qāḍī of
several towns, including al-Ṭāʾif in the Ḥijāz and Shaqrāʾ in al-Washm, during both the
112
On him see EI3, s.v. “Dāwūd b. Jirjīs” (Itzchak Weismann); ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Mūsawī al-Baghdādī,
Nubdha laṭīfa fī tarjamat shaykh al-Islām … Dāwūd al-Baghdādī (Bombay: Maṭbaʿat Nukhbat al-Akhbār,
1305/1887); al-Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-bashar, 1:610-11; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 1:276-78.
See further Commins, “Why Unayza?” 3-4; Itzchak Weismann, “The Naqshabandiyya-Khâlidiyya and the
Salafî Challenge in Iraq,” Journal of the History of Sufism 4 (2003-2004): 236-38.
113
114
On him see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 2:626-33; Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 235-38; Āl Bassām,
ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:225-44; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:432-36; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā,
1:178-81; and see further ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAjlān, al-Shaykh al-ʿallāma ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān Abā Buṭayn muftī ʾl-diyār al-Najdiyya (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣumayʿī, 1422/2001). The long alif in
“Abā” is a fixed vowel (ibid., 5n1).
306
first and second Saudi states. His final post was in ʿUnayza, where he lived from
1248/1832f to 1270/1853f.
Not long after Ibn Jirjīs arrived in ʿUnayza in the 1260s/1840s, Abā Buṭayn
became the first of many Wahhābīs to refute him. The circumstances that led him to take
up his pen are described in one of Abā Buṭayn’s later refutations, where he notes that the
Iraqi studied with him a short while (wa-jalasa ʿindanā mudda) and requested an ijāza in
the Ḥanbalī madhhab (wa-ṭalaba minnī ijāza fī ʾl-futyā fī ʾl-madhhab). Then, some four
years later, Ibn Jirjīs returned to ʿUnayza en route to the Ḥijāz for the ḥajj. This time he
caused trouble, having brought with him a piece of writing (waraqa) with quotations
from Ibn Taymiyya intended to show that the latter did not oppose the cult of saints. Abā
Buṭayn met with Ibn Jirjīs to discuss the issue, after which he wrote a lengthy rebuttal of
Ibn Jirjīs’s waraqa. This came to be known as al-Intiṣār li-ḥizb Allāh al-muwaḥḥidīn
waʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-mujādil ʿalā ʾl-mushrikīn (“Support for the Monotheist Partisans of God
and the Refutation of Those who Dispute on behalf of Polytheists”).115 As Abā Buṭayn
writes in it, a certain person (i.e., Ibn Jirjīs) was claiming that supplicating to the dead
(duʿāʾ al-amwāt) did not constitute shirk and that this was Ibn Taymiyya’s position.116
Al-Intiṣār is a detailed exposition of Wahhābī doctrine that makes occasional jibes at Ibn
Jirjīs and his reading of Ibn Taymiyya.
Whether he knew it or not, Ibn Jirjīs was following in a long line of Shāfiʿī
opponents of Wahhābism who argued that Ibn Taymiyya was on their side. Ibn Jirjīs’s
115
Abā Buṭayn, Taʾsīs al-taqdīs fī kashf talbīs Dāwūd ibn Jirjīs, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Barjas Āl ʿAbd al-
Karīm (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1422/2001), 19. The date of his arrival appears here as the 1260s (fī
athnāʾ ʿushr sittīn baʿd al-miʾatayn).
116
See idem, al-Intiṣār li-ḥizb Allāh al-muwaḥḥidīn, ed. al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl Furayyān
(Riyadh: Dār Ṭayba, 1409/1989), 45-46.
307
arguments are not much different from these earlier efforts (reviewed in chapter 1),
though if a difference can be detected it is that Ibn Jirjīs portrays Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn
al-Qayyim as even more tolerant of the cult of saints than his predecessors had done. The
waraqa that Ibn Jirjīs brought with him to ʿUnayza was likely an early draft of a later
work completed in 1273/1856 (Ṣulḥ al-ikhwān min ahl al-īmān wa-bayān al-dīn al-
qayyim fī tabriʾat Ibn Taymiyya waʾbn al-Qayyim).117 This was devoted, as the title
indicates, to defending Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim against the charge that they
excommunicated those participating in the cult of stains. It is largely a collection of
quotations from the two scholars’ books and fatwās. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf would write a line-by-
line refutation of it (Minhāj al-taʾsīs waʾl-taqdīs fī kashf shubuhāt Dāwūd ibn Jirjīs).118
The other major theme in Ibn Jirjīs’s anti-Wahhābī writings is the defense of the
Ṣūfī poem al-Burda and its author, al-Būṣīrī. As was seen in Chapter 1, al-Būṣīrī and his
poem featured prominently in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s early polemics. In the Kalimāt
epistle, he asserted that there were elements of polytheism in the poem, in particular in
the line, “O most noble of creation [i.e., the Prophet], none have I to seek refuge in / but
you …” (yā akrama ʾl-khalqi mā lī man alūdhu bihi / siwāka …).119 After Abā Buṭayn’s
first confrontation with Ibn Jirjīs, some of his students in al-Qaṣīm alerted him to the fact
that the Iraqi had written a poetic elaboration (tashṭīr) of al-Burda. In a reply to his
students, Abā Buṭayn criticizes Ibn Jirjīs for ascribing divine powers to the Prophet in
asking him directly to intercede with God on the Day of Judgement and to intervene in
117
See Ibn Jirjīs, Ṣulḥ al-ikhwān (Bombay: Maṭbaʿat Nukhbat al-Akhbār, 1306/1888f). For the completion
date, see Brockelmann, GAL, SII, 790.
118
Āl al-Shaykh, Minhāj al-taʾsīs waʾl-taqdīs, ed. Ismāʿīl ibn Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Dār al-
Hidāya, 1407/1987). It was completed in or before 1280/1863f, the date of the earliest known manuscript;
see al-Māniʿ, al-Āthār al-makhṭūṭa, 62.
119
308
worldly affairs. For Abā Buṭayn, this was the deification of Muḥammad, similar to the
Christians’ apotheosis of Jesus.120 Abā Buṭayn’s letter to his students was written in or
just before 1269/1853, for that is when Ibn Jirjīs, in Mecca, saw it and composed a
refutation of it.121 In response to this and more, Abā Buṭayn wrote two more refutations
of Ibn Jirjīs;122 the dispute also attracted the attention of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who authored
at least one tract in support of Abā Buṭayn and against Ibn Jirjīs.123
What elicited this flurry of refutations was not only Ibn Jirjīs’s views but also the
receptive hearing that they were receiving in al-Qaṣīm. During the second Saudi state, the
Wahhābī scholars in al-ʿĀriḍ saw al-Qaṣīm as a place where Wahhābism never quite took
root and where opponents of the movement were welcome. Something of this attitude can
be seen in a letter to the people of ʿUnayza from ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, who complains bitterly
about the town’s stubborn persistence in hosting Ibn Jirjīs (al-mushāqqa waʾl-muʿānada
bi-ikrām Dāwūd al-ʿIrāqī) despite his well-known hatred of Wahhābism and open
support for the cult of saints (maʿa ʾshtihārihi bi-ʿadāwat al-tawḥīd wa-ahlihi waʾl-taṣrīḥ
bi-ibāḥat duʿāʾ al-ṣāliḥīn).124 “This man is getting to be familiar with your town and is
becoming accustomed to visiting it,” ʿAbd al-Laṭīf writes, “and some of its notables and
120
This correspondence is in Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, 2:235-44.
121
Ibn Jirjīs, Naḥt ḥadīd al-bāṭil wa-barduhu fī adillat al-ḥaqq al-dhābba ʿan ṣāḥib al-Burda (Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1425/2004), 16. For the completion date, see ibid., 96.
122
An edition of the first response is found in al-ʿAjlān, Abā Buṭayn, 358-429, where it is titled al-Radd
ʿalā ʾl-Burda; the second, which is much longer, has been published as Taʾsīs al-taqdīs fī kashf talbīs
Dāwūd ibn Jirjīs, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Barjas Āl ʿAbd al-Karīm (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla,
1422/2001).
123
The first, known as Bayān al-maḥajja fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-lajja, is found in al-Durar al-saniyya, 11:121-
213; Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, 4:223-85. Some say this was a response to Muḥammad
ibn Ḥumayd (d. 1295/1878), the Ḥanbalī muftī in Mecca, but it looks to be directed against Ibn Jirjīs. The
second tract is Kashf mā alqāhu Iblīs min al-bahraj waʾl-talbīs ʿalā qalb Dāwūd ibn Jirjīs, ed. ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Zīr Āl Ḥamad (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1415/1994f).
124
309
leaders hold him in high regard, associate with him, and support him.”125 This behavior
he chalks up to their hostility to Wahhābism and the fact that it originated in al-ʿĀriḍ.126
The English traveler Charles Doughty, during his trip to Arabia in the years 1876-
78, took notice of the relatively anti-Wahhābī atmosphere of ʿUnayza. As he recalls, “I
found it a reproach in Aneyza to be named Waháby … a mocking word in the mouths of
the eyyâl [i.e., young men] which they bestowed on any lourdane ill-natured fellow.”127
Doughty gives the impression that the town was divided, describing a conversation with a
man from ʿUnayza who “despised the Waháby straitness and fanaticism” of the town,
preferring to live in Basra. The same man told him that “an half of this townspeople are
Wahábies.”128
The presence of anti-Wahhābī elements in al-Qaṣīm can be attributed at least
partly to the area’s status as a trading hub (Doughty’s confabulator was a corn merchant)
and as a routine stop on the pilgrimage route from Iraq. At the time of Doughty’s visit,
Burayda was, in his words, “a small and weak principality,”129 while ʿUnayza was home
to a number of prominent merchant families. Understandably, the latter would not have
been amenable to Wahhābī restrictions on travel. Anti-Wahhābī sentiment in al-Qaṣīm
was to remain a source of much annoyance to Wahhābī scholars in Riyadh, as will be
seen further below.
125
wa-hādhā ʾl-rajul yaʾnasu ilā baldatikum wa-yaʿtādu ʾl-majīʾ ilayhā wa-lahu min malaʾihā wa-
akābirihā man yuʿaẓẓimuhu wa-yuwālīhi wa-yanṣuruhu, ibid., 1:295.
126
ʿadam qubūl mā manna ʾllāh bihi min al-nūr waʾl-hudā ḥaythu ʿurifa min jihat al-ʿĀriḍ, ibid.
127
Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols., new ed. (New York: Random House, 1937), 2:455.
128
Ibid., 2:368.
129
Ibid., 2:455.
310
Ibn Manṣūr
Al-Qaṣīm was not the only site of anti-Wahhābī activism in Najd during this period, as
the case of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Manṣūr (d. 1282/1865) demonstrates. Ibn
Manṣūr was highly unusual as an opponent of Wahhābism, for while he outwardly
belonged to the movement he criticized it in secret. The full extent of his activism was
not laid bare till after his death.130
Born in the town of al-Farʿa in al-Washm in approximately 1211/1796f, Ibn
Manṣūr fled to Iraq before the fall of al-Dirʿiyya, continuing his education in Basra,
Zubayr, and Baghdad. In Iraq he studied with several anti-Wahhābī scholars of Najdī
origin, including Muḥammad ibn Sallūm (d. 1246/1831), who are said to have influenced
his hostility to Wahhābism. Indeed, the evidence that Ibn Manṣūr developed his anti-
Wahhābī views in Iraq is strong. At the beginning of his stay there, in 1232/1816f or just
afterward, he wrote a blistering poem against ʿUthmān ibn Sanad (d. 1242/1827), a Najdī
scholar in Basra who had criticized Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in a poem.131
While primarily a defense of Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Manṣūr’s poem also mentions Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb favorably, as in the verse, “Explain to me the error of the shaykh so that I may
respond to you / Was it in his destroying of idols? For the truth he did follow.”132 Over
the course of the next decade, however, Ibn Manṣūr’s outlook on Wahhābism changed, as
130
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 5:89-106; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 2:113-17; al-Hindī, Zahr
al-khamāʾil, 36-37; al-Rudayʿān, Manbaʿ al-karam, 147-65; and see further the editors’ introduction in Ibn
Manṣūr, Fatḥ al-ḥamīd fī sharḥ al-tawḥīd, ed. Suʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿArīfī and Ḥusayn ibn Julayʿib
al-Saʿīdī, 4 vols. (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1435/2004f), 1:45-129. Cf. the discussion in Al-Fahad,
“From Exclusivism to Accommodation,” 507-8; Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 60-61.
131
Ibn Manṣūr, al-Radd al-dāmigh ʿalā ʾl-zāʿim anna shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya zāʾigh, ed. Sulaymān
ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī (Riyadh: Dār al-Tadmuriyya, 1425/2004). For the date of poem, see the editor’s
introduction ibid., 77.
132
abin lī ḍalāla ʾl-shaykhi ḥattā ujībakum / a-fī hadmihi ʾl-awthāna faʾl-ḥaqqa yatbaʿū (meter = ṭawīl),
ibid., 114.
311
he came to see Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and the devotees of his doctrine as modern-day
Khārijites. Still in Iraq, he began work on a book bringing together the many traditions
concerning the Khārijites’ doctrine and history. As he notes in the final version of this
book, he drafted part of it (kuntu sawwadtu baʿḍahu) in Basra in 1240/1824f and
completed the fair copy (thumma ʿanna lī … an ubayyiḍahu) in Najd in 1255/1839f,133
giving it the title Manhaj al-maʿārij li-akhbār al-Khawārij biʾl-ishrāf ʿalā ʾl-isrāf min
dīnihim al-mārij (“Path to the Heights of Reports about the Khārijites Looking Down on
the Extremism of their Disordered Religion”).134 While the book never refers explicitly to
the Wahhābīs, it is evident from several passages that “Khārijites” is occasionally code
for Wahhābīs. For example, at one point Ibn Manṣūr complains that the Khārijites
excommunicate and fight Muslims on the grounds that the latter have not satisfied the
confession of faith. Ibn Manṣūr retorts that takfīr should only occur if the confession of
faith is openly disavowed (al-juḥūd lahumā). Yet the historical Khārijites are known for
practicing takfīr on the basis of major sins (kabāʾir), not on the grounds mentioned by Ibn
Manṣūr. Thus the Wahhābīs seem to be intended here. In another place in the work, Ibn
Manṣūr states that a true Muslim renewer of the faith (mujaddid) would not
excommunicate the umma (yaḥkumu ʿalayhā biʾl-kufr), which must be an oblique
reference to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his alleged status as a mujaddid. Such a comment
would be irrelevant to the case of the historical Khārijites.135
On his return to Najd in approximately 1242/1826f, Ibn Manṣūr was appointed
the qāḍī of Sudayr, and some two decades later became the qāḍī of Ḥāʾil. Around
133
Idem, Manhaj al-maʿārij, ms. Cairo, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, al-Taymūriyya 2144, f. 104a. A critical
edition has recently been published in Riyadh (amid some controversy) but I have not had access to it.
134
Ibid., f. 2b.
135
These examples are noted in the editors’ introduction in idem, Fatḥ al-ḥamīd, 1:69-71.
312
1270/1853f, he retired to Sudayr, where he lived out his remaining years. During all this
time, he maintained the appearance of a loyal Wahhābī. In 1252/1836, he completed an
extensive commentary on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Kitāb al-tawḥīd,136 the contents of
which were sound enough to earn the endorsement (taqrīẓ) of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Ḥasan. The latter’s only complaint was that the Ibn Manṣūr mentioned his teacher Ibn
Sallūm in the introduction.137
Yet toward the end of his life, there surfaced accusations that Ibn Manṣūr was the
author of anti-Wahhābī texts. Both ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf wrote to him
expressing their dismay at what they were hearing, appealing to him to return to the truth.
The former had it on good authority from visitors to Sudayr that Ibn Manṣūr did not
adhere to Wahhābī doctrine. The visitors, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān tells him, had thought that you
knew the truth conveyed by the movement (annaka ʿarafta ṣiḥḥat al-daʿwa), but what
they saw from your conduct was the opposite of it (wa-lā ḥasala minka illā ḍidd hādhā).
Effectively retracting his endorsement of Ibn Manṣūr’s commentary on Kitāb al-tawḥīd,
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān states that upon careful examination he has found Ibn Manṣūr’s doctrine
concerning tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya (wajadnā muʿtaqadak fī tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya) to be the
same as that of ʿAbdallāh al-Muways, an early opponent of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. He
concludes, “What I have found in you is deception” (mā laqītu fīka ḥīla).138 ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf, in his letter to Ibn Manṣūr, likewise draws attention to the troubling rumors
surrounding his correspondent’s creed, complaining of reports that he is on friendly terms
136
Ibid., 1:154.
137
Ibid., 1:170.
138
313
with both Wahhābīs and their opponents in Sudayr (yuṣāḥibu awliyāʾ al-awthān kamā
yuṣāḥibu ʿābidī ʾl-raḥmān).139
As ʿAbd al-Raḥmān recounts in subsequent refutations, when Ibn Manṣūr died in
1282/1865 his books were collected to be sold, and among them two texts were found
that caused a storm.140 The first was a short poem (some 35 lines) by Ibn Manṣūr in
praise of Ibn Jirjīs; the second was a long refutation of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, also written
by Ibn Manṣūr. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān remarks that the ostensibly Wahhābī scholar had been
concealing his true views (wa-kāna yukhfī amrahu hādhā).141
The poem praising Ibn Jirjīs, which refers to him by name and mentions one of
his refutations of Abā Buṭayn, ends with a note encouraging him to keep standing up to
the Wahhābīs (shīʿat jund al-nahrawān).142 Several Wahhābī scholars, including ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, and Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq, would refute it in verse of their own,
describing Ibn Manṣūr and Ibn Jirjīs as partners in crime.143
The second work by Ibn Manṣūr was titled Jalāʾ al-ghumma ʿan takfīr hādhihi ʾl-
umma (“Removing the Darkness of the Excommunication of This Community”), and is
preserved nearly in its entirety in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s refutation of it (Miṣbāḥ al-ẓalām fī ʾl-
radd ʿalā man kadhaba ʿalā ʾl-shaykh al-imām), which was completed in 1286/1869.144
Jalāʾ al-ghumma was not Ibn Manṣūr’s only open attack on Wahhābism, as he refers here
139
Ibid., 12:294-96 (=Āl al-Shaykh, ʿUyūn al-rasāʾil, 2:637-39)
140
Ibid., 11:512, 579.
141
Ibid., 11:554.
142
Ibid., 12:331-33.
143
For ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s poem, see ibid., 12:333-36. A manuscript with all of these poems (copied in
1283/1867) is mentioned in Khālid ibn ʿAlī al-Wazzān and ʿAbdallāh ibn Bassām al-Basīmī, “Manhaj al-
shaykh ʿUthmān ibn Manṣūr fī tadwīn al-tārīkh waʾl-ansāb,” al-Dāra 36 (1431/2010): 45-130, at 53-54.
144
Āl al-Shaykh, Miṣbāḥ al-ẓalām, 43, 25.
314
to two others,145 but it is the only one that survives. As the title suggests, it is an attack on
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for excommunicating the Muslim community—as well for fighting
Muslims and deeming their land to be bilād kufr.146 In making his case, Ibn Manṣūr
quotes from several of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s epistles, including Sittat mawāḍiʿ min al-
sīra, Kashf al-shubuhāt, and the Kalimāt. Many of the charges are the same as those
brought by earlier refuters, but Ibn Manṣūr mentions none of their works.147 Like others,
Ibn Manṣūr brings Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim to bear against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,
claiming that they were hesitant to engage in takfīr.148 And like Ibn Jirjīs, he defends the
author of al-Burda at length, contending that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb failed to understand
the poem.149
There must have been some concern among the scholars in Riyadh that Ibn
Manṣūr’s ideas could catch on, as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf wrote numerous
refutations of him after his death.150 Indeed, Ibn Manṣūr was a well-respected scholar in
several regions of Najd and had taught numerous men who had gone on to be major
scholars in their own right, including the historian ʿUthmān ibn Bishr. In a brief letter
refuting some of his claims, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf instructs a correspondent to read this missive
aloud lest anyone be misled by Ibn Manṣūr’s ignorance and error (an yaghtarra bi-
145
The titles are given ibid., 64. The first is Ghasl al-daran ʿammā rakibahu hādhā ʾl-rajul min al-miḥan,
the second Tabṣirat ulī ʾl-albāb.
146
See, for instance, ibid., 44, 52.
147
He does, however, attribute some of his anti-Wahhābī knowledge to his teachers in Iraq (ibid., 44).
148
See, for instance, ibid., 300-1.
149
Ibid., 307-9.
150
These include, in addition to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Miṣbāḥ al-ẓalām, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s al-Maqāmāt,
mentioned in ch. 2. See also, by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, al-Durar al-saniyya, 5:267-82, 11:512-33, 533-46,
547-51, 554-74, 575-86, 12:45-46; and, by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, ibid., 4:73-104, 5:287-304, 12:296-98, 298-
331, 336-37.
315
jahālatihi wa-ḍalālatihi).151The case of Ibn Manṣūr was a scandal with explosive
potential, and the Wahhābī scholars were determined not to let it get out of control.
Ibn Jirjīs, Part II
With the onset of the Saudi civil war, the perceived threat of Ibn Manṣūr receded into the
background as the scholars became preoccupied with Ibn ʿAjlān, the Ottoman occupation
of al-Aḥsāʾ, and the political uncertainty in Riyadh. Yet the threat of Ibn Jirjīs, whose
anti-Wahhābī writings were unrelenting, continued to loom large, and the scholars made
time to refute them.
In 1291/1874f, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf penned a short refutation of something by Ibn Jirjīs
at the request of some students.152 There was nothing new in what Ibn Jirjīs was saying,
according to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, apart from a tad more mendacity (al-ziyāda min al-kadhib
ʿalā ʾllāh wa-kitābihi).153 The Iraqi was reiterating his claim that Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn
al-Qayyim were on his side in the debate over takfīr and the cult of saints, which ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf says is like attributing Judaism and Christianity to Abraham (ka-nisbat al-
Yahūdiyya waʾl-Naṣrāniyya ilā Ibrāhīm).154 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf wrote this book only two years
before his death, in 1293/1876, at the age of about 65. Shortly thereafter, a Wahhābī
scholar living in Mecca, Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿĪsā (d. 1329/1911),155 wrote a refutation
151
152
Idem, Tuḥfat al-ṭālib waʾl-jalīs fī kashf shubah Dāwūd ibn Jirjīs, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Barjas Āl ʿAbd
al-Karīm, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1410/1989f); originally printed as Dalāʾil al-rusūkh fī ʾl-radd
ʿalā ʾl-manfūkh (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Muqtaṭaf waʾl-Laṭāʾif al-Gharrāʾ, 1305/1887f). For the completion
date, see ibid., 55.
153
Idem, Tuḥfat al-ṭālib waʾl-jalīs, 36.
154
Ibid.
155
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:436-52; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 1:91-94.
316
of another work by Ibn Jirjīs, debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.156 Ibn Jirjīs
died two years later, in 1299/1882.
The case of Ibn ʿĪsā is worth pausing to consider as it illustrates the budding
relationship between the Wahhābīs in Arabia and a group of like-minded scholars in Iraq,
in particular the al-Ālūsī family in Baghdad.157 The al-Ālūsī scholars shared with the
Wahhābīs a predilection for Taymiyyan theology, including hostility toward the cult of
saints. Ibn ʿĪsā, who was born in Shaqrāʾ in 1253/1837 and later settled in Mecca, is
known to have corresponded with one of the Ālūsīs, Nuʿmān ibn Maḥmūd al-Ālūsī (d.
1317/1899), from whom he received an ijāza. In his refutation, Ibn ʿĪsā lists Nuʿmān
among those scholars who have refuted Ibn Jirjīs.158 This example shows that the
Wahhābīs were finding themselves in doctrinal alignment with a group of scholars in
Iraq. Ibn ʿĪsā was not the only Wahhābī scholar to correspond with al-Ālūsī household.
Not later than 1284/1867, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf traded letters with at least one member of the al-
Ālūsī clan, praising him for manifesting Islam and the sunna (iẓhār al-Islām waʾl-sunna)
156
Ibn ʿĪsā, al-Radd ʿalā shubuhāt al-mustaghīthīn bi-ghayr Allāh, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Barjas Āl ʿAbd
al-Karīm, (Riyadh: Dār Ṭayba, 1409/1989). The completion date is 1294/1877 (ibid., 102-3).
157
On them see EI3, s.v. “al-Alūsī family” (Edouard Méténier); and see further Butrus Abu-Manneh,
“Salafiyya and the Rise of the Khālidiyya in Baghdad in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Die Welt des
Islams 43 (2003): 349-72; Itzchak Weismann, “Genealogies of Fundamentalism: Salafi Discourse in
Nineteenth-Century Baghdad,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 36 (2009): 267-80. The alleged
influence of the Wahhābīs on this group of scholars, mentioned in both of these articles, bears
investigation. It may well be that the al-Ālūsī scholars acquired their Taymiyyan theology independently of
the Wahhābīs, as did Ibn al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī in Yemen.
158
This was a reference to his Shaqāʾiq al-Nuʿmān fī shaqāshiq Ibn Sulaymān, which he had written in
response to an epistle by Ibn Jirjīs refuting Nuʿmān’s father, Abū ʾl-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd al-Ālūsī (d.
1270/1854). The original copy of Nuʿmān’s refutation, dated 1275/1859, is held at Princeton University.
See al-Ālūsī, Shaqāʾiq al-Nuʿmān fī shaqāshiq Ibn Sulaymān, ms. Princeton, Princeton University, Garrett
2795, ff. 2a-27a, at 27a. (Nuʿmān, it should be noted, writes his family name al-Ālūsī, not al-Alūsī). Ibn
Jirjīs’s refutation of Abū ʾl-Thanāʾ was printed as Risāla fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-marḥūm al-sayyid Maḥmūd
afandī al-Ālūsī (Bombay: Maṭbaʿat Nukhbat al-Akhbār, 1306/1888f).
317
and combatting the preachers of error (al-duʿāt ilā ʾl-ḍalāl), likely a reference to Ibn
Jirjīs.159
Another member of the Āl al-Shaykh who corresponded with the al-Ālūsī family
was Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 1319/1901), a son of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan’s
who was much younger than his brother, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf.160 The latter was in his 50s when
Isḥāq was born in Riyadh in 1276/1859f. In a letter to Isḥāq, Nuʿmān al-Ālūsī reports
having published one of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s refutations of Ibn Jirjīs in Egypt (fa-ṭabaʿnāhu fī
Miṣr).161 This was Dalāʾil al-rusūkh fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-manfūkh, published in 1305/1887f
with the endorsements of several Iraqi scholars whose hatred for Ibn Jirjīs and gratitude
for ʿAbd al-Laṭīf are manifest.162 A year later, Nuʿmān’s nephew, Maḥmūd Shukrī ibn
ʿAbdallāh al-Ālūsī (d. 1342/1924), put the finishing touches on his own refutation of Ibn
Jirjīs, presented as a continuation of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Minhāj al-taʾsīs waʾl-taqdīs.163
It is of some significance that when Nuʿmān was writing to Isḥāq, the latter was in
India, where he had gone in 1308/1891 following the Rashīdī conquest of Riyadh. His
case is illustrative of another inchoate connection between the Wahhābīs scholars and
their counterparts in other lands. The purpose of Isḥāq’s three-your sojourn in India
(1308-10/1891-1893), was education. In Bombay, Delhi, Bhopal, and Machhali Shahar,
he studied with a number of scholars belonging to the formative Ahl-i Ḥadīth movement,
159
al-Durar al-saniyya, 14:188-90. The correspondent is ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ālūsī (d. 1284/1867), a
brother of Abū ʾl-Thanāʾ al-Ālūsī’s.
160
On him see Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 122; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:557-64; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-
nāẓirīn, 1:98-99; and see further Sulṭān ibn Rāshid al-Ghunaym, Juhūd al-shaykh Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fī taqrīr ʿaqīdat al-salaf (Riyadh: n.p.,
1437/2016).
161
al-Ghunaym, Juhūd al-shaykh Isḥāq, 50-51.
162
Āl al-Shaykh, Dalāʾil al-rusūkh, alif-hāʾ (pagination in Arabic letters).
163
Maḥmūd al-Ālūsī, Fatḥ al-mannān tatimmat Minhāj al-taʾsīs radd Ṣulḥ al-ikhwān, ed. ʿUmar ibn
Aḥmad Āl ʿAbbās, (Riyadh: Dār al-Tawḥīd, 1430/2009). See the completion date (1306/1889) ibid., 411.
318
which was, like Wahhābism, enamored of Ibn Taymiyya and his thought.164 Isḥāq’s
teachers included the noted ḥadīth experts Nadhīr Ḥusayn al-Dihlawī (d. 1320/1902),165
Muḥammad Bashīr al-Sahsawānī (d. 1323/1905),166 and the Yemeni-born Ḥusayn ibn
Muḥsin al-Anṣārī (d. 1327/1909).167 A similar study tour had been recently undertaken by
a son of Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq’s, Saʿd (d. 1349/1930), who arrived in India in 1301/1884, just
before his father’s death, and stayed some seven years.168 Saʿd’s teachers included the
forenamed Nadhīr Ḥusayn, Muḥammad Bashīr, and Ḥusayn ibn Muḥsin, as well as
another prominent scholar in this network, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān al-Qannawjī (d.
1307/1890).169 Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq had carried on a correspondence with Ṣiddīq Ḥasan,
complaining in one letter of the dearth of Islamic texts in Najd.170
All in all, more than 20 Najdīs studied in India toward the end of the second Saudi
state and during the Rashīdī interregnum.171 It is likely that the connections forged during
this period paved the way for the printing of Wahhābī texts in India beginning in the
1300s/1890s, which we will come to shortly.
164
See EI3, s.v. “Ahl-i Ḥadīth” (Claudia Preckel).
165
On him see ʿAbd al-Ḥayy ibn Fakhr al-Dīn al-Ḥasanī, al-Iʿlām bi-man fī tārīkh al-Hind min al-aʿlām al-
musammā bi-Nuzhat al-khawāṭir wa-bahjat al-masāmiʿ waʾl-nawāẓir, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm,
1420/1999), 8:1391-1393.
166
On him see ibid., 8:1352-1353.
167
On him see ibid., 8:1212-1214.
168
nāẓirīn, 1:144-49; Ibn Ḥamdān, Tarājim, 106-14. On his India trip, see the editor’s introduction in Saʿd ibn
ʿAtīq, Kitāb al-majmūʿ min rasāʾil wa-fatāwā ʾl-shaykh Saʿd ibn Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq, ed. Ismāʿīl ibn Saʿd ibn
ʿAtīq, 4th ed. (Riyadh: Dār al-Hidāya, 1415/1995), 9-16.
169
On him see al-Ḥasanī, Iʿlām, 8:1246-1250.
170
For the letter, see Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 245-54. Ibn ʿAtīq is quite critical here of the allegorical
interpretations in Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s Qurʾānic exegesis, accusing him of tafwīḍ.
171
Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Mudayhish, “Min ʿulamāʾ Najd alladhīna raḥalū ilā ʾl-Hind li-ṭalab al-ʿilm,”
al-Jazīra, April 18, 2013.
319
Zaynī Daḥlān
The next major Muslim author to launch a scholarly attack on the Wahhābīs was the
Shāfiʿī muftī of Mecca, Aḥmad ibn Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1304/1886), in his book al-Durar
al-saniyya fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Wahhābiyya (“The Splendid Pearls in Refutation of the
Wahhābīs”). Published in Cairo in 1299/1882, it was the first refutation of Wahhābism to
appear in print, meaning it was the first anti-Wahhābī text that the Wahhābīs encountered
not in manuscript form. This fact, combined with the prestige of the author, goes some
way in explaining the strong reaction that al-Durar al-saniyya elicited in Najd.
Zaynī Daḥlān was born in Mecca in 1232/1816f.172 An initiate of the Bā ʿAlawī
ṣūfī order, he was a prolific author of fatwās and books in a variety of fields, including
works of history, and he was a popular teacher as well, attracting numerous students from
around the world. His al-Durar al-saniyya was written in response to a request to
assemble the ḥadīth, Qurʾānic verses, and other evidence in favor of visiting the
Prophet’s grave and using him as a means to God (ziyārat al-nabī ṣ waʾl-tawassul
bihi).173 The book begins by fulfilling this request, then goes on to cover the evidence in
favor of the cult of saints more generally. Finally, it turns to a long and detailed critique
of Wahhābism, including the movement’s history and doctrine. Like some of the earliest
refuters of Wahhābism, Daḥlān quotes repeatedly from the refutations of Ibn Taymiyya
by Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 756/1355) and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 973/1566),174
implying that the Wahhābīs, the modern-day opponents of the cult of saints (al-munkirūn
172
On him see EI3, s.v. “Daḥlān, Aḥmad b. Zaynī” (Esther Peskes). For a contemporary portrait, see
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, “Some of My Experiences with the Muftis of Mecca (1885),” Asian Affairs 8
(2007): 25-37.
173
Daḥlān, al-Durar al-saniyya (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Bahiyya, 1299/1882), 2.
174
See, for instance, ibid., 3, 7, 11.
320
lil-ziyāra waʾl-tawassul), take after Ibn Taymiyya.175 While never explicitly condemning
Ibn Taymiyya, his frequent references to al-Subkī and al-Haytamī indicate the low regard
in which Daḥlān held him. Also revealing is Daḥlān’s rejection of the distinction between
tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya and tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, which he correctly identifies as the means
by which the Wahhābīs justify takfīr.176 The final section of al-Durar al-saniyya is full of
the usual accusations—e.g., that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb claimed prophecy and said that
there have been no Muslims for 600 years. Here he seems to be indebted to earlier
refutations, as he quotes from three of them (Ibn Sulaymān al-Kurdī’s risāla, Ibn
ʿAfāliq’s Tahakkum al-muqallidīn, and ʿAlawī al-Ḥaddād’s Miṣbāḥ al-anām).177
The publication of Daḥlān’s al-Durar al-saniyya coincided with the rise of a new
generation of Wahhābī scholars who were beginning to fill the shoes of the late ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf and the nearly-departed Ibn ʿAtīq. This new cohort included the above-mentioned
Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq, but its most prominent and influential
members were ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf (d. 1339/1921) and Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān (d.
1349/1930), who emerged as the preeminent classical Wahhābī scholars of the Rashīdī
interregnum and the early part of the third Saudi state. Somewhat later, ʿAbdallāh’s
younger brother, Muḥammad (d. 1367/1948), also played an important role.178
175
Ibid., 21. Curiously, Daḥlān never uses Wahhābī or any of its variants in this book (the title is not his),
though he does so frequently in his history of Mecca; see idem, Khulāṣat al-kalām, 227ff (this section of
the book is in some places identical to al-Durar al-saniyya).
176
Idem, al-Durar al-saniyya, 25-26.
177
Ibid., 24-25, 33, 34-35.
178
nāẓirīn, 2:311-15; and see further ʿAbd al-Muḥsin ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl al-Shaykh, al-Shaykh Muḥammad
ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl al-Shaykh nuftī Najd wa-qāḍī quḍāt al-Washm wa-ʿAsīr waʾl-
Riyāḍ: sīratuhu wa-rasāʾiluhu (Riyadh: n.p., 1432/2011). The elder brother of ʿAbdallāh and Muḥammad,
Ibrāhīm (d. 1329/1911), was a more minor figure, but is known as the father of the Saudi kingdom’s future
muftī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm (d. 1389/1969).
321
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, one of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s sons, was born in al-Hufūf in
1265/1848f, during his father’s short stint as a preacher in al-Aḥsāʾ.179 He received his
early education in Riyadh, but upon his father’s death in 1293/1876 moved south to the
town of al-ʿAmmār in al-Aflāj. As during the second Egyptian occupation, the southern
areas of Najd were something of a refuge for scholars during the political turmoil of the
Saudi civil war. In al-Aflāj he would study under Ibn ʿAtīq, as would Ibn Siḥmān, who
was already there.
Ibn Siḥmān was born in approximately 1266/1849f, around the same time as
ʿAbdallāh, but on the very opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula, in ʿAsīr.180 His
birthplace was the small town of al-Suqqā on the mountainous outskirts of Abhā. His
father, Siḥmān ibn Muṣliḥ, was a politician and Qurʾān teacher who relocated with his
family to Riyadh in 1280/1863f. In Riyadh, Ibn Siḥmān took lessons under ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, but the family’s stay there was brief. With the outbreak of the
Saudi civil war, Siḥmān and his sons again relocated, this time to al-ʿAmmār, seeking out
the relative tranquility of al-Aflāj. For the next fifteen years and more, Ibn Siḥmān
studied with Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq, being joined by ʿAbdallāh in 1293/1876. Following the
179
nāẓirīn, 1:459-70; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 2:290-314; and see further ʿAbd al-Muḥsin
ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl al-Shaykh, al-Shaykh ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl al-Shaykh
muftī ʾl-diyār al-Najdiyya: sīratuhu wa-rasāʾiluhu (Riyadh: n.p., 1433/2012).
180
On him see Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 290-322; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:399-412; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat
al-nāẓirīn, 1:168-72; Ibn Ḥamdān, Tarājim, 16-24; Āl ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, Tadhkirat ulī ʾl-nuhā, 3:256-66;
and see further ʿUmar ibn Gharāma al-ʿAmrawī, Qalāʾid al-jumān fī bayān sīrat Āl Suḥmān, Riyadh: n.p.,
1408/1987f. This last title raises the question of the vocalization of Siḥmān. For reasons that are unclear, al-
ʿAmrawī prefers Suḥmān, a choice described to me by one Saudi scholar as groundless (interview with
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shuqayr, Riyadh, August 25, 2015). Another Saudi, Sulaymān al-Kharāshī, who has
edited some of Ibn Siḥmān’s books, told me that Saḥmān is the typographical standard (interview with
Sulaymān al-Kharāshī, Riyadh, August 30, 2015). According to Ismāʿīl ibn Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq, a great-
grandson of Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq’s, Siḥmān was the preferred vocalization of the Siḥmān family (interview
with Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd al-Ḥamad, Riyadh, September 7, 2015). Siḥmān is also the most common
pronunciation colloquial Saudi Arabic.
322
death of their teacher in 1301/1884, and the death of Siḥmān the same year (sc.
1301/1883f), Ibn Siḥmān and ʿAbdallāh returned to Riyadh. This was during the second
reign of the imām ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayṣal (1292-1305/1875-87), only a few years before the
conquest Riyadh by the Āl Rashīd.
Back in Riyadh, Ibn Siḥmān, a proficient calligrapher, was employed as the
imām’s personal scribe (kātib); but his principal vocation, and the one that would come to
define his career, was as a writer of refutations. ʿAbdallāh, meanwhile, assumed the role
of de facto head of the Wahhābī religious establishment and the main instructor in
Riyadh, teaching scores of students over the next thirty years. ʿAbdallāh is said to have
spent a year in Ḥāʾil, on the orders of Ibn Rashīd, beginning in 1308/1891, and Ibn
Siḥmān was also made to go there, accompanying the imām ʿAbdallāh during his brief
exile in 1305/1887 and returning to Riyadh in 1309/1891f. The presence of ʿAbdallāh and
Ibn Siḥmān in Ḥāʾil is said to have left an impression on some of the scholars of the
town, who lent their support to Ibn Siḥmān in subsequent scholarly disputes.
Ibn Siḥmān was the first Wahhābī scholar to respond to Daḥlān’s al-Durar al-
saniyya. Just after returning to Riyadh from Ḥāʾil, he penned a refutation titled al-
Mawāhib al-rabbāniyya fī ʾl-intiṣār lil-ṭāʾifa al-Muḥammadiyya al-Wahhābiyya wa-radd
aḍālīl al-shubah al-Daḥlāniyya (“The Divine Gifts in Support of the Muḥammadan
Wahhābī Sect and in Refutation of the Erroneous Specious Arguments of Daḥlān”).181 He
181
Ibn Siḥmān, al-Mawāhib al-rabbāniyya, ms. Riyadh, Maktabat al-Malik Salmān, Jāmiʿat al-Malik
Suʿūd, 3989. This is an incomplete manuscript, but it is useful in confirming the author’s choice of title
(ibid., f. 1a). For the full text of the refutation (sans the original introduction), see idem, ʿUqūd al-jawāhir
al-munaḍḍada al-ḥisān, ed. Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAqīl al-Ẓāhirī, in Ibn ʿAqīl al-Ẓāhirī, Ibn Siḥmān:
tārīkh ḥayātihi wa-ʿilmihi wa-taḥqīq shiʿrihi, 2 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1427/2006), 1:193-228.
323
completed it in 1302/1884f.182 Apart from a brief prose introduction, al-Mawāhib al-
rabbāniyya is written entirely in verse. In nearly 500 lines, Ibn Siḥmān rebuts Daḥlān’s
many charges, accusing him of quoting spurious ḥadīth and misinterpreting sound ones,
and chiding him for relying on al-Subkī and al-Haytamī. While by no means the first
Wahhābī poet, Ibn Siḥmān indulged the genre more than any Wahhābī scholar before
him. At the beginning of the poem, he explains his choice of medium, saying that poetry
possesses greater rhetorical power than prose—or, rather, more power than the sword (fa-
qultu mujīban biʾl-qarīḍi li-annahū / ashaddu ʿalā ʾl-aʿdā mina ʾl-ṣārimi ʾl-hindī).183
Another external feature of the refutation that stands out is its title, bearing as it
does the phrase al-ṭāʾifa al-Muḥammadiyya al-Wahhābiyya (“the Muḥammadan Wahhābī
sect”). For Ibn Siḥmān, there was no shame in the Wahhābī epithet, and his embrace of it
marks a shift toward accepting Wahhābism as badge of pride and even as an identity.
Once an insulting exonym, Wahhābī was being reclaimed by those it was intended to
stigmatize. The pioneer of this development was likely a religious scholar named Mullah
ʿImrān ibn Riḍwān (d. 1280/1863f). The obscure Mullah ʿImrān, from the Arabic-
speaking coastal town of Bandar Lengeh (Ar., Lanja) on the Persian Gulf in the far south
of Iran, is known to have been sympathetic to Wahhābism. In a poem with which Ibn
Siḥmān was familiar,184 he took ownership of the Wahhābī label, writing, “If the follower
of Aḥmad [i.e., the Prophet] is described as Wahhābī / then I affirm that I am Wahhābī”
(in kāna tabiʿu Aḥmadin mutawahhiban / fa-anā ʾl-muqirru bi-annanī Wahhābī).185
182
The author’s original copy, complete with date, is held at Maktabat al-Midhnab al-ʿĀmma. See the
photos in Nāṣir ibn Sulaymān al-Ṣamʿānī, al-Shaykh Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān: ḥayātuhu wa-shiʿruhu,
master’s thesis, Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd al-Islāmiyya, 1412/1992, 117.
183
Ibn Siḥmān, ʿUqūd al-jawāhir, 1:197 (meter = ṭawīl). Cf. ibid., 1:183.
184
He quotes it in al-Hadiyya al-saniyya, 110-12.
185
Ibn Riḍwān, Mukhtārāt min qaṣāʾid al-shaykh ʿImrān ibn ʿAlī Āl Riḍwān, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn
ʿAbdallāh al-Sulaymān (Riyadh: n.p., 1426/2005), 83 (meter = ṭawīl). On Mullah ʿImrān, who appears to
324
Mullah ʿImrān, it would appear, was the first Wahhābī to identify as such. Ibn Siḥmān
popularized the practice.
Following Ibn Siḥmān, two other Wahhābī scholars wrote refutations of Daḥlān’s
al-Durar al-saniyya: Ṣāliḥ al-Shathrī (d. 1309/1891f) in 1304/1887 and Zayd ibn
Muḥammad Āl Sulaymān (d. 1307/1889) in 1306/1889.186 Yet both of these works
appear to have gone mostly unnoticed.
It was two other refutations, by Indian scholars, that caught the attention of
Daḥlān’s supporters. These were by ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sindī (Ṣiyānat al-
insān ʿan waswasat al-shaykh Daḥlān) and ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Fakhr al-Dīn (al-Ḥaqq al-
mubīn fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-luhābiyya al-mubtadiʿīn), respectively.187 Both names, as it turns
out, were pseudonyms. The identity of the first author was later revealed as Muḥammad
Bashīr al-Sahsawānī, mentioned above as one of the teachers of Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān and Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq during their stay in India; the identity of the second remains
unknown. In all likelihood, al-Sahsawānī’s contact with these students helped him
procure the original Wahhābī sources that he quotes throughout his book, including Ibn
Ghannām’s history.188 The fact that Indian authors were now defending Wahhābism in
writing is further testament to the growing links between India and Najd.
have been ethnically Arab, see the editor’s introduction ibid., 13-17. A Shāfiʿī, ʿImrān was likely
influenced in turn by al-Shāfiʿī’s famous line, in kāna rafḍan ḥubbu Āli Muḥammadin / faʾl-yashhadi ʾl-
thaqalāni annī rāfiḍī.
186
See al-Shathrī, Taʾyīd al-malik al-mannān fī naqḍ ḍalālāt Daḥlān, ed. Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir al-Shathrī
(Riyadh: Dār al-Ḥabīb, 1421/2000), 142; Āl Sulaymān, Fatḥ al-mannān fī naqḍ shubah al-ḍāll Daḥlān, ed.
ʿAbdallāh ibn Zayd Āl Musallam (Riyadh: Dār al-Tawḥīd, 1426/2005f), 187. Al-Shathrī was mentioned
above as a refuter of Ibn Duʿayj.
187
Both were published in Delhi in 1890 according to the British library. See Alexander S. Fulton and A.
G. Ellis, Supplementary Catalogue of Arabic Printed Books in the British Museum (London: Oxford
University Press, 1926), cols. 6, 56-57. The first is widely available online; the second, which I have not
seen, is either lost or very rare.
188
al-Sahsawānī, Ṣiyānat al-insān, ed. Rashīd Riḍā (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1351/1933f), 424ff.
325
In 1309/1891, one of the late Daḥlān’s students in Mecca came across the two
Indian refutations and felt compelled to respond. This was Muḥammad Saʿīd ibn
Muḥammad Bābṣayl (d. 1330/1912), a scholar of Yemeni origin who succeeded Daḥlān
as the Shāfiʿī muftī of Mecca.189 In his refutation of the two Indians (al-Qawl al-mujdī fī
ʾl-radd ʿalā ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sindī), published as a lithograph in Jakarta
in 1309/1892,190 Bābṣayl repeatedly lays the blame for Wahhābism at the feet of Ibn
Taymiyya. Whereas Daḥlān had been careful not to criticize him by name, Bābṣayl
devotes most of his refutation to Ibn Taymiyya explicitly, describing him as “the seedbed
of the tree of corruption and innovation” (manbat shajarat al-fasād waʾl-bidʿa).191 The
error and corruption of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he says, are merely derivative of Ibn
Taymiyya’s (ḍalāl wa-fasād mutafarriʿ ʿalā ḍalāl wa-fasād).192 In terms of their central
argument, there is little difference between Bābṣayl’s al-Qawl al-mujdī, written in
1309/1892, and the Shāfiʿī al-Qabbānī’s Faṣl al-khiṭāb, written exactly 150 solar years
earlier in 1155/1742.
Ibn Siḥmān kept the cycle of refutations going with a strongly worded reply to
Bābṣayl (al-Bayān al-mubdī li-shanāʿat al-Qawl al-mujdī).193 Unlike al-Mawāhib al-
rabbāniyya, this work was written mostly in prose. As in most of his prose refutations,
Ibn Siḥmān follows the standard procedure of quoting his opponent line-by-line and
189
On him see “Bābṣayl muftī ʾl-Shāfiʿiyya wa-imām maqāmihā biʾl-ḥaram al-Makkī,” Makka al-
Mukarrama, February 5, 2015. (The biographical dictionaries say next to nothing about him.)
190
See Bābṣayl, al-Qawl al-mujdī (Jakarta: n.p., 1309/1892). I am grateful to the National Library of Israel
for lending me a copy of this rare lithograph.
191
Ibid., 4.
192
Ibid., 17.
193
Ibn Siḥmān, al-Bayān al-mubdī (Amritsar: Maṭbaʿ al-Qurʾān waʾl-Sunna, n.d.). It is fascinating to
observe just how global the debate sparked off by al-Durar al-saniyya’s printing in Cairo in 1299/1882
was. Al-Sahsawānī’s Ṣiyānat al-insān appeared in Delhi in approximately 1307/1890, Bābṣayl’s al-Qawl
al-mujdī in Jakarta in 1309/1892, and Ibn Siḥmān’s al-Bayān al-mubdī in Amritsar in 1897.
326
commenting on the quoted text. Another common feature of his refutations is a tendency
to reproduce long passages of Ibn Ghannām’s history, including the letters and epistles by
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb therein, which he does here.194 In defending Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn
Siḥmān dismisses Bābṣayl’s and Daḥlān’s sources, namely, al-Subkī and al-Haytamī, and
quotes several scholars, mostly Shāfiʿīs, with favorable opinions of Ibn Taymiyya—Ibn
Kathīr, al-Dhahabī, al-Mizzī, and ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Yāfiʿī (d. 768/1367).195 The objective
here is to show that Shāfiʿīs were not all anti-Taymiyyan. He also mentions, relying on
Nuʿmān al-Ālūsī’s apologia for Ibn Taymiyya (Jalāʾ al-ʿaynayn fī muḥākamat al-
Aḥmadayn), the names of several later Shāfiʿīs with Taymiyyan sympathies, such as
Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/1690), ʿAlī al-Suwaydī (d. 1237/1822), and Maḥmūd al-
Ālūsī.196 Following the main text of al-Bayān al-mubdī is an endorsement (taqrīẓ) by one
of Ibn Siḥmān’s devoted students in Ḥāʾil, Ṣāliḥ ibn Sālim Āl Bunayyān (d. 1330/1912),
who praises his teacher as the eloquent author of numerous verse and prose refutations.197
As the substance of this endorsement indicates, Ibn Siḥmān had already acquired
something of a reputation as a prolific refuter. And yet al-Bayān al-mujdī was his first
refutation to appear in print, produced as a lithograph from the publishing house Maṭbaʿ
al-Qurʾān waʾl-Sunna in Amritsar, India. The book is not internally dated, but the British
Library records its publication date as 1897.198 Many more books by Ibn Siḥmān would
be published in India over course of the next two decades. The process by which this
occurred is difficult to reconstruct, but a hint may be found in one of Ibn Siḥmān’s poems
194
In this instance, he suggests that the interested reader consult Ibn Ghannām’s book directly (fa-ʿalayhi
bi-muṭālaʿat Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-afhām; ibid., 67).
195
Ibid., 71-82.
196
Ibid., 82-83
197
fa-kam lahu min rudūdin qad ajāda bihā / naẓman wa-nathran atā min ghayri muḍṭarabī (meter =
ṭawīl), ibid., 150-58, at 156.
198
Fulton and Ellis, Supplementary Catalogue, cols. 827-28.
327
that he sent to a man in Qatar named ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Khāṭir (d.
1326/1908f). The latter seems to have been a businessman with connections in India. In
the poem, Ibn Siḥmān implores the man to assist him in publishing his refutations,
complaining that the enemies of Wahhābism have been printing their works left and
right:
And how they have done corruption in the land with the books that
they have spread in the east and the west!
They have published of them, by my life, [so many] publications
and cast them into every country and place.199
The Wahhābī publishing effort in India thus appears to have begun at least in part as a
response to a glut of anti-Wahhābī books hitting the market. From the perspective of Ibn
Siḥmān, there was indeed an outpouring of anti-Wahhābism in print. Daḥlān’s al-Durar
al-saniyya was published in 1299/1882, followed by both Ibn Jirjīs’s Ṣulḥ al-ikhwān and
Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s al-Ṣawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya in 1306/1888f. All of these
authors were dead at the time of publication, but new refutations of Wahhābism were
being published as well, including ones by the Syrians Muḥammad ʿAṭāʾ Allāh ibn
Ibrāhīm al-Kasm (d. 1357/1938) and Mukhtār ibn Aḥmad al-ʿAẓamī (d. 1340/1921), and
the Iraqi Jamīl Ṣiqdī al-Zahāwī (d. 1354/1936).200 Ibn Siḥmān composed long refutations
of each of these and more. The publishing houses of India published more than a dozen
of his refutations, as lithographs, over a period of about twenty years.201
199
wa-mā afsadū fī ʾl-arḍi biʾl-kutubu ʾllatī / ashāʿū bihā fī sharqihā waʾl-maghāribī // wa-qad ṭabaʿū
minhā la-ʿamrī maṭābiʿan / wa-zajjū bihā fī kulli qaṭrin wa-jānibī (meter = ṭawīl), Ibn Siḥmān, ʿUqūd al-
jawāhir, 2:139-41, at 141.
200
See al-Kasm, al-Aqwāl al-marḍiyya fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Wahhābiyya (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿUmūmiyya,
1901); al-ʿAẓamī, Jalāʾ al-awhām ʿan madhāhib al-aʾimma al-ʿiẓām waʾl-tawassul bi-jāh khayr al-anām
(Damascus: Maṭbaʿat al-Fayḥāʾ, 1330/1912); al-Zahāwī, al-Fajr al-ṣādiq fī ʾl-radd ʿalā munkirī ʾl-tawassul
waʾl-karāmāt waʾl-khawāriq (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Wāʿiẓ, 1323/1905).
201
Here is a list of them, beginning with those books that are dated. Square brackets indicate a book
published together with the preceding one:
1. al-Bayān al-mubdī li-shanāʿat al-qawl al-mujdī, Amritsar: Maṭbaʿ al-Qurʾān waʾl-Sunna, 1897
328
There were Wahhābī lithographs published in India apart from those by Ibn
Siḥmān as well. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Kitāb al-tawḥīd, for instance, was published in
Delhi in 1308/1890f, and the commentary thereon by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan, Fatḥ
al-majīd, was published in 1311/1893f.202 Several refutations by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf were
published during this period as well,203 as were Ibn Ghannām’s history and the first major
compendium of Wahhābī texts, Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd.204 Yet Ibn Siḥmān’s books seem to
have formed the majority of the early Wahhābī publications in India.
2. Taʾyīd madhhab al-salaf wa-kashf shubuhāt man ḥādda waʾnḥarafa wa-duʿiya biʾl-Yamānī Sharaf,
Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Muṣṭafawiyya, 1323/1905
3. Kashf al-shubhatayn ʿan risālat Yūsuf ibn Shabīb waʾl-qaṣīdatayn, Bombay: Maṭbaʿat Kulzār Ḥasanī,
1327/1909f
4. Kashf al-awhām waʾl-iltibās ʿan tashbīh baʿḍ al-aghbiyāʾ min al-nās, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-
Muṣṭafawiyya, 1328/1910
5. [Tamyīz al-ṣidq min al-mayn fī muḥāwarat al-rajulayn]
6. Iqāmat al-ḥujja waʾl-dalīl wa-īḍāḥ al-maḥajja waʾl-sabīl ʿalā mā mawwaha bihi ahl al-kadhib waʾl-
mayn min zanādiqat ahl al-Baḥrayn, Delhi, al-Maṭbaʿ al-Mujtabāʾī, 1332/1913
7. al-Ṣawāʿiq al-mursala al-shihābiyya ʿalā ʾl-shubah al-dāḥiḍa al-Shāmiyya, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-
Muṣṭafawiyya, 1335/1916
8. [Tabriʾat al-shaykhayn al-imāmayn min tazwīr ahl al-kadhib waʾl-mayn]
9. [Kashf al-shubuhāt allatī awradahā ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Baghdādī fī ḥill dhabāʾiḥ al-ṣulb wa-kuffār al-
bawādī]
10. [Taḥqīq al-kalām fī mashrūʿiyyat al-jahr biʾl-dhikr baʿd al-salām]
11. al-Dīwān al-musammā bi-ʿUqūd al-jawāhir al-munaḍḍada al-ḥisān, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-
Muṣṭafawiyya 1337/1919
12. al-Asinna al-ḥidād fī radd shubuhāt ʿAlawī al-Ḥaddād, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Muṣṭafawiyya, n.d.
13. [al-Ḍiyāʾ al-shāriq fī radd shubuhāt al-mādhiq al-māriq]
14. Kashf ghayāhib al-ẓalām ʿan awhām Jalāʾ al-awhām wa-barāʾat al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb ʿan muftarayāt hādha ʾl-mulḥid al-kadhdhāb, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Muṣṭafawiyya, n.d.
15. [Irshād al-ṭālib ilā ahamm al-maṭālib]
Some but not all of these are mentioned in Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ḍubayb, “Ḥarakat iḥyāʾ al-turāth
baʿd tawḥīd al-Jazīra,” al-Dāra 1 (1395/1975): 42-60, at 46-47, 59-60; Aḥmad Khān, Muʿjam al-maṭbūʿāt
al-ʿArabiyya fī shibh al-qārra al-Hindiyya al-Bākistāniyya (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Malik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya,
1421/2000), 192-93.
202
al-Ḍubayb, “Ḥarakat iḥyāʾ al-turāth,” 46; Khān, Muʿjam al-maṭbūʿāt, 400, 280.
203
Khān, Muʿjam al-maṭbūʿāt, 300-1.
204
Ibn Ghannām’s Rawḍat al-afkār waʾl-awhām was published in 1337/1918 by al-Maṭbaʿa al-
Muṣṭafawiyya in Bombay (see above, Introduction, p. 24, note 48); Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd was published in
Delhi in 1895 (Fulton and Ellis, Supplementary Catalogue, cols. 627-29). To my knowledge, the earliest
Wahhābī publication in India was a shorter compendium of texts titled Raghbat al-muwaḥḥidīn fī taʿallum
aṣl al-dīn, dated 1306/1889; for this see the new edition: ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Kamālī, ed.,
Raghbat al-muwaḥḥidīn (n.p.: Maktabat al-Aṣāla waʾl-Turāth al-Islāmiyya, 1431/2010), 12-16 (an earlier
date given here for one of the two lithographs is based on a misreading).
329
As has been seen, the Wahhābīs in Riyadh, led by Ibn Siḥmān, were intent on
defending themselves from literary attacks abroad, and they had found a group of capable
allies in India where there were publishing houses willing to produce Wahhābī texts. But
there were still major scholarly challenges to confront back home.
Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr
The site of the next domestic challenge to the scholars was once again al-Qaṣīm, the
region where, as was seen before, commitment to Wahhābism does not seem to have run
very deep. As the second Saudi state crumbled and the power of the Āl Rashīd grew,
there came to the fore a group of scholars, most of them from Burayda, who were
outspoken in their disdain for the scholars in Riyadh. These men did not identify
themselves as opponents of Wahhābism. Rather, they claimed to represent the heritage of
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his descendants up to and including ʿAbd al-Laṭīf. At the same
time, they were intent on downplaying the classical Wahhābī doctrines related to
interaction with non-Wahhābī Muslims, including travel. Because of their claim to be
Wahhābīs, they posed perhaps the greatest challenge yet to the authority of classical
Wahhābī scholars in Riyadh, who were particularly vulnerable at this moment without
the backing of the Āl Suʿūd.
The dissident Wahhābī faction in al-Qaṣīm was led by two men, Ibrāhīm ibn
Ḥamad ibn Jāsir (d. 1338/1919) and ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAmr (d. 1326/1908f), both
from Burayda. Ibn Jāsir, the senior partner of the pair, was born in 1241/1825f;205 Ibn
205
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:277-93; al-ʿUmarī, ʿUlamāʾ Āl Salīm, 203-4; Muḥammad ibn
Nāṣir al-ʿAbbūdī, Muʿjam usar Burayda, 23 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-Thulūthiyya, 1431/2010), 3:54-98.
330
ʿAmr, some 45 years his junior, was born in 1287/1870f.206 Both are said to have studied
in Iraq and Syria, where they were exposed to the corrupting influences of their anti-
Wahhābī teachers. Ibn Jāsir at one point held a positive view of the cult of saints, though
he later retracted this in a statement announcing his “return to the truth” (al-rujūʿ ilā ʾl-
ḥaqq).207 Otherwise, Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr were not fans of the cult of saints, or at least
tended to avoid the issue. What most separated them from their classical Wahhābī
counterparts was their lenient approach to takfīr and al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ.
In Burayda, Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr drew the ire of a group of scholars adhering to
the stricter Wahhābī line. The leaders of this group were two cousins, Muḥammad ibn
ʿUmar ibn Salīm (d. 1308/1890)208 and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Salīm (d.
1326/1908).209 Both of them had studied with Abā Buṭayn in ʿUnayza and ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf in Riyadh. The division in Burayda, and in al-Qaṣīm more
generally, came to be seen as one between two rival camps, the followers of the Āl Salīm
and the followers of Ibn Jāsir.210 According to one source, the two camps were known as
“the rabid dogs” (al-maghālīth) and “the opposition” (al-ḍidd), respectively.211 The
nature of their contest was well summarized by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, writing in
the early years of the third Saudi state. The people of al-Qaṣīm, he recalled,
206
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:324-34; al-ʿUmarī, ʿUlamāʾ Āl Salīm, 357; al-ʿAbbūdī, Muʿjam
usar Burayda, 15:613-37. Cf. the discussion in Steinberg, Religion und Staat in Saudi-Arabien, 106-7, 172-
75; Al-Fahad, “From Exclusivism to Accommodation,” 508-10; Commins, Wahhabi Mission, 68-69, 73.
207
Ibn Jāsir, Rujūʿ al-shaykh Ibrāhīm ibn Jāsir, ms. Mecca, Maktabat al-Ḥaram al-Makkī, ʿĀmm 4242, pp.
177-180. This was likely written in 1303/1886, mentioned by Ibn Jāsir here as the year when his views
were corrected.
208
nāẓirīn, 2:260-63; al-ʿUmarī, ʿUlamāʾ Āl Salīm, 53-63.
209
nāẓirīn, 2:264-67; al-ʿUmarī, ʿUlamāʾ Āl Salīm, 20-52.
210
It is somewhat surprising that Burayda was the scene of this struggle, not ʿUnayza with its greater
reputation for anti-Wahhābī activism. One possibility is that ʿUnayza did not have a sufficient number of
strict Wahhābīs for there to be a contest there.
211
al-ʿAbbūdī, Muʿjam usar Burayda, 3:60.
331
came to be two parties and two groups: One group believed that [the people] of
the Ottoman Empire and grave worshippers like them were Muslims, not
apostates; they did not believe in the necessity of showing them enmity and of
dissociating from them; they deemed traveling to their lands permissible; and they
did not believe in the necessity of emigrating from their midst. The second group
opposed them and held the contrary of what they believed. Between them there
arose a great struggle and conflict.212
The dispute, as is indicated here, revolved around the related issues of takfīr and travel.
Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr denied that the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire were
polytheists, and argued that traveling to their lands, for business or otherwise, was
permissible. The Āl Salīm, following the views of the scholars in Riyadh, maintained that
the Ottoman Empire was a state of unbelief, and held that travel to land under its control
was forbidden.
The dispute seems to have come out into the open in the year 1313/1895f, when
Ibn Siḥmān sent a letter to certain students in Burayda reprimanding them for their
position on travel. The letter, which comprises a poem by Ibn Siḥmān on the same
subject, is found in his dīwān, among other places.213 In it he regrets what he has heard
about some of the brothers (baʿḍ al-ikhwān), namely, “that they claim that living among
the polytheists is permissible for one who prays and fasts, that travel is permissible to the
lands of the polytheists and idol-worshippers, and that those who forbid these things and
212
fa-ṣārū bi-dhālika ḥizbayn wa-farīqayn farīq yaʿtaqidu anna ʾl-dawla al-ʿUthmāniyya wa-man
shābahahum min ʿubbād al-qubūr Muslimūn laysū bi-murtaddīn wa-lā yarā wujūb ʿadāwatihim waʾl-
barāʾa minhum wa-yubīḥu ʾl-safar ilā diyārihim wa-lā yarā wujūb al-hijra min bayn ẓahrānayhim waʾl-
farīq al-thānī khālafūhum waʿtaqadū khilāf mā kānū yaʿtaqidūna wa-ḥaṣala baynahum nizāʿ ʿaẓīm
waʾftirāq, quoted in Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAqīl al-Ẓāhirī, Masāʾil min tārīkh al-Jazīra al-ʿArabiyya,
4th ed. (Riyadh: Dār al-Aṣāla, 1415/1994), 60.
213
Ibn Siḥmān, ʿUqūd al-jawāhir, 2:51-58. In one manuscript of the letter, 1313 is identified as the year
when the author learned of the students’ views; see Ibn Siḥmān, Risāla ilā ʾl-ikhwān, ms. Ḥāʾil, Maktabat
al-Shaykh Ṣāliḥ Āl Bunayyān. An unsigned epistle in another manuscript likewise dates the outbreak of the
dispute to 1313; see ms. Mecca, Maktabat al-Ḥaram al-Makkī, ʿĀmm 4242, pp. 164-67, at 164.
332
prohibit them are extremists (mushaddidīn).”214 In his poem, he reminds his
correspondents of the requirements of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, which include showing
enmity to the unbelievers and loyalty to the believers, and not living among infidels
unless the religion can be manifested. Employing the phrase Millat Ibrāhīm (“the religion
of Abraham”) as shorthand for al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, he writes,
The religion of Abraham, follow its path

