IBN ʿABD AL-WAHHĀB, MUḤAMMAD

IBN ʿABD AL-WAHHĀB, MUḤAMMAD (ah 1115–1206/1703–1792 ce), Islamic fundamentalist teacher who established the Wahhābi movement. He was born in Najd, a central region in Arabia. His father was the judge in the town of al-ʿUyaynah and also taught jurisprudence according to the strict Ḥanbali legal school and traditions. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began his study of the Qurʾān and basic Ḥanbalī texts under his father but set out on travels "in search of knowledge" when he was about twenty years old. He went first to Mecca and Medina, where he studied mainly with ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sayf and Muḥammad Ḥāyat al-Sindi. ʿAbd Allāh was a Ḥanbali scholar from Najd who had settled in Medina. Through him, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb became tied to the traditions of Syrian Ḥanbalī scholarship. Ibn Sayf transmitted the course of studies of the seventeenth-century Syrian teacher ʿAbd al-Bāqi al-Ḥanbalī and instructed him in the works of the great Ḥanbalī jurist and theologian Aḥmad ibn Taymīyah (d. 1328). Al-Sindi was not a Ḥanbalī scholar but a scholar of traditions who came from India; in Medina, he was part of a group of teachers who inspired a spirit of socio-moral revival in students from many areas. It was this basic education, with his father and after, that prepared Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for his life's mission: the purification and renewal of Islamic society.

He went next to the city of Basra and the region of al-Ḥasā in eastern Arabia. Although he continued his studies, he also began his mission of purification. In Basra in particular, he opposed popular religious customs as well as the beliefs of the large Shīʿī Muslim population. Some sources suggest that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also went to Persia, Syria, and even Egypt; this is, however, highly unlikely, for the sources closest to his lifetime make no mention of these broader travels.

Sometime between 1731 and 1737, he returned to Najd and lived in Ḥuraymilā, where his father was at the time. Following his father's death in 1740, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb returned to al-ʿUyaynah and received the support of the local ruler for his purification efforts. Soon forced to leave by local opposition, however, he moved to al-Darʿīyah; there the local leader, Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, swore in 1744 to protect Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and to support his mission. This alliance created a new state based on the fundamentals of Islam.

People from many areas were persuaded by the teachings and writings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. In addition, as conflicts arose, the military power of the new state brought victory and further expansion. Following Ibn Saʿūd's death in 1765, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb remained a major counselor to his successor, ʿAbd al-Azīz, and continued to preach and write until his death in 1792.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb left many works. Although he addressed varied subjects, his writings on tawḥīd, or the oneness of God, are the most prominent; the major text in this group is Kitāb al-tawḥīd. For him, tawḥīd was more than a monotheistic affirmation: it was a rejection of "saint worship" and veneration of anything other than God. A summary of his teachings is presented in Al-uṣūl al-thalāthah wa-adillatuha (The three roots and their proofs). Some of his sermons have been published in Khuṭab al-shaykh (Sermons of the shaykh), while some legal decisions are presented in the history written by Ibn Ghannām.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb created a movement of renewal at a time of ferment within the Islamic world. During the eighteenth century there were many Muslim groups working for socio-moral reconstruction on the basis of a strict interpretation of Islamic fundamentals. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was not unique, but he was the most rigorous of the major leaders in rejecting medieval "innovations" and the most intractable in opposing compromises with popular religion.

The immediate result of his work was the creation of a state community in Arabia dedicated to the implementation of his mission. This state was militarily defeated in the nineteenth century but experienced a revival in the twentieth, when it became the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's influence, however, goes beyond this political aspect. Islamic renewal in its Wahhābi form inspired later Muslim thinkers and activists in a variety of areas. For much of the nineteenth century, "Wahhābism" played a role in the Islamic world similar to that of "Khomeinism" in the last part of the twentieth. In intellectual terms, what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote and taught about themes such as tawḥīd became part of the fundamentalist mood in modern Islam. His work was respected by a wide spectrum of thinkers ranging from the relatively fundamentalist Rashīd Rīda in Egypt to the South Asian modernist scholar Muḥammad Iqbāl.

See Also

Wahhābīyah.

Bibliography

The basic primary sources include the writings of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb preserved in ʿUthmān ibn Bishr's Kitāb ʿunwān al-majd fī ta ʿrīkh Najd (Baghdad, 1328/1910), and Ḥusayn ibn Ghannām's Rawḍat al-afkār (Riyadh, 1368). Although early Western discussions made use of the anonymous Lam ʿ al-shihāb fī sīrat Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, edited by Ahmad M. Abu Hikima (Beirut, 1967), it is not a reliable source. Important secondary sources include ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣāliḥ al-ʿUthaymin's Al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ḥayātuhu wa-fikruhu (Riyadh, n. d.); Henri Laoust's Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-al-Din Aḥmad B. Taimīya (Cairo, 1939), pp. 506–540; and the many books on Arabia by H. St. John Philby, including Arabia (New York, 1930). The most thorough study of his life and thought is Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhābi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Threat (New York, 2004). Surveys that indicate his place in modern Islamic history are Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (New York, 2000) and John Obert Voll's Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Syracuse, N.Y., 1994).

John O. Voll (1987 and 2005)