Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was born in 1703 to a family of scholars in the small oasis town of ’Uyayna in the Central Arabian region known as the Najd. He traveled widely as a young man, pursuing his religious studies in Basra and Medina. He was trained in the most conservative of the four legal traditions of Islam—the Hanbali school—and was profoundly influenced by Ibn Taymiyya, a fourteenth-century theologian. Ibn Taymiyya argued for a return to the practices of the early Muslim community of the Prophet Muhammad and his first successors, or caliphs. He condemned all mystical practices associated with Sufism as deviations from the true path of Islam. Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab returned home to the Najd with a clear set of beliefs and the ambition to put them into practice. At first the passionate young reformer enjoyed the support of the ruler of his home town. However, his views soon proved controversial. When Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab ordered the public execution of a woman for adultery, leaders in neighboring towns and key trade partners of ’Uyayna were appalled—and alarmed. This was not Islam as the townspeople of ?Uyayna had known and practiced their faith. They pressured their ruler to kill the radical theologian, but he chose to exile Ibn ?Abd al-Wahhab instead. The exiled young theologian with the dangerous ideas did not have far to wander. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was welcomed by the ruler of the nearby oasis of al-Dir‘iyya, Muhammad ibn Sa’ud. Modern Saudis date the founding of their first state to this historic meeting in 1744–1745, when the two men agreed that the reformed Islam preached by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab would be observed by the Saudi ruler and his followers. The “Dir’iyya Agreement” set out the basic tenets of the movement that would come to be called Wahhabism.

At the time the movement was forming, the Wahhabis were widely misunderstood by the outside world. They were described as a new sect and accused of unorthodox beliefs. Quite the contrary, their beliefs were extremely orthodox, calling for a return to the pristine Islam of the Prophet and his successors, the caliphs. The Wahhabis sought to draw a line around the third century after the revelation of the Qur’an, and to ban all subsequent developments as “pernicious innovation.” The single most important tenet of Wahhabism was the unique quality of God, or, as they put it, the “oneness of God.” Any association of lesser beings with God was denounced as polytheism (in Arabic, shirk), for if one believed God had partners or agents, one believed in more than one God. Islam, like many other religions, is a dynamic faith and has undergone significant changes over time. Over the centuries, a number of institutions had developed in Islam that fell foul of this absolute tenet of Wahhabism, the unity or oneness of God. There was, for instance, a widespread veneration of saints and holy men in the Arab world, from the companions of the Prophet Muhammad to the humblest of local village holy men, each with his own shrine or sacred tree. (These shrines are still maintained in many parts of the Arab world today.) The Wahhabis objected to Muslims praying to holy men to intercede on their behalf with God, as this compromised God’s oneness. They argued that greater reverence was shown to outstanding Muslims by following their example rather than worshiping at their graves. The shrines to saints, and the annual pilgrimages marking a given saint’s day, were thus an early target of Wahhabi attack. Muhammad Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab chopped down sacred trees and shattered the tombs of holy men with his own hands. This horrified mainstream Sunni Muslim society, which saw such desecration of tombs as a mark of disrespect to some of the most revered figures in Islam. Along with his abhorrence of saint worship, Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab was particularly intolerant of the mystical practices and beliefs associated with Sufism. Islamic mysticism takes many forms, from mendicant ascetics to the famous whirling dervishes. Sufis use a wide range of techniques, from fasting to chanting and dancing to self-immolation, to reach the ecstasy of mystical union with the Creator. Organized into orders that convened regular prayer sessions, Sufism was a fundamental part of Ottoman religious and social life. Some orders built fine lodges and attracted the elites of society, and others called for complete abstinence and abandonment of worldly goods. Certain trades and professions were linked to particular Sufi orders. It is hard to think of a religious institution more closely connected to Ottoman society. Yet the Wahhabis believed that all who engaged in Sufism were polytheists for aspiring to mystical union with their Creator. It was a very serious charge. By defining much of Ottoman Islam as polytheistic, the Wahhabis set themselves on a collision course with the empire. Although Orthodox Islam decrees tolerance of other monotheistic faiths, such as Judaism and Christianity, it is absolutely intolerant of polytheism, or the belief in many gods. Indeed, all good Muslims have a duty to persuade polytheists of the error of their ways and convert them to the true path of Islam. Failing that, Muslims have a duty of jihad to fight and eliminate polytheism. By characterizing mainstream practices such as Sufism and the veneration of saints as polytheistic, Wahhabism posed a direct challenge to the religious legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire. The challenge of Wahhabism was easy for the Ottomans to overlook so long as the movement remained confined to the central Arabian region of the Najd, beyond Ottoman frontiers. Between 1744 and the death of Muhammad ibn Sa’ud in 1765, expansion of the Wahhabi movement was limited to the oasis towns of central Najd. It wasn’t until the late 1780s that Wahhabism reached Ottoman frontiers in southern Iraq and the Hijaz. In the 1790s the Ottomans took notice of the new threat to their Arab provinces and urged their governor in Baghdad to take action. The pasha of Baghdad delayed sending his troops into the hostile terrain of the Arabian peninsula for as long as he could. It was not until 1798 that he finally mustered a 10,000-man army to fight the Wahhabis. The Ottoman forces did not fare well in Wahhabi territory; they soon were surrounded and forced to negotiate a truce with Sa‘ud ibn ’Abd al-’Aziz, the Saudi commander. In agreeing to the truce, the Wahhabis made no promises to respect the towns and villages of Ottoman Iraq in the future. The pasha of Baghdad had serious grounds for concern. The Wahhabis pursued their crusade into Ottoman territory for the first time in 1802, when they attacked the southern Iraqi shrine city of Karbala. Karbala holds a special position in Shiite Islam, for it was here that Husayn ibn ’Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was killed by the forces of the Umayyad caliph in 680 AD. The martyred Husayn is venerated as the third of twelve infallible leaders, or imams, of Shi’ite Islam, and the mosque built on the site of his tomb was lavishly decorated with a gilt dome. Thousands of pilgrims would come each year to lay precious gifts on the tomb of the imam and undertake acts of devotion in his honour?just the sort of saint veneration that the Wahhabis found most abhorrent. The Wahhabi attack on Karbala was chillingly brutal. The chronicler Ibn Bishr gives a contemporary description of the carnage:The Muslims [i.e., Wahhabis] surrounded Karbala and took it by storm. They killed most of the people in the markets and houses. They destroyed the dome above Husayn’s grave. They took away everything they saw in the mausoleum and near it, including the coverlet decorated with emeralds, sapphires and pearls which covered the grave. They took away everything they found in the town—possessions, arms, clothes, fabric, gold, silver and precious books. One cannot count their spoils. They stayed there for just one morning and left after midday, taking away all the possessions. Nearly 2,000 people were killed in Karbala.²⁴