and show enmity to those to whom he showed enmity, if you are Muslim,
And show loyalty to those to whom he showed loyalty, and beware being
foolish (cf. Q. 2:130), lest you be brought low and be regretful.
Is it in the religion, o you, to live together with the enemies
in a land where unbelief has grown oppressive and stern,
And not to manifest, when you are in the land of unbelief,
your religion among people, openly and publicly? …
May your mother be bereft of you! Have you thought to yourself even once
of the religion of Abraham, or do you wish to destroy it?215
In the prose portion of the letter, Ibn Siḥmān suggests two possible sources of these
brothers’ waywardness. Either it is skepticism about the central tenets of Wahhābism
(shakk fī aṣl hādhihi ʾl-daʿwa), or it is misinformation and distortion (talbīs wa-tamwīh
wa-tashkīl) attributable to certain wicked persons, which would be less worrisome (aqall
khaṭaran).216 At the end of the letter, he requests a response from his correspondents,
asking them either to recant their views and affirm the truth of what he has written, or
else present evidence against it.217
214
annahum zaʿamū anna ʾl-iqāma bayn aẓhur al-mushrikīn jāʾiza li-man ṣallā wa-ṣāma wa-anna ʾl-safar
jāʾiz ilā bilād al-mushrikīn wa-ʿubbād al-aṣnām wa-anna man nahā ʿan dhālika wa-manaʿa minhu fa-huwa
min al-mushaddidīn, Ibn Siḥmān, ʿUqūd al-jawāhir, 1:51.
215
wa-millatu Ibrāhima faʾslik ṭarīqahā / wa-ʿādi ʾlladhī ʿādāhu in kunta Muslimā // wa-wāli ʾlladhī wālā
wa-iyyāka lā takun / safīhan fa-taḥẓā biʾl-hawāni wa-tandamā // a-fī ʾl-dīni yā hādhā musākanatu ʾl-ʿidā /
bi-dārin bihā ʾl-kufru ʾdlahamma wa-ajhamā // wa-anta bi-dāri ʾl-kufri lasta bi-muẓhirin / li-dīnika bayna
ʾl-nāsi jahran wa-muʿlimā … thakilatka hal ḥaddathta nafsaka marratan / bi-millati Ibrāhīma am kunta
muʿdimā (meter = ṭawīl), ibid., 1:54.
216
Ibid., 51-52.
217
Ibid., 58.
333
Yet no response was forthcoming.218 What happened instead is that one of the
addressees of the letter, a Burayda resident named Sābiq ibn Fawzān, took offense and
sought help.219 In an epistle sent to Riyadh, he transcribed the letter and wrote a brief
commentary on it, asking that one of the scholars intervene, ideally a member of the Āl
al-Shaykh.220 Sābiq was convinced that Ibn Siḥmān had transgressed and wanted this
view reaffirmed. As requested, one of the Āl al-Shaykh responded. This was Ibn
Siḥmān’s close friend ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, who supported Ibn Siḥmān and
criticized Sābiq for falling under the influence of the likes of Ibn ʿAmr.
ʿAbdallāh begins his letter by reminding Sābiq of the all-important obligation of
al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ (muʿādāt al-kuffār waʾl-nahy ʿan muwālātihim) and the fact that
mixing with unbelievers is one of the greatest causes of corruption on earth (min aʿẓam
al-fasād fī ʾl-arḍ ikhtilāṭ al-Muslim biʾl-kāfir).221 He goes on to underscore that
manifesting enmity is a sine qua non for membership in Islam. In a passage that echoes
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Kalimāt epistle, ʿAbdallāh writes, “if a man in the time of the
Prophet had said, ‘I follow Muḥammad, and what he professes is true, but I will not fight
Abū Jahl or confront any of the people,’ do you think that despite this he would be a
218
This series of events is reconstructed from a careful reading of the contents of Ibn Siḥmān’s refutations
of Ibn ʿAmr, al-Radd al-kabīr and al-Radd al-ṣaghīr. I am grateful to the Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz for
providing me with a copy; see Ibn Siḥmān, al-Radd ʿalā ʾbn ʿAmr, ms. Riyadh, Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz, al-Murshid 8, ff. 0b-122b (al-Radd al-kabīr), ff. 123b-201b (al-Radd al-ṣaghīr). This is the original
copy, in Ibn Siḥmān’s hand. An edition of al-Radd al-kabīr, made on the basis of two other manuscripts
departing occasionally from the original, is Ibn Siḥmān, “al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ li-Arbāb al-qawl al-rāʾid,” ed.
Fahd ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī al-ʿArjānī, Ph.D. dissertation, al-Jāmiʿa al-Islāmiyya biʾl-Madīna al-Munawwara,
1428/2007. In the following I cite both the original manuscript and “al-Jawāb al-fāʾid” in parentheses.
219
Sābiq is the father of the Saudi diplomat Fawzān ibn Sābiq (d. 1373/1954).
220
Ibn Siḥmān, al-Radd al-kabīr, f. 9b (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 76).
221
Ibid., f. 11a (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 81). ʿAbdallāh’s letter to Sābiq is partly preserved in al-Radd al-
kabīr.
334
Muslim, or no?”222 Ibn Siḥmān, says ʿAbdallāh, was speaking generally (wa-kalām
Sulaymān ʿāmm) and only meant to give advice (naṣīḥa), not to reproach anyone. Sābiq
should not have blown his statements out of proportion (istaʿẓama) and called them a
transgression (mujāzafa).223 Ibn Siḥmān had not charged Sābiq with unbelief.
Further along in his letter, ʿAbdallāh blames the Ibn Jāsir faction for giving rise to
the trouble (fitna) in al-Qaṣīm.224 The fitna started, he writes, when these people began to
contest the legitimacy of shunning those who mix with the polytheists and who travel to
their lands (inkār mashrūʿiyyat al-hajr wa-tark al-salām ʿalā ʾl-mukhāliṭīn waʾl-
musāfirīn).225 According to a modern Saudi historian, shunning (hajr) entailed not
speaking to these persons, inviting them to one’s home, or responding to their greetings
for a limited time.226 Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr were apparently agitating against this, and
contesting that it was consistent with Wahhābī principles. From ʿAbdallāh’s perspective,
however, their pretense of fidelity to the Wahhābī tradition was false. They were
affecting admiration for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and pretending to adhere to his path only to
mislead the uneducated.227 Though outwardly Wahhābī, they were employing the same
spurious arguments (shubah) as Dāwūd ibn Jirjīs and ʿUthmān ibn Manṣūr in distorting
the words Ibn Taymiyya.228
222
law anna rajulan fī zaman al-nabī ṣ qāla anā muttabiʿ Muḥammadan ṣ wa-huwa ʿalā ʾl-ḥaqq lākin lā
uqātilu Abā Jahl wa-lā ataʿarraḍu li-aḥadin min al-nās a-taẓunnu annahu maʿa hādhā yakūnu Musliman
am lā, ibid. f. 23a (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 120).
223
Ibid., f. 35a (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 164).
224
Ibid., f. 31b (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 151).
225
226
al-ʿAbbūdī, Muʿjam usar Burayda, 15:613.
227
wa-yuẓhirūna taʿẓīmahu waʾl-intimāʾ ilā ṭarīqatihi li-yulabbisū bi-dhālika ʿalā man lā dirāyata lahu,
228
335
The matter of travel, ʿAbdallāh informs Sābiq, was addressed previously by his
father, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, who clearly opposed travel to the lands of unbelievers for those
unable to manifest the religion (li-man lam yatamakkan min iẓhār dīnihi).229 ʿAbdallāh
defines manifesting the religion as stating clearly to the polytheists that one does not
profess their religion (al-taṣrīḥ lahum annahu laysa ʿalā millatihim wa-lā ʿalā dīnihim),
and manifesting enmity to them (iẓhārihi ʾl-ʿadāwa lahum).230 Praying, fasting, and
harboring hatred of the polytheists in one’s heart are not sufficient; rather, manifesting
the religion requires openly condemning them for the polytheism that they profess and
practice (al-inkār ʿalayhim fīmā ʿtaqadūhu wa-faʿalūhu min al-shirk).231
ʿAbdallāh’s letter to Sābiq appears to have been written around the time another
letter, similar in content and purpose, was sent from Riyadh to Burayda. This was written
by ʿAbdallāh’s uncle, Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who had just returned to Najd after
studying in India, Egypt, and the Ḥijāz. Written in late 1313/mid-1896, his letter was
addressed to a young man in Burayda named ʿAbdallāh ibn Aḥmad Āl Rawwāf (d.
1359/1940), who, like Sābiq, seems to have been similarly influenced by Ibn Jirjīs and
Ibn ʿAmr.232 Āl Rawwāf had written to Isḥāq asking him about the permissibility of
travelling to the lands of the polytheists. In his response, Isḥāq describes how al-Qaṣīm
has become divided between those who permit such travel and those who prohibit it (ṣāra
ʿindakum māniʿ wa-mujīz), and explains at length why the former are wrong and the
229
Ibid., ff. 57a, 58a (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 235, 240).
230
231
Ibid., f. 102b (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 394).
232
See Isḥāq Āl al-Shaykh, al-Ajwiba al-samʿiyyāt li-ḥall al-asʾila al-Rawwāfiyyāt, ed. ʿĀdil bin Bādī al-
Murshidī (Riyadh: Dār Aṭlas al-Khaḍrāʾ, 1425/2005). The completion date is inferred from the date of one
of the endorsements—the first of Muḥarram 1314—found in the earlier edition; see idem, Sulūk al-ṭarīq al-
aḥmad, ed. Ismāʿīl ibn Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq (Riyadh: Dār al-Hidāya, 1413/1991), 15. On Āl Rawwāf, see Āl
Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:28-31.
336
latter are right.233 His argument is practically identical to Ibn Siḥmān’s and ʿAbdallāh’s,
namely, that in order to travel to such lands one must be able to manifest the religion, the
highest level of which is described as the verbal expression of hatred and enmity (aʿlā
maqāmāt iẓhār al-dīn … al-qawl biʾl-lisān maʿa ʾl-ʿadāwa waʾl-baghḍāʾ).234 All of this
is rather ironic coming from the well-travelled Isḥāq—and the irony is enhanced by the
endorsement of Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq, 235 who also spent years in India—but this seems to have
been lost on the disputants.
The question of which lands in particular were off limits—which lands
specifically were dār kufr—was generally avoided by the Wahhābī scholars. The
exception is Ibn Siḥmān, who is quite clear in excluding al-Shām, Egypt, and Iraq from
the dār al-Islām in one of his refutations of Ibn ʿAmr. There he writes,
whoever deems al-Shām, Egypt, Iraq, and other like countries the majority of
whose inhabitants supplicate to saints and righteous persons and cleave to their
graves … Islamic lands, speaking with him about manifesting the religion and the
duty to emigrate is trouble that yields no benefit. How can one who deems them
Islamic lands talk about emigration and manifesting the religion? Only those who
judge these countries to be lands of unbelief ought to be talking about and
investigating these issues. 236
For Ibn Siḥmān, then—and presumably for most of his allies—al-Shām, Egypt, and Iraq
were lands of unbelief (bilād kufr) on account of the predominance of the cult of saints.
Why he names these places is no doubt because they were destinations for Najdī
233
Āl al-Shaykh, al-Ajwiba al-samʿiyyāt, 66.
234
Ibid., 85-86.
235
Ibid., 57-58.
236
man jaʿala ʾl-Shām wa-Miṣr waʾl-ʿIrāq wa-mā ashbahahā min al-bilād allatī ghālib man sakanahā
mimman yadʿū ʾl-awliyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥīn wa-yaʿkufūna ḥawl qubūrihim … bilād Islām faʾl-kalām maʿahu fī
iẓhār al-dīn wa-wujūb al-hijra ʿanāʾ bilā fāʾida wa-kayfa yatakallamu fī ʾl-hijra wa-fī iẓhār al-dīn man
yarā anna hādhihi ʾl-amṣār bilād Islām innamā yatakallamu wa-yabḥathu fī hādhihi ʾl-masāʾil man
yaḥkumu bi-annahā bilād kufr, Ibn Siḥmān, al-Radd al-kabīr, f. 91a (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 351-52).
337
travelers; his criteria, however, would have excluded many other Islamic lands from the
dār al-Islām as well.
The letters from Riyadh to Burayda provoked Ibn ʿAmr to act; henceforward he
emerges as the most active member of the “opposition” faction in Burayda. One of his
first acts was to lodge a complaint against Ibn Siḥmān with the ruler in Ḥāʾil, Muḥammad
ibn Rashīd (r. 1288-1315/1872-97), alerting him to the contents of Ibn Siḥmān’s letter.
While Ibn ʿAmr’s complaint is not extant, the letter of apology from Ibn Siḥmān to Ibn
Rashīd that it elicited is. Part of Ibn Siḥmān’s letter is written in verse.237 Praising him as
an excellent and clement leader and stressing the traditional Islamic duty of obedience to
the ruler (faʾl-wājib ʿalaynā al-samʿ waʾl-ṭāʿa), Ibn Siḥmān explains to Ibn Rashīd that
he would not have sent the letter had he thought that the amīr would disapprove. He asks
Ibn Rashīd for indulgence (musāmaḥa) and to rescind his reproach (izālat mashrūhikum),
but never admits having committed any particular offense. Indeed, Ibn Siḥmān states
explicitly that he has not repented of what he has written (wa-innī ʿalā mā qultuhu
ghayru nādimī), claiming that his words have been misrepresented by certain slanderers
(fa-qad qallaba ʾl-wāshūna qawlī wa-lam akun / bi-awwali maẓlūmin li-wāshin wa-
lāʾimī).238 Years later, Ibn Siḥmān would write that Ibn ʿAmr’s complaint (shikāya) led
Ibn Rashīd to threaten him (jāʾanā minhu tahdīd wa-waʿīd), and that as a result he was
forbidden from writing about issues related to al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ (muniʿnā min al-
237
Aḥmad al-Bassām, “Min juhūd al-malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz fī tawḥīd kalimat al-ʿulamāʾ wa-qiyādatihim al-
dīniyya (Burayda namūdhajan),” al-ʿUlūm al-insāniyya waʾl-ijtimāʿiyya 6 (1429/2008): 158-207, at 177-80
(meter = ṭawīl).
238
Ibid.
338
jawāb waʾl-kalām fī hādhihi ʾl-masāʾil).239 Ibn ʿAmr had succeeded, for the moment at
least, in silencing Ibn Siḥmān.
The complaint to Ibn Rashīd was not Ibn ʿAmr’s only act against Ibn Siḥmān.
What he did next was dig up two old poems by his adversary on the subject of travel and
write a critical response (jawāb) to each.240 The first of these poems was something that
Ibn Siḥmān had written to Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā, the Wahhābī scholar in Mecca, many years
back.241 It takes the form of a rhetorical a question about whether it is permissible for a
Muslim to live in a land ruled by unbelievers. In his jawāb, Ibn ʿAmr agrees that iẓhār al-
dīn is the qualification for living among infidels, as Ibn Siḥmān had said, but he rejects
the classical Wahhābī understanding of the concept. Manifesting the religion, he says, is
the ability to carry out one’s religious obligations (wa-ammā iẓhār al-dīn fa-huwa an
yatamakkana ʾl-insān min adāʾ wājibāt dīnihi), which he identifies as believing in God
and His prophet, praying, and fasting during Ramaḍān.242 When Ibn ʿAmr’s jawāb found
its way to Riyadh, it was refuted by Isḥāq.
The second poem, as Ibn Siḥmān would later explain, was written in 1305/1887f
in response to a man in al-Aḥsāʾ who claimed that he was manifesting the religion
there.243 In his jawāb, Ibn ʿAmr seizes on three lines as particularly egregious, as they
239
Ibn Siḥmān, al-Radd al-kabīr, ff. 118b, 121a-121b (“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 451, 460).
240
For the poems, see idem, ʿUqūd al-jawāhir, 2:95-96, 1:319-21. Ibn ʿAmr’s jawāb to the first poem is
partly preserved in Isḥāq Āl al-Shaykh, Īḍāḥ al-maḥajja waʾl-sabīl wa-iqāmat al-ḥujja waʾl-dalīl ʿalā man
ajāza ʾl-iqāma bayn ahl al-shirk waʾl-taʿṭīl, ed. Ismāʿīl ibn Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Hidāya,
1415/1994f). For his jawāb to the second, see Ibn ʿAmr, Jawāb qaṣīdat Ibn Siḥmān, ms. Mecca, Maktabat
al-Ḥaram al-Makkī, ʿĀmm 4242, pp. 171-76. The second jawāb is dated 24 Rabīʿ I 1314/approximately
September 1, 1896 (ibid., p. 175).
241
Around twenty years before Isḥāq wrote a counter-refutation of Ibn ʿAmr’s jawāb; see Isḥāq Āl al-
Shaykh, Īḍāḥ al-maḥajja waʾl-sabīl, 27.
242
Ibid., 36, 43.
243
See Ibn Siḥmān, al-Radd al-ṣaghīr, f. 123b.
339
suggest that al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ is impossible (amr muḥāl) in a territory governed by an
oppressive ruler (man ṭaghā):
And the love and the hatred that are our religion,
and enmity for the sake of God that is the measure,
And likewise loyalty on behalf of His majesty,
if one examines the matter carefully,
Are impossible in a place governed by one who oppresses;
were they achievable, residing [there] would not bring you misfortune.244
It is an absolute outrage (ṭāmma kubrā), Ibn ʿAmr says, for Ibn Siḥmān to suggest that
one cannot be a Muslim in a land ruled by an oppressor. Unfortunately, he complains, Ibn
Siḥmān’s abominable extremism (al-ghuluww al-shanīʿ) is the view of many people in
Najd.245
This second jawāb of Ibn ʿAmr’s would, like the first, make its way to Riyadh.
There it was refuted by none other than Ibn Siḥmān—but not in his own name.246 In a
highly unusual move, however, Ibn Siḥmān hid his identity as the author of this
refutation, writing about himself in the third person (e.g., manẓūmat Ibn Siḥmān);247 he
feared the wrath of Ibn Rashīd, as he would later explain.248 In this short refutation, Ibn
Siḥmān defends himself against the charge of extremism but reaffirms that the man in al-
Aḥsāʾ was in no way manifesting the religion. Had he truly been doing so, the polytheists
there would have persecuted him and either killed or expelled him (lā yatrukūnahu wa-lā
yadaʿūnahu bal immā qatalūhu wa-immā akhrajūhu).249 This was the meaning of
244
waʾl-ḥubbu waʾl-bughḍu ʾlladhī dīnunā / wa-ʿadāwatun fī ʾllāhi wa-hiya ʿiyārū // wa-kādhā ʾl-
muwālātu ʾllatī li-ajlihā / in amʿanat fī dhālika ʾl-anẓārū // amrun muḥālun fī wilāyati man ṭaghā / law
kāna ḥaqqan mā dahāka qarārū (meter = rajaz), idem, ʿUqūd al-jawāhir, 1:320.
245
Ibn ʿAmr, Jawāb, pp. 173-74.
246
This is his al-Juyūsh al-rabbāniyya fī kashf al-shubah al-ʿAmriyya, ed. Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī
(Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣumayʿī, 1430/2009).
247
Ibid., 95.
248
See below, this paragraph.
249
Ibn Siḥmān, al-Juyūsh al-rabbāniyya, 104.
340
“impossible” in his poem, he says, and it remains the case to this day that manifesting the
religion in al-Aḥsāʾ is impossible (wa-iẓhār al-dīn ʿalā hādhihi ʾl-ṣifa muḥāl wujūduhu fī
ʾl-nās al-yawm).250 As if to complicate matters further, Ibn ʿAmr responded to Ibn
Siḥmāns’ counter-refutation on the assumption that its author was Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf;251 Ibn Siḥmān then wrote a refutation of this, this time as himself.252 It is in the
latter text that Ibn Siḥmān explains how he was forced to hide his identity out of fear that
Ibn ʿAmr would again complain to Ibn Rashīd.253
In Ramaḍān 1314/February 1897, Ibn ʿAmr wrote again to Ibn Rashīd,
complaining about the extremism that was allegedly widespread in Najd (al-ghuluww
alladhī shāʿa fī Najd).254 The extremism of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, he states, can be
found in every town (jamīʿ Najd kullu qarya fīhā nās yarawna raʾy Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf),
and has been embraced by the majority of Najd’s scholars (akthar ṭalabat al-ʿilm).255
Their doctrine (madhhabuhum), he states, consists of judging all lands to be lands of
unbelief, forbidding travel there, and excommunicating all who disagree with them (al-
ḥukm ʿalā sāʾir al-bilād biʾl-kufr wa-taḥrīm al-safar ilayhā wa-takfīr man
khālafahum).256 The first to give expression to these ideas, he suggests, was Ḥamad ibn
ʿAtīq.257 This suggestion, however, was either a statement of ignorance or else a
250
Ibid.
251
Idem, al-Radd al-ṣaghīr, f. 123b.
252
This is his al-Radd al-ṣaghīr, which remains unpublished. From the look of it, it was never completed (f.
201b).
253
khashyata an yasʿā bī huwa wa-aṣḥābuhu kamā saʿaw binā awwalan wa-shakawnā ḥattā laṭafa ʾllāh
binā, ibid., f. 126.
254
Ibn ʿAmr, Risāla ilā ʾl-amīr Muḥammad ibn Rashīd, ms. Mecca, Maktabat al-Ḥaram al-Makkī, ʿĀmm
4242, pp. 168-71, at pp. 168-69. We know that this was not his first such letter to Ibn Rashīd, since he
refers to an earlier complaint and the positive response that it elicited (ibid., p. 170).
255
Ibid., 169.
256
Ibid.
257
Ibid.
341
calculated attempt to misrepresent the views of earlier Wahhābī scholars as less extreme.
As has been seen, while Ibn ʿAtīq did introduce some new elements into the doctrine of
al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, his views were largely consistent with what obtained previously in
Wahhābism.
It is hard to know whether Ibn ʿAmr was sincerely committed to the Wahhābī
heritage. Ostensibly he was advocating a pared down version of Wahhābism—a kind of
Wahhābism lite—one in which the distinction between Wahhābīs and non-Wahhābīs was
deemphasized and relations between them normalized. At times he underscores his
fidelity to the Wahhābī tradition. For example, when ʿAbdallāh accuses him of feigning
his Wahhābī allegiance, he shoots back that this is a malicious lie (buhtān ʿaẓīm).258
Furthermore, he firmly rejects the accusation that he takes after Ibn Jirjīs and Ibn
Manṣūr.259 Yet there are also indications that Ibn ʿAmr was not nearly as Wahhābī as he
let on. In one place, for instance, he writes that it is not necessary to return to the words
of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb on the issue of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, since the matter is made
perfectly clear by the Qurʾān and sunna.260 There are also times when Ibn ʿAmr appears
to be ignorant of the Wahhābī textual heritage. For example, responding to Ibn Siḥmān’s
use of the phrase millat Ibrāhīm, he states, “this fool has made millat Ibrāhīm one of the
requirements of the religion!” apparently not realizing that Ibn Siḥmān was using the
term synonymously with al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ.261 As Isḥāq explains to Ibn ʿAmr, the
258
259
lam yufarriq bayn mā jādal bihi Dāwūd waʾbn Manṣūr min ijāzat al-shirk wa-bayn al-kalām fī ʾl-safar
ilā bilād al-mushrikīn, ibid., f. 92b (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 356).
260
wa-mathal hādhā lā yaḥtāju man arāda ʾl-istidlāl ʿalayhi ilā tanbīh al-shaykh Muḥammad, ibid., f. 20b
(=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 113).
261
fa-jaʿala hādhā ʾl-aḥmaq millat Ibrāhīm wājiban min wājibāt al-dīn, Isḥāq Āl al-Shaykh, Īḍāḥ al-
maḥajja waʾl-sabīl, 8.
342
meaning of millat Ibrāhīm is well-established as al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ in Wahhābism.262
The same issue comes up again in a subsequent exchange between Ibn ʿAmr and Ibn
Siḥmān. The latter writes that “the ignorant dull-wit [i.e., Ibn ʿAmr] did not know what
we intended and meant by millat Ibrāhīm, which is manifesting enmity and hatred,
dissociating from polytheism and its adherents, and showing loyalty to and love for the
allies of God.”263 Understandably, Ibn Siḥmān believed that Ibn ʿAmr’s true intention
was to wipe every last Wahhābī from the face of the earth.264
It is no coincidence that Ibn Jāsir and Ibn ʿAmr made their move against the
scholars in Riyadh only after the disintegration of the second Saudi state and once the Āl
Rashīd were firmly in control of Najd. They seemed to think that the Rashīdīs were their
natural allies, and the silencing of Ibn Siḥmān suggested that Ibn Rashīd was indeed on
their side. But in the final analysis, the idea that the Rashīdīs intervened heavily in this
conflict to support one side or the other does not bear out. Apart from the temporary
silencing of Ibn Siḥmān, there is no evidence that Ibn Rashīd or his successors pursued a
policy of persecuting the so-called extremist Wahhābīs in Riyadh, Burayda, or elsewhere.
The Āl Rashīd may have sought to shut down the debate. Soon enough, Ibn Siḥmān was
writing in his own voice again, and the series of refutations was soon brought to an end.
After the exchange of letters and refutations in 1313-14/1896-97, something of a cold
262
wa-qad taqarrara bi-ḥamd Allāh wa-minnatihi ʿind ahl hādhihi ʾl-daʿwa al-ḥanīfiyya waʾl-ṭarīqa al-
Muḥammadiyya anna millat Ibrāhīm hiya mubādaʾat aʿdāʾ Allāh wa-rasūlihi biʾl-ʿadāwa waʾl-baghḍāʾ
waʾl-barāʾa minhum wa-mimmā yaʿbudūna waʾl-taṣrīḥ lahum bi-dhālika, ibid., 12.
263
faʾl-fadm al-jāhil mā ʿarafa mā qaṣadnāhu wa-aradnāhu bi-millat Ibrāhīm wa-annahā iẓhār al-ʿadāwa
waʾl-bughḍ waʾl-barāʾa min al-shirk wa-ahlihi wa-muwālāt awliyāʾ Allāh wa-maḥabbatuhum, Ibn Siḥmān,
al-Radd al-kabīr, f. 35b (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,” 165).
264
wa-bi-wuddika yā ʿaduww Allāh annahu lam yabqa ʿalā wajh al-arḍ min ahl hādhihi ʾl-daʿwa al-
Najdiyya al-Muḥammadiyya … man yaqūmu bihā wa-yanshuruhā, ibid., f. 116a (=“al-Jawāb al-fāʾiḍ,”
441).
343
peace between the rival groups of scholars seems to have set in, in al-Qaṣīm as
elsewhere.
Only with the resurgence of the Āl Suʿūd was the dispute finally settled—in favor
of ʿAbdallāh and Ibn Siḥmān. In 1326/1908f, Ibn ʿAmr was executed in Riyadh at the
order of the new Saudi ruler, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. This may have had more to do with political
activism than religious polemic; it is said that Ibn ʿAmr went to Iraq to rally Ottoman
support for the Āl Rashīd.265 But the symbolism of his execution is still striking. Ten
years after Ibn ʿAmr incited a Rashīdī ruler to threaten Ibn Siḥmān, a Saudi leader had
come to power and put Ibn ʿAmr to death. It was a sudden change of fortunes for the man
from Burayda. Ibn Siḥmān can only have been pleased.
III. The Rise of the Third Saudi State (1319-1351/1902-1932)266
In Shawwāl 1319/January 1902, a young member of the Āl Suʿūd named ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz,
accompanied by a few dozen men, captured Riyadh in a surprise move traditionally seen
as the beginning of the third Saudi state. Born in Riyadh in approximately 1292/1875f,
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl Suʿūd (r. 1319-73/1902-53) had spent the past few
years in Kuwait, where his father, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, one of the sons of Fayṣal ibn Turkī,
had taken refuge. At the time of Riyadh’s capture, the Rashīdī amīr in Ḥāʾil, ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz ibn Mutʿib Āl Rashīd (r. 1315-/1897-1906), was heavily distracted by an ongoing
military conflict with Kuwait; the British soon intervened to save the Gulf statelet from
absorption into the Rashīdī emirate. The newly victorious ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz took full
265
See al-ʿAbbūdī, Muʿjam usar Burayda, 15:615.
266
On this period, see Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia 210-320; Al-Rasheed, History of Saudi Arabia,
37-68.
344
advantage of his momentum to expand the territory under his control, quickly
consolidating power in al-ʿĀriḍ and al-Kharj, whereafter things moved quickly in his
favor. In 1324/1906, after several years of struggle, he established control over al-Qaṣīm;
in 1331/1913, he did likewise over al-Aḥsāʾ, expelling the Ottomans after a forty-year
presence; in 1340/1921, Ḥāʾil fell to his forces and was annexed to the new Saudi state;
and finally, in 1343/1924, he gained control over Mecca, the rest of the Ḥijāz following
in the next year. In a remarkably short period, the new Saudi ruler had succeeded in
recreating the empire of his forefathers. As was the case with those ancestors, his military
venture was cast as jihād for the sake of spreading tawḥīd.
Nowhere was this ideological component of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s military expansion
clearer than in the case Ḥāʾil. The conquest of the town was preceded by a fatwā, written
by one or more of the Wahhābī scholars in Riyadh, authorizing the assault as legitimate
jihād—indeed, as the most virtuous jihād (jihād ahl Ḥāʾil min afḍal al-jihād).267 The
rationale presented was threefold: First, the people of Ḥāʾil (though they had never been
his subjects before) were in a state of rebellion against ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (al-khurūj ʿan ṭāʿat
walī amr al-Muslimīn) and so must be fought until they obey his commands (ḥattā
yaltazimū mā amarahum bihi ʾl-imām); second, they had failed in their duty to
excommunicate polytheists, including the polytheists of the Ottoman Empire (ʿadam
takfīr al-mushrikīn … min al-dawla al-Turkiyya wa-ʿubbād al-qubūr ka-ahl Makka wa-
ghayrihim); and third, they had given support to the polytheists (muẓāharat al-
mushrikīn), meaning the Ottomans and others at war with the Āl Suʿūd.268 The role of
267
al-Durar al-saniyya, 9:289-93, at 292.
268
Ibid., 9:298-92. The second and third charges, as the fatwā explains, correspond to the third and eighth
nullifiers of the ten nullifiers of Islam (nawāqiḍ al-Islām) enumerated by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.
345
jihād in the conquest of Ḥāʾil is seen again in a poem by Ibn Siḥmān celebrating ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz’s progress in the effort. Written in 1337/1918, it encourages him to continue
waging jihād against the town, whose defenders are described as an army of unbelievers
(jund ahl al-kufr).269 Naturally, the Wahhābī scholars of Ḥāʾil, otherwise sympathetic to
the hardline views of their colleagues in Riyadh, disagreed with the idea that their town
was a legitimate target of jihād. In a fatwā, three them affirmed that the people of the
town adhered to the laws of Islam (sharāʾiʿ al-Islām), arguing that the conflict between
the Āl Rashīd and the Āl Suʿūd should not give rise to the shedding of Muslim blood.270
In 1339/1920f, their fatwā was rebutted by Ibn Siḥmān in a strongly worded refutation,
which was endorsed by ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, and
Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq.271
As can be seen in the rationale for the jihād against Ḥāʾil, the leading Wahhābī
scholars in the mid-fourteenth/early twentieth century continued to view the Ottoman
Empire as an infidel state. This view was reiterated in a 1333/1915 fatwā by Ibn Siḥmān
in response to the question whether Muslims should support the Ottomans in World War
I. The answer was a definitive no, as the “Turks” were far worse unbelievers than the
Christians:
The unbelief of that accursed Turkish state is more severe than the unbelief of the
Jews and the Christians, and far more injurious to Islam and the Muslims than
[that of] the Christians, for they [i.e., the Turks] are apostates from Islam, and the
unbelief of the apostate from Islam is more severe than the unbelief of one who is
born an unbeliever.272
269
fa-jāhidhumū fī ʾllāhi ḥaqqa jihādihi / fa-hum jundu ahli ʾl-kufri min kulli wāghilī (meter = ṭawīl), Ibn
Siḥmān, Tahniʾa lil-imām ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz lammā aghāra ʿalā arkān Ḥāʾil, ms. Riyadh, Maktabat al-Malik
Salmān, 3422, pp. 93-95, at 95.
270
See the text of the fatwā in Ḥassān al-Rudayʿān, Manbaʿ al-karam, 91-92.
271
See ibid., 92-93, where the 22-page responsum is briefly described. My many efforts to see or obtain a
copy were unsuccessful. It remains a sensitive document.
272
inna kufr hāʾulāʾi ʾl-dawla al-Turkiyya al-malʿūna aghlaẓ min kufr al-Yahūd waʾl-Naṣārā wa-aʿẓam
ḍararan ʿalā ʾl-Islām waʾl-Muslimīn min al-Naṣārā bi-kathīr li-annahum murtaddūn ʿan al-Islām wa-kufr
346
The irony here is that ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, perhaps unbeknownst to the scholars, had few
misgivings about establishing cordial relations with either the Ottomans or (Christian)
British Empire. In 1328/1910, he officially recognized the Ottomans’ suzerainty over his
growing domains and agreed to pay tribute to the Porte. Four years later, following the
expulsion of the Ottomans from al-Aḥsāʾ, he once again acknowledged their
suzerainty.273 His dealings with the British were of even greater significance. In
1334/1915, he signed a protection treaty with the British that, in exchange for his
agreement not to aggress against Bahrain and Kuwait, afforded him a monthly subsidy of
£5,000, a sum he continued to collect until his advance into the Ḥijāz a decade later.274
The Ikhwān
One of factors enabling ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s military expansion to proceed so quickly was the
emergence of a new kind of soldiery, the Ikhwān.275 These were groups of bedouin
tribesmen from all around the country who, at the encouragement of the new ruler,
abandoned their nomadic lifestyle of animal husbandry in favor of permanent settlement
in agricultural camps known as hujar (sing. hijra). Most of the hujar were built in the
vicinity of existing towns. The construction of the first hijra, in a placed called al-
Arṭāwiyya in the east of Sudayr, has been dated to 1331/1913.276 Over the next fifteen
al-murtadd ʿan al-Islām aghlaẓ min kufr al-kāfir al-aṣlī, Ibn Siḥmān, Fatwā fī ʾl-dawla al-Turkiyya waʾl-
Naṣārā, ms. Riyadh, Maktabat al-Malik Salmān, 3422, pp. 134-45, at 137. The fatwā has endorsements by
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf.
273
274
Al-Rasheed, History of Saudi Arabia, 40.
275
On the Ikhwān generally, see John S. Habib, Ibn Sa’ud’s Warriors of Islam: The Ikhwan of Najd and
their Role in the Creation of the Sa’udi Kingdom, 1910-1930 (Leiden: Brill, 1978); Joseph Kostiner, “On
Instruments and Their Designers: The Ikhwan of Najd and the Emergence of the Saudi State,” Middle
Eastern Studies 21 (1985): 298-323.
276
347
years, the number of hujar grew to some 200. Each of them was associated with one of
the nomadic tribes, most tribes occupying multiple hujar.277 Al-Arṭāwiyya, for instance,
was dominated by the Muṭayr, led by Fayṣal al-Dawīsh (d. 1349/1930), while al-
Ghaṭghaṭ to the west of Riyadh was the province of the ʿUtayba, led by Sulṭān ibn Bijād
(d. 1351/1932). The tens of thousands of fighting-age men who populated the hujar
formed the shock troops of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s army. A contemporary British official
compared them to Cromwell’s Ironsides and Germany’s Stormtroopers.278
The defining features of these new Saudi forces, apart from their erstwhile
nomadism, were religious zeal and operational independence. Indoctrinated into
Wahhābism by the scholars or by preachers living in the hujar with them, the Ikhwān
exhibited a militant zeal reminiscent of that of the soldiers of the first Saudi state, who
pillaged, massacred, and destroyed shrines in places such as Iraq and al-Aḥsāʾ. The
Ikhwān earned a reputation for similarly indiscriminate and savage violence, particularly
with the atrocities committed in the Ḥijāzī towns of Turaba in 1337/1919 and al-Ṭāʾif in
1343/1924.279 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s inability to prevent these massacres spoke to his lack of
control over the Ikhwān, a fact noted as early as 1337/1919 by a British military officer in
India. The official observed of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz that “the horse of religious ferment has
exceeded his expectation in its power and the rider finds it harder to control than he had
anticipated.”280 These were prescient words.
One reason the “horse of religious ferment” had gotten out of control was that the
Ikhwān had developed their own, particularly unforgiving take on Wahhābī doctrine. The
277
Habib, Ibn Sa’ud’s Warriors, 58.
278
Ibid., 22
279
Ibid., 93-94, 113-14.
280
Ibid., 80.
348
scholars made a concerted effort to correct their views, but to little avail. One can see
exactly which issues were in the dispute by examining the scholars’ letters and fatwās to
the hujar, including, most importantly, those by Ibn Siḥmān. In two short sets of fatwās
published together in 1340/1921f, Irshād al-ṭālib ilā ahamm al-maṭālib (“Guiding the
Seeker to the Most Important Questions”) and Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq waʾl-ittibāʿ fī
mukhālafat ahl al-jahl waʾl-ibtidāʿ (“The Way of the People of Truth and Adherence in
Opposing the People of Ignorance and Innovation”), Ibn Siḥmān answers the questions of
an unidentified brother (akh) concerning the beliefs and practices of the Ikhwān.281 The
main issues are takfīr and ostracism (hajr); related to both is the matter of the Ikhwān’s
favored headgear, the turban (ʿimāma).
In these fatwās, Ibn Siḥmān warns emphatically against extremism (ghuluww) in
takfīr and hajr, asserting these are issues that should only be addressed by those with
sufficient knowledge.282 The ignorant (juhhāl) among the Ikhwān, he writes, have
engaged in generalized takfīr, including takfīr of those bedouin who have not settled in a
hijra (yukaffirūna biʾl-ʿumūm wa-yukaffirūna man lam yuhājir).283 Settling in one of the
hujar, he says, is recommended (mustaḥabba), not obligatory.284 He also objects to the
view that those who revert to nomadism after settling in a hijra (man taʿarraba baʿd al-
281
See Ibn Siḥmān, Irshād al-ṭālib ilā ahamm al-maṭālib, ed. Rashīd Riḍā (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār,
1340/1921f); idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq waʾl-ittibāʿ fī mukhālafat ahl al-jahl waʾl-ibtidāʿ, ed. Rashīd Riḍā
(Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1340/1921f (printed together). In what follows I cite the most recent editions:
Irshād al-ṭālib, ed. Badr ibn Jalwī al-ʿUtaybī and Sāyir ibn Saʿd al-Ḥarbī (Kuwait: Dār al-Khizāna,
1438/2016); Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Barjas Āl ʿAbd al-Karīm (ʿUjmān: Maktabat al-
Furqān, 1417/1996f).
282
Idem, Irshād al-ṭālib, 31-33.
283
Ibid., 74.
284
Idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 30-31, 109-10.
349
hijra) ought to be considered unbelievers.285 Such reversion to nomadism is not a good
thing—it is a grave sin (kabīra)—but it is not grounds for takfīr.286
The Ikhwān’s view that the bedouin were to be considered prima facie
unbelievers was based on an epistle of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s describing the bedouin as
infidels in no uncertain terms. Ibn Siḥmān explains that these words no longer apply,
because the people of Najd, settled and nomadic alike, adopted Islam during the first
Saudi state; therafter the bedouin, including those who have not settled in hujar, have not
been regarded as unbelievers tout court.287 On this score he quotes ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Ḥasan’s comment that an instructor is adequate for correcting the beliefs of most of the
bedouin of Najd (akthar bādiyat Najd yakfī fīhim al-muʿallim).288 Most of the inhabitants
of the territory ruled by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, he continues, are Muslims (wa-ammā man fī
wilāyat imām al-Muslimīn faʾl-ghālib ʿalā aktharihim al-Islām).289 The bedouin should
therefore be presumed Muslim until evidence is presented to the contrary.
Lest one be given the impression that Ibn Siḥmān had suddenly gone soft, it is
should be noted that he does not extend the presumption of Islam to the rest of Arabia. As
for the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula (man fī jazīrat al-ʿArab), he says, it is
apparent that the majority of them do not profess Islam (al-ẓāhir anna ghālibahum wa-
aktharahum laysū ʿalā ʾl-Islām).290 The presumption of Islam applied only in the domain
of the renascent Saudi state.
285
Idem, Irshād al-ṭālib, 77. On the issue of returning to the desert after hijra, see Clifford Edmund
Bosworth, “A Note on Taʿarrub in Early Islam,” Journal of Semitic Studies 34 (1989): 355-62; Patricia
Crone, “The First-Century Concept of Hiğra,” Arabica 41 (1994): 352-87, at 356, 381-82
286
Ibn Siḥmān, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 35-37.
287
Ibid., 71-74.
288
Ibid., 19. Cf. above, p. 283.
289
Ibid., 79.
290
Ibid.
350
Ibn Siḥmān also writes in an admonitory vein with regard to hajr, noting that the
Ikhwān have taken the practice way too far. Those who have committed sins, such as
failing to show for prayer, are being subjected to hajr beyond the point at which it is
reasonable, and after the sinners have repented. In such cases, hajr may well become
counterproductive, he says, turning people away from Islam as opposed to guiding them
toward it. He counsels an approach that considers the costs and benefits of punitive
action, saying that hajr must be commensurate with the sin in question.291 Relating hajr
to the larger duty of commanding right and forbidding wrong (al-amr biʾl-maʿrūf waʾl-
nahy ʿan al-munkar), he urges the Ikhwān to perform the duty wisely (ʿalīman),
discerningly (ḥalīman), and kindly (rafīqan).292 He refers regretfully to the case of a man
who was beaten to death by the Ikhwān after failing to attend prayer.293 It was in response
to such excessive behavior, he says, that ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz banned the Ikhwān from
preaching among the bedouin.294
Related to both takfīr and hajr was the issue of the turban (ʿimāma), a small piece
of fabric worn by the Ikhwān over the headdress (ghutra). The Ikhwān believed that
donning the turban was a necessary step in the bedouin’s abandonment of nomadism and
adoption of Islam. They deemed the more common cord (ʿiqāl) worn by the bedouin a
sign of pre-Islamic existence. Ibn Siḥmān laments that the Ikhwān are excommunicating
those who wear the cord and ostracizing the settled bedouin who continue to wear it; for
him, such insistence on the superiority of one kind of headgear over another was without
291
Idem, Irshād al-ṭālib, 65-67.
292
Ibid., 76. Cf. Cook, Commanding Right, 180. The one thing I would add to Cook’s treatment is that the
notion of al-amr biʾl-maʿrūf waʾl-nahy ʿan al-munkar was often closely related to professing Wahhābism
in the sense of al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ and iẓhār al-dīn. In Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq (p. 95), for instance, Ibn
Siḥmān writes about al-amr biʾl-maʿrūf waʾl-nahy ʿan al-munkar as synonymous with millat Ibrāhīm.
293
Ibn Siḥmān, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 90.
294
Ibid., 87. See further, Al-Fahad, “The ‘Imama vs. the ‘Iqal.”
351
basis in Islam. He devotes tens of pages to the issue, arguing that the turban and the cord
are equally acceptable.295
Yet what Ibn Siḥmān appears to have been most upset by was the Ikhwān’s
accusations against the scholars. Some of the Ikhwān, he says, claim that they have
compromised on God’s religion (dāhanū fī dīn Allāh) and have hidden and buried millat
Ibrāhīm (katamūhā wa-dafanūhā). A more specific charge is that the scholars have begun
permitting travel to the lands of polytheists.296 Ibn Siḥmān rejects these accusations, but
acknowledges that the scholars no longer support ostracizing those who engage in such
travel. It was determined, he says, that the costs of hajr in this case now outweigh the
benefits. He denies, however, that they permit travel to the lands of polytheists, referring
to his struggles against Ibn ʿAmr and Ibn Jāsir during the reign of the Āl Rashīd.297 As
the modified position on travel suggests, there may have been some truth to the Ikhwān’s
perception that the scholars were beginning to compromise.
The limited nature of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s control over the Ikhwān was laid bare in the
massacres at Turaba and al-Ṭāʾif, and the problem only grew worse in the mid-
1340s/later 1920s. This was when the Ikhwān defied ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s orders to cease
raiding in southern Iraq. In 1341/1922, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz signed an agreement with the
British known as the ʿUqayr Protocol, which demarcated the boundaries of Najd and
Iraq.298 It was the first acknowledgment of any limit on his territorial expansion. The
Ikhwān’s continued raiding, however, was straining relations with the British, who began
295
Ibn Siḥmān, Irshād al-ṭālib, 68-75, 79-93; idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 113-19
296
Idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 86-87.
297
Ibid., 102-6.
298
352
to use airpower to repel them. In the course of these events, the scholars sent letters to the
Ikhwān’s leaders, counseling obedience to the ruler and warning against rebellion.299
The mounting tensions between ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and the Ikhwān led to the
convening of two large conferences in Riyadh in 1345/1927 and 1347/1928, at which the
Ikhwān aired their grievances.300 After the first conference, the scholars issued a fatwā,
dated Shaʿbān 1435/February 1927, on several issues that the Ikhwān had raised. While
agreeing with them on some of the issues, such as whether the Shīʿa in al-Aḥsāʾ should
be allowed to practice their religion or not—the answer was no, and that they should
either convert to Islam or be expelled—the scholars deferred to the judgment of the imām
on the all-important issue of jihād (wa-ammā ʾl-jihād fa-huwa muḥawwal ilā naẓar al-
imām).301 Yet the leaders of the Ikhwān were not willing to accept this restriction on their
military activity, persisting in their raiding, both in Najd and beyond. At the second
Riyadh conference, these leaders, including Fayṣal al-Dawīsh and Sulṭān ibn Bijād, were
absent; they were now in open rebellion against ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.
In Shawwāl 1347/March 1929, the rebel factions of the Ikhwān, led by al-Dawīsh
and Ibn Bijād, met an army of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s loyal forces in a decisive battle outside al-
Arṭāwiyya known as the Battle of al-Sabila. The Ikhwān were dealt a major defeat, some
of them fleeing to Iraq and Kuwait to escape arrest. The defeat paved the way for their
final submission in Shaʿbān 1348/January 1930. In putting down the Ikhwān rebellion,
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had the full backing of the scholars, who declared, after al-Sabila, in a co-
299
See, for instance, al-Durar al-saniyya, 9:183-98.
300
Habib, Ibn Sa’uds’ Warriors, 122-23, 129-35.
301
“Fatwā ʿulamāʾ Najd ḍidd al-Miṣriyīn waʾl-Shīʿa,” al-Siyāsa al-usbūʿiyya, May 21, 1927, p. 25. The
fatwā’s signatories include Ibn Siḥmān, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq, and the future grand
muftī of the kingdom, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm. For a translation of this fatwā by Guido Steinberg, see
Camron Amin, et al, eds., The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 57-61.
353
signed fatwā, that the Ikhwān had apostatized (lā shakka fī kufrihim wa-riddatihim) and
must be fought (yajibu ʿalā jamīʿ al-Muslimīn jihāduhum wa-qitāluhum). The reasons
given were that the Ikhwān had excommunicated Muslims and deemed their blood and
property licit, and that they had sought refuge in Ottoman lands (inḥāzū ilā aʿdāʾ Allāh
wa-rasūlihi).302
The Ikhwān defeated, the scholars presumably rejoiced at being rid of such
extremists who had abjured their authority. And yet when it came to shaping the third
Saudi state in accordance with classical Wahhābī principles, the scholars had lost a
crucial ally. For while they disagreed with the Ikhwān on certain things, the scholars’
vision of the ideal Wahhābī state was in some ways closer to that of the Ikhwān than to
that of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Like the Ikhwān, the scholars wanted the Shīʿa in the eastern
province converted or expelled, and they opposed the presence of Westerners visiting and
doing business in the country. The scholars’ position on the latter issue is brought out in a
letter sent to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in approximately 1347/1928f, in which they report having
learned that a foreign company is prospecting for mineral resources (maʿādin)—i.e., oil.
They warn that partnering with foreigners from a Christian territory, and inviting them to
Arabian lands under Islamic rule, are prohibited by God’s law.303 As with the issue of the
the Shīʿa in the east, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz did not defer to the opinion of the scholars on this
point either.
302
al-Durar al-saniyya, 9:209-11. The signatories include Ibn Siḥmān, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, and
Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm.
303
anna mushārakat al-ajānib alladhīna taḥt wilāyat al-Naṣārā wa-idkhālahum fī ʾl-diyār al-ʿArabiyya
waʾl-wilāya al-Islāmiyya amr muḥarram lā tubīḥuhu ʾl-sharīʿa, ibid., 9:333-34. The signatories include Ibn
Siḥmān, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Saʿd ibn ʿAtīq, and Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm.
354
Rashīd Riḍā
The Ikhwān were not the only imperfect ally with whom the Wahhābī scholars grappled
in the 1340s/1920s. Another was Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1354/1935), the Islamic modernist
scholar based in Egypt who emerged in this decade as the foremost intellectual defender
of the Wahhābīs in the Arab east. But if the Ikhwān were a flawed ally on account of
their extremist tendencies, the opposite was the case with Riḍā. For the scholars, he was
not Wahhābī enough.
Born in 1282/1865 in Tripoli, in modern-day Lebanon, Riḍā began his intellectual
career as a disciple of the Egyptian Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1323/1905), one of the
pioneers of Islamic modernism.304 ʿAbduh and those in his circle were concerned above
all with adapting Islam to the requirements of the modern world. In doing so they were
ready to depart drastically in some ways from the accumulated theological and legal
tradition of Sunnī Islam. ʿAbduh, for instance, wished to do away with the madhhab and
taqlīd, was against the notion of miracles, and was skeptical of much of the Sunnī ḥadīth
corpus. In all of this, he was heavily influenced by European philosophy and culture.
Riḍā was more conservative in his approach to the Islamic textual tradition, but
nonetheless saw himself as a steward of ʿAbduh’s intellectual project, namely, reform
(iṣlāḥ). Shortly after moving to Cairo in 1315/1898, he established the journal al-Manār
with ʿAbduh’s assistance and under his guidance. After about a decade and a half, he
began using the journal to rehabilitate the bad image of the Wahhābīs. With his printing
press, known also as al-Manār, he would publish numerous Wahhābī texts with the
financial support of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.
304
The best introduction to ʿAbduh and Riḍā remains Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age,
1798-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), ch. 6 and 9.
355
Much has been made of the political and financial considerations that motivated
Riḍā’s embrace of the Wahhābīs, and there is certainly much to them.305 Riḍā was a
proponent of pan-Islamic unity who saw the young Saudi state as possibly playing a
major role in a pan-Islamic political project. After the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate
in 1342/1924 and the subsequent Saudi conquest of the Ḥijāz, his vision of the young
Saudi state’s role in pan-Islam expanded. In the pages of al-Manār and the Egyptian daily
al-Ahrām, he defended the Wahhābīs against their critics and extolled the virtues of ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz.306 Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he said, was a mujaddid, one of the
renewers of Islam, who had taught the people of Najd the proper understanding of tawḥīd
as expounded by Ibn Taymiyya; his movement, referred to by Riḍā neutrally as
Wahhābism (al-Wahhābiyya), was one of reform and renewal (al-iṣlāḥ waʾl-tajdīd).307
The wise and patient ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (al-ʿāqil al-ḥalīm al-ṣabūr) was praised for
promoting this version of Islam and maintaining his independence from foreign
powers.308 In the summer of 1344/1926, Riḍā confided to a friend that ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had
begun patronizing him.309
Yet even before these political and financial considerations were in play, Riḍā
evinced a fondness for certain aspects of Wahhābism that Islamic modernists before him
had not. In 1327/1909f, for instance, he approvingly published a polemic against the cult
305
On Riḍā’s relations with the Wahhābīs, see Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in
the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 60-94.
306
These articles were collected by Riḍā in the volume al-Wahhābiyyūn waʾl-Ḥijāz (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-
Manār, 1344/1926).
307
Ibid., 6.
308
Ibid., 91.
309
Martin Kramer, Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986), 110. The friend was Shakīb Arslān.
356
of saints by Ibn Taymiyya.310 ʿAbduh, by contrast, appears to have held Ibn Taymiyya in
low regard,311 and was certainly unsympathetic to the Wahhābīs.312 Riḍā’s ultimate
embrace of the Wahhābīs should thus be seen as consistent with his intellectual
trajectory. By his own account, he did not develop a favorable view of Wahhābism until
his arrival in Egypt (wa-anā lam aʿlam bi-ḥaqīqat hādhihi ʾl-ṭāʾifa illā baʿd al-hijra ilā
Miṣr), where for the first time he read about the movement in the histories of al-Jabartī
and al-Nāṣirī.313 In 1338/1919, in the pages of al-Manār, he published Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s Kashf al-shubuhāt, again in a way that signaled his approval.314 Even before
the fall of the Ottomans and the Saudi expansion into the Ḥijāz, then, Riḍā was acting as
something of a Wahhābī apologist. As will be seen shortly, however, he was not on board
with every aspect of classical Wahhābism. In the words of his colleague Shakīb Arslān
(d. 1366/1946), what Riḍā sought to promote was “a true Wahhābism, but enlightened
and moderate” (“un vrai Wahabisme, mais éclairé et moderne”).315
Riḍā’s next move to help the Wahhābī came in the early 1440s/early 1920s, when
he made his al-Manār publishing house available for the printing of Wahhābī texts at
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s expense. Over the course of about a decade, al-Manār printed more than
two dozen Wahhābī books. As was the case with the earlier Wahhābī publishing effort in
India, some of the first Wahhābī books published this time around were written by Ibn
310
This was Qāʿida jalīla fī ʾl-tawassul waʾl-wasīla (published several times more by al-Manār). Riḍā also
published Ibn al-Qayyim’s Madārij al-sālikīn in 1334/1915f. See Tāmir Muḥammad Mutawallī, Manhaj
al-shaykh Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā fī ʾl-ʿaqīda (Jeddah: Dār Mājid ʿAsīrī, 1425/2004), 196, 200.
311
312
Lauzière, Making of Salafism, 62-63
313
Riḍā’s introduction in al-Sahsawānī, Ṣiyānat al-insān, 8. The first of these was noted in the Introduction;
the second, by the Moroccan Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Khālid al-Nāṣirī (d. 1315/1897), is titled al-Istiqṣā
li-akhbār duwal al-Maghrib al-aqṣā.
314
Ibid., 202.
315
Arslān, “La disparition d’une des plus grandes figures de l’Islam Rachid Ridha,” La Nation arabe 5
(1935): 448-49; noted in Lauzière, Making of Salafism, 104.
357
Siḥmān, who was still an active refuter. The first books of his published by al-Manār
were Irshād al-ṭālib and Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq waʾl-ittibāʿ, the fatwā collections responding
to the Ikhwān.316 In addition to Ibn Siḥmān’s books, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz funded the publication
of a number of compendia of Wahhābī texts, the most comprehensive being Majmūʿat al-
rasāʾil waʾl-masāʾil al-Najdiyya, published in four volumes between 1344/1925f and
1349/1930f.317 For the most part, these books were published without editorial comment,
but occasionally Riḍā clarifed a point or registered an objection in footnotes. These
comments were not all received favorably back in Najd.
The Wahhābī scholars, while happy to make use of Riḍā’s printing press, were ill
at ease with his reformist approach to Islam. An early sign of their apprehension is
glimpsed in a 1340/1922 letter to Ibn Siḥmān from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn
Māniʿ (d. 1385/1965), an ʿUnayza-born Wahhābī scholar serving as the qāḍī of Qatar.318
In the letter, Ibn Māniʿ signals his agreement with Ibn Siḥmān that Riḍā suffers from a
corrupted doctrine (fasād al-muʿtaqad), which includes his view that the Shīʿa,
Khārijites, Jahmites, and grave worshippers (al-Rāfiḍa waʾl-Khawārij waʾl-Jahmiyya wa-
ʿubbād al-qubūr) all belong to Islam. He further complains that Riḍā and those like him
316
Here is a list of Ibn Siḥmān’s books published by al-Manār, square brackets again indicating a book
published together with the preceding one:
1. Irshād al-ṭālib ilā ahamm al-maṭālib, 1340/1921f
2. [Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq waʾl-ittibāʿ fī mukhālafat ahl al-jahl waʾl-ibtidāʿ]
3. Tanbīh dhawī ʾl-albāb al-salīma ʿan al-wuqūʿ fī ʾl-alfāẓ al-mubtadiʿa al-wakhīma, 1343/1924f
4. [Tabriʾat al-shaykhayn al-imāmayn min tazwīr ahl al-kadhib waʾl-mayn]
5. al-Ḍiyāʾ al-shāriq fī radd shubuhāt al-mādhiq al-māriq, 1344/1925f
6. Rujum ahl al-taḥqīq waʾl-īmān ʿalā mukaffirī Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, 1346/1927f
Most of these are mentioned in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shuqayr, Ṭibāʿat al-kutub wa-waqfuhā ʿind al-malik
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Riyadh: Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 1424/2003), 56ff.
317
Other compendia include al-Hadiyya al-saniyya waʾl-tuḥfa al-Wahhābiyya al-Najdiyya (1342/1923f, 2nd
ed. 1344/1924f), Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya (2nd ed. 1342/1923f), Majmūʿat rasāʾil wa-fatāwā fī
masāʾil muhimma tamussu ilayhā ḥājat al-ʿaṣr (1346/1927f), and Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd al-Najdiyya
(1346/1927f); see al-Shuqayr, Ṭibāʿat al-kutub, 62ff. Toward the end of this period, the Wahhābīs began to
publish on their own in the Ḥijāz.
318
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 6:100-13; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 2:338-46.
358
are not faithful to the Qurʾān and the sunna, privileging their own reasoning—what is in
their minds (mā bi-ʿuqūlihim)—over revealed proof-texts. In short, they are philosophers,
not men of religion (faʾl-qawm falāsifa laysū bi-ahl dīn); they may call themselves
reformers, but in fact they are corrupters (wa-yusammūna anfusahum al-muṣliḥīn illā
annahum hum al-mufsidūn; cf. Q. 2:11-12).319 Two years later, in 1342/1923f, another
Najdī scholar, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Ṣīrāmī (d. 1345/1927), wrote to Ibn Siḥmān to
complain about Riḍā.320 Al-Ṣīrāmī, the long-time qāḍī of al-Dilam, refers here casually to
“the editor of al-Manār and other innovators and misled people” (ṣāḥib al-Manār wa-
ghayrihi min ahl al-bidaʿ waʾl-ḍalāl).321 That Riḍā was an innovator with unsound creed
seems to have been the common view of the Wahhābī scholars in Najd.
Unsurprisingly, the most vehement of Riḍā’s Wahhābī critics was Ibn Siḥmān,
who in 1342/1924 composed a short refutation of Riḍā and his doctrine.322 The starting
point of his refutation is a footnote in the collection Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya, one
of the compendia of Wahhābī texts published by al-Manār. In the footnote, Riḍā offers
his views on the correct interpretation of God’s attributes. Regarding a ḥadīth in which
God says about those who love Him, “I am their ear through which they hear” (kuntu
samʿahu ʾlladhī yasmaʿu bihi), Riḍā writes that the consensus view of the scholars is that
the expression is allegorical (min al-majāz aw al-kināya).323 Ibn Siḥmān responds by
319
Ibn Māniʿ, Risāla ilā Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān, ms. Riyadh, Dārat al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Wathāʾiq
15/909. Most of the letter is transcribed in the editor’s introduction in Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān, Taʿaqqubāt
al-shaykh al-ʿallāma Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān ʿalā baʿḍ taʿlīqāt al-shaykh Rashīd Riḍā ʿalā kutub aʾimmat al-
daʿwa, ed. Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣumayʿī, 1420/2009), 117-21.
320
On him see Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 3:386-89.
321
Ibn Siḥmān, Taʿaqqubāt, 122 (editor’s introduction). Other Najdī scholars who criticized Riḍā include
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī ibn Yābis (d. 1389/1969) and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Nāṣir al-Saʿdī (d. 1376/1956) (ibid.,
91-97, 98-102).
322
Ibid. This text was published only in 1430/2009.
323
Riḍā, ed., Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1342/1923f), 77. For the
ḥadīth, see al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1247 (Kitāb al-riqāq, bāb al-tawāḍuʿ, no. 6502).
359
saying that this is completely wrong, quoting Ibn Taymiyya’s views on God’s
attributes.324 He raises the attributes issue again soon afterward, drawing attention to
Riḍā’s comment in Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya that the position of traditional anti-
kalām scholars (ʿulamāʾ al-athar) consists of accepting the literal meanings of the
attributes while leaving their interpretation to God (al-akhdh bi-ẓawāhirihā maʿa ʾl-
tanzīh waʾl-tafwīḍ).325 Ibn Siḥmān, again relying on Ibn Taymiyya, notes that this is the
doctrine of tafwīḍ, a doctrine only of innovators (madhhab ṭāʾifa min ahl al-bidaʿ).326
These are rather minor criticisms, however, in comparison with what comes next.
In another footnote in Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya, highlighted by Ibn
Siḥmān, Riḍā objects (if only indirectly) to the classical Wahhābī approach to takfīr. His
comment comes in a discussion of a ḥadīth in which the Prophet declares that the blood
of a Muslim is licit if, among other things, he leaves his religion and separates from the
community (waʾl-tārik li-dīnihi al-mufāriq lil-jamā‘a).327 According to the ḥadīth scholar
al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277), such a person is an apostate who ought to be killed. For Riḍā,
this was far too categorical a statement. He responds that the separating from the
community (mufāraqat al-jamāʿa) mentioned in the ḥadīth requires openly declaring
one’s abandonment of Islam (al-mujāhara bi-tark al-Islām); one who merely commits an
act indicative of unbelief (man atā bi-shayʾ yadullu ʿalā ʾl-kufr) should not be killed.328
For Ibn Siḥmān, this was again wrong. Quoting Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan on the importance of takfīr, he affirms that whoever commits shirk
324
Ibn Siḥmān, Taʿaqqubāt, 141-42.
325
Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya, 732.
326
327
For the ḥadīth, see al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1211 (Kitāb al-diyāt, bāb qawl Allāh taʿālā anna ʾl-nafsa biʾl-
nafsi…, no. 6878); Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 3:1302-1303 (Kitāb al-qasāma waʾl-muḥāribīn waʾl-qiṣāṣ waʾl-diyāt,
bāb mā yubāḥu bihi dam al-Muslim, no. 1676).
328
Majmūʿat al-ḥadīth al-Najdiyya, 45.
360
has left the religion, even if he continues to utter the confession of faith and to pray.329
The idea that one must announce one’s abandonment from Islam in order to put oneself
beyond the pale is without any basis.330 The mere commission of shirk is tantamount to
openly declaring oneself a polytheist: “What grave worshippers do at the tombs of
prophets, saints, and righteous persons is the open declaration of unbelief and the
abandonment of the religion of Islam.”331 It is incumbent on Muslims to declare those
who commit shirk to be unbelievers.
The polemic gets more heated still in the next section, where Ibn Siḥmān
addresses a personal matter: Riḍā’s editing job on one of his own books, Minhāj ahl al-
ḥaqq waʾl-ittibāʿ. In the original version of this book, Ibn Siḥmān had written, in
response to a question about whether the people of the Arabian Peninsula outside the
territory controlled by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz are Muslims, that it is safe to assume most of them
are not (al-ghālib ʿalā aktharihim mā dhakarnā awwalan min ʿadam al-Islām). Riḍā had
removed this sentence in the published version, explaining in a footnote that he deleted
an ignorant judgment of kufr against a great many Muslims (ḥadhafnā hunā mithl mā
qablahu min al-ḥukm ʿalā aktharihim bi-ghayr ʿilm). He went on to explain that all of the
settled people in question profess Islam (al-ḥaqq anna ahl al-ḥaḍar kullahum ʿalā ʾl-
Islām), as well as many of the bedouin (waʾl-kathīr min ahl al-bawādī). The evidence for
this, he says, is that a student of his traveled from Yemen to the Ḥijāz and reported seeing
people praying throughout.332
329
330
Ibid., 183-84.
331
mā yafʿaluhu ʿubbād al-qubūr ʿind ḍarāʾiḥ al-anbiyāʾ waʾl-awliyāʾ waʾl-ṣāliḥīn mujāhara biʾl-kufr wa-
tark li-dīn al-Islām, ibid., 185. See also, for the deleted text, idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 79 (al-Furqān ed.).
332
Idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq, 61 (al-Manār ed.).
361
Ibn Siḥmān was not amused by Riḍā’s handiwork, describing him as an
antagonist (muʿtariḍ).333 Reitering his view that the majority of the people in the areas
concerned are unbelievers and polytheists (ghālib ahl hādhihi ʾl-amṣār ʿalā ʾl-kufr biʾllāh
waʾl-ishrāk bihi), he refers to the activites of grave worshippers (ʿubbād al-qubūr) in
Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, among other places.334 In effect, he broadened his judgment of
kufr against the majority of the inhabitants of Arabia to one against the Islamic world
more generally. To support his view, he quotes several pages of Ibn Ghannām’s history
describing the practices related to the cult of saints from the Ḥijāz to Iraq. Only an
ignorant and skeptical person (al-jāhil al-murtāb), Ibn Siḥmān writes, would doubt that
what these people are committing is anything but unbelief.335 Coming to Riḍā’s comment
about the settled population of Arabia, he responds that one who understands Islam
correctly (man ʿarafa ʾl-Islām ʿalā ḥaqīqatihi) would not say such a thing, given the
number of settled peoples who supplicate to saints and righteous persons.336 As it
happens, Riḍā was himself no fan of the cult of saints, or of Ṣūfism more generally; but
for Ibn Siḥmān this was irrelevant. Riḍā had insulted him and defaced his work while
affirming that “grave worshippers” were Muslims. These were the acts of an enemy, not
an ally, of Wahhābism.
It should also be noted that Riḍā was at odds with the classical Wahhābī approach
to al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ as well, though Ibn Siḥmān does not bring this up. Riḍā’s position
on the issue can be seen in the footnotes in Irshād al-ṭālib and Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq waʾl-
ittibāʿ. In each of these books, Ibn Siḥmān quotes Ibn Taymiyya’s line that “a believer
333
See, e.g., idem, Taʿaqqubāt, 129.
334
Ibid., 212-13.
335
Ibid., 213-24.
336
Ibid., 229.
362
must be shown loyalty even if he wrongs you and oppresses you, and an unbeliever must
be shown enmity even if he gives to you and is kind to you.”337 In each case, Riḍā writes
that it is only the belligerent unbeliever (al-kāfir al-ḥarbī) who should be shown enmity,
since the Prophet did not prohibit showing kindness (birr) to non-Muslims.338 Similarly,
in his Qurʾānic exegesis, Riḍā writes that “some religious zealots claim, out of ignorance,
that it is not permissible for a Muslim to exhibit kindness in interacting with or
associating with a non-Muslim, or to trust him in any matter at all.”339 Though he speaks
immediately after this of a group of such zealots in Afghanistan, it is likely that he has the
Wahhābīs in mind as well. With two of the most crucial tenets of classical Wahhābī
doctrine, then, takfīr and al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, Riḍā was not on board. While ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz never said so openly, he would have agreed with Riḍā on the matter of takfīr and
al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ: the classical Wahhābī positions were simply too extreme.
Riḍā never veered in his support for the new Saudi state and its attendant religious
movement, remaining a staunch supporter of them to the end of his life. The strong
relationship between the Riḍā and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and their converging interest in making
the Saudi state a leader of global Islam, facilitated the movement of several of Riḍā’s
disciples to the Ḥijāz in the 1340s/1920s. Men of reformist outlook who had studied
under Riḍā in Cairo were invited to take up influential positions as preachers and teachers
in Mecca and Medina. They included the Egyptians ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir Abū ʾl-Samḥ (d.
1370/1951), Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī (d. 1378/1959), and Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Razzāq
337
For this line, see above, ch. 3, p. 200.
338
Ibn Siḥmān, Irshād al-ṭālib (al-Manār ed.), 25; idem, Minhāj ahl al-ḥaqq (al-Manār ed.), 12.
339
yazʿumu baʿḍ al-mutaḥammisīn fī ʾl-dīn ʿalā jahl annahu lā yajūzu lil-Muslim an yuḥsina muʿāmalat
ghayr al-Muslim aw-muʿāsharatahu aw yathiqa bihi fī amr min al-umūr, Riḍā, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ḥakīm,
13 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1324-53/1906f-34f), 3:277. For more on Riḍā’s approach to al-walāʾ
waʾl-barāʾ, see Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping
Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 229-34, where this passage is quoted.
363
Ḥamza (d. 1392/1972), the Syrian Muḥammad Baḥjat al-Bayṭār (d. 1396/1976), and the
Moroccan Taqī al-Dīn al-Hilālī (d. 1407/1987).340 Some of them stayed in the Ḥijāz for
good. While Najdī scholars continued to hold the most senior posts, in the Ḥijāz as
elsewhere, the presence of these men helped to show the world that Saudi Islam was not
the Wahhābism of old. Most of them would adopt a more exclusivist understanding of
Islam than Riḍā,341 but their views never developed the hard edge of Ibn Siḥmān and his
allies. They represented the “true Wahhābism” of Riḍā more so than classical
Wahhābism.
Conclusion
In Ṣafar 1349/July 1930, Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān died in Riyadh, and along with him
something of the spirit of classical Wahhābism died as well. For a period of about 100
years, as this chapter has shown, the Wahhābī scholars fended off a host of challenges to
the integrity of their movement, intent on preserving classical Wahhābī doctrine and
preventing normalization with non-Wahhābī Muslims (apart from a few perceived allies
in Iraq and India). At first, the rise of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and the third Saudi state seemed like
a blessing to these men, who did not seem to understand that they would soon be forced
to compromise some elements of their doctrine. In the 1330s/1910s, for instance, Ibn
Siḥmān dismissed as unfounded the idea that the nascent Saudi state was appealing for
support to the British Empire (tastaʿīnu bi-dawlat al-kufr), saying,
We have not inclined toward them nor appealed for support to them in any of the
things that you claim, nor have we taken them as allies. You know well that no
340
Lauzière, Making of Salafism, 70-75.
341
Ibid., 93-94.
364
flag of theirs is found in our land, and that we have not appointed consulates or
adhered to their laws in our country.342
Such was the outlook of the scholars at the dawn of the third Saudi state. The state that
they envisioned was not one that would host foreign embassies or fly foreign flags, let
alone form military alliances with unbelievers. The continued to pine for the first Saudi
state, a polity that would promote true Islam and fight to expand the realm of tawḥīd.
Gradually, they came to learn that the new Saudi ruler had a different vision. This was the
early fourteenth/early twentieth century, a time when the nation-state system was
expanding to the non-Western world, and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was attuned to the changes in
international politics. He sought integration into the Western-led Westphalian state
system.
In 1339/1920f, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz assured the scholars in a letter that anyone opposing
the teachings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his descendants would be “exposed to danger”
(mutaʿarraḍ lil-khaṭar).343 And yet, his reign did not entail a militant enforcement of
classical Wahhābī principles. As was seen, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz did not endeavor to convert or
expel the Shīʿa in al-Aḥsāʾ as the scholars requested; nor did he follow their advice to
prohibit Christians from entering the country to prospect for oil. Futhermore one of his
objectives, normalizing relations with the broader Islamic world, was entirely at odds
with what the scholars had been advocating for the past hundred years.
342
wa-innā lam nanziʿ ilayhim wa-lam nastaʿin bihim fī shayʾ min al-umūr allatī tazʿumūnahā wa-innā lam
nattakhidhhum awliyāʾ wa-qad ʿalimtum annahu laysa fī diyārinā lahum ʿalaman [sic] wa-lā jaʿalnā fī
awṭāninā qanāṣil wa-lam naltazim fī millatinā qawānīnahum, Ibn Siḥmān, al-Ḍiyāʾ al-shāriq fī radd
shubuhāt al-mādhiq al-māriq, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Barjas Āl ʿAbd al-Karīm (Riyadh: Riʾāsat Idārat al-
Buḥūth al-ʿIlmiyya waʾl-Iftāʾ, 1414/1992), 651.
343
365
To be sure, the scholars had shown some signs of an ability to interact with and
live among non-Wahhābī Muslims. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan lived and studied for
about a decade in Egypt; his son ʿAbd al-Laṭīf did so for much longer. Many Wahhābīs
traveled to India and Iraq, forming alliances with like-minded scholars. In addition, they
had proven themselves willing to obey rulers of whom they did not particularly approve.
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf displayed a realist bent during the Saudi civil war of the second Saudi state,
submitting to the authority of Suʿūd after first endorsing ʿAbdallāh. Political Rrealism
obtained during the Rashīdī interregnum as well, when Ibn Siḥmān underscored his duty
of obedience to Ibn Rashīd. There was some precedent, then, for a certain flexibility in
Wahhābī practice.
But on the whole, these were exceptions to a much greater pattern of persistently
uncompromising thinking by the scholars. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf had, after all, stood up to
ʿAbdallāh when the latter asked the Ottomans to intervene in the Saudi civil war. There
were limits to what the rulers could get away with. The scholars of the early third Saudi
state raised some objections to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s policies, but for the most part they
overlooked those aspects of his rule they did not like. This was an unprecedented spirit of
compromise. The sort of Wahhābism that became the state religion of the third Saudi
state was not much different from what Ibn ʿAmr was advocating in Burayda not so long
before.
Two dates may be seen as symbolic of the new Saudi polity’s development into a
conventional nation state. The first is Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1347/May 1929, when ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
came out openly against the term Wahhābī in a speech at the royal palace in Riyadh.
Rejecting the Wahhābī epithet as misleading and slanderous, he stated,
366
They call us Wahhābīs and call our doctrine Wahhābī, believing that ours is a
particular doctrine. This is a terrible error that arose out of lying propaganda …
We are not the adherents of a new doctrine and a new creed. Muḥammad ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb introduced nothing new. Our creed is the creed of the pious
ancestors that is found in the Book of God and the sunna of His Messenger.344
While in one sense ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was merely saying that Wahhābism was nothing but
true Islam, his declaration carried another kind of implication. For Wahhābism, as a label
and an identity, had to a large degree been adopted by its adherents from the 1300s/1880s
onwards. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz wanted to put a stop to this. He wanted the Wahhābīs to shed
their conception of themselves as a sect apart, as one with irreconcilable differences with
mainstream Sunnī Islam.
The second date is Jumāda I 1351/September 1932. This was when a royal decree
proclaimed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Suʿūdiyya).
Before this date, the third Saudi state had been known as the Kingdom of the Ḥijāz, Najd,
and its Dependencies (Mamlakat al-Ḥijāz wa-Najd wa-Mulḥaqātihā). As an article
accompanying the decree explains, the purpose of the name change was to capture the
sense of national unity (al-waḥda al-ʿunṣuriyya) allegedly felt by Najdīs and Ḥijāzīs
alike.345 The name of the dynasty would serve as the symbol of their national unity. Soon,
the kingdom’s subjects would referr to themselves as Saudis (Suʿūdiyyūn, sing. Suʿūdī),
which is not how the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula had ever thought of themselves
previously. A national identity of Saudiness was thus being encouraged just as Wahhābī
identity was being discouraged.
344
yusammūnanā biʾl-Wahhābiyyīn wa-yusammūna madhhabanā biʾl-Wahhābī biʿtibār annahu madhhab
khāṣṣ wa-hādhā khaṭaʾ fāḥish nashaʾa ʿan al-diʿāyāt al-kādhiba … wa-naḥnu lasnā aṣḥāb madhhab jadīd
wa-ʿaqīda jadīda wa-lam yaʾti Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb biʾl-jadīd fa-ʿaqīdatunā ʿaqīdat al-salaf
al-ṣāliḥ allatī jāʾat fī kitāb Allāh wa-sunnat rasūlihi, “Khiṭāb jalālat al-malik,” Umm al-qurā, 6 Dhū ʾl-ḥijja
1347/May 16, 1929.
345
“Taḥwīl ism Mamlakat al-Ḥijāz wa-Najd wa-Mulḥaqātihā ilā ʾsm al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-
Suʿūdiyya,” Umm al-qurā, 22 Jumādā I 1351/September 23, 1932.
367
In exchange for support for the new regime, the scholars received a vast supply of
funds to nurture a system of educational institutions for teaching and spreading the
Wahhābī creed; and they were granted power to oversee a vast bureaucracy dedicated to
commanding right and forbidding wrong (al-amr biʾl-maʿrūf waʾl-nahy ʿan al-munkar), a
doctrine that had not been fundamental to Wahhābism but would now become a symbol
of the religious establishment’s power in society. Despite their best efforts, the classical
Wahhābism that the scholars had long promoted—the kind that demanded that its
adherents evince enmity to those unlike them—was on the way out.
368
Conclusion
In 1381/1961, the Syrian religious scholar and jurist ʿAlī al-Ṭanṭāwī published a short
biography of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.1 In its author’s conception, it was to be
the first of its kind: a book that would finally transcend the propaganda war (ḥarb al-
diʿāya) over Wahhābism that had raged since the movement’s rise in the
twelfth/eighteenth century. Born in Damascus in 1327/1909 and educated in Salafī circles
there from a young age, al-Ṭanṭāwī was one of his generation’s leading pan-Islamist
figures.2 There were things that he liked about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and things that he
disliked. In writing his book, he said, he was not setting out to please the partisans of
Wahhābism or its critics, but rather to state the truth as he saw it.3
The result was a mildly critical take on the founder of the Wahhābī movement, at
once praised for preaching the correct understanding of tawḥīd and criticized for the
manner (uslūb) in which he did so. The problem with his uslūb, al-Ṭanṭāwī said, was that
it entailed excommunicating and fighting Muslims. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he wrote,
saw the manifestations of shirk that some people were committing at graves and
considered them to be polytheists. Then he extended this judgment generally
against every land where these domes and these tombs were found. This is to say,
he judged Muslims to be apostates altogether and their blood and property to be
licit.4
This may seem like an unflattering portrayal of the Najdī reformer; and yet, al-Ṭanṭāwī
was far more concerned with being perceived as pro-Wahhābī than the reverse. In any
1
al-Ṭanṭāwī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 2 vols. (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1381/1961).
2
On him see Mujāhid Dīrāniyya, “Sīrat al-shaykh ʿAlī al-Ṭanṭāwī,” al-Adab al-Islāmī 9 (1423/2002): 132-
38.
3
al-Ṭanṭāwī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 1:40-44.
4
raʾā mā yaṣnaʿu baʿḍ al-nās ʿind al-qubūr min maẓāhir al-shirk faʿtabarahum mushrikīn thumma
ʿammama ʾl-ḥukm ʿalā kull balad fīhi hādhihi ʾl-qubāb wa-hādhihi ʾl-qubūr ay annahu ḥakama bi-riddat
al-Muslimīn jamīʿan waʾstiḥlāl dimāʾihim wa-amwālihim, ibid., 1:9-10.
369
event, his book in no way imperiled his scholarly career, which soon took him to Saudi
Arabia. Two years after it came out, he took up a teaching position in Riyadh at what is
now the Imām Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd Islamic University. A few years later, he settled in
the Ḥijāz, where he lived and worked until his death in 1420/1999. In 1410/1990, he
received the King Faisal Prize for Service to Islam. Apparently, the Saudi government
did not hold it against him that he had written critically of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.
Back in 1381/1961, according to al-Ṭanṭāwī, two developments had converged to
make it possible to write a balanced biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb possible. The first
was that “Wahhābīs’ zeal in preaching it [i.e., Wahhābism] and their insistence on
spreading it have slackened” (wa-qad faturat ḥamāsat al-Wahhābiyyīn fī ʾl-daʿwa la-hā
waʾl-ḥurṣ ʿalā nashrihā); the second was that “their enemies’ zeal in waging war on it
has slackened [as well]” (wa-faturat ḥamāsat khuṣūmihim fī ḥarbihā).5 While a remnant
(baqiyya) of scholars remained committed to prosecuting the propaganda war as before,
hostilities on both sides had relaxed considerably.6
How this had come to pass al-Ṭanṭāwī does not say, but his surrounding remarks
suggest an answer: the recession of the cult of saints. Al-Ṭanṭāwī, an Islamic modernist in
the mold of Rashīd Riḍā, was like him no fan of these ritual practices. In his view, the
anti-Wahhābī refutations continuing to be churned out had come to possess a timeworn
quality. They repeated ad nauseum the arguments in favor of such practices as tawassul
just as “1,000 books” before them had, but those practices were now looked upon
differently. “Today,” he wrote in his biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, “we read this
talk for entertainment and amusement”; but before, “anyone who rejected it would have
5
Ibid. 1:11.
6
Ibid.
370
been considered an innovating Wahhābī deserving of people’s disdain and eternal
damnation.”7 What is being alluded to here is that fact that, with the advent of modernity,
the cult of saints lost its place in popular and scholarly Islam alike. Scholars such as al-
Ṭanṭāwī, who considered saint veneration to be mindless superstition incompatible with a
renewed and revitalized Islam, were happy to see it go. The Wahhābī form of Islam, on
the contrary, stripped as it was of its historical “zeal,” was in their view compatible with
this modernist vision.
Another factor that contributed to the diminished zeal of Wahhābism was King
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s success in domesticating it in the early third Saudi state, as was discussed
in Chapter 5. Marginalized in the new state’s power structure and put on the defensive,
the Wahhābī scholars focused on consolidating their influence, maneuvering to stake out
the most favorable position possible. The scholar at the forefront of this effort was
Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1389/1969), commonly
known as Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, who assumed the title of “grand muftī” (al-muftī ʾl-
akbar) in 1373/1953.8 Beginning in the 1370s/1950s, he laid the foundation of a new,
centralized educational system on the model of Egypt’s al-Azhar, working to establish
numerous educational institutes across the country. In 1374/1955, he formed an
organization for issuing fatwās and managing religious affairs (Dār al-Iftāʾ waʾl-Ishrāf
ʿalā ʾl-Shuʾūn al-Dīniyya), inspired by the model on offer in nearby Muslim states. Much
7
wa-naḥnu naqraʾu ʾl-yawm hādhā ʾl-kalām lil-tasliya waʾl-fakāha … man ankarahu Wahhābī mubtadiʿ
ḥaqīq biʾzdirāʾ al-nās wa-sūʾ al-munqalab, ibid. 1:6
8
On him see Āl al-Shayhk, Mashāhīr, 169-84; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 1:242-63; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-
nāẓirīn, 3:363-69.
371
of the scholars’ energy was channeled into running and nurturing these and other such
institutions.9
To be sure, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm did not renounce the exclusivist and activist
components of classical Wahhābism. To exclusivism he remained deeply committed, as
is seen in a fatwā of his ruling that the Islam of the majority of the Islamic world is Islam
in name only (Islām al-akthar Islām ismī).10 His activism, however, appears to have been
reigned in. In one of his fatwās he rules that travel to Beirut is permissible only if one can
manifest the religion (iẓhār al-dīn), defined as “one’s openly professing tawḥīd and
dissociating from what the polytheists believe” (mujāharatuhu biʾl-tawḥīd waʾl-barāʾa
mimmā ʿalayhi ʾl-mushrikūn).11 For the most part, this conforms to the classical Wahhābī
approach to iẓhār al-dīn.12 What is different is that Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm did not make
the point as emphatically as it was done in the past. Scholars like him continued to touch
on such themes, but in a largely perfunctory and theoretical manner. Muḥammad ibn
Ibrāhīm did not make a major issue of travelling abroad.
He made much more noise on the question of positive laws (qawānīn), attacking
the various law codes and courts being adopted by the kingdom that seemed transgressive
of the sharīʿa. He famously summarized his views on qawānīn in 1380/1960 essay
(Risāla fī taḥkīm al-qawānīn).13 But on this issue as on others, the grand muftī’s approach
was one of “negotiation and compromise,”14 not intransigence; and it was this approach
9
See further, on this “routinization and institutionalization” of Wahhābism, Mouline, Clerics of Islam, 119-
70.
10
Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh, Fatāwā wa-rasāʾil samāḥat al-shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm
ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh, ed. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Qāsim, 13 vols. (Mecca: Maṭbaʿat
al-Ḥukūma, 1399-1405/1979-1984), 1:77.
11
Ibid., 1:91-92.
12
He omits to mention dissociation from the polytheists themselves.
13
Ibid., 12:284-91; al-Durar al-saniyya, 16:206-18. See further Mouline, Clerics of Islam, 143-44.
14
Mouline, Clerics of Islam, 145.
372
that came to define the Wahhābī scholarly establishment. As Guido Steinberg has
observed, the scholars proved themselves “ready to submit to the wishes of the king
whenever an important political issue was at stake.”15 During Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm’s
tenure, such acts of submission were relatively minor, but they paved the way for what
was to come. For some conservative Wahhābīs, the definitive act of capitulation was the
scholars’ approval of the decision to invite American troops to be stationed on Saudi soil
in 1411/1990. Wahhābī zeal had indeed slackened. By this time, however, it was already
being harnessed by new actors, and to new ends.
In the 1390s/1970s, a new movement began to take shape in Sunnī Islam that
gradually adopted the classical Wahhābī heritage as its own. This is the movement known
today as Jihādī Salafism (al-salafiyya al-jihādiyya), among other names (e.g., al-tayyār
al-jihādī, al-ḥaraka al-jihādiyya), of which al-Qāʿida and the Islamic State have been the
foremost organizational expressions. Jihādī Salafism has its proximate origins in the
broader Islamist movement associated in the Arab world with the Muslim Brotherhood,
an organization founded in Egypt in 1346/1928 with the aim of Islamizing politics and
society and combatting a perceived secularizing trend in the country. The more specific
source of inspiration, however, was the revolutionary thought of Sayyid Quṭb, a Muslim
Brother whose concept of God’s sovereignty (ḥākimiyya) had a formative influence on a
generation of radicals.16 At the heart of ḥākimiyya was the idea that political authority
was the exclusive prerogative of God, and thus that those ruling by other than the sharīʿa
15
Steinberg, “The Wahhabi Ulama and the Saudi State: 1745 to the Present,” in Saudi Arabia in the
Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs, ed. Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman (New York:
New York University Press, 2005), 11-34, at 26.
16
On the concept of ḥākimiyya, which Quṭb adopted from the Indo-Pakistani author Abū ʾl-Aʿlā Mawdūdī
(d. 1399/1979), see Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2018), ch. 4.
373
had usurped God’s prerogative and committed apostasy. Quṭb argued that Islamic
society, having ceased to uphold ḥākimiyya, had ceased to exist, reverting to jāhiliyya. In
one of his later works, Maʿālim fī ʾl-ṭarīq (“Milestones”), he urged the formation of a
“vanguard” (ṭalīʿa) to lead the Islamist revolution to restore ḥākimiyya. This was the role
that the early jihādī groups such as al-Jamāʿa al-Islāmiyya and Jamāʿat al-Jihād in
Egypt—the forerunners of Jihādī Salafism—saw themselves playing. The main
ideological innovation that they introduced to Quṭb’s framework was the
conceptualization of revolution as defensive jihād against an illegitimate ruler—
illegitimate for having failed to apply the sharīʿa. The analogy commonly adduced was
Ibn Taymiyya’s jihād against the Mongols.
Over the next two decades, as the jihādīs cohered into a distinct ideological
movement, they underwent a profound ideological shift, distancing themselves from Quṭb
and grounding their ideas in classical Wahhābism. While Quṭb exhibited some affinity
for Ibn Taymiyya toward the end of his life, some of his views, such as his metaphorical
interpretation of God’s attributes, were incompatible with the strictures of Wahhābī
thought. Thus, as the Jihādī Salafī movement developed a more Wahhābī character, it
necessarily parted ways with Quṭb. According to Daniel Lav, “[a]t the end point of the
school’s [i.e., Jihādī Salafism’s] development, its doctrine no longer made explicit
reference to Quṭb.”17 The centrality of ḥākimiyya remained, but it was subsumed under
the rubric of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya.
Those most responsible for the Wahhābizing trend in the Sunnī jihādī movement
were a network of Arab scholars who included, among others, the Jordanian-Palestinian
17
Lav, Radical Islam and the Revival of Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012), 169.
374
Abū Muḥammad al-Maqdisī, whom we met in the introduction to this study. It was al-
Maqdisī in particular who played a key role in introducing the classical Wahhābī heritage
to the jihādī milieu, authoring a number of books, including Millat Ibrāhīm, that
showcased the classical Wahhābī focus on eradicating shirk and opposing its
practitioners. In doing so, he cast the jihādī cause as an extension of the Wahhābī war on
shirk. This is way the way that it is portrayed by the jihādīs to this day.
The difference was that the polytheism in question was not related to the cult of
saints, but was rather political and legislative in nature. Al-Maqdisī did not view this as
any kind of conceptual leap; the jihādī war on political and legislative shirk was for him
merely the latest phase of the age-old war on shirk in general. As he writes in one of his
books, “Every age is afflicted by its own particular tribulation and forms of polytheism”
(anna li-kull zaman fitnatahu wa-shirkiyyātihi). In the age of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, this was
“entering into false discourse around God’s names and attributes” (al-khawḍ fī asmāʾ
Allāh taʿālā wa-ṣifātihi); in the age of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, it was “the worship of
graves, tombs, and saints” (ʿibādat al-qubūr waʾl-aḍriḥa waʾl-awliyāʾ); and in the
present age, it is “the application of European laws” (taḥkīm qawānīn al-Faranja).18 To
the same effect he writes elsewhere, “there is no difference between the polytheism of
graves and the polytheism of constitutions” (lā farqa bayn shirk al-qubūr wa-shirk al-
dustūr), that is, between the polytheism encountered by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and the
polytheism of this age (shirk al-ʿaṣr).19 The remedy in both cases, he goes on to say, is
the same, namely, ʿadāwa and jihād.20 Whatever one may think of al-Maqdisī’s
18
al-Maqdisī, Kashf al-niqāb ʿan sharīʿat al-ghāb, Minbar al-Tawḥīd waʾl-Jihād, 1408/1988, 2-3.
19
Idem, al-Kawāshif al-jaliyya fī kufr al-dawla al-Suʿūdiyya, 2nd ed., Minbar al-Tawḥīd waʾl-Jihād,
1410/2000f, 235.
20
Ibid., 165-66.
375
understanding of political and legislative shirk, there is little reason to question his
motives or suspect his sincerity. He and his fellow travelers today are deeply immersed in
the classical Wahhābī tradition, and they know it inside and out. Quṭb and his works,
meanwhile, are almost never invoked.
Recently, over the past few years, the Jihādī Salafī claim on the classical Wahhābī
heritage has been trumpeted even more loudly by the scholars affiliated with the Islamic
State. Since declaring itself the restored caliphate in 1435/2014, the latter organization
has published a series of classical Wahhābī texts. 21 In the introduction to one of these, the
editor likens the Islamic State to the early Wahhābī mission (daʿwa), claiming that the
group “is once against renewing the mission of tawḥīd, jihād, and sunna” (tuʿīdu tajdīd
al-tawḥīd waʾl-jihād waʾl-sunna) .22 Meanwhile, he continues, the palace scholars and
preachers of evil (ʿulamāʾ al-salāṭīn wa-duʿāt al-sūʾ), meaning those scholars and
preachers in Saudi Arabia critical of the Islamic State,
wrongly ascribe themselves to the imām Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,

knowing full well that today the Islamic State, its mission, and its jihād are an
extension and embodiment of the mission of tawḥīd and jihād initiated by the
Messenger of God and his companions, and renewed by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and
his descendants. 23
The Islamic State’s online supporters have been even more emphatic on this score. One
of them, for example, the pseudonymous Gharīb al-Surūriyya, has declared that the
Islamic State is “the true heir of the blessed Najdī mission” (al-warīth al-ḥaqīqī lil-daʿwa
21
These include Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn, Kashf al-shubuhāt, and Mufīd al-mustafīd,
Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh’s al-Dalāʾil fī ḥukm muwālāt ahl al-ishrāk, Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq’s Sabīl al-najāt waʾl-
fikāk, and ʿAbdallāh Abā Buṭayn’s al-Intiṣār li-ḥizb Allāh al-muwaḥḥidīn, among many othes. It may be
observed that the Islamic State’s publications do not include anything by Quṭb.
22
Editor’s introduction in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Kashf al-shubuhāt, Maktabat al-Himma, 1437/2016, 5n1.
23
wa-yansubūna anfusahum zūran lil-imām Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wa-hum yaʿlamūna ḥaqq al-
yaqīn anna ʾl-Dawla al-Islāmiyya wa-daʿwatahā wa-jihādahā ʾl-yawm imtidād wa-tajsīd li-daʿwat al-
tawḥīd waʾl-jihād allatī jāʾa bihā rasūl Allāh ṣ wa-aṣḥābuhu wa-jaddadahā ʾbn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wa-
aḥfāduhu, ibid.
376
al-Najdiyya al-mubāraka), because “it is supporting tawḥīd, eradicating shirk,
excommunicating polytheists, and implementing God’s law.”24
At present, then, Wahhābism is a contested tradition, simultaneously claimed by
Saudi Arabia’s official scholars and the Jihādī Salafīs.25 Neither claim would seem to be
entirely valid. To be sure, there are substantial differences between classical Wahhābism
and Jihādī Salafism, including the latter’s emphasis on restoring the caliphate, its
propensity for extreme violence and terrorism, and its focus on legal-political shirk as
opposed to cult-of-saints shirk. Yet the Saudi scholars’ efforts to play down the
exclusivist and activist components of their heritage are unpersuasive. What is beyond
dispute is that the duty of manifesting enmity—one of the defining features of classical
Wahhābism from its origins to the mid-fourteenth/early twentieth century—has found a
new and abiding home.
24
fa-hiya tanṣuru ʾl-tawḥīd wa-tahdimu ʾl-shirk wa-tukkafiru ʾl-mushrikīn wa-tuqīmu ʾl-sharʿ, Gharīb al-
Surūriyya, “al-Dawla al-Islāmiyya imtidād lil-daʿwa al-Najdiyya,” May 30, 2017, Telegram Messenger.
25
See further, on this question, Cole Bunzel, “The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Saudi Arabia and the
Islamic State,” in Beyond Sunni and Shia: The Roots of Sectarianism in a Changing Middle East, ed.
Frederic Wehrey (London: Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2017), 239-64; idem, “Wahhabism, Saudi
Arabia, and the Islamic State: ‘Abdallah ibn Jibrin and Turki al-Bin‘ali,” in Salman’s Legacy: The
Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia, ed. Madawi Al-Rasheed (London: Hurst and Oxford University
Press, 2018), 183-96.
377
‫‪Appendix I‬‬
‫‪Kalimāt fī bayān shahādat an lā ilāha illā ʾllāh (c. 1155/1742)1‬‬
‫‪Arabic text:‬‬
‫‪ [25a] .1‬ﺑﺳم ﷲ اﻟرﺣﻣن اﻟرﺣﯾم‪.‬‬
‫‪" .2‬اﻟﻠﮭّم أﻧت اﻟﻣﻠك ﻻ إﻟﮫ إّﻻ أﻧت‪ ،‬أﻧت رﺑّﻲ وأﻧﺎ ﻋﺑدك‪ ،‬ظﻠﻣت ﻧﻔﺳﻲ واﻋﺗرﻓت ﺑذﻧﺑﻲ‪ ،‬ﻓﺎﻏﻔر ﻟﻲ ذﻧوﺑﻲ ﺟﻣﯾﻌﺎ ً‪،‬‬
‫إﻧّﮫ ﻻ ﯾﻐﻔر اﻟذﻧوب إّﻻ أﻧت‪ ،‬واھدﻧﻲ ﻷﺣﺳن اﻷﺧﻼق واﻷﻋﻣﺎل‪ ،‬ﻻ ﯾﮭدي ﻷﺣﺳﻧﮭﺎ إّﻻ أﻧت‪ ،‬واﺻرف ﻋﻧّﻲ‬
‫ﺳﯾّﺋﮭﺎ‪ ،‬ﻻ ﯾﺻرف ﻋﻧّﻲ ﺳﯾّﺋﮭﺎ إّﻻ أﻧت‪ ،‬ﻟﺑّﯾك وﺳﻌدﯾك‪ ،‬واﻟﺧﯾر ﻛﻠّﮫ ﻓﻲ ﯾدﯾك‪ ،‬واﻟﺷّر ﻟﯾس إﻟﯾك‪ ،‬أﻧﺎ ﺑك وإﻟﯾك‪،‬‬
‫]‪ [25b‬أﺳﺗﻐﻔرك وأﺗوب إﻟﯾك‪".‬‬
‫‪ .3‬أّﻣﺎ ﺑﻌد‪ :‬ﻓﮭذه ﻛﻠﻣﺎت ﻓﻲ ﺑﯾﺎن ﺷﮭﺎدة أن ﻻ إﻟﮫ إّﻻ ﷲ وﺑﯾﺎن اﻟﺗوﺣﯾد‪ ،‬اﻟذي ھو ﺣ ّ‬
‫ق ﷲ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻌﺑﯾد‪ ،‬وھو أﻓرض‬
‫ﻣن اﻟﺻﻼة واﻟزﻛﺎة وﺻﯾﺎم رﻣﺿﺎن‪ .‬ﻓرﺣم ﷲ اﻣرأً ﻧﺻﺢ ﻧﻔﺳﮫ وﻋرف أّن وراءه ﺟﻧّﺔ وﻧﺎراً‪ ،‬وأّن ﷲ ﺟﻌل ﻟﻛّل‬
‫ﻣﻧﮭﻣﺎ أﻋﻣﺎ ً‬
‫ﻻ‪ .‬ﻓﺈن ﺳﺄل ﻋن ذﻟك وﺟد رأس أﻋﻣﺎل اﻟﺟﻧّﺔ ﺗوﺣﯾد ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ ،‬ﻓﻣن أﺗﻰ ﺑﮫ ﯾوم اﻟﻘﯾﺎﻣﺔ ﻓﮭو ﻣن أھل‬
‫اﻟﺟﻧّﺔ ﻗطﻌﺎ ً وﻟو ﻛﺎن ﻋﻠﯾﮫ ﻣن اﻟذﻧوب ﻣﺛل ﺟﺑﺎل رﺿوى‪ .‬ورأس أﻋﻣﺎل أھل اﻟﻧﺎر ھو اﻟﺷرك ﺑﺎ‪ ،k‬ﻓﻣن ﻣﺎت‬
‫ﻋﻠﻰ ذﻟك ﻓﻠو أﺗﻰ ﯾوم اﻟﻘﯾﺎﻣﺔ ﺑﻌﺑﺎدة اﻟﻠﯾل واﻟﻧﮭﺎر واﻟﺻدﻗﺔ واﻹﺣﺳﺎن ﻓﮭو ﻣن أھل اﻟﻧﺎر ﻗطﻌﺎ ً‪ ،‬ﻛﺎﻟﻧﺻﺎرى اﻟذﯾن‬
‫ﯾﺑﻧﻲ أﺣدھم ]‪ [26a‬ﺻوﻣﻌﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺑّرﯾّﺔ وﯾزھد ﻓﻲ اﻟدﻧﯾﺎ وﯾﻌﺑد اﻟﻠﯾل واﻟﻧﮭﺎر ﻟﻛﻧّﮫ ﺧﻠط ذﻟك ﺑﺎﻟﺷرك‪ .‬ﻗﺎل ﷲ‬
‫ﻋَﻣٍل َﻓَﺟﻌَﻠﻧﺎهُ َھﺑﺎًء َﻣﻧﺛوًرا( ]اﻟﻔرﻗﺎن‪ .[23 :‬وﻗﺎل ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬ﻣﺛَُل اﻟﱠذﯾَن َﻛَﻔروا‬ ‫ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وَﻗِدﻣﻧﺎ ِإﻟٰﻰ ﻣﺎ َ‬
‫ﻋِﻣﻠوا ِﻣن َ‬
‫ﺷﻲٍء ٰذِﻟَك ھَُو اﻟ ﱠ‬

‫ﺿﻼُل اﻟَﺑﻌﯾد ُ(‬ ‫ﻋﻠٰﻰ َ‬ ‫ف ﻻ َﯾﻘِدروَن ِﻣّﻣﺎ َﻛ َ‬
‫ﺳﺑوا َ‬ ‫ِﺑَرِﺑِّﮭم أَﻋﻣﺎﻟُُﮭم َﻛَرﻣﺎٍد اﺷﺗَدﱠت ِﺑِﮫ اﻟّرﯾُﺢ ﻓﻲ َﯾوٍم ﻋﺎ ِ‬
‫ﺻ ٍ‬
‫]إﺑراھﯾم‪.[18 :‬‬
‫‪ [26a] .4‬ﻓرﺣم ﷲ اﻣرأً ﺗﻧﺑّﮫ ﻟﮭذا اﻷﻣر اﻟﻌظﯾم ]‪ [26b‬ﻗﺑل أن ﯾﻌ ّ‬

‫ض ﻋﻠﻰ ﯾدﯾﮫ وﯾﻘول‪) :‬ﯾﺎ َﻟﯾﺗَِﻧﻲ اﺗ ﱠَﺧذ ُ‬
‫ت َﻣَﻊ‬
‫ﺳﺑﯾًﻼ( ]اﻟﻔرﻗﺎن‪ [27a] .[27 :‬ﻧﺳﺄل ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ 2‬أن ﯾﮭدﯾﻧﺎ وإﺧواﻧﻧﺎ اﻟﻣﺳﻠﻣﯾن إﻟﻰ اﻟﺻراط‬
‫اﻟﱠرﺳوِل َ‬
‫اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻘﯾم‪ ،‬ﺻراط اﻟذﯾن أﻧﻌم ﻋﻠﯾﮭم‪ ،‬وأن ﯾﺟﻧّﺑﻧﺎ وإﯾّﺎھم طرﯾق اﻟﻣﻐﺿوب ﻋﻠﯾﮭم‪ ،‬وھم اﻟﻌﻠﻣﺎء اﻟذﯾن ﻟم ﯾﻌﻣﻠوا‪،‬‬
‫‪1‬‬
‫‪This epistle, by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, arrived in Basra in mid-1155/mid-1742. It is preserved‬‬
‫‪). (See above, ch. 1, pp. 43ff.) The first of‬ب ‪) and Kashf al-ḥijāb (= b /‬أ ‪in al-Qabbānī’s Faṣl al-khiṭāb (= a /‬‬
‫‪these is used here as the principal source text. Cf. the version of the epistle in al-Durar al-saniyya, 2:100-‬‬
‫‪12.‬‬
‫‪ 2‬ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﺳﺎﻗﻄﺔ ﻓﻲ ب‪.‬‬
‫‪378‬‬
‫وطرﯾق اﻟﺿﺎﻟّﯾن‪ ،‬وھم اﻟﻌﺑّﺎد اﻟﺟّﮭﺎل‪ [27b] .‬ﻓﻣﺎ أﻋظﻣﮭﺎ ﻣن دﻋوة وﻣﺎ أﺣوج ﻣن دﻋﺎ ﺑﮭﺎ أن ﯾﺣﺿر ﻗﻠﺑﮫ ﻓﻲ‬
‫ﻛّل رﻛﻌﺔ إذا ﻗرأ ﺑﯾن ﯾدي ﷲ ﻟﯾﮭدﯾﮫ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈّن ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻗد ذﻛر أﻧّﮫ ﯾﺳﺗﺟﯾب اﻟدﻋﺎء اﻟذي ﻓﻲ اﻟﻔﺎﺗﺣﺔ إذا دﻋﺎ ﺑﮫ‬
‫اﻹﻧﺳﺎن ﺑﻘﻠب ﺣﺎﺿر‪.‬‬
‫‪ [28a] .5‬ﻓﻧﻘول‪ :‬ﻻ إﻟﮫ إّﻻ ﷲ ھﻲ اﻟﻌروة اﻟوﺛﻘﻰ وھﻲ ﻛﻠﻣﺔ اﻟﺗﻘوى وھﻲ اﻟﺣﻧﯾﻔﯾّﺔ ﻣﻠّﺔ إﺑراھﯾم وھﻲ اﻟﺗﻲ ﺟﻌﻠﮭﺎ‬
‫ﻛﻠﻣﺔ ﺑﺎﻗﯾﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻋﻘﺑﮫ ﻟﻌﻠّﮭم ﯾرﺟﻌون‪ ،‬وھﻲ اﻟﺗﻲ ﺧﻠﻘت ﻷﺟﻠﮭﺎ اﻟﻣﺧﻠوﻗﺎت‪ ،‬وﺑﮭﺎ ﻗﺎﻣت اﻷرض واﻟﺳﻣﺎوات‪،‬‬
‫س ِإّﻻ ِﻟَﯾﻌﺑُدوِن( ]اﻟذارﯾﺎت‪.[56 :‬‬ ‫وﻷﺟﻠﮭﺎ أرﺳﻠت اﻟرﺳل وأﻧزﻟت اﻟﻛﺗب‪ .‬ﻗﺎل ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وﻣﺎ َﺧَﻠﻘ ُ‬
‫ت اﻟِﺟﱠن َواِﻹﻧ َ‬
‫ت( ]اﻟﻧﺣل‪ .[36 :‬واﻟﻣراد ﻣﻌﻧﻰ ھذه‬ ‫وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وَﻟَﻘد َﺑﻌَﺛﻧﺎ ﻓﻲ ﻛُ ِّل أ ُﱠﻣٍﺔ َرﺳوًﻻ أَِن اﻋﺑُد ُوا اﱠ‪َ َw‬واﺟﺗَِﻧﺑُوا اﻟ ّ‬
‫طﺎﻏو َ‬
‫اﻟﻛﻠﻣﺔ‪ ،‬وأّﻣﺎ اﻟﻠﻔظ ﺑﺎﻟﻠﺳﺎن ﻣﻊ اﻟﺟﮭل ﺑﻣﻌﻧﺎھﺎ ﻓﻼ ﯾﻧﻔﻊ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈّن اﻟﻣﻧﺎﻓﻘﯾن ﯾﻘوﻟوﻧﮭﺎ وھم ﺗﺣت اﻟﻣﻐﺎر ﻓﻲ اﻟدرك اﻷﺳﻔل‬
‫ﻣن اﻟﻧﺎر‪.‬‬
‫‪ [28b] .6‬ﻓﺎﻋﻠم أّن اﻟﻛﻠﻣﺔ ﻧﻔﻲ وإﺛﺑﺎت‪ :‬ﻧﻔﻲ ﻟﻺﻟﮭﯾّﺔ ﻋّﻣﺎ ﺳوى ﷲ وإﺛﺑﺎﺗﮭﺎ ﻛﻠّﮭﺎ ‪ k‬وﺣده ﻻ ﺷرﯾك ﻟﮫ‪ ،‬ﻟﯾس ﻓﯾﮭﺎ ﺣ ّ‬
‫ق‬
‫ﻋﺑدًا ]‪َ [29a‬ﻟَﻘد‬ ‫ت َواﻷ َر ِ‬

‫ض ِإّﻻ آِﺗﻲ اﻟﱠرﺣٰﻣِن َ‬ ‫ﻲ ﻣرﺳل‪ .‬ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ِ) :‬إن ﻛُﱡل َﻣن ِﻓﻲ اﻟﺳﱠﻣﺎوا ِ‬
‫ﻟﻣﻠك ﻣﻘّرب وﻻ ﻧﺑ ّ‬
‫ﻋد{ا َوﻛُﻠﱡُﮭم آﺗﯾِﮫ َﯾوَم اﻟِﻘﯾﺎَﻣِﺔ َﻓردًا( ]ﻣرﯾم‪ .[93-95 :‬ﻓﺈذا ﻗﯾل ﻻ ﺧﺎﻟق إّﻻ ﷲ ﻓﮭذا ﻣﻌروف أﻧّﮫ ﻻ‬ ‫أَﺣﺻﺎھُم َو َ‬
‫ﻋدﱠھُم َ‬
‫ﻲ‪ ،‬وإذا ﻗﯾل ﻻ ﯾرزق إّﻻ ﷲ ﻓﻛذﻟك‪ ،‬وإذا ﻗﯾل ﻻ إﻟﮫ‬ ‫ﯾﺧﻠق اﻟﺧﻠق إّﻻ ھو‪ ،‬ﻻ ﯾﺷﺎرﻛﮫ ﻓﻲ ذﻟك ﻣﻠك وﻻ ﻧﺑ ّ‬
‫ﻲ وﻻ وﻟ ّ‬
‫إّﻻ ﷲ ﻓﻛذﻟك‪.‬‬
‫‪ .7‬ﻓﺗﻔﻛّر ﻓﻲ ھذا‪ ،‬واﺳﺄل ﻋن ﻣﻌﻧﻰ اﻹﻟﮫ ﻛﻣﺎ ﺗﺳﺄل ﻋن ﻣﻌﻧﻰ اﻟﺧﺎﻟق واﻟرازق‪ .‬ﻓﺎﻋﻠم أّن اﻹﻟﮫ ھو اﻟﻣﻌﺑود‪.‬‬
‫ھذا ﺗﻔﺳﯾر ھذه اﻟﻠﻔظﺔ ﺑﺈﺟﻣﺎع أھل اﻟﻌﻠم‪ .‬ﻓﻣن ﻋﺑد ﺷﯾﺋﺎ ً ﻓﻘد اﺗ ّﺧذه إﻟﮭﺎ ً‪ ،‬وﺟﻣﯾﻊ ذﻟك ﺑﺎطل إّﻻ واﺣد وھو ﷲ‬
‫ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪.‬‬
‫‪ .8‬واﻟﻌﺑﺎدة أﻧواع ﻛﺛﯾرة ﻟﻛن أﻣﺛ ّﻠﮭﺎ ﺑﺄﻣور ظﺎھرة‪ ،‬وأﺳﺗﻧﻛر ﻣن ذﻟك اﻟﺳﺟود‪ ،‬ﻓﻼ ﯾﺟوز ﻟﻌﺑد‪ 3‬أن ﯾﺿﻊ وﺟﮭﮫ ﻋﻠﻰ‬
‫ﻲ‪ [30b] ،‬وﻣن ذﻟك اﻟذﺑﺢ‪ ،‬ﻓﻼ ﯾﺟوز ﻷﺣد أن ﯾذﺑﺢ‬ ‫اﻷرض ﺳﺎﺟداً إّﻻ ‪ k‬ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ ،‬ﻻ ﻟﻣﻠك ﻣﻘّرب وﻻ ﻟﻧﺑ ّ‬
‫ﻲ وﻻ ﻟوﻟ ّ‬
‫ب اﻟﻌﺎَﻟﻣﯾَن ﻻ‬ ‫إّﻻ ّ‪ w‬ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗرن ﷲ ﺑﯾﻧﮭﻣﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻘرآن ﻓﻲ ﻗوﻟﮫ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) :‬ﻗُل ِإﱠن َ‬
‫ﺻﻼﺗﻲ َوﻧُﺳُﻛﻲ َوَﻣﺣﯾﺎ َ‬
‫ي َوَﻣﻣﺎﺗﻲ ﱠِ‪َ ِw‬ر ّ ِ‬
‫ﺷرﯾَك َﻟﮫُ( ]اﻷﻧﻌﺎم‪ ،[162-163 :‬واﻟﻧﺳك ھو اﻟذﺑﺢ‪ [31a] .‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬ﻓ َ‬
‫ﺻ ِّل ِﻟَرِﺑَّك َواﻧَﺣر( ]اﻟﻛوﺛر‪.[2 :‬‬ ‫َ‬
‫ﻲ أو ﻗﺑر ﻓﻛﻣﺎ ﻟو ﺳﺟد ﻟﮫ‪ ،‬وﻗد ﻟﻌﻧﮫ رﺳول ﷲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم‬ ‫ﻓﺗﻔ ّ‬
‫طن ﻟﮭذا واﻋﻠم أّن ﻣن ذﺑﺢ ﻟﻐﯾر ﷲ ﻣن ﺟﻧّ ّ‬
‫‪3‬‬
‫ھﻜﺬا ﻓﻲ ب‪ ،‬وﻓﻲ أ‪ :‬اﻟﻌﺒﺪ‬
‫‪379‬‬
‫ﻓﻲ اﻟﺣدﯾث اﻟﺻﺣﯾﺢ‪ ،‬ﻗﺎل‪" :‬ﻟﻌن ﷲ ﻣن ذﺑﺢ ﻟﻐﯾر ﷲ‪ [33a] ".‬وﻣن أﻧواع اﻟﻌﺑﺎدة اﻟدﻋﺎء ﻛﻣﺎ ﻛﺎن اﻟﻣؤﻣﻧون‬
‫ﻼ وﻧﮭﺎراً‪ ،‬ﻻ ﯾﺷّك أﺣد أّن ھذا ﻣن أﻧواع اﻟﻌﺑﺎدة‪.‬‬

‫ﯾدﻋون ﷲ ﻟﯾ ً‬
‫‪ [33b] .9‬ﻓﺗﻔﻛّر رﺣﻣك ﷲ ﻓﯾﻣﺎ ﺣدث ﻓﻲ اﻟﻧﺎس ﻣن دﻋﺎء ﻏﯾر ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻓﻲ ﺷدّة ورﺧﺎء‪ ،‬ھذا ﯾرﯾد ﺳﻔراً ﻓﯾﺄﺗﻲ ﻋﻧد‬
‫ﻲ أو ﻏﯾره ﻓﯾدﺧل ﻋﻠﯾﮫ ﺑﻣﺎﻟﮫ ﻋن ﻧﮭﺑﮫ‪ ،‬وھذا ﯾﻠﺣﻘﮫ ﺷدّة ﻓﻲ اﻟﺑّر أو اﻟﺑﺣر ﻓﯾﺳﺗﻐﯾث ﺑﻌﺑد اﻟﻘﺎدر أو ﺷﻣﺳﺎن‬
‫ﻗﺑر ﻧﺑ ّ‬
‫ﻲ أﻧّﮫ ﯾﻧﺟﯾﮫ ﻣن ھذه اﻟﺷدّة‪.‬‬ ‫]‪ [34a‬أو ﻧﺑ ّ‬

‫ﻲ أو وﻟ ّ‬
‫‪ .10‬ﻓﯾﻘﺎل ﻟﮭذا اﻟﻣﺷرك‪ :‬إن ﻛﻧت ﺗﻌرف أّن‪ 4‬اﻹﻟﮫ ھو اﻟﻣﻌﺑود وﺗﻌرف أّن اﻟدﻋﺎء ﻣن اﻟﻌﺑﺎدة ﻓﻛﯾف ﺗدﻋو ﻣﺧﻠوﻗﺎ ً ﻣﯾّﺗﺎ ً‬
‫ﻏﺎﺋﺑﺎ ً وﺗﺗرك اﻟﺣ ّ‬

‫ﻲ اﻟﺣﺎﺿر اﻟرؤوف اﻟرﺣﯾم اﻟﻘرﯾب؟‬
‫‪ .11‬ﻓﯾﻘول ھذا اﻟﻣﺷرك اﻟﻣﻐرور‪ :‬إّن اﻷﻣر ﺑﯾد ﷲ ‪ 5‬وﻟﻛّن ھذا اﻟﺻﺎﻟﺢ ﯾﺷﻔﻊ ﻟﻲ ﻋﻧد ﷲ وﺗﻧﻔﻌﻧﻲ ﺷﻔﺎﻋﺗﮫ وﺟﺎھﮫ‪،‬‬
‫وﯾظّن أّن ھذا ﯾﺳﻠّﻣﮫ ﻣن اﻟﺷرك‪.‬‬
‫‪ .12‬ﻓﯾﻘﺎل ﻟﮭذا اﻟﺟﺎھل اﻟﻣﺷرك‪ :‬ﻓﻌﺑّﺎد اﻷﺻﻧﺎم اﻟذﯾن ﻗﺎﺗﻠﮭم رﺳول ﷲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم وﻧﮭب أﻣواﻟﮭم وأﺑﻧﺎءھم‬
‫وﻧﺳﺎءھم ﻛﻠّﮭم ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون أّن ﷲ ھو اﻟﺿﺎّر اﻟﻧﺎﻓﻊ اﻟذي ﯾدﺑّر اﻷﻣر‪ ،‬وإﻧّﻣﺎ أرادوا ﻣﺎ أردت ﻣن اﻟﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ﻋﻧد ]‪[34b‬‬
‫ﺿﱡرھُم َوﻻ َﯾﻧَﻔﻌُُﮭم( اﻵﯾﺔ ]ﯾوﻧس‪ .[18 :‬وﻗوﻟﮫ‬

‫ﷲ‪ [39a] ،‬ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وَﯾﻌﺑُدوَن ِﻣن دوِن اِﱠ‪ w‬ﻣﺎ ﻻ َﯾ ُ‬
‫ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬واﻟﱠذﯾَن اﺗ ﱠَﺧذوا ِﻣن دوِﻧِﮫ أَوِﻟﯾﺎَء ﻣﺎ َﻧﻌﺑُد ُھُم ِإّﻻ ِﻟﯾَُﻘ ِ ّرﺑوﻧﺎ ِإَﻟﻰ ﷲِ ُزﻟﻔٰﻰ( ]اﻟزﻣر‪ .[3 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) :‬ﻗُل َﻣن‬
‫ﻲِ‬
‫ت ِﻣَن اﻟَﺣ ّ‬
‫ج اﻟَﻣِﯾّ َ‬
‫ت َوﯾُﺧِر ُ‬
‫ﻲ ِﻣَن اﻟَﻣِﯾّ ِ‬ ‫ض أَﱠﻣن َﯾﻣِﻠُك اﻟﺳﱠﻣَﻊ َواﻷ َﺑﺻﺎَر َوَﻣن ﯾُﺧِر ُ‬
‫ج اﻟَﺣ ﱠ‬ ‫َﯾرُزﻗُﻛُم ِﻣَن اﻟﺳﱠﻣﺎِء َواﻷ َر ِ‬
‫ﺳَﯾﻘوﻟوَن ]‪ [39b‬ﷲُ َﻓﻘُل أََﻓﻼ ﺗَﺗ ﱠﻘوَن( ]ﯾوﻧس‪.[31 :‬‬

‫َوَﻣن ﯾُدَِﺑُّر اﻷ َﻣَر َﻓ َ‬
‫‪ .13‬ﻓﻠﯾﺗدﺑّر اﻟﻠﺑﯾب اﻟﻧﺎﺻﺢ ﻟﻧﻔﺳﮫ اﻟذي ﯾﻌرف أّن ﺑﻌد اﻟﻣوت ﺟﻧّﺔ وﻧﺎراً‪ 6،‬وﯾﻌرف أّن ﷲ ﻻ ﯾﻐﻔر أن ﯾﺷرك ﺑﮫ‪،‬‬
‫ھل ﺑﻌد ھذا اﻟﺑﯾﺎن ﺑﯾﺎن‪ 7‬إذا ﻛﺎن ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻗد ﺣﻛﻰ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻘرآن ﻋن اﻟﻛﻔّﺎر أﻧّﮭم ﯾﻘّرون أّن ﷲ ھو اﻟﺧﺎﻟق‬
‫اﻟرازق اﻟﻣﺣﯾﻲ اﻟﻣﻣﯾت اﻟذي ﯾدﺑّر اﻷﻣر‪ ،‬وإﻧّﻣﺎ أرادوا ﻣن اﻟذﯾن ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﯾﮭم اﻟﺗﻘّرب واﻟﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ﻋﻧد ﷲ؟ وﻛم‬
‫ﺳَﯾﻘوﻟوَن ِ‪ w‬ﻗُل أََﻓﻼ‬ ‫ﻣن آﯾﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻘرآن ذﻛر ﷲ ﻓﯾﮭﺎ ھذا ﻛﻘوﻟﮫ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) :‬ﻗُل ِﻟَﻣِن اﻷ َر ُ‬
‫ض َوَﻣن ﻓﯾﮭﺎ ِإن ﻛُﻧﺗ ُم ﺗَﻌَﻠﻣوَن َ‬
‫ﺳَﯾﻘوﻟوَن ِﱠِ‪ w‬ﻗُل أََﻓﻼ ﺗَﺗ ﱠﻘوَن ]‪ [40a‬ﻗُل َﻣن ِﺑَﯾِدِه َﻣَﻠﻛو ُ‬
‫ت‬ ‫ب اﻟﻌَرِش اﻟﻌَظﯾِم َ‬
‫ت اﻟﺳﱠﺑﻊِ َوَر ﱡ‬ ‫ﺗَذَﻛﱠروَن ﻗُل َﻣن َر ﱡ‬
‫ب اﻟﺳﱠﻣﺎوا ِ‬
‫أّن ﺳﺎﻗﻄﺔ ﻓﻲ ب‪.‬‬ ‫‪4‬‬

‫‪5‬‬
‫ھﻛذا ﻓﻲ ب‪ ،‬وﻓﻲ أ‪ :‬ﯾﺑدﻟﮫ ﷲ‪.‬‬
‫‪6‬‬
‫ھﻜﺬا ﻓﻲ ب‪ ،‬وﻓﻲ أ‪ :‬ﻧﺎر‪.‬‬
‫‪7‬‬
‫ھﻜﺬا ﻓﻲ ب؛ ﺑﯿﺎن ﺳﺎﻗﻄﺔ ﻓﻲ أ‪.‬‬
‫‪380‬‬
‫ﻋَﻠﯾِﮫ ِإن ﻛُﻧﺗ ُم ﺗَﻌَﻠﻣوَن َ‬
‫ﺳَﯾﻘوﻟوَن ِﱠِ‪] (w‬اﻟﻣؤﻣﻧون‪ .[84-89 :‬إﻟﻰ ﻏﯾر ذﻟك ﻣّﻣﺎ ذﻛر‬ ‫ﻛُ ِّل َ‬
‫ﺷﻲٍء َوھَُو ﯾُﺟﯾُر َوﻻ ﯾُﺟﺎُر َ‬
‫ﷲ ﻋﻧﮭم اﻹﻗرار ﺑﮭذه اﻷﻣور وأﻧّﮭم ﯾرﯾدون ﻣّﻣﺎ ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﯾﮫ اﻟﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ﻻ ﻏﯾر‪.‬‬
‫‪ .14‬ﻓﺈذا اﺣﺗّﺞ ﺑﻌض اﻟﻣﺷرﻛﯾن ﺑﺄّن أوﻟﺋك ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ اﻷﺻﻧﺎم وھﻲ ﺣﺟﺎرة وﺧﺷب وﻧﺣن ﻟم ﻧﻌﺗﻘد إّﻻ ﻓﻲ‬
‫اﻟﺻﺎﻟﺣﯾن‪ ،‬ﻓﻘل ﻓﻲ ﺟواﺑﮫ‪ :‬واﻟﻛﻔّﺎر أﯾﺿﺎ ً ﻣﻧﮭم ﻣن ﯾﻌﺗﻘد ﺑﺎﻟﺻﺎﻟﺣﯾن ﻣﺛل اﻟﻣﻼﺋﻛﺔ وﻋﯾﺳﻰ ﺑن ﻣرﯾم وﻓﻲ اﻷوﻟﯾﺎء‬
‫ﻣﺛل اﻟﻌزﯾر وﻧﺎس ﻣن اﻟﺟّن‪ ،‬وذﻛر ﷲ ذﻟك ﻓﻲ ﻛﺗﺎﺑﮫ‪ .‬ﻓﻘﺎل ﻓﻲ اﻟذﯾن ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ اﻟﻣﻼﺋﻛﺔ‪َ) :‬وَﯾوَم َﯾﺣﺷُُرھُم‬
‫َﺟﻣﯾﻌًﺎ ﺛ ُﱠم َﯾﻘوُل ِﻟﻠَﻣﻼِﺋَﻛِﺔ أَٰھُؤﻻِء ِإﯾّﺎﻛُم ﻛﺎﻧوا َﯾﻌﺑُدوَن ]‪ [40b‬ﻗﺎﻟوا ﺳُﺑﺣﺎَﻧَك أَﻧ َ‬
‫ت َوِﻟﯾﱡﻧﺎ ِﻣن دوِﻧِﮭم َﺑل ﻛﺎﻧوا َﯾﻌﺑُدوَن‬
‫اﻟِﺟﱠن( ]ﺳﺑﺄ‪ .[40-41 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وﻻ َﯾﺷَﻔﻌوَن ِإّﻻ ِﻟَﻣِن ارﺗَﺿٰﻰ( ]اﻷﻧﺑﯾﺎء‪ .[28 :‬وﻗﺎل ﻓﯾﻣن اﻋﺗﻘد ﻓﻲ اﻟﻣﺳﯾﺢ‬
‫ﻋَﻠﻰ ﷲِ ِإﱠﻻ اﻟَﺣ ﱠ‬

‫ق ِإﻧﱠَﻣﺎ اﻟَﻣﺳﯾُﺢ ﻋﯾ َ‬
‫ﺳﻰ اﺑُن َﻣرَﯾَم َرﺳوُل‬ ‫ﺑن ﻣرﯾم‪) :‬ﻗُل ﯾﺎ أَھَل اﻟِﻛﺗﺎ ِ‬
‫ب ﻻ ﺗَﻐﻠوا ﻓﻲ دﯾِﻧﻛُم َوﻻ ﺗَﻘوﻟوا َ‬
‫ح ِﻣﻧﮫُ( ]اﻟﻧﺳﺎء‪) [41a] [171 :‬ﻗُل أَﺗَﻌﺑُدوَن ِﻣن دوِن ﷲِ ﻣﺎ ﻻ َﯾﻣِﻠُك َﻟﻛُم َ‬
‫ﺿ{را َوﻻ‬ ‫ﷲِ َوَﻛِﻠَﻣﺗ ُﮫُ أَﻟﻘﺎھﺎ ِإﻟٰﻰ َﻣرَﯾَم َورو ٌ‬
‫َﻧﻔﻌًﺎ( ]اﻟﻣﺎﺋدة‪ .[76 :‬ﻓﺈذا ﻛﺎن ﻋﯾﺳﻰ وھو ﻣن أﻓﺿل اﻟرﺳل ﻗﯾل ﻓﯾﮫ ھذا‪ ،‬ﻓﻛﯾف ﺑﻌﺑد اﻟﻘﺎدر ﯾﻣﻠك ﺿّراً وﻧﻔﻌﺎ ً؟‬
‫]‪ [50b‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) 8 :‬أ ُوٰﻟِﺋَك اﻟﱠذﯾَن َﯾدﻋوَن َﯾﺑﺗَﻐوَن ِإﻟٰﻰ َرِﺑِّﮭمُ اﻟَوﺳﯾَﻠﺔَ أَﯾﱡُﮭم أَﻗَر ُ‬
‫ب َوَﯾرﺟوَن َرﺣَﻣﺗَﮫُ َوَﯾﺧﺎﻓوَن‬
‫ﻋذاَﺑﮫُ( ]اﻹﺳراء‪ .[57 :‬وﻗﺎل طﺎﺋﻔﺔ ﻣن اﻟﺳﻠف‪ :‬ﻛﺎن أﻗوام ﯾدﻋون اﻟﻣﻼﺋﻛﺔ واﻟﻣﺳﯾﺢ واﻟﻌزﯾر‪ ،‬ﻓﻘﺎل ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪:‬‬
‫َ‬
‫ھؤﻻء ﻋﺑﯾدي ﻛﻣﺎ أﻧﺗم ﻋﺑﯾدي وﯾرﺟون رﺣﻣﺗﻲ ﻛﻣﺎ ﺗرﺟون رﺣﻣﺗﻲ‪.‬‬
‫‪ .15‬ﻓرﺣم ﷲ اﻣرأً ﺗﻔﻛّر ﻓﻲ ھذه اﻵﯾﺔ اﻟﻌظﯾﻣﺔ وﻓﯾﻣﺎ أﻧزﻟت ﻓﯾﮫ‪ [51a] ،‬وﺗﻔﻛّر أّن اﻟذﯾن اﻋﺗﻘدوا ﻓﯾﮭم إﻧّﻣﺎ أرادوا‬
‫اﻟﺗﻘّرب إﻟﻰ ﷲ واﻟﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ‪.‬‬
‫‪ [52b] .16‬وھذا ﻛﻠّﮫ ﯾدور ﻋﻠﻰ ﻛﻠﻣﺗﯾن‪ [53a] :‬اﻷوﻟﻰ أن ﺗﻌرف أّن اﻟﻛﻔّﺎر ﯾﻌرﻓون أّن ﷲ ھو اﻟﺧﺎﻟق اﻟرازق اﻟذي‬
‫ﯾدﺑّر اﻷﻣر‪ [53b] ،‬وإﻧّﻣﺎ أرادوا اﻟﺗﻘّرب ﺑﮭؤﻻء إﻟﻰ ﷲ ﺑﮭذا‪ .‬واﻟﻛﻠﻣﺔ اﻟﺛﺎﻧﯾﺔ أّن أﻧﺎﺳﺎ ً ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ أﻧﺎس ﻣن‬
‫اﻷﻧﺑﯾﺎء ﻣﺛل ﻋﯾﺳﻰ واﻷوﻟﯾﺎء ﻣﺛل اﻟﻌزﯾر ﻓﻛﺎﻧوا ھم واﻟذﯾن ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ اﻷﺻﻧﺎم واﻟﺷﺟر واﻟﺣﺟر واﺣداً‪ ،‬وﻟّﻣﺎ‬
‫ﻗﺎﺗﻠﮭم رﺳول ﷲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم ﻟم ﯾﻔّرق ﺑﯾن اﻟذﯾن ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ اﻷوﺛﺎن ﻣن اﻟﺧﺷب واﻟﺣﺟر ﻋن‪ 9‬اﻟذﯾن‬
‫ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ اﻷﻧﺑﯾﺎء واﻟﺻﺎﻟﺣﯾن‪ [59a] ،‬ﻋﻠﻰ أّن أھل زﻣﺎﻧﻧﺎ ﯾﻌﺗﻘدون ﻓﻲ اﻟﺣﺟﺎرة اﻟﺗﻲ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻘﺑور وﻓﻲ اﻟﺷﺟر‬
‫اﻟذي ﻋﻠﯾﮭﺎ ﻛﺎﻷﺛل اﻟذي ﻷﺑو ﺟرى ‪ 10‬ﻓﻲ اﻟﺧرج وﻏﯾر ذﻟك‪.‬‬
‫‪ 8‬ﻓﻲ ب‪ :‬ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪.‬‬

‫‪ 9‬ﻓﻲ ب‪ :‬ﻣن‪.‬‬
‫‪ 10‬ﻓﻲ ب‪ :‬ﻷﺑﻮ ﺣﯿﺮي‪ .‬وُﻛﺘﺐ ﻓﻲ اﻟﮭﺎﻣﺶ‪ :‬ﻷﺑﻲ ﺣﯿﺮي وﻟ ّ‬
‫ﻲ ﻣﻦ اﻷوﻟﯿﺎء‪.‬‬
‫‪381‬‬
‫‪ .17‬إذا ﺗﺑﯾّن ھذا وﻋرف اﻟﻣؤﻣن دﯾن ﷲ‪ ،‬وﻗﺎل ھذا ﺑﻌد ذﻟك ﺑﯾّن ﻧﻌرﻓﮫ ﻣن أّول‪ ،‬ﻓﻘل ﻟﮫ‪ :‬إذا ﻛﺎن أﺻﺣﺎب رﺳول ﷲ‬
‫ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم ﻟم ﯾﻌرﻓوا ھذا إّﻻ ﺑﻌد اﻟﺗﻌﻠّم‪ ،‬وﻣن أﻧواع اﻟﺷرك ]‪ [59b‬أﺷﯾﺎء ﻣﺎ ﻋرﻓوھﺎ إّﻻ ﺑﻌد ﺳﻧﯾن‪ ،‬ﻓﺈن‬
‫ﻋرﻓت ھذا ﺑﻼ ﺗﻌﻠّم ﻓﺄﻧت أﻋﻠم ﻣﻧﮭم‪ .‬ﺑل اﻷﻧﺑﯾﺎء ﻟم ﯾﻌرﻓوا ھذا إّﻻ ﺑﻌد أن ﻋﻠّﻣﮭم ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ .‬ﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻷﻋﻠم‬
‫ﻲ ِإَﻟﯾَك َوِإَﻟﻰ اﻟﱠذﯾَن ِﻣن‬ ‫ٰ‬

‫اﻟﺧﻠق ﻣﺣّﻣد ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم‪َ) :‬ﻓﺎﻋَﻠم أَﻧﱠﮫُ ﻻ ِإﻟﮫَ ِإﱠﻻ ﷲَ( ]ﻣﺣّﻣد‪ .[19 :‬وﻗﺎل‪َ) :‬وَﻟَﻘد أوِﺣ َ‬
‫ﻋَﻣﻠَُك( ]اﻟزﻣر‪.[65 :‬‬ ‫َﻗﺑِﻠَك َﻟِﺋن أَﺷَرﻛ َ‬

‫ت َﻟَﯾﺣَﺑ َ‬
‫طﱠن َ‬
‫ﺻٰﻰ ِﺑﮭﺎ‬
‫‪ [63a] .18‬وإن ﻗﺎل‪ :‬ھو ﻣﺎ ﯾُﺧﺎف ﻣﻧﮫ‪ ،‬ﻓﻣﺎ ﺑﺎل اﻟﺧﻠﯾل ﯾوﺻﻲ ﺑﮭﺎ أوﻻده وھم أﻧﺑﯾﺎء ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وَو ّ‬
‫طﻔٰﻰ َﻟﻛُمُ اﻟدّﯾَن َﻓﻼ ﺗَﻣوﺗ ُﱠن ِإّﻻ َوأَﻧﺗ ُم ُﻣﺳِﻠﻣوَن( ]اﻟﺑﻘرة‪َ) .[132 :‬وِإذ‪ 11‬ﻗﺎَل‬
‫ﻲ ِإﱠن اﱠ‪ َw‬اﺻ َ‬
‫ب ﯾﺎ َﺑِﻧ ﱠ‬
‫ِإﺑراھﯾمُ َﺑﻧﯾِﮫ َوَﯾﻌﻘو ُ‬
‫ﻋظﯾمٌ﴾ ]ﻟﻘﻣﺎن‪ .[13 :‬وإذا ﻛﺎن ھذا ﻻ ﯾُﺧﺎف ﻣﻧﮫ‬ ‫ﻲ ﻻ ﺗ ُﺷِرك ِﺑﺎﱠ‪ِ ِw‬إﱠن اﻟِﺷّرَك َﻟ ُ‬
‫ظﻠمٌ َ‬ ‫ﻟُﻘﻣﺎُن ِﻻﺑِﻧِﮫ َوھَُو َﯾِﻌ ُ‬
‫ظﮫُ ﯾﺎ ﺑَُﻧ ﱠ‬
‫ب اﺟﻌَل ٰھذَا اﻟَﺑَﻠدَ‬

‫ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻣﺳﻠﻣﯾن ﻓﻣﺎ ﺑﺎل اﻟﺧﻠﯾل ﯾﺧﺎﻓﮫ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻧﻔﺳﮫ وﺑﻧﯾﮫ وھم أﻧﺑﯾﺎء ﺣﯾث ﻗﺎل‪َ) :‬وِإذ ﻗﺎَل ِإﺑراھﯾمُ َر ّ ِ‬
‫ﻲ أَن َﻧﻌﺑُدَ اﻷ َﺻﻧﺎَم( ]إﺑراھﯾم‪[35 :‬؟ وﻣﺎ ﺑﺎل اﻟﺣﻛﯾم اﻟﻌﻠﯾم ﻟّﻣﺎ أﻧزل ﻛﺗﺎﺑﮫ ﻟﯾﺧرج اﻟﻧﺎس ﻣن‬
‫آِﻣًﻧﺎ َواﺟﻧُﺑﻧﻲ َوَﺑِﻧ ﱠ‬
‫اﻟظﻠﻣﺎت إﻟﻰ اﻟﻧور ﺟﻌﻠﮫ ﻓﻲ ھذا اﻷﻣر وأﻛﺛر اﻟﻛﻼم ﻓﯾﮫ وﺑﯾّﻧﮫ وﺿرب اﻷﻣﺛﺎل وﺣذّر ﻣﻧﮫ وأﺑدأ وأﻋﺎد؟ ﻓﺈذا ﻛﺎن‬
‫اﻟﻧﺎس ﯾﻔﮭﻣوﻧﮫ ﺑﻼ ﺗﻌﻠّم وﻻ ﻧﺧﺎف ﻋﻠﯾﮭم ﻣﻧﮫ ﻓﻣﺎ ﺑﺎل ر ّ‬

‫ب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻣﯾن ﺟﻌل أﻛﺛر ﻛﺗﺎﺑﮫ ﻓﯾﮫ؟ ﻓﺳﺑﺣﺎن ﻣن طﺑﻊ ﻋﻠﻰ‬
‫]‪ [63b‬ﻗﻠب ﻣن ﺷﺎء ﻣن ﺧﻠﻘﮫ ﻣﻊ ھذا اﻟﺑﯾﺎن اﻟواﺿﺢ‪ ،‬ﻓﺄﺻّﻣﮭم وأﻋﻣﻰ أﺑﺻﺎرھم‪.‬‬
‫‪ [65a] .19‬وأﻧت ﯾﺎ ﻣن ﻣّن ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ ﺑﺎﻹﺳﻼم وﻋرف أّن ﻣﺎ ﻣن إﻟﮫ إّﻻ ﷲ‪ ،‬ﻻ ﺗظن أﻧّك إذا ﻗﻠت‪ ،‬ھذا ھو اﻟﺣ ّ‬
‫ق وأﻧﺎ‬
‫ﻣﺗ ّﺑﻌﮫ وﺗﺎرك ﻣﺎ ﺳواه‪ ،‬ﻟﻛن ﻻ أﺗﻌّرﺿﮭم وﻻ أﻗول ﻓﯾﮭم ﺷﯾﺋﺎ ً‪ ،‬ﻻ ﺗظن أّن ذﻟك ﯾﺣﺻل ﻟك ﺑل ﻻ ﺑدّ ﻣن ﺑﻐﺿﮭم‬
‫وﺑﻐض ﻣن ﯾﺣﺑّﮭم وﻣﺳﺑّﺗﮭم وﻣﻌﺎداﺗﮭم ]‪ [65b‬ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل أﺑوك إﺑراھﯾم‪َ) :‬واﻟﱠذﯾَن َﻣﻌَﮫُ ِإذ ﻗﺎﻟوا ِﻟَﻘوِﻣِﮭم ِإﻧّﺎ ﺑَُرآُء ِﻣﻧﻛُم‬
‫َوِﻣّﻣﺎ ﺗَﻌﺑُدوَن ِﻣن دوِن اﱠ‪َ ِw‬ﻛَﻔرﻧﺎ ِﺑﻛُم َوَﺑدا َﺑﯾَﻧﻧﺎ َوَﺑﯾَﻧﻛُمُ اﻟﻌَداَوة ُ َواﻟَﺑﻐﺿﺎُء أََﺑدًا َﺣﺗ ّٰﻰ ﺗ ُؤِﻣﻧوا ِﺑﺎﱠ‪َ ِw‬وﺣدَهُ( ]اﻟﻣﻣﺗﺣﻧﺔ‪:‬‬
‫ت َوﯾُؤِﻣن ِﺑﺎِﱠ‪َ w‬ﻓَﻘِد اﺳﺗَﻣ َ‬

‫ﺳَك ِﺑﺎﻟﻌُرَوِة اﻟُوﺛﻘٰﻰ( ]اﻟﺑﻘرة‪ .[256 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪:‬‬ ‫‪ .[4‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬ﻓَﻣن َﯾﻛﻔُر ِﺑﺎﻟ ّ‬
‫طﺎﻏو ِ‬
‫ت( ]اﻟﻧﺣل‪ .[36 :‬وﻟو ﯾﻘول رﺟل أﻧﺎ أﺗ ّﺑﻊ ﻣﺣّﻣداً‬ ‫)َوَﻟَﻘد َﺑﻌَﺛﻧﺎ ﻓﻲ ﻛُ ِّل أ ُﱠﻣٍﺔ َرﺳوًﻻ أَِن اﻋﺑُد ُوا اﱠ‪َ َw‬واﺟﺗَِﻧﺑُوا اﻟ ّ‬
‫طﺎﻏو َ‬
‫ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم وھو ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺣ ّ‬

‫ق‪ ،‬ﻟﻛن ﻻ أﺗﻌّرض اﻟﻼت واﻟﻌّزى وأﺑﺎ ﺟﮭل وأﻣﺛﺎﻟﮫ ﻣﺎ ﻋﻠ ّ‬
‫ﻲ ﻣﻧﮭم‪ ،‬ﻟم ﯾﺻّﺢ‬
‫إﺳﻼﻣﮫ‪.‬‬
‫‪ 11‬إذ ﺳﺎﻗﻄﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻛّﻞ ﻣﻦ أ وب‪.‬‬
‫‪382‬‬
‫‪ [68b] .20‬وأّﻣﺎ ﻣﺟﺎدﻟﺔ ﺑﻌض اﻟﻣﺷرﻛﯾن ﺑﺄّن ھؤﻻء اﻟطواﻏﯾت ﻣﺎ أﻣروا اﻟﻧﺎس ﺑﮭذا وﻻ رﺿوا ﺑﮫ‪ ،‬ﻓﮭذا ﻻ ﯾﻘوﻟﮫ إّﻻ‬
‫ﻣﺷرك‪ .‬ﻓﺈّن ھؤﻻء ﻣﺎ أﻛﻠوا أﻣوال اﻟﻧﺎس وﻻ ﺗرأ ّﺳوا ﻋﻠﯾﮭم وﻻ ﻗّرﺑوا ﻣن ﻗّرﺑوا إّﻻ ﻟﮭذا‪ ،‬وإذا رأوا رﺟ ً‬
‫ﻼ ﺻﺎﻟﺣﺎ ً‬
‫ﻋﺎﻟﻣﺎ ً اﺳﺗﮭزؤوا ﺑﮫ‪ ،‬وإذا رأوا ﻣﺷرﻛﺎ ً ﻛﺎﻓراً ﺷﯾطﺎﻧﺎ ً ﻗّرﺑوه وأﺣﺑّوه ﺑل زّوﺟوه ﺑﻧﺎﺗﮭم وﻋدّوا ذﻟك ﺷرﻓﺎ ً‪ .‬وھذا‬
‫اﻟﻘﺎﺋل ﯾﻌﻠم أّن ﻗوﻟﮫ ﻛذب‪ ،‬ﻓﺈﻧّﮫ ﻟو ﯾﺣﺿر ﻋﻧدھم وﯾﺳﻣﻊ ﺑﻌض اﻟﻣﺷرﻛﯾن ﯾﻘول‪ :‬ﺟﺎءﺗﻧﻲ ﺷدّة وﻧﺧﯾت اﻟﺷﯾﺦ أو‬
‫ﻧذرت ﻟﮭم ﻓﺗﺧﻠّﺻت ﻣن ھذه اﻟﺷدّة‪ ،‬ﻟم ﯾﺟﺳر ھذا اﻟﻘﺎﺋل أن ﯾﻘول‪ :‬ﻻ ﯾﻧﻔﻊ وﻻ ﯾﺿّر إّﻻ ﷲ‪ ،‬ﺑل ﻟو ﻗﺎل ھذا‬
‫وأﺷﺎﻋﮫ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻧﺎس وﻧﺻﺣﮭم ﻷﺑﻐﺿوه اﻟطواﻏﯾت‪ ،‬ﺑل ﻟو ﻗدروا ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﺗﻠﮫ ﻟﻘﺗﻠوه‪ .‬وﺑﺎﻟﺟﻣﻠﺔ ﻓﻼ ﯾﻘول ھذا‬
‫إّﻻ ﻣﺷرك ﻣﻛﺎﺑر‪ ،‬وإّﻻ ﻓﺎدﻋﺎؤھم ھذا وﺗﺧوﯾﻔﮭم اﻟﻧﺎس وذﻛرھم اﻟﺳواﻟف اﻟﻛﻔرﯾّﺔ اﻟﺗﻲ ﻵﺑﺎﺋﮭم ﺷﻲء ﻣﺷﮭور ﻻ‬
‫ﻋﻠٰﻰ أَﻧﻔُِﺳِﮭم ِﺑﺎﻟﻛُﻔر( ]اﻟﺗوﺑﺔ‪.[17 :‬‬

‫ﯾﻧﻛره ﻣن ﻋرف ﺣﺎﻟﮭم‪ ،‬وھم ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) :‬ﺷﺎِھدﯾَن َ‬
‫ﺿﱠل َﻣن ﺗَدﻋوَن ِإّﻻ ِإﯾّﺎهُ( ]اﻹﺳراء‪:‬‬ ‫‪ [72a] .21‬وﻟﻧﺧﺗم اﻟﻛﺗﺎب ﺑذﻛر آﯾﺔ ﻣن ﻛﺗﺎب ﷲ‪َ) :‬وِإذا َﻣﺳﱠﻛُمُ اﻟ ﱡ‬
‫ﺿﱡر ِﻓﻲ اﻟَﺑﺣِر َ‬
‫‪ .[67‬ﻓذﻛر ﻋن اﻟﻛﻔّﺎر أﻧّﮭم إذا ﺟﺎءﺗﮭم اﻟﺷدّة أﺧﻠﺻوا اﻟدﯾن ‪ k‬وإذا ﺟﺎء اﻟرﺧﺎء أﺷرﻛوا‪ .‬واﻟﻣﺷرﻛون اﻟﯾوم‬
‫ﻓﻲ زﻣﺎﻧﻧﺎ ھذا إذا ﺟﺎءﺗﮭم اﻟﺷدّة ﺗرﻛوا ﷲ وﻧﺧوا ﻓﻼﻧﺎ ً وﻓﻼﻧﺎ ً‪ .‬ﻓﺗﺑﯾّن اّن ﺷرك اﻟﻛﻔّﺎر أﺧ ّ‬
‫ف ﻣن ﺷرك أھل زﻣﺎﻧﻧﺎ‬
‫اﻟذﯾن إذا أﺻﺎﺑﮭم اﻟﺿّر ﻧﺧوا ﺣﺳﯾﻧﺎ ً وراﻋﻲ اﻟﺧﻠوة‪.‬‬
‫‪ [81b] .22‬ﻓرﺣم ﷲ اﻣرأً ﺗﻔﻛّر ﻓﻲ ھذه اﻵﯾﺔ وﻓﻲ ﻏﯾرھﺎ ﻣن اﻵﯾﺎت‪ .‬ﻓﻣن ﻣّن ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ ﺑﺎﻹﺳﻼم ﻓﻠﯾﺣﻣد ﷲ‪ .‬ﻓﺈن‬
‫أﺷﻛل ﻋﻠﯾﮫ ﻓﻠﯾﺳﺄل أھل اﻟﻌﻠم ﺑﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل ﷲ ورﺳوﻟﮫ وﻻ ﯾﺑدي ﺑﺎﻹﻧﻛﺎر‪ ،‬وﻟﯾﻌﻠم أﻧﮫ إن ردّ ﻓﺈﻧّﻣﺎ ردّ ﻋﻠﻰ ﷲ‪ ،‬وﻣن‬
‫أظﻠم ﻣّﻣن ذ ُﻛّر ﺑﺂﯾﺎت رﺑّﮫ ﺛم أﻋرض ﻋﻧﮭﺎ‪ِ) :‬إﻧّﺎ ِﻣَن اﻟُﻣﺟِرﻣﯾَن ُﻣﻧﺗَِﻘﻣوَن( ]اﻟﺳﺟدة‪ .[22 :‬واﻟﺣﻣد ‪ k‬ر ّ‬
‫ب‬
‫اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻣﯾن‪.‬‬
‫‪ [82a] .23‬اﻋﻠم رﺣﻣك ﷲ ]‪ [82b‬أّن ﺷﯾﺋﺎ ً ﻣن ﻓروع اﻟﺷرك اﻷﻛﺑر ﻗد وﻗﻊ ﻓﯾﮫ ﺑﻌض اﻷّوﻟﯾن اﻟﻣﺻﻧّﻔﯾن‪ ،‬ﺷﯾﺋﺎ ً ﻣن‬
‫ﺟﻧس ھذا وﻏﯾر ذﻟك‪ ،‬ﻋﻠﻰ ﺟﮭﺎﻟﺔ ﻟم ﯾﻔطن ﻟﮫ‪ .‬ﻣن ذﻟك ﻗوﻟﮫ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺑردة‪" :‬ﯾﺎ أﻛرم اﻟﺧﻠق ﻣﺎ ﻟﻲ ﻣن أﻟوذ ﺑﮫ‬
‫ﺳواك‪ ".‬وﻓﻲ اﻟﮭﻣزﯾّﺔ ﺷﻲء ﻣن ﺟﻧس ھذا‪ ،‬وﻏﯾر ذﻟك ﺷﻲء ﻛﺛﯾر‪ .‬وھذا ھو ﻣن اﻟدﻋﺎء اﻟذي ھو ﻣن اﻟﻌﺑﺎدة اﻟﺗﻲ‬
‫ﻻ ﺗﺻﻠﺢ إّﻻ ‪ k‬وﺣده‪.‬‬
‫‪ [112b] .24‬ﻓﺈذا ﺟﺎدﻟك ﺑﻌض اﻟﻣﺷرﻛﯾن ﺑﺟﻼﻟﺔ ھذا اﻟﻘﺎﺋل وﻋﻠﻣﮫ وﺻﻼﺣﮫ وﻗﺎل‪ :‬ﻛﯾف ﯾﺟﮭﻠﮫ ھذا؟ ﻓﻘل‪ :‬أﻋﻠم ﻣﻧﮫ‬
‫ﺳﻰ اﺟﻌَل َﻟﻧﺎ‬ ‫وأﺟّل وأﺻﻠﺢ أﺻﺣﺎب ﻣوﺳﻰ‪ ،‬وھم اﻟذﯾن اﺧﺗﺎرھم ﷲ وﻓ ّ‬
‫ﺿﻠﮭم ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻣﯾن‪ ،‬ﺣﯾث )ﻗﺎﻟوا ﯾﺎ ﻣو َ‬
‫‪383‬‬
‫ِإٰﻟًﮭﺎ َﻛﻣﺎ َﻟُﮭم آِﻟَﮭﺔٌ ﻗﺎَل ِإﻧﱠﻛُم َﻗومٌ ﺗَﺟَﮭﻠوَن( ]اﻷﻋراف‪ .[138 :‬ﻓﺈذا ﺧﻔﻲ ھذا ﻋﻠﻰ ﺑﻧﻲ إﺳراﺋﯾل ﻣﻊ ﺟﻼﻟﺗﮭم وﻋﻠﻣﮭم‬
‫وﻓﺿﻠﮭم ﻓﻣﺎ ظﻧّك ﺑﻐﯾرھم؟‬
‫‪ [116b] .25‬وﻗل ﻟﮭذا اﻟﺟﺎھل‪ :‬أﻋﻠم ﻣن اﻟﺟﻣﯾﻊ وأﺻﻠﺢ أﺻﺣﺎب رﺳول ﷲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم ﻟّﻣﺎ ﻣّروا ﻋﻠﻰ‬
‫ﺷﺟرة ﻗﺎﻟوا‪ :‬ﯾﺎ رﺳول ﷲ‪ ،‬اﺟﻌل ﻟﻧﺎ ذات أﻧواط‪ ،‬ﻓﺣﻠف رﺳول ﷲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم أّن ھذا ﻛﻣﺎ ﻗﺎل ﻗوم‬
‫ﻣوﺳﻰ‪) :‬اﺟﻌَل َﻟﻧﺎ ِإٰﻟًﮭﺎ(‪.‬‬
‫ﻲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم ﺻّرح أّن ﻣن اﻋﺗﻘد ﻓﻲ ﺷﺟرة أو‬

‫‪ [117a] .26‬ﻓﻔﻲ ھذا ﻋﺑرﺗﯾن ﻋظﯾﻣﺗﯾن‪ :‬اﻷوﻟﻰ أّن اﻟﻧﺑ ّ‬
‫ﺗﺑّرك ﺑﮭﺎ ﻓﻘد اﺗ ّﺧذھﺎ إﻟﮭﺎ ً‪ [119a] .‬واﻟﻌﺑرة اﻟﺛﺎﻧﯾﺔ أّن اﻟﺷرك ﻗد ﯾﻘﻊ ﻣن أﻋﻠم اﻟﻧﺎس وأﺻﻠﺣﮭم وھو ﻻ ﯾدري‪ ،‬ﻛﻣﺎ‬
‫ﻗﯾل‪ :‬اﻟﺷرك أﺧﻔﻰ ﻣن دﺑﯾب اﻟﻧﻣل‪ [121a] .‬وإّﻻ ﻓﺄﺻﺣﺎب رﺳول ﷲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم ﯾﻌرﻓون أﻧّﮭﺎ ﻻ ﺗﺧﻠق‬
‫ﻲ ﺻﻠّﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯾﮫ وﺳﻠّم إذا أﻣرھم ﺑﺎﻟﺗﺑّرك ﺣّل ﻓﯾﮭﺎ ﺑرﻛﺔ‪ [121b] ،‬ﺑﺧﻼف ﻗول‬
‫وﻻ ﺗرزق وإﻧّﻣﺎ ظﻧّوا اّن اﻟﻧﺑ ّ‬
‫اﻟﺟﺎھل‪ ،‬ھذا ﻧﻌرﻓﮫ‪.‬‬
‫‪ [122a] .27‬وإن أردت ﺑﯾﺎﻧﮫ ﻣن ﻛﻼم أھل اﻟﻌﻠم وإﻧﻛﺎر ﺟﻧس ھذا اﻻﻋﺗﻘﺎد ﻓﻲ اﻟﺻﺎﻟﺣﯾن وﺗﺑﯾﯾﻧﮭم أّن ھذا ﻣن اﻟﺷرك‬
‫اﻟذي ﺣّرﻣﮫ ﷲ ﻓﮭو ﻣوﺟود‪ ،‬أﻋﻧﻲ ﻛﻼم اﻟﻌﻠﻣﺎء ﻓﻲ ھذا‪ ،‬إن أردت ﻣن اﻟﺣﻧﺎﺑﻠﺔ وإن أردت ﻣن ﻏﯾرھم‪ .‬وﺻﻠّﻰ‬
‫ﷲ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﺣّﻣد وآﻟﮫ وﺻﺣﺑﮫ وﺳﻠّم‪.‬‬
‫‪384‬‬
English translation:
1. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
2. “O God, you are the King, there is no god but you. You are my Lord and I am your
servant. I have wronged myself and admitted my sin. Forgive me then my sins
altogether; none can forgive sins but you. And guide me to the most perfect of
manners and works; none can guide to the most perfect of them but you. And avert
from me their evil; none can avert from me their evil but you. I am here, at your
service. All good is in your hands, and evil belongs not to you. By you I am, and to
you I am. I seek your forgiveness and I repent to you.” 12
3. To proceed: These are words in explication of the confession that there is no god but
God, and in explication of monotheism (tawḥīd), which is God’s due from the
servants and is more obligatory than prayer, alms-giving, and fasting Ramadan. May
God have mercy on him who counsels himself and knows that beyond him are
paradise and hellfire, and that has God appointed acts corresponding to each of these.
If he asks about these he will find that the greatest of the acts of paradise is the
worship of God as one (tawḥīd Allāh)—whoso arrives with it on the Day of Judgment
will certainly be among the inhabitants of paradise, even if his sins are as the
mountains of Raḍwā—and the greatest of the acts of hellfire is the association of
partners with God (al-shirk biʾllāh)—whoso dies having done this, even if he arrives
on the Day of Judgment having worshipped night and day and having performed
charity and kindness, will certainly be among the inhabitants of hellfire, like a
Christian who builds a hermitage in the land, leads a life of asceticism in this world,
12
Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2:534-35 (Kitāb ṣalāt al-musāfirīn wa-qaṣrihā, bāb al-duʿāʾ fī ṣalāt al-layl wa-qiyāmihi,
no. 771).
385
worships day and night, and yet mixes this with the association of partners with God.
God says, “We shall advance upon what work they have done, and make it a scattered
dust” (Q. 25:23). And God says, “The likeness of those who disbelieve in their Lord:
their works are as ashes, whereon the wind blows strong upon a tempestuous day;
they have no power over that which they have earned—that is far straying” (Q.
14:18).
4. May God have mercy on a person who reflects on this important matter before he
bites his hands and says, “Would that I had taken a way along with the Messenger!”
(Q. 25:27). We ask God to guide us and our Muslim brethren to the straight path, the
path of those whom God has blessed, and to turn us and them away from the path of
those against whom God is wrathful, namely, those with knowledge who do not act,
and the path of those who are astray, namely, the devout who are ignorant. How
important this supplication [i.e., “guide us to the straight path…” in Q. 1] is! And
how necessary it is for him who utters it to summon his mind in every unit of prayer
(rukʿa), when he recites before God that He may guide him! Indeed, God mentions
that He will answer the supplication in al-Fātiḥa [i.e., Q. 1] when a person recites it
with a present mind.
5. We say: There is no god but God is the firmest bond; it is the statement of godfearing;
it is pure monotheism (al-ḥanīfiyya), the religion of Abraham; it is that which God
made “a phrase enduring among His posterity, perchance that they would return” (Q.
43:28); it is that for which created things were created, that for which the earth and
the heavens were erected, and that for which the messengers were sent and the books
were revealed. God says, “I have not created the jinn and mankind except to worship
386
Me” (Q. 51:56). And He says, “Indeed, We sent forth among every nation a
messenger, saying, ‘Worship you God, and eschew idols’” (Q. 16:36). What is
desired is the meaning of this phrase; uttering it in ignorance of its meaning confers
no benefit. Indeed, the hypocrites uttered it, and they are below the unbelievers in the
lowest level of hellfire.
6. Know then that the phrase comprises negation and affirmation: the negation of the
divinity of all but God, and the affirmation of it entirely for God alone without
partner, there being no share in this for any angel near [to God] or any prophet sent
[with a message]. As God says, “None is there in the heavens and earth but he comes
to the All-merciful as a servant; He has indeed counted them, and He has numbered
them exactly. Every one of them shall come to Him upon the Day of Resurrection, all
alone” (Q. 19:93-95). When one says, “there is no creator but God,” the meaning is
that none creates creation but Him, without the participation in this of any angel or
prophet or saint. And when one says, “none provides sustenance but God,” then
likewise. And when one says, “there is no god but God,” then likewise.
7. So reflect on this, and ask about the meaning of God as you ask about the meaning of
the Creator and Sustainer. And know that [the word] god (al-ilāh) means that which
is worshipped—this is the interpretation of this word according to the consensus of
the scholars. Therefore, whoso worships something takes it as a god, and all of these
are false but one, who is God (Allāh).
8. Worship is of many forms, but I will give examples in matters that are apparent.
Among those that I will single out for disapprobation is prostration (sujūd). It is not
permissible for a servant to put his face to the ground in prostration to any but God,
387
not to an angel close [to God], or to a prophet, or to a saint. And among them is
slaughter (dhabḥ). It is not permissible for one to slaughter for any but God, for God
ties the two together in the Qurʾān in His statement, “Say: ‘My prayer, my sacrifice,
my living, my dying—all belongs to God, the Lord of all Being. No associate has
He’” (Q. 6:162-63), “sacrifice” (nusuk) meaning slaughter. And He says, “So pray
unto thy Lord and sacrifice” (Q. 108:2). So contemplate this, and know that whoso
slaughters for a spirit (jinnī) or a grave apart from God, it is as if he has prostrated to
it. The Messenger of God cursed such a person in the sound ḥadīth, saying, “May
God curse him who slaughters for other than God.”13 And among the forms of
worship is supplication (duʿāʾ), for the believers were calling on God night and day.
No one doubts that this is one of the forms of worship.
9. So reflect, may God have mercy on you, on the supplication to other than God, in
times of hardship and in times of comfort, that has afflicted mankind. Such-and-such
a person intends to travel, so he goes to the grave of a prophet or someone else and
enters there with his property to prevent being robbed; and such-and-such a person is
afflicted by hardship on land or on sea, so he seeks the help of ʿAbd al-Qādir [al-
Jīlānī] or Shamsān, or a prophet or a saint, that he may relieve him of this hardship.
10. So let it be said to this polytheist, “If you know that God is that which is worshipped,
and [if] you know that supplication is a form of worship, then how can you call on a
created being that is dead and absent and ignore the Living, the Present, the All-
Gentle, the All-Merciful, the Near?”
13
Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 3:1567 (Kitāb al-aḍāḥī, bāb taḥrīm al-dhabḥ li-ghayr Allāh, no. 1978).
388
11. The deluded polytheist will say, “The affair belongs to God; but this righteous person
will intercede for me with God, and his intercession and his stature will benefit me.”
He thinks that this will save him from the association of partners with God.
12. Let it then be said to this ignorant polytheist, “The idol-worshippers whom the
Messenger of God fought and whose property, sons, and women he seized all
believed that God is the One Who Inflicts Harm, the One Who Confers Benefits, and
the One Who Arranges the Affair; all that they sought is what you have sought,
namely, intercession with God. As God says, ‘They worship, apart from God, what
neither harms them nor benefits them, and they say, “These are our intercessors with
God”’ (Q. 10:18). And His words, ‘And those who take allies, apart from Him—“We
only worship them that they may bring us nigh in nearness to God”’ (Q. 39:3). And
God says, ‘Say: “Who provides you out of heaven and earth, or who possesses
hearing and sight, and who brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the
dead from the living, and who directs the affair?” They will surely say, “God”’ (Q.
10:31).”
13. May he who possesses understanding and advises himself, and who knows that after
death are paradise and hellfire, and knows that God forgives not that He be ascribed
partners, thus consider: Is there need for explanation after this explanation, when God
has related in the Qurʾān that the unbelievers affirmed that God is the Creator, the
Sustainer, the Giver of Life, the Bringer of Death, and the One Who Directs the
Affair, and that all that they sought from those in whom they believed was nearness to
and intercession with God? How numerous are the verses in the Qurʾān in which God
mentions this! Such as His words, “Say: ‘Whose is the earth, and whoso is in it, if you
389
have knowledge?’ They will say, ‘God’s.’ Say: ‘Will you not then remember?’ Say:
‘Who is the Lord of the seven heavens and the Lord of the mighty throne?’ They will
say, ‘God’s.’ Say: ‘Will you not then be godfearing?’ Say: ‘In whose hand is the
dominion of everything, protecting and Himself unprotected, if you have
knowledge?’ They will say, ‘God’s’” (Q. 23:84-89). Among other [verses] in which
God mentions that they affirmed these things, and that all that they sought from those
in whom they believed was intercession.
14. When one of the polytheists objects that those [i.e., the earlier polytheists] believed in
idols of stone and wood, while we have believed only in righteous persons, then say
to him in response, “Among the unbelievers there were also those who believed in
righteous persons, such as the angels and Jesus son of Mary, and in saints such as al-
ʿUzayr [sic] and some of the jinn. God mentions this in His Book. He says regarding
those who believed in the angels, ‘Upon the day when He shall muster them all
together, then He shall say to the angels, “Was it you these were worshipping?” They
shall say, “Glory be to Thee! Thou art our Ally, apart from them; nay rather, they
were worshipping the jinn”’ (Q. 34:40-41). And God says, ‘And they intercede not
save for him with whom He is well-pleased’ (Q. 21:28). And He says regarding those
who believed in Jesus son of Mary, ‘People of the Book, go not beyond the bounds in
your religion, and say not concerning God but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of
Mary, was only the Messenger of God, and His Word that He committed to Mary,
and a Spirit from Him’ (Q. 4:171); ‘Say: “Do you worship, apart from God, that
which cannot harm or benefit you?’ (Q. 5:76). If this was said of Jesus, who was one
the most virtuous of the messengers, then how could ʿAbd al-Qādir have the ability to
390
inflict harm and confer benefits? God says, ‘Those they call upon are themselves
seeking the means to come to their Lord, which of them shall be nearer; they hope for
His mercy, and fear His chastisement’ (Q. 17:57). And a party of the ancestors said,
‘There were people who used to call upon the angels, the Messiah, and al-ʿUzayr
[sic], and God would say, “These are my servants, as you are my servants, and they
desire my mercy, as you desire my mercy.”’”
15. May God have mercy on a person who reflects on this important verse and the
circumstances in which it was revealed, and reflects on the fact that those who
believed in them sought nothing but nearness to God and intercession [with Him].
16. All of this revolves around two points. The first is that you know that the unbelievers
knew that God is the Creator, the Sustainer, and the One Who Directs the Affair; all
that they sought by this [i.e., calling on them] was nearness to God through them. The
second point is that there were people who believed in prophets, such as Jesus, and
saints, such as al-ʿUzayr [sic], and they were the same as those who believed in idols,
trees, and rocks. When the Messenger of God fought them, he did not distinguish
between those who believed in idols of wood and stone and those who believed in
prophets and righteous persons—though the people of our time [also] believe in the
stone atop graves and in the trees above of them, such as the tamarisk tree of Abu Jarā
in al-Kharj and the like.
17. When this has become clear and a believer has come to understand God’s religion,
and he says afterwards, “This is clear; we knew it before,” then say to him, “If the
companions of the Messenger of God knew this only after being instructed, and if
there were forms of polytheism that they came to know only after years’ time, then if
391
you knew this without instruction you are greater in knowledge than they! Indeed, the
prophets knew this only after God instructed them. He says to Muḥammad, the most
knowledgeable of mankind, ‘Know thou therefore that there is no god but God’ (Q.
47:19). And He says, ‘It has been revealed to thee, and to those before thee, “If thou
associatest other gods with God, thy work shall surely fail”’ (Q. 39:65).”
18. If he says, “This [i.e., shirk] is not to be feared,” [then say to him,] “Why is it that the
Friend of God [i.e., Abraham] charged his sons, who were prophets, with this [i.e.,
avoiding shirk]. As He says, ‘And Abraham charged his sons with this and Jacob
likewise: “My sons, God has chosen for you the religion; see that you die not save in
submission”’ (Q. 2:132)? ‘And when Lokman said to his son, admonishing him, “O
my son, do not associate others with God; to associate others with God is a mighty
wrong”’ (Q. 31:13). If this was not to be feared from Muslims, then why did the
Friend of God fear this for himself and his children, who were prophets, when he
says, ‘My Lord, make this land secure, and turn me and my sons away from
worshiping idols’ (Q. 14:35)? And does the All-Wise and All-Knowing, when He
revealed His Book to bring mankind from darkness to light, dedicate it [i.e., the
Book] to this subject, speak at length about it, clarify it, present examples, and warn
against it, beginning with it and returning to it? If people understood it without
instruction, and we were not supposed to fear it from them, then why does the Lord of
the Worlds dedicate the greater part of His Book to it? Glory be to Him who has set a
seal on the hearts of those He wills of His creation, in spite of this clear explanation,
and has rendered them deaf and blind [cf. Q. 16:108].”
392
19. As for you, O you whom God has blessed with Islam and who knows that there is no
god but God. Do not think that if you say, “This is the truth. I follow it and eschew all
else, but I will not confront them (lā ataʿarraḍuhum) and I will say nothing
concerning them,” do not think that that will profit you. Rather, it is necessary to hate
them, to hate those whom they love, to revile them, and to show them enmity, as your
father Abraham said, “We are quit of you and that which you worship, apart from
God. We disbelieve in you, and between us and you enmity has shown itself, and
hatred for ever, until you believe in God alone” (Q. 60:4). And God says, “So
whosoever disbelieves in idols and believes in God, has laid hold of the firmest bond”
(Q. 2:256). And God says, “Indeed, We sent forth among every nation a Messenger,
saying: ‘Worship you God, and eschew idols’” (Q. 16:36). If a man said, “I follow
Muḥammad, and he has the truth, but I will not oppose (lā ataʿarraḍu) al-Lāt, al-
ʿUzzā, Abū Jahl, and the likes of them; I have no obligation with respect to them,”
then his Islam would not be not sound.
20. As for the contention of some of the polytheists that those idols (ṭawāghīt) [i.e., the
human ṭawāghīt of Najd] did not command [their followers] to do this [i.e., to
worship them] and did not approve of it, this is something that only a polytheist
would say. For they have not devoured people’s belongings, assumed leadership over
them, and drawn near those whom they have drawn near but for this [purpose]. When
they [i.e., the polytheists of Najd] see a righteous and learned man, they mock him;
and when they see an unbelieving polytheist devil, they draw him near and show him
love; indeed, they give their daughters in marriage to them [i.e., the ṭawāghīt], and
consider this to be noble. Whoso says this knows that what he is saying is a lie. For if
393
he is present with them and hears one of the polytheists say, “I was visited by
hardship and sought the help of the shaykh,” or, “I made a vow to them and was
delivered from this hardship,” he does not dare say, “None confers benefits or inflicts
harm but God.” Indeed, were he to say this, to spread it among people, and to advise
them accordingly, the idols would show him hatred; nay, they would kill him if they
could. In sum, only a quarrelsome polytheist would say this. Indeed, that they claim
this [i.e., the ability to confer benefits and inflict harm], that they inspire dread in
people, and that they mention their forefathers’ earlier acts of disbelief—this is well-
known and not denied by any with knowledge of their condition. As God says,
“witnessing against themselves unbelief” (Q. 9:17).
21. Let us end the epistle (kitāb) by mentioning a verse from God’s Book, “And when
affliction visits you upon the sea, then there go astray those on whom you call except
Him” (Q. 17:67). He mentions that when the unbelievers were visited by hardship,
they worshipped God exclusively, and when they were visited by comfort, they
associated other beings with God. As for the unbelievers of our present time, when
they are visited by hardship, they leave God and seek the help of so-and-so and so-
and-so. Thus it becomes clear that the polytheism of the [earlier] unbelievers was less
severe than the polytheism of the people of our time, who, when they are visited by
affliction, seek the help of Ḥusayn and the guardian of the place of seclusion [i.e.,
Idrīs, the son of Ḥusayn].
22. May God have mercy on a person who reflects on this verse and others. Whoso God
has blessed with Islam should praise God. If he is confused, he should ask those with
knowledge about what God and His Messenger have said, and he should not launch
394
into condemnation. He should know that if he refutes [this], he will only be refuting
God. “And who does greater evil than he who is reminded of the signs of his Lord,
then turns away from them? We shall take vengeance upon the sinners” (Q. 32:22).
And all praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds.14
23. Know, may God have mercy on you, that some of early authors committed something
in the branches of major polytheism (al-shirk al-akbar)—something of this kind and
something of another—on account of ignorance, being unaware of it. An example of
this is his [i.e., al-Būṣīrī’s] statement in al-Burda, “O most noble of creation [i.e., the
Prophet], none have I to seek refuge in / but you.” And in al-Hamziyya is something
of this kind, and a great deal of another kind. This is a form of supplication, a form of
worship, which is only valid when directed to God alone.
24. When one of the polytheists contends with you, referring to the greatness of the
author [i.e., al-Būṣīrī], his knowledge, and his righteousness, and says, “How could
this person be ignorant of this [i.e., polytheism]?” then say, “More knowledgeable
than he, and greater and more righteous, were the companions of Moses, and they are
those whom God chose and preferred among the Worlds, in which circumstance ‘they
said, “Moses, make for us a god, as they have gods.” Said he, “You are surely a
people who are ignorant”’ (Q. 7:138). So if this was not apparent to the Children of
Israel, despite their greatness, their knowledge, and their virtue, then what are you to
think of those apart from them?”
25. And say to this ignorant one, “Most knowledgeable of all, and most righteous, were
the Companions of the Messenger of God, who said, as they passed a tree [called
14
What follows from here looks to be a separate piece of writing appended to the main text.
395
Dhāt Anwāṭ], ‘O Messenger of God. Make for us a Dhāt Anwāṭ.’ The Messenger of
God swore that this was as when the people of Moses said, ‘make for us a god.’”15
26. In this are two great lessons (ʿibratayn). The first is that the Prophet stated clearly that
those who believe in or seek the blessing of a tree have taken it as a god. The second
lesson is that polytheism may be committed by the most knowledgeable and most
righteous of persons unwittingly, as it is said, “Polytheism is more hidden than the
crawling of ants.” However, the Companions of the Messenger of God knew that it
[i.e., the tree] does not create or provide sustenance; what they thought was that if the
Prophet commanded them to seek a blessing [from it], a blessing would materialize
therein, which is in contrast to the ignorant person’s statement, “we [already] know
this.”
27. If you would like the explanation of this in the words of the scholars, their
condemnation of this belief in righteous persons, and their clarification that this is a
form of the polytheism that God prohibited, that is available—that is, the words of the
scholars concerning this—whether you would like it from the Ḥanbalīs, or you would
like it from others. And may God bless and preserve Muḥammad, his family, and his
companions.
15
al-Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:475 (Kitāb al-fitan, bāb mā jāʾa la-tarkabanna sanan man kāna qablakum, no.
2180).
396
‫‪Appendix II‬‬
‫‪Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (c. 1158/1745)1‬‬
‫‪ [42a] .1‬ﻗﺎل ﺑﻌﺪ اﻟﺒﺴﻤﻠﺔ‪:‬‬
‫‪ .2‬ھﺬه أرﺑﻊ ﻗﻮاﻋﺪ ذﻛﺮھﺎ ﷲ ﻋّﺰ وﺟّﻞ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺤﻜﻢ ﻛﺘﺎﺑﮫ ﯾﻌﺮف ﺑﮭﺎ اﻟﺮﺟﻞ ﺷﮭﺎدة أن ﻻ إﻟﮫ إّﻻ ﷲ وﯾﻤّﯿﺰ ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻤﺴﻠﻤﯿﻦ‬
‫وﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻤﺸﺮﻛﯿﻦ‪ .‬ﻓﺘﺪّﺑﺮھﺎ ﺑﺸﺮاﺷﺮ ﻗﻠﺒﻚ وأﺻﻎ إﻟﯿﮭﺎ ﺑﻔﮭﻤﻚ ﻓﺈّﻧﮭﺎ ﻋﻈﯿﻤﺔ اﻟﻨﻔﻊ‪.‬‬
‫‪ .3‬اﻷوﻟﻰ أّن ﷲ ﺳﺒﺤﺎﻧﮫ ذﻛﺮ أّن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﻓﻲ زﻣﺎن رﺳﻮل ﷲ ﺻّﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ‪ ،‬وﻗﺪ ﻗﺘﻠﮭﻢ واﺳﺘﺤّﻞ أﻣﻮاﻟﮭﻢ‪،‬‬
‫ﻻ ﷲ‪ ،‬ﻻ ﯾﺸﺎرﻛﮫ ﻓﻲ ذﻟﻚ ﻣﻠﻚ ﻣﻘّﺮب وﻻ ﻧﺒّﻲ ﻣﺮﺳﻞ‪ ،‬وأّﻧﮫ ﻻ ﯾﺮزق إّﻻ ﷲ وﻻ ﯾﺮﻓﻊ‬
‫ﻛﺎﻧﻮا ﯾﻘّﺮون أّﻧﮫ ﻻ ﯾﺨﻠﻖ إ ّ‬
‫وﯾﺨﻔﺾ إ ّ‬
‫ﻻ ﷲ‪ ،‬وأّﻧﮫ ﺳﺒﺤﺎﻧﮫ ﻣﻨﻔﺮد ﺑﻤﻠﻚ اﻟﺴﻤﺎوات واﻷرض‪ ،‬وأّن ﺟﻤﯿﻊ اﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ ﻋﺒﯿﺪ ﻟﮫ ﺗﺤﺖ ﻗﮭﺮه‬
‫وﻣﺸﯿﺌﺘﮫ‪ .‬ﻓﺈذا ﻓﮭﻤﺖ أّن ھﺬا ﻣﻔﮭﻮم ﻋﻨﺪ اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر وﻻ ﯾﺠﺤﺪوﻧﮫ وﺳﺄﻟﻚ ﺑﻌﺾ اﻟﻤﺸﺮﻛﯿﻦ ﻋﻦ دﻟﯿﻠﮫ‪ ،‬ﻓﺎﻗﺮأ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ‬
‫ﺳَﯿﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ِ ﱠ•ِ ُﻗﻞ َأَﻓﻼ َﺗَﺬﱠﻛﺮوَن( اﻵﯾﺘﯿﻦ‬

‫ض َوَﻣﻦ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ ]‪ِ [42b‬إن ُﻛﻨُﺘﻢ َﺗﻌَﻠﻤﻮَن َ‬ ‫ﻖ اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر‪ُ) :‬ﻗﻞ ِﻟَﻤِﻦ ا َ‬
‫ﻷر ُ‬ ‫ﻓﻲ ﺣ ّ‬
‫ﺴﻤَﻊ‬ ‫ض َأﱠﻣﻦ َﯾﻤِﻠ ُ‬

‫ﻚ اﻟ ﱠ‬ ‫ﺴﻤﺎِء َوا َ‬
‫ﻷر ِ‬ ‫]اﻟﻤﺆﻣﻨﻮن‪ .[84-85 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻓﻲ ﺳﻮرة ﯾﻮﻧﺲ‪ُ) :‬ﻗﻞ َﻣﻦ َﯾﺮُزُﻗُﻜﻢ ِﻣَﻦ اﻟ ﱠ‬
‫ﷲُ َﻓُﻘﻞ َأَﻓﻼ َﺗﺘﱠﻘﻮَن(‬

‫ﺴَﯿﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ﱠ‬ ‫ﺖ ِﻣَﻦ اﻟَﺤﱢﻲ َوَﻣﻦ ُﯾَﺪﱢﺑُﺮ ا َ‬
‫ﻷﻣَﺮ َﻓ َ‬ ‫ﺖ َوُﯾﺨِﺮُج اﻟَﻤﱢﯿ َ‬ ‫َوا َ‬
‫ﻷﺑﺼﺎَر َوَﻣﻦ ُﯾﺨِﺮُج اﻟَﺤﱠﻲ ِﻣَﻦ اﻟَﻤﱢﯿ ِ‬
‫]ﯾﻮﻧﺲ‪.[31 :‬‬
‫‪ .4‬إذا ﻓﮭﻤﺖ ھﺬه ﻓﮭﻤﺎً ﺟّﯿﺪًا‪ ،‬وﻟﻜﻦ أﯾﻦ ﻣﻦ ﯾﻔﮭﻢ؟ ﻓﺈّن أﻛﺜﺮ اﻟﻨﺎس ﻻ ﯾﻔﮭﻤﻮﻧﮭﺎ! ]‪ [43b‬ﻓﺎﻋﺮف اﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ ﻣﻊ‬
‫ﻣﻌﺮﻓﺘﮭﻢ ﺑﻤﺎ ﺗﻘّﺪم ﯾﻌﺘﻘﺪون ﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ واﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻷوﻟﯿﺎء ﻣﻦ ﺟﮭﺔ ﷲ ﻷﺟﻞ ﻗﺮﺑﮭﻢ ﻣﻨﮫ‪ .‬ﻓﺈذا ﺗﺒﺎﻋﺪ اﻟﻤﺸﺮك ھﺬه‬
‫وﻗﺎل‪ :‬ﻛﯿﻒ أّن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر ﯾﺤّﺒﻮن اﻷوﻟﯿﺎء واﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ ﻷﺟﻞ ﻗﺮﺑﮭﻢ ﻣﻨﮫ وﯾﻌﺘﻘﺪون ﻓﯿﮭﻢ؟ ﻓﺎﻗﺮأ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ ﻓﯿﻤﻦ ﯾﻌﺘﻘﺪ ﻓﻲ‬
‫ﻚ َأﻧ َ‬
‫ﺖ َوِﻟﱡﯿﻨﺎ ِﻣﻦ دوِﻧِﮭﻢ َﺑﻞ‬ ‫ﺸُﺮھُﻢ َﺟﻤﯿًﻌﺎ ُﺛﱠﻢ َﯾﻘﻮُل ِﻟﻠَﻤﻼِﺋَﻜِﺔ َأٰھُﺆﻻِء ِإّﯾﺎُﻛﻢ ﻛﺎﻧﻮا َﯾﻌُﺒﺪوَن ﻗﺎﻟﻮا ُ‬
‫ﺳﺒﺤﺎَﻧ َ‬ ‫اﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ‪َ) :‬وَﯾﻮَم َﯾﺤ ُ‬
‫ﻛﺎﻧﻮا َﯾﻌُﺒﺪوَن اﻟِﺠﱠﻦ َأﻛَﺜُﺮھُﻢ ِﺑِﮭﻢ ُﻣﺆِﻣﻨﻮَن( ]ﺳﺒﺄ‪ .[40-41 :‬وﻗﺎل ﻓﻲ اﻻﻋﺘﻘﺎد ﺑﺎﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء‪َ) :‬ﻣﺎ اﻟَﻤﺴﯿُﺢ اﺑُﻦ َﻣﺮَﯾَﻢ ِإّﻻ‬
‫ﻄﻌﺎَم( اﻵﯾﺘﯿﻦ ]اﻟﻤﺎﺋﺪة‪ .[75-76 :‬وﻗﺎل ﻓﻲ اﻻﻋﺘﻘﺎد ﻓﻲ‬ ‫ﺳُﻞ َوأُﱡﻣﮫُ ِ‬

‫ﺻّﺪﯾَﻘﺔٌ ﻛﺎﻧﺎ َﯾﺄُﻛﻼِن اﻟ ﱠ‬ ‫َرﺳﻮٌل َﻗﺪ َﺧَﻠﺖ ِﻣﻦ َﻗﺒِﻠِﮫ اﻟﱡﺮ ُ‬
‫‪1‬‬
‫‪This epistle, by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, arrived in Basra in the earlier part of 1158/1745. It is‬‬
‫‪preserved in al-Qabbānī, Naqd qawāʿid al-ḍalāl. (See above, ch. 1, pp. 59ff.) The following translation is‬‬
‫‪borrowed, with some modifications, from Cook, “Early Wahhābī Epistle.” Following him, I indicate the‬‬
‫‪text lost through haplography with curly brackets; the missing text in paragraph 5 is recovered from al-‬‬
‫‪Durar al-saniyya, 2:28-29.‬‬
‫‪397‬‬
‫اﻷوﻟﯿﺎء‪) :‬أُوٰﻟِﺌ َ‬
‫ﻚ اﻟﱠﺬﯾَﻦ َﯾﺪﻋﻮَن َﯾﺒَﺘﻐﻮَن ِإﻟٰﻰ َرﱢﺑِﮭُﻢ اﻟَﻮﺳﯿَﻠﺔَ َأﱡﯾﮭُﻢ َأﻗَﺮ ُ‬
‫ب َوَﯾﺮﺟﻮَن َرﺣَﻤَﺘﮫُ َوَﯾﺨﺎﻓﻮَن َﻋﺬاَﺑﮫُ( اﻵﯾﺔ‬
‫]اﻹﺳﺮاء‪.[67 :‬‬
‫‪ .5‬ﻓﺈذا ﻓﮭﻤﺖ ھﺬه اﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪة‪ ،‬وھﻲ أﻧﮭﻢ ﺗﻘّﺮﺑﻮا ﻣﻦ اﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ ﻷﺟﻞ ﻗﺮﺑﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﷲ‪ ،‬وﻗﺎل ﻟﻚ اﻟﻤﺸﺮك‪ :‬أﻧﺎ ﻻ أطﻠﺐ إّﻻ‬
‫ﻣﻦ ﷲ وﻟﻜﻦ أرﺟﻮ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ اﻟﺘﻘّﺮب ﺑﺎﻟﺘﺠﺎﺋﻲ إﻟﯿﮭﻢ ودﻋﺎﺋﻲ إّﯾﺎھﻢ‪ ،‬ﻓﺎﻓﮭﻢ اﻟﺜﺎﻟﺜﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ أّن ﷲ اﻟﻌﻠّﻲ اﻷﻋﻠﻰ‬
‫ذﻛﺮ ﻓﻲ ﻛﺘﺎﺑﮫ أن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر ﻣﺎ دﻋﻮا اﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ إّﻻ ﻟﻄﻠﺐ اﻟﺘﻘّﺮب ﻣﻦ ﷲ }وطﻠﺐ اﻟﺸﻔﺎﻋﺔ‪ ،‬وإّﻻ ﻓﮭﻢ ﻣﻘّﺮون ﺑﺄﻧﮫ ﻻ‬
‫ﻀﱡﺮھُﻢ‬ ‫ﯾﺪّﺑﺮ اﻷﻣﺮ إّﻻ ﷲ ﻛﻤﺎ ﺗﻘّﺪم‪ {.‬ﻓﺈذا طﻠﺐ اﻟﻤﺸﺮك اﻟﺪﻟﯿﻞ ﻋﻠﻰ ذﻟﻚ ﻓﺎﻗﺮأ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ‪َ) :‬وَﯾﻌُﺒﺪوَن ِﻣﻦ دوِن ﱠ‬
‫ﷲِ ﻣﺎ ﻻ َﯾ ُ‬
‫َوﻻ َﯾﻨَﻔُﻌﮭُﻢ( اﻵﯾﺔ ]ﯾﻮﻧﺲ‪ .[18 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬واﻟﱠﺬﯾَﻦ اﺗﱠَﺨﺬوا ِﻣﻦ دوِﻧِﮫ َأوِﻟﯿﺎَء ﻣﺎ َﻧﻌُﺒُﺪھُﻢ ِإّﻻ ِﻟُﯿَﻘﱢﺮﺑﻮﻧﺎ ِإَﻟﻰ ﱠ‬
‫ﷲِ ُزﻟﻔٰﻰ(‬
‫]اﻟﺰﻣﺮ‪.[3 :‬‬
‫‪ .6‬ﻓﺈذا ﻓﮭﻤﺖ ھﺬه اﻟﻤﺴﺄﻟﺔ اﻟﻌﻈﯿﻤﺔ وﺗﺤّﻘﻘﺖ ﻣﻦ أن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر ﻗﺪ ﻋﺮﻓﻮا ﺛﻼث ھﺬه ]‪ [44a‬اﻟﻤﺴﺎﺋﻞ وأﻗّﺮوا ﺑﮭﺎ‪ ،‬اﻷوﻟﻰ أﻧﮫ‬
‫ﻻ ﯾﺨﻠﻖ وﻻ ﯾﺮزق وﻻ ﯾﺨﻔﺾ وﻻ ﯾﺮﻓﻊ وﻻ ﯾﺪّﺑﺮ إّﻻ ﷲ وﺣﺪه ﻻ ﺷﺮﯾﻚ ﻟﮫ‪ ،‬واﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ }أّﻧﮭﻢ ﯾﺘﻘّﺮﺑﻮن ﺑﺎﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ‬
‫واﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء ﻷﺟﻞ ﻗﺮﺑﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﷲ وﺻﻼﺣﮭﻢ‪ ،‬واﻟﺜﺎﻟﺜﺔ{ أﻧﮭﻢ ﯾﻌﺮﻓﻮن أن اﻟﻨﻔﻊ واﻟﻀّﺮ ﺑﯿﺪ ﷲ وﻟﻜﻦ أرادوا ﻣﻦ اﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء‬
‫واﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ اﻟﺘﻘّﺮب ﻣﻦ ﷲ واﻟﺸﻔﺎﻋﺔ ﻋﻨﺪه‪ [44b] ،‬ﻓﺘﺪّﺑﺮ ھﺬا ﺗﺪّﺑﺮًا ﺟّﯿﺪًا‪ ،‬واﻋﺮﺿﮫ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﻠﺒﻚ ﺳﺎﻋﺔ ﺑﻌﺪ ﺳﺎﻋﺔ‪ ،‬ﻓﻤﺎ‬
‫أﻗّﻞ ﻣﻦ ﯾﻌﺮﻓﮫ ﻣﻦ أھﻞ اﻷرض ﺧﺼﻮﺻﺎً ﻣﻦ ﯾّﺪﻋﻲ اﻟﻌﻠﻢ!‬
‫‪ [45a] .7‬ﻓﺈذا ﻓﮭﻤﺖ ورأﯾﺖ اﻟﻌﺠﺐ‪ ،‬ﻓﺎﻋﺮف ﺣﯿﻨﺌﺬ اﻟﻤﺴﺄﻟﺔ اﻟﺮاﺑﻌﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ أن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﻓﻲ زﻣﻦ رﺳﻮل ﷲ ﺻّﻠﻰ‬
‫ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ ﻻ ﯾﺸﺮﻛﻮن داﺋﻤﺎً ﺑﻞ ﺗﺎرة ﯾﺸﺮﻛﻮن وﺗﺎرة ﯾﻮّﺣﺪون ﷲ وﯾﺘﺮﻛﻮن دﻋﺎء اﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ‪ .‬ﻓﺈذا‬
‫ﻛﺎﻧﻮا ﻓﻲ اﻟﺴّﺮاء دﻋﻮھﻢ واﻋﺘﻘﺪوا ﻓﯿﮭﻢ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈذا أﺻﺎﺑﮭﻢ اﻟﻀّﺮ واﻷﻟﻢ واﻟﺸﺪاﺋﺪ ﺗﺮﻛﻮھﻢ وأﺧﻠﺼﻮا • اﻟﺪﯾﻦ وﻋﺮﻓﻮا أن‬
‫اﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ ﻻ ﯾﻤﻠﻜﻮن ﻧﻔﻌﺎً وﻻ ﺿّﺮًا‪ .‬ﻓﺈذا ﻛّﺬب أﺣﺪ ﻓﻲ أّن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر اﻷّوﻟﯿﻦ ﻛﺎﻧﻮا ﯾﺨﻠﺼﻮن • ﻓﻲ ﺑﻌﺾ‬
‫ﺿﱠﻞ َﻣﻦ َﺗﺪﻋﻮَن ِإّﻻ ِإّﯾﺎُه( ]اﻹﺳﺮاء‪ .[67 :‬وﻗﺎل‪َ) :‬وِإذا َﻣ ﱠ‬

‫ﺲ‬ ‫ﺴُﻜُﻢ اﻟ ﱡ‬
‫ﻀﱡﺮ ِﻓﻲ اﻟَﺒﺤِﺮ َ‬ ‫اﻷﺣﯿﺎن‪ ،‬ﻓﺎﻗﺮأ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ‪َ) :‬وِإذا َﻣ ﱠ‬
‫ﺿﱞﺮ َدﻋﺎ َرﺑﱠﮫُ ُﻣﻨﯿًﺒﺎ ِإَﻟﯿِﮫ( اﻵﯾﺔ ]اﻟﺰﻣﺮ‪ .[8 :‬ﻓﮭﺬا اﻟﺬي ﻣﻦ أھﻞ اﻟﻨﺎر ھﻮ اﻟﺬي ﯾﺨﻠﺺ اﻟﺪﯾﻦ • ﺗﺎرة وﯾﻨﺨﻰ‬
‫اِﻹﻧﺴﺎَن ُ‬
‫ﺴﺎَﻋﺔُ َأَﻏﯿَﺮ ﱠ‬
‫ﷲِ َﺗﺪﻋﻮَن ِإن ُﻛﻨُﺘﻢ‬ ‫ﷲِ َأو َأَﺗﺘُﻜُﻢ اﻟ ّ‬
‫ب ﱠ‬
‫اﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ ﺗﺎرة‪ .‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ُ) :‬ﻗﻞ َأَرَأﯾَﺘُﻜﻢ ِإن َأﺗﺎُﻛﻢ َﻋﺬا ُ‬
‫ﺻﺎِدﻗﯿَﻦ( اﻵﯾﺘﯿﻦ ]اﻷﻧﻌﺎم‪.[40-41 :‬‬
‫ﻼ ﺟّﯿﺪًا وأﻟﻘﮭﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﻠﺒﻚ ﺳﺎﻋﺔ ﺑﻌﺪ ﺳﺎﻋﺔ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈن ﻓﮭﻤﺘﮭﺎ رأﯾﺖ‬
‫‪ .8‬ﻓﮭﺬه أرﺑﻊ ﻣﺴﺎﺋﻞ ذﻛﺮھﺎ ﷲ ﻓﻲ ﻛﺘﺎﺑﮫ‪ ،‬ﻓﺘﺄّﻣﻠﮭﺎ ﺗﺄﱡﻣ ً‬
‫اﻟﻌﺠﺐ‪ [46a] .‬ﻓﮭﺬه أرﺑﻊ ﻗﻮاﻋﺪ ﻋﻈﯿﻤﺔ اﻟﻨﻔﻊ ]‪ [46b‬ذﻛﺮھﺎ ذﻛﺮًا واﺿﺤﺎً ﻣﺒّﯿﻨﺎً ﻟﻠﻌﺎرف واﻟﺠﺎھﻞ‪ ،‬وﺿﺮب ﻟﮭﺎ‬
‫‪398‬‬
‫ﺿﺤﮫ‪ .‬وﻟﻜّﻦ اﻟﻤﺸﺮك ﯾﻘﻮل‪ :‬ھﺬا ﻛّﻠﮫ ﺻﺤﯿﺢ‬
‫اﻷﻣﺜﺎل ﺑﺤﯿﺚ ﻻ ﯾﻘﺪر أﺣﺪ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﺸﺮﻛﯿﻦ ﺑﺠﺤﺪ أّن ﷲ ذﻛﺮ ذﻟﻚ وو ّ‬
‫وأﻧﺎ ﻣﻘّﺮ ﺑﮫ‪ ،‬وﻻ أﺷﺮك ﺑﺎ•‪ .‬ﻓﺈذا ﻗﺎل ذﻟﻚ ﻓﮭﮭﻨﺎ أرﺑﻊ ﻣﺴﺎﺋﻞ أﺧﺮ ﯾﺸﮭﺪوﻧﮭﺎ اﻟﻨﺎس‪ ،‬ذﻛﺮھﻢ وأﻧﺜﺎھﻢ‪ .‬اﻟﻘﻮاﻋﺪ اﻷوﻟﻰ‬
‫ذﻛﺮھﺎ ﷲ ﻓﻲ ﻛﺘﺎﺑﮫ‪ ،‬وھﻲ ﻣﻦ اﻹﯾﻤﺎن ﺑﺎﻟﻐﯿﺐ‪ ،‬وأّﻣﺎ ھﺬه اﻷرﺑﻊ ﻓﻠﯿﺴﺖ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻐﯿﺐ ﺑﻞ اﻟﻨﺎس ﯾﺒﺼﺮوﻧﮭﺎ ﺑﺄﻋﯿﻨﮭﻢ‬
‫وﯾﺴﻤﻌﻮﻧﮭﺎ ﺑﺂذاﻧﮭﻢ‪.‬‬
‫‪ [47a] .9‬اﻷوﻟﻰ أّن ﻓﻲ زﻣﺎﻧﻨﺎ ﻣﻦ ﯾﻨﺨﻰ ﺷﻤﺴﺎن وﺣﺴﯿﻦ وإدرﯾﺲ وﺗﺎج وأﻣﺜﺎﻟﮭﻢ وﯾﺪﻋﻮھﻢ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺮﺧﺎء واﻟﺸّﺪة وﯾﻨﺬر‬
‫ﻟﮭﻢ وﯾﻄﻠﺐ ﻣﻨﮭﻢ ﺗﻔﺮﯾﺞ اﻟﻜﺮﺑﺎت وﻗﻀﺎء اﻟﺤﺎﺟﺎت‪ .‬وﻗﺪ ﺗﺒّﯿﻦ ﻟﻚ أّن ﷲ ذﻛﺮ أّن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر ﻓﻲ زﻣﺎن رﺳﻮل ﷲ ﺻّﻠﻰ‬
‫‪2‬‬
‫ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ ﯾﺪﻋﻮن اﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ واﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺮﺧﺎء‪ ،‬وأّﻣﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸّﺪة ﻓﯿﺨﻠﺼﻮن •‪ ،‬ﻓﻀﺎّر ﻣﺸﺮﻛﻲ‬
‫زﻣﺎﻧﻨﺎ أﺷّﺪ ﻣﻦ ﺟﮭﺘﯿﻦ‪ ،‬ﻣﻦ ﺟﮭﺔ أّن اﻷّوﻟﯿﻦ ﯾﻌﺘﻘﺪون ﻓﻲ اﻷﻧﺒﯿﺎء واﻟﻤﻼﺋﻜﺔ وھﺆﻻء ﻓﻲ ﺷﻤﺴﺎن وإدرﯾﺲ وأﻣﺜﺎﻟﮭﻤﺎ‪،‬‬
‫]‪ [47b‬وﻣﻦ ﺟﮭﺔ أّن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر اﻷّوﻟﯿﻦ ﺗﺎرة ﯾﺸﺮﻛﻮن‪ ،‬وھﻮ ﺣﺎل اﻟﺮﺧﺎء‪ ،‬وﺗﺎرة ﯾﻮّﺣﺪون‪ ،‬وھﻮ ﺣﺎل اﻟﺸّﺪة‪ ،‬وﻛّﻔﺎر‬
‫ﻒ ﻣّﻤﻦ ﯾﺸﺮك داﺋﻤﺎً وﻻ ﯾﻔﺼﻠﮫ‬

‫زﻣﺎﻧﻨﺎ ﯾﺸﺮﻛﻮن داﺋﻤﺎً‪ ،‬ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸّﺪة واﻟﺮﺧﺎء‪ .‬واﻟﺬي ﯾﺸﺮك ﺗﺎرة وﯾﻮّﺣﺪ ﺗﺎرة أﺧ ّ‬
‫ﺑﺘﻮﺣﯿﺪ‪.‬‬
‫‪ [57a] .10‬اﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ أّن ھﺆﻻء اﻟﻤﻌﺘﻘﺪ ﻓﯿﮭﻢ‪ ،‬ﺷﻤﺴﺎن وأوﻻده وإدرﯾﺲ وأوﻻده‪ ،‬ﻟّﻤﺎ أﺗﻮھﻢ اﻟﻤﺸﺮﻛﻮن ﺑﺎﻟﻨﺬور وأﺧﺒﺮوھﻢ‬
‫ﺑﺄّﻧﮭﻢ دﻋﻮھﻢ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸّﺪة وأّﻧﮭﻢ ﻓّﺮﺟﻮا ﻋﻨﮭﻢ‪ ،‬ﻗﺒﻠﻮھﻢ وأﺣّﺒﻮھﻢ وﻣﻨﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﯾﻌّﻠﻤﮭﻢ ﺑﺎﻟﻨﺬر ﻗﺒﻞ أن ﯾﺨﺒﺮوه‪ ،‬ﻗﺪ أﺧﺒﺮﺗﮫ‬
‫اﻟﺸﯿﺎطﯿﻦ ﺑﺬﻟﻚ‪ .‬وھﺬه اﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ أّن اﻟﻄﻮاﻏﯿﺖ اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺨﺮج ﯾﺮﺿﻮن ﺑﺬﻟﻚ‪ ،‬ﻻ ﯾﺠﺤﺪه إ ّ‬
‫ﻻ ﻣﻦ ﺟﺤﺪ اﻟﺸﻤﺲ‬
‫ﻓﻲ اﻟﻨﮭﺎر‪.‬‬
‫‪ [58b] .11‬اﻟﺜﺎﻟﺜﺔ أّﻧﺎ وإّﯾﺎھﻢ ﻛّﻞ طﺎﺋﻔﺔ ﺗﻜّﻔﺮ اﻷﺧﺮى‪ ،‬ﻓﻤﻨﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﯾﻘﻮﻟﻮن‪ :‬ارﺗّﺪوا أھﻞ اﻟﻌﺎرض وﻛﻔﺮوا‪ ،‬وﻧﻘﻠﻮﻧﺎ إﻟﻰ‬
‫ﻣّﻜﺔ وإﻟﻰ اﻟﺤّﻜﺎم‪ ،‬وﻧﺤﻦ ﻧّﺪﻋﻲ أّﻧﮭﻢ ﻛّﻔﺎر‪ ،‬أﻋﻨﻲ اﻟﻌﺎﺑﺪ واﻟﻤﻌﺒﻮد‪ ،‬وھﺬه اﻟﺜﺎﻟﺜﺔ ھﻲ اﻟﻤﻘﺎطﻌﺔ‪ 3‬واﻟﻌﺪاوة ﺑﯿﻨﻨﺎ ﻗﺪ‬
‫اﺷﺘﮭﺮت ﻋﻨﺪ اﻟﻤﻮّﺣﺪﯾﻦ واﻟﻤﺸﺮﻛﯿﻦ ﻻ ﯾﻨﻜﺮھﺎ أﺣﺪ ﻣﻨﮭﻢ‪.‬‬
‫‪ [62a] .12‬اﻟﺮاﺑﻌﺔ أّن ﻧﺎﺳﺎً ﻓﻲ اﻟﻌﺎرض ﻣﻊ ھﺬه اﻟﻄﺎﺋﻔﺔ ﻋﻠﯿﻨﺎ ﯾّﺪﻋﻮن أّﻧﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺒﺎطﻞ وأّﻧﺎ ﻛّﻔﺮﻧﺎ اﻟﻤﺴﻠﻤﯿﻦ‪.‬‬
‫‪ [62b] .13‬ﻓﺈذا ﺗﺄّﻣﻠﺖ اﻷرﺑﻊ اﻟﺘﻲ ذﻛﺮھﺎ ﷲ ﻓﻲ ﻛﺘﺎﺑﮫ‪ ،‬ﺛﻢ ﺗﺄّﻣﻠﺖ اﻷرﺑﻊ اﻟﺘﻲ ﺗﺮى ﺑﻌﯿﻨﻚ‪ ،‬ﺗﺒّﯿﻦ ﻟﻚ اﻷﻣﺮ‪ .‬وﷲ أﻋﻠﻢ‪.‬‬
‫‪ 2‬ﻓﻲ اﻷﺻﻞ‪ :‬ﻣﺸﺮﻛﻮن‪.‬‬

‫‪ 3‬ﻓﻲ اﻷﺻﻞ‪ :‬اﻟﻘﺎطﻌﺔ‪.‬‬
‫‪399‬‬
1. [In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.]
2. These are four principles mentioned by God in the unambiguous part of His Book
through which a man may come to know the confession that there is no god but God
and distinguish between Muslims and polytheists. So reflect on them with your whole
heart and attend to them with your understanding, for they are of great benefit.
3. The first [principle] is that God mentions that the unbelievers of the time of the
Messenger of God, whom he killed and whose property he deemed licit, affirmed that
none creates but God, without the participation in this of any angel close [to God] or
prophet sent [with a message]; that none provides sustenance but God and none raises
up and puts down but God; that He alone is the lord of the heavens and the earth; and
that all the prophets and the righteous are His slaves, subject to His power and His
will. When you have understood that this was understood by the unbelievers and that
they did not deny it, and one of the polytheists asks you for the proof of it, recite to
him His words regarding the unbelievers, “Say: ‘Whose is the earth, and whoso is in
it, if you have knowledge?’ They will say, ‘God’s.’ Say: ‘Will you not then
remember?’” – the two verses (Q. 23:84-85). And He says in the Sūra of Yūnus [i.e.,
Q. 10], “Say: ‘Who provides you out of heaven and earth, or who possesses hearing
and sight, and who brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the dead
from the living, and who directs the affair?’ They will surely say: ‘God.’ Then say:
‘Will you not be godfearing?’” (Q. 10:31).
4. When you have understood this [principle] thoroughly—but where is anyone who
understands it? Most people do not understand it!—then get to know the second
400
[principle], which is that despite their knowledge of what has already been stated,
they believed in angels, prophets, and saints for the sake of God on account of their
closeness to Him. When the polytheist has trouble accepting this [principle] and says,
“How can it be that the unbelievers loved the saints and the righteous on account of
their closeness to Him and believed in them?” then recite to him His words regarding
those who believed in the angels, “Upon the day when He shall muster them all
together, then He shall say to the angels, ‘Was it you these were worshipping?’ They
shall say, ‘Glory be to Thee!’ Thou art our Protector, apart from them; nay rather,
they were worshipping the jinn; most of them believed in them’” (Q. 34:40-41). And
He says regarding belief in Prophets, “The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a
Messenger; Messengers before him passed away; his mother was a just woman; they
both ate food” – the two verses (Q. 5:75-76). And He says regarding belief in saints,
“Those they call upon are themselves seeking the means to come to their Lord, which
of them shall be nearer; they hope for His mercy, and fear His chastisement” – the
verse (Q. 17:57).
5. When you have understood this principle, namely, that they drew near to the
righteous on account of their nearness to God, and the polytheist says to you, “I make
requests only of God, but I hope to obtain from the righteous nearness [to Him] by
recourse to them and calling upon them,” then come to understand the third
[principle], which is that God mentions in His Book that the unbelievers did not call
upon the righteous except in seeking nearness to God {and seeking [their]
intercession [with God]; this apart, they affirm that none directs the affair but God, as
already stated.} When the polytheist asks for the proof of this, then recite to him,
401
“They worship, apart from God, what hurts them not neither profits them” – the verse
(Q. 10:18). And He says, “And those who take protectors, apart from Him—‘We only
worship them that they may bring us nigh in nearness to God’” (Q. 39:3).
6. When you have understand this major point and realized that the unbelievers knew
these three points and affirmed them—the first that none creates, provides sustenance,
puts down, raises up, or directs but God, alone without partner; the second {that they
drew near to the angels and the prophets on account of their nearness to God and their
righteousness; and the third} that they knew that benefit and harm are in the hand of
God but wanted from the prophets and the angels nearness to God and intercession
with Him—then reflect thoroughly on this, and come back to it again and again, for
how few are those on earth who know it, especially those who lay claim to
knowledge!
7. When you have understood and are in wonderment, then get to know the fourth point,
which is that the unbelievers who were in the time of the Messenger of God did not
associate other beings with God (yushrikūna) all the time; rather, sometimes they did,
and sometimes they worshipped God as one (yuwaḥḥidūna ʾllāh), abstaining from
calling upon the prophets and the righteous. When they were doing well, they called
upon them and believed in them, but when they were afflicted by harm, pain, and
hardships, they left them and worshipped God exclusively, recognizing that the
prophets and the righteous cannot confer benefits or inflict harm. When someone
denies that the original unbelievers sometimes worshipped God exclusively, then
recite [to him] His words, “And when affliction visits you upon the sea, then there go
astray those on whom you call except Him” (Q. 17:67). And He says, “When some
402
affliction visits a man, he calls upon his Lord, turning to him…” – the verse (Q. 39:8).
This person who belongs to the people of hellfire is the one who at times worships
God exclusively and at times seeks the help of the prophets and the angels. And He
says, “Say: ‘What think you? If God’s chastisement comes upon you, or the Hour
comes upon you, will you call upon any other than God if you speak truly?’…” – the
two verses (Q. 6:40-41).
8. These are four points mentioned by God in His Book, so reflect on them with great
thoroughness, and go over them in your mind again and again; if you understand
them, you will be in wonderment. These are four principles of great benefit that He
has stated in a manner clear and evident to the knowledgeable and the ignorant
[alike], supplying parables in such a way that none of the polytheists can deny that
God has stated this and made it plain. Yet the polytheist will say, “All this is correct,
and I affirm it, but I do not associate other beings with God (wa-lā ushriku biʾllāh)!”
When he says that, here are four further points to which people bear witness, male
and female [alike]. The first principles are mentioned by God in His Book, and they
are a matter of faith in the unseen. As for these four, they are not a matter of the
unseen, but rather they are seen by people with their own eyes and heard by them
with their own ears.
9. The first [principle] is that in our time there are people who seek the help of Shamsān,
Ḥusayn, Idrīs, Tāj, and their like, call upon them in times of comfort and hardship,
make vows to them, and ask them to relieve their troubles and supply their needs. It
has already been made clear to you that God states that the unbelievers in the time of
the Messenger of God called upon the angels, the prophets, and the righteous in times
403
of comfort, but in times of hardship worshipped God exclusively. So the polytheists
of our time are worse from two points of view: from the point of view that the
original [unbelievers] used to believe in the prophets and the angels, whereas these
believe in Shamsān, Idrīs, and their like; and from the point of view that the original
unbelievers sometimes associated other beings with God (yushrikūna)—in times of
comfort—and sometimes worshipped God as one (yuwaḥḥidūna)—in times of
difficulty—whereas the unbelievers of our time always associate other beings with
God—in times of difficulty and comfort. Someone who associates other beings with
God sometimes and worships God as one sometimes is less bad than someone who
always associates other beings with God and does not alternate this with the worship
of God as one.
10. The second [principle] is that those who are believed in, namely, Shamsān and his
sons and Idrīs and his sons, when the polytheists come to them with votive offerings
and tell them that they called on them in times of difficulty and found relief through
them, they [i.e., Shamsān, etc.] receive them and treat them warmly. Some of them
[i.e., Shamsān, etc.] apprise them of what the vows were before they [i.e., the
polytheists] inform them, having been told this by devils. This second [principle],
namely, that the idols that are in al-Kharj have no objection to this, can be denied
only by someone who denies the sun at midday.
11. The third [principle] is that we and they—both sides—declare the other to be
unbelievers. Among them are those who say, “The people of al-ʿĀriḍ have
apostatized and become unbelievers,” and have denounced us to Mecca and to the
rulers. And we maintain that they are unbelievers, that is, the worshipper and the
404
worshipped. This third [point], namely, the cutting off of relations and the enmity that
is between us, has become well-known among the monotheists and the polytheists,
and is not denied by any of them.
12. The fourth [principle] is that some people in al-ʿĀriḍ, in line with this side that is
against us, claim that we are in error and that we have declared Muslims to be
unbelievers.
13. If you reflect on the four [principles] mentioned by God in His Book, and then reflect
on the four that you see with your own eyes, the matter will be clear to you. And God
knows best.
405
‫‪Appendix III‬‬
‫‪Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (1218/1803)1‬‬
‫‪ [2a] .1‬ﺑﺴﻢ ﷲ اﻟﺮﺣﻤﻦ اﻟﺮﺣﯿﻢ‪.‬‬
‫‪ .2‬اﻋﻠﻢ رﺣﻤﻚ ﷲ أّن اﻟﺤﻨﯿﻔّﯿﺔ ﻣّﻠﺔ إﺑﺮاھﯿﻢ أن ﺗﻌﺒﺪ ﷲ ﻣﺨﻠﺼﺎً ﻟﮫ اﻟﺪﯾﻦ‪ ،‬وﺑﺬﻟﻚ أﻣﺮ ﷲ ﺟﻤﯿﻊ اﻟﻨﺎس وﺧﻠﻘﮭﻢ ﻟﮫ‪ ،‬ﻛﻤﺎ‬
‫ﺲ ِإّﻻ ِﻟَﯿﻌُﺒﺪوِن( ]اﻟﺬارﯾﺎت‪ .[56 :‬ﻓﺈن ﻋﺮﻓﺖ أّن ﷲ ﺧﻠﻘﻚ ﻟﻌﺒﺎدﺗﮫ‪ ،‬ﻓﺎﻋﻠﻢ أّن اﻟﻌﺒﺎدة ﻻ‬ ‫ﻗﺎل‪َ) :‬وﻣﺎ َﺧَﻠﻘ ُ‬
‫ﺖ اﻟِﺠﱠﻦ َواِﻹﻧ َ‬
‫ﺗﺴّﻤﻰ ﻋﺒﺎدة إّﻻ ﻣﻊ اﻟﺘﻮﺣﯿﺪ‪ ،‬ﻛﻤﺎ أّن اﻟﺼﻼة ﻻ ﺗﺴّﻤﻰ ﺻﻼة إّﻻ ﻣﻊ اﻟﻄﮭﺎرة‪ ،‬ﻛﻤﺎ ﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) :‬ﻣﺎ ﻛﺎَن ِﻟﻠُﻤﺸِﺮﻛﯿَﻦ‬
‫ﻄﺖ َأﻋﻤﺎُﻟﮭُﻢ َوِﻓﻲ اﻟّﻨﺎِر ھُﻢ ﺧﺎِﻟﺪوَن( ]اﻟﺘﻮﺑﺔ‪.[17 :‬‬ ‫ﷲِ ﺷﺎِھﺪﯾَﻦ َﻋﻠٰﻰ َأﻧُﻔِﺴِﮭﻢ ِﺑﺎﻟُﻜﻔِﺮ أُوٰﻟِﺌ َ‬
‫ﻚ َﺣِﺒ َ‬ ‫َأن َﯾﻌُﻤﺮوا َﻣﺴﺎِﺟَﺪ ﱠ‬
‫ﻓﻤﻦ دﻋﺎ ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ طﺎﻟﺒﺎً ﻣﻨﮫ ﻣﺎ ﻻ ﯾﻘﺪر ﻋﻠﯿﮫ إّﻻ ﷲ ﻣﻦ ﺟﻠﺐ ﺧﯿﺮ أو دﻓﻊ ﺿّﺮ ﻓﻘﺪ أﺷﺮك ﻓﻲ اﻟﻌﺒﺎدة‪ ،‬ﻛﻤﺎ ﻗﺎل‬
‫ﺐ َﻟﮫُ ِإﻟٰﻰ َﯾﻮِم اﻟِﻘﯿﺎَﻣِﺔ َوھُﻢ َﻋﻦ ُدﻋﺎِﺋِﮭﻢ ﻏﺎِﻓﻠﻮن( ]اﻷﺣﻘﺎف‪:‬‬ ‫ﺿﱡﻞ ِﻣﱠﻤﻦ َﯾﺪﻋﻮ ِﻣﻦ دوِن ﱠ‬
‫ﷲِ َﻣﻦ ﻻ َﯾﺴَﺘﺠﯿ ُ‬ ‫ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وَﻣﻦ َأ َ‬
‫‪ .[5‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬واﻟﱠﺬﯾَﻦ َﺗﺪﻋﻮَن ِﻣﻦ دوِﻧِﮫ ﻣﺎ َﯾﻤِﻠﻜﻮَن ِﻣﻦ ِﻗﻄﻤﯿٍﺮ ِإن َﺗﺪﻋﻮھُﻢ ﻻ َﯾﺴَﻤﻌﻮا ُدﻋﺎَءُﻛﻢ َوَﻟﻮ َ‬
‫ﺳِﻤﻌﻮا َﻣﺎ‬
‫اﺳَﺘﺠﺎﺑﻮا َﻟُﻜﻢ ۖ َوَﯾﻮَم اﻟِﻘﯿﺎَﻣِﺔ َﯾﻜُﻔﺮوَن ِﺑِﺸﺮِﻛُﻜﻢ ۚ َوﻻ ُﯾَﻨﱢﺒُﺌ َ‬

‫ﻚ ِﻣﺜُﻞ َﺧﺒﯿٍﺮ( ]ﻓﺎطﺮ‪ .[13-14 :‬ﻓﺄﺧﺒﺮ ﺗﺒﺎرك وﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ أّن‬
‫دﻋﺎء ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ ﺷﺮك‪ ،‬ﻓﻤﻦ ﻗﺎل ﯾﺎ رﺳﻮل ﷲ أو ﯾﺎ اﺑﻦ ﻋّﺒﺎس أو ﯾﺎ ﻋﺒﺪ اﻟﻘﺎدر أو ﯾﺎ ﻣﺤﺠﻮب أو ﻏﯿﺮھﻢ زاﻋﻤﺎً أّﻧﮫ‬
‫ﺑﺎب ﺣﺎﺟﺘﮫ إﻟﻰ ﷲ وﺷﻔﯿﻌﮫ ﻋﻨﺪه ووﺳﯿﻠﺘﮫ إﻟﯿﮫ ﻓﮭﻮ اﻟﻤﺸﺮك اﻟﺬي ﯾﮭﺪر دﻣﮫ وﻣﺎﻟﮫ إّﻻ أن ﯾﺘﻮب ﻣﻦ ذﻟﻚ‪[2b] .‬‬
‫وﻛﺬﻟﻚ ﻣﻦ ذﺑﺢ ﻟﻐﯿﺮ ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ أو ﻧﺬر ﻟﻐﯿﺮ ﷲ أو ﺗﻮّﻛﻞ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ أو رﺟﺎ ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ أو ﺧﺎف ﺧﻮف اﻟﺸّﺮ ﻣﻦ‬
‫ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ أو اﻟﺘﺠﺄ إﻟﻰ ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ أو اﺳﺘﻌﺎن ﺑﻐﯿﺮ ﷲ ﻓﯿﻤﺎ ﻻ ﯾﻘﺪر ﻋﻠﯿﮫ إّﻻ ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻓﮭﻮ أﯾﻀﺎً ﻣﺸﺮك‪ .‬وﻣﺎ ذﻛﺮﻧﺎ ﻣﻦ‬
‫ك ِﺑِﮫ َوَﯾﻐِﻔُﺮ ﻣﺎ دوَن ٰذِﻟ َ‬

‫ﻚ ِﻟَﻤﻦ َﯾﺸﺎُء( ]اﻟﻨﺴﺎء‪:‬‬ ‫ﷲَ ﻻ َﯾﻐِﻔُﺮ َأن ُﯾﺸَﺮ َ‬
‫أﻧﻮاع اﻟﺸﺮك ھﻮ اﻟﺬي ﻗﺎل ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻓﯿﮫ‪ِ) :‬إﱠن ﱠ‬
‫‪ .[116‬وھﻮ اﻟﺬي ﻗﺎﺗﻞ رﺳﻮل ﷲ ﺻّﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ ﻣﺸﺮﻛﻲ اﻟﻌﺮب ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وأﻣﺮھﻢ ﺑﺈﺧﻼص اﻟﻌﺒﺎدة ﻛّﻠﮭﺎ •‬
‫ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪.‬‬
‫‪1‬‬
‫‪This version of the Arbaʿ qawāʿid fīʾ ʾl-dīn was presented to the people of Mecca upon the Wahhābī‬‬
‫‪conquest of the city in 1218/1803. It is preserved in the account of the conquest by ʿAbdallāh ibn‬‬
‫)‪Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1242/1826f), who describes it as a brief epistle (risāla mukhtaṣara‬‬
‫‪for the commoners to learn and study. (See above, ch. 3, pp. 180-81.) The printed version of ʿAbdallāh’s‬‬
‫‪account (al-Durar al-saniyya, 1:222-41) omits the Arbaʿ qawāʿid; it is reproduced here from ʿAbdallāh ibn‬‬
‫‪Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Risālat ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ms. Mecca,‬‬
‫‪Maktabat al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf, ʿAqāʾid 1349.‬‬
‫‪406‬‬
‫‪ .3‬وﯾّﺘﻀﺢ ﻟﻚ ذﻟﻚ ﺑﻤﻌﺮﻓﺔ أرﺑﻌﺔ ﻗﻮاﻋﺪ ذﻛﺮھﺎ ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻓﻲ ﻛﺘﺎﺑﮫ‪ .‬أّوﻟﮭﺎ أن ﺗﻌﻠﻢ أن اﻟﻜّﻔﺎر اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﻗﺎﺗﻠﮭﻢ رﺳﻮل ﷲ‬
‫ﺻّﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ ﻛﺎﻧﻮا ﯾﻘّﺮون أّن ﷲ ھﻮ اﻟﺨﺎﻟﻖ اﻟﺮازق اﻟﻤﺤﯿﻲ اﻟﻤﻤﯿﺖ اﻟﻤﺪّﺑﺮ ﻟﺠﻤﯿﻊ اﻷﻣﻮر‪ ،‬واﻟﺪﻟﯿﻞ ﻋﻠﻰ‬
‫ﺖ‬ ‫ﺴﻤَﻊ َوا َ‬

‫ﻷﺑﺼﺎَر َوَﻣﻦ ُﯾﺨِﺮُج اﻟَﺤﱠﻲ ِﻣَﻦ اﻟَﻤﱢﯿ ِ‬ ‫ض َأﱠﻣﻦ َﯾﻤِﻠ ُ‬
‫ﻚ اﻟ ﱠ‬ ‫ﺴﻤﺎِء َوا َ‬
‫ﻷر ِ‬ ‫ذﻟﻚ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ُ) :‬ﻗﻞ َﻣﻦ َﯾﺮُزُﻗُﻜﻢ ِﻣَﻦ اﻟ ﱠ‬
‫ﷲُ َﻓُﻘﻞ َأَﻓﻼ َﺗﺘﱠﻘﻮَن( ]ﯾﻮﻧﺲ‪ .[31 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪ُ) :‬ﻗﻞ ِﻟَﻤِﻦ‬
‫ﺴَﯿﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ﱠ‬ ‫ﺖ ِﻣَﻦ اﻟَﺤﱢﻲ َوَﻣﻦ ُﯾَﺪﱢﺑُﺮ ا َ‬
‫ﻷﻣَﺮ َﻓ َ‬ ‫َوُﯾﺨِﺮُج اﻟَﻤﱢﯿ َ‬
‫ش اﻟَﻌﻈﯿِﻢ‬
‫ب اﻟَﻌﺮ ِ‬
‫ﺴﺒﻊِ َوَر ﱡ‬
‫ت اﻟ ﱠ‬
‫ﺴﻤﺎوا ِ‬ ‫ﺳَﯿﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ِ ﱠ•ِ ُﻗﻞ َأَﻓﻼ َﺗَﺬﱠﻛﺮوَن ُﻗﻞ َﻣﻦ َر ﱡ‬
‫ب اﻟ ﱠ‬ ‫ض َوَﻣﻦ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ ِإن ُﻛﻨُﺘﻢ َﺗﻌَﻠﻤﻮَن َ‬ ‫ا َ‬
‫ﻷر ُ‬
‫ﺳَﯿﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ِ ﱠ•ِ ُﻗﻞ‬

‫ﺷﻲٍء َوھَُﻮ ُﯾﺠﯿُﺮ َوﻻ ُﯾﺠﺎُر َﻋَﻠﯿِﮫ ِإن ُﻛﻨُﺘﻢ َﺗﻌَﻠﻤﻮَن َ‬ ‫ﺳَﯿﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ِ ﱠ•ِ ُﻗﻞ َأَﻓﻼ َﺗﺘﱠﻘﻮَن ُﻗﻞ َﻣﻦ ِﺑَﯿِﺪِه َﻣَﻠﻜﻮ ُ‬
‫ت ُﻛﱢﻞ َ‬ ‫َ‬
‫َﻓﺄَّﻧٰﻰ ُﺗﺴَﺤﺮوَن( ]اﻟﻤﺆﻣﻨﻮن‪.[84-89 :‬‬
‫‪ .4‬إذا ﻋﺮﻓﺖ ھﺬه اﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪة وأﺷﻜﻞ ﻋﻠﯿﻚ ﻛﯿﻒ أﻗّﺮوا ‪ 2‬ﺑﮭﺬا ﺛﻢ ﺗﻮّﺟﮭﻮا إﻟﻰ ﻏﯿﺮ ﷲ ﯾﺪﻋﻮﻧﮫ ﻓﺎﻋﺮف اﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪة اﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ‬
‫أّﻧﮭﻢ ﯾﻘﻮﻟﻮن ﻣﺎ ﺗﻮّﺟﮭﻨﺎ إﻟﯿﮭﻢ ودﻋﻮﻧﺎھﻢ إّﻻ ﻟﻄﻠﺐ اﻟﺸﻔﺎﻋﺔ ﻋﻨﺪ ﷲ‪ ،‬ﻧﺮﯾﺪ ﻣﻦ ﷲ ﻻ ﻣﻨﮭﻢ‪ ،‬ﻟﻜﻦ ﺑﺸﻔﺎﻋﺘﮭﻢ‪ .‬واﻟﺪﻟﯿﻞ‬
‫ﷲِ ُﻗﻞ َأُﺗَﻨﱢﺒﺌﻮَن‬

‫ﺷَﻔﻌﺎُؤﻧﺎ ِﻋﻨَﺪ ﱠ‬
‫ﻀﱡﺮھُﻢ َوﻻ َﯾﻨَﻔُﻌﮭُﻢ َوَﯾﻘﻮﻟﻮَن ٰھُﺆﻻِء ُ‬ ‫ﻋﻠﻰ ذﻟﻚ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬وَﯾﻌُﺒﺪوَن ِﻣﻦ دوِن ﱠ‬
‫ﷲِ ﻣﺎ ﻻ َﯾ ُ‬
‫ﺳﺒﺤﺎَﻧﮫُ َوَﺗﻌﺎﻟٰﻰ َﻋّﻤﺎ ُﯾﺸِﺮﻛﻮَن( ]ﯾﻮﻧﺲ‪ .[18 :‬وﻗﺎل ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬واﻟﱠﺬﯾَﻦ‬

‫ض ُ‬ ‫ت َوﻻ ِﻓﻲ ا َ‬
‫ﻷر ِ‬ ‫ﱠ‬
‫ﷲَ ِﺑﻤﺎ ﻻ َﯾﻌَﻠُﻢ ِﻓﻲ اﻟ ﱠ‬
‫ﺴﻤﺎوا ِ‬
‫ﷲَ َﯾﺤُﻜُﻢ َﺑﯿَﻨﮭُﻢ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺎ ھُﻢ ﻓﯿِﮫ َﯾﺨَﺘِﻠﻔﻮَن ِإﱠن ﱠ‬

‫ﷲَ ﻻ‬ ‫ﷲِ ُزﻟﻔﻰ ِإﱠن ﱠ‬
‫اﺗﱠَﺨﺬوا ِﻣﻦ دوِﻧِﮫ َأوِﻟﯿﺎَء ﻣﺎ َﻧﻌُﺒُﺪھُﻢ ِإّﻻ ِﻟُﯿَﻘﱢﺮﺑﻮﻧﺎ ِإَﻟﻰ ﱠ‬
‫ب َﻛّﻔﺎٌر( ]اﻟﺰﻣﺮ‪.[3 :‬‬

‫َﯾﮭﺪي َﻣﻦ ھَُﻮ ﻛﺎِذ ٌ‬
‫‪ .5‬إذا ﻋﺮﻓﺖ ھﺬا ﻓﺎﻋﺮف اﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪة اﻟﺜﺎﻟﺜﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ أّن ﻣﻨﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ طﻠﺐ اﻟﺸﻔﺎﻋﺔ ﻣﻦ اﻷﺻﻨﺎم وﻣﻨﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﺗﺒّﺮأ ﻣﻦ اﻷﺻﻨﺎم‬
‫وﺗﻌّﻠﻖ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ ﻣﺜﻞ ﻋﯿﺴﻰ وأّﻣﮫ‪ .‬واﻟﺪﻟﯿﻞ ﻋﻠﻰ ذﻟﻚ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪) :‬أُوٰﻟِﺌ َ‬
‫ﻚ اﻟﱠﺬﯾَﻦ َﯾﺪﻋﻮَن َﯾﺒَﺘﻐﻮَن ِإﻟٰﻰ َرﱢﺑِﮭُﻢ‬
‫ﻚ ﻛﺎَن َﻣﺤﺬوًرا( ]اﻹﺳﺮاء‪ .[57 :‬واﻟﺮﺳﻮل‬

‫ب َرﱢﺑ َ‬ ‫اﻟَﻮﺳﯿَﻠﺔَ َأﱡﯾﮭُﻢ َأﻗَﺮ ُ‬
‫ب َوَﯾﺮﺟﻮَن َرﺣَﻤَﺘﮫُ َوَﯾﺨﺎﻓﻮَن َﻋﺬاَﺑﮫُ ِإﱠن َﻋﺬا َ‬
‫ﺻّﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ ﻟﻢ ﯾﻔّﺮق ﺑﯿﻦ ﻣﻦ ﻋﺒﺪ اﻷﺻﻨﺎم وﻣﻦ ﻋﺒﺪ اﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ‪ ،‬ﺑﻞ ﻛّﻔﺮ اﻟﻜّﻞ وﻗﺎﺗﻠﮭﻢ ﺣّﺘﻰ ﻛﺎن اﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻛّﻠﮫ‬
‫•‪.‬‬
‫‪] .6‬إذا ﻋﺮﻓﺖ ھﺬا ﻓﺎﻋﺮف[ اﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪة اﻟﺮاﺑﻌﺔ‪ ،‬وھﻲ أﻧﮭﻢ ﻣﺨﻠﺼﻮن • ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸﺪاﺋﺪ وﯾﻨﺴﻮن ﻣﺎ ﯾﺸﺮﻛﻮن‪ ،‬ﻛﻤﺎ ﻗﺎل‬
‫ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ‪َ) :‬ﻓﺈِذا َرِﻛﺒﻮا ِﻓﻲ اﻟُﻔﻠِﻚ َدَﻋُﻮا ﱠ‬

‫ﷲَ ُﻣﺨِﻠﺼﯿَﻦ َﻟﮫُ اﻟّﺪﯾَﻦ َﻓَﻠّﻤﺎ َﻧّﺠﺎھُﻢ ِإَﻟﻰ اﻟَﺒﱢﺮ ِإذا ھُﻢ ُﯾﺸِﺮﻛﻮَن( ]اﻟﻌﻨﻜﺒﻮت‪.[65 :‬‬
‫وأھﻞ زﻣﺎﻧﻨﺎ ﯾﺨﻠﺼﻮن اﻟﺪﻋﺎء ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸﺪاﺋﺪ ﻟﻐﯿﺮ ﷲ‪ .‬إذا ﻋﺮﻓﺖ ھﺬا‪ 3‬ﻓﺎﻋﺮف أن اﻟﻤﺸﺮﻛﯿﻦ اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﻛﺎﻧﻮا ﻓﻲ زﻣﻦ‬
‫‪2‬‬
‫ﻓﻲ اﻷﺻﻞ‪ :‬أﻗّﺮ‪.‬‬
‫‪3‬‬
‫ﻓﻲ اﻷﺻﻞ‪ :‬ھﺬه‪.‬‬
‫‪407‬‬
‫اﻟﻨﺒّﻲ ﺻّﻠﻰ ﷲ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ وﺳّﻠﻢ أﺧ ّ‬
‫ﻒ ﺷﺮﻛﺎً ﻣﻦ ﻋﻘﻼء زﻣﺎﻧﻨﺎ ھﺬا‪ ،‬ﻷّن أوﻟﺌﻚ ﻣﺨﻠﺼﻮن • ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸﺪاﺋﺪ وھﺆﻻء ﯾﺪﻋﻮن‬
‫ﻣﺸﺎﯾﺨﮭﻢ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸّﺪة واﻟﺮﺧﺎء‪ .‬وﷲ أﻋﻠﻢ‪.‬‬
‫‪408‬‬
1. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
2. Know, may God have mercy on you, that pure monotheism (al-ḥanīfiyya), the
religion of Abraham, is that you worship God exclusively. Of this God has
commanded all humankind, and for this He has created them. As He says, “I have not
created the jinn and mankind except to worship Me” (Q. 51:56). If you know that
God has created you to worship Him, then know that worship is not called worship
without monotheism (tawḥīd), as prayer is not called prayer without purification. As
God says, “It is not for the polytheists to inhabit God’s places of worship, witnessing
against themselves unbelief; those—their works have failed them, and in hellfire they
shall dwell forever” (Q. 9:17). Therefore, whoso calls on something apart from God,
asking it to provide a benefit or to protect from harm as only God is able, has
associated other beings with God in worship (ashraka fī ʾl-ʿibāda). As God says,
“And who is further astray than he who calls, apart from God, upon such a one as
shall not answer him till the Day of Resurrection? Such as are heedless of their
calling” (Q. 46:5). And God says, “And those you call upon, apart from Him, possess
not so much as the skin of a date-stone. If you call upon them, they will not hear your
prayer, and if they heard, they would not answer you; and on the Day of Resurrection
they will disown your association. None can tell thee like One who is aware” (Q.
35:13-14). He thus indicates that to call on other than God is polytheism; therefore,
whoso says, “O Messenger of God,” or “O Ibn ʿAbbās,” or “O ʿAbd al-Qādir,” or “O
Maḥjūb” or someone else, claiming that he is the gateway to God through which his
need will be satisfied (bāb ḥājatihi ilā ʾllāh), his intercessor before God, and his
409
means to God, he is a polytheist whose blood and property are licit until he repents of
that. Likewise, whoso slaughters for other than God, makes vows to other than God,
relies on other than God, put his hope in other than God, fears evil from other than
God, takes refuge in other than God, or seeks help from other than God in what only
God is capable of—he is also a polytheist. And the forms of polytheism that we have
mentioned are those concerning which God says, “God forgives not that aught should
be with Him associated; less than that He forgives to whomsoever He will” (Q.
4:116). And it is that on account of which the Messenger of God fought the
polytheists among the Arabs, commanding them to direct all worship to God.
3. This will become clear to you by coming to know four principles mentioned by God
in His Book. The first is that you know that that the unbelievers whom the Messenger
of God fought affirmed that God is the Creator, the Sustainer, the Giver of the Life,
the Bringer of Death, and the One Who Directs all Affairs. The proof of this is His
statement, “Say: ‘Who provides you out of heaven and earth, or who possesses
hearing and sight, and who brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the
dead from the living, and who directs the affair?’ They will surely say, ‘God’” (Q.
10:31). And God says, “Say: ‘Whose is the earth, and whoso is in it, if you have
knowledge?’ They will say, ‘God’s.’ Say: ‘Will you not then remember?’ Say: ‘Who
is the Lord of the seven heavens and the Lord of the mighty throne?’ They will say,
‘God’s.’ Say: ‘Will you not then be godfearing?’ Say: ‘In whose hand is the dominion
of everything, protecting and Himself unprotected, if you have knowledge?’ They
will say, ‘God’s’ Say: ‘How then are you bewitched?’” (Q. 23:84-89).
410
4. When you have come to know this principle and it is confusing to you how they
affirmed this and then turned to those apart from God, calling on them, then get to
know the second principle, which is that that they said, “We have only turned to them
and called on them to ask for intercession with God; we seek [salvation] from God—
not from them—but by means of their intercession.” The proof of this is His
statement, “They worship, apart from God, what neither harms them nor benefits
them, and they say, ‘These are our intercessors with God.’ Say: ‘Will you tell God
what He knows not either in the heavens or in the earth?’ Glory be to Him! High be
He exalted above that they associate!” (Q. 10:18). And God says, “And those who
take allies, apart from Him—‘We only worship them that they may bring us nigh in
nearness to God’—surely God shall judge between them touching that whereon they
are at variance. Surely God guides not him who is a liar, unthankful’” (Q. 39:3).
5. When you have come to know this, then get to know the third principle, which is that
among them were those who sought intercession from idols, and among them were
those who disavowed idols and clung to righteous persons, such as Jesus and his
mother. The proof of this is His statement, “Those they call upon are themselves
seeking the means to come to their Lord, which of them shall be nearer; they hope for
His mercy, and fear His chastisement. Surely thy Lord's chastisement is a thing to
beware of” (Q. 17:57). The Messenger did not distinguish between those who
worshipped idols and those who worshipped righteous persons; rather he declared all
of them to be unbelievers and fought [all of] them, until the religion was God’s
entirely.
411
6. [When you have come to know this, then get to know] the fourth principle, which is
that in times of hardship they worshipped God alone and forgot that which they were
associating with God (mā yushrikūna). As God says, “When they embark in the ships,
they call on God, worshipping Him exclusively; but when He has delivered them to
the land, they associate others with Him” (Q. 29:65). [By contrast,] the people of our
time direct their supplication to other than God in times of hardship. When you have
come to know this, know then that the polytheists in the time of the Prophet were less
severe in polytheism than the learned people of our time. This is because those
worshipped God exclusively in times of hardship, while these call on their shaykhs in
times of hardship and in times of ease. And God knows best.
412
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MANIFEST ENMITY:

THE ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND PERSISTENCE OF

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY

NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

Adviser: Bernard A. Haykel

This dissertation presents a critical reexamination of Wahhābism (al-Wahhābiyya), the

origins, development, and persistence over a nearly two-hundred-year span, namely,

Wahhābism adamantly required its adherents to manifest enmity (ʿadāwa) to those

Muslims deemed polytheists.

As is examined in detail, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb grounded his doctrine in the

earlier scholars’ views, he adapted them in a more extremist direction. Furthermore, he

launched a religio-political movement to eliminate shirk, following the example of the

Prophet Muḥammad and the early Muslim community.

as inspiration, for a new form of Islamic activism.

about Wahhābism and Saudi Arabia I owe to him.

my work. His scholarship—aimed at “reconstitut[ing] the past from the fragmentary

rest on smaller things”—has for me been a model of historical writing.

In transliterating Arabic, I have generally followed the system of the Encyclopedia of

following mention of the Prophet Muḥammad is here shortened to ṣ. In translating from

Created using Esri data in GQIS

Abstract ......................................................................................................................... iii

Note on Conventions .................................................................................................... vii

Genealogy of the Āl al-Shaykh .................................................................................... viii

Genealogy of the Āl Suʿūd............................................................................................. ix

Map of the Arabian Peninsula ......................................................................................... x

Map of Najd .................................................................................................................. xi

Chapter 1: The Early Refutation of Wahhābism ............................................................ 33

Chapter 5: The Persistence of Classical Wahhābism (1238-1351/1823-1932) ..............277

Appendix II: Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (c. 1158/1745).....................................................397

Appendix III: Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (1218/1803) .......................................................406

In 1405/1984, ʿĀṣim al-Barqāwī, a young Jordanian of Palestinian descent living in

fourteenth/mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Names such as Muḥammad ibn

In al-Barqāwī’s presentation, the obligation to manifest enmity to the unbelievers

title of the book, “The Religion of Abraham.” According to al-Barqāwī, as according to

Muḥammad, who is depicted as having been uncompromisingly hostile to the polytheists

Barqāwī says, it takes the form of jihād.4

titled al-Durar al-saniyya fī ʾl-ajwiba al-Najdiyya (“The Splendid Pearls of Najdī

reading” (thamarat hādhihi ʾl-muṭālaʿa).7

uncompromising and activist nature. The main tenets of Wahhābism included

excommunication (takfīr) and association and dissociation (al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ),

legislative prerogative by establishing man-made laws; obeying them was thus

Wahhābism could, in his view, light the way to jihādī revolution.

salafiyya al-jihādiyya). Over time, al-Maqdisī acquired a reputation as the most

Wahhābism and Classical Wahhābism

to claim as their own, namely, Wahhābism as it was from the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth

Wahhābism will occasionally be referred to here as “classical Wahhābism.”

by the enemies of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792), Wahhābism’s

Shortly after he began preaching in central Arabia in the mid-twelfth/mid-eighteenth

following the example of the early Muslims in the first/seventh century.

enterprise quickly resurfaced in a second Saudi state (1238-1305/1823-87). This

deeply unpopular among those to whom it applies. Wahhābism is therefore by no means

merely as Muslims (Muslimūn) and monotheists (muwaḥḥidūn), casting their opponents

as unbelievers (kuffār) and polytheists (mushrikūn). It is therefore not really an option to

Wahhābī sect” (al-ṭāʾifa al-Muḥammadiyya al-Wahhābiyya). It is therefore inaccurate to

assume that the term Wahhābī is inherently insulting.12

Yet another alternative to Wahhābism is Salafism (al-salafiyya), a term that some

movement. To be sure, Wahhābism can rightly be seen as part of a larger Salafī

movement in Sunnī Islam. To my mind, Salafism is a movement that combines a

Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in significant ways, as will be seen.

propose here a modest terminological innovation, namely, classical Wahhābism. The

Wahhabiyya” (“old Wahhābism”) as distinguished from the new Wahhābism developed