Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Official-

dom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989); 

S. D. Goitein, The Origin of the Vizierate and Its True 

Character (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968); C. L. Klausner, The 

Seljuk Vezirate: A Study of Civil Administration, 1055–1194

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973); Ann 

Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1981); Yaacov Lev, State and Soci-

ety in Fatimid Egypt (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991).

vizier

  

703  J

---

704

AF

J:

Wahhabism

 

(Arabic: Wahhabiyya)

Named after its founder, m

Uhammad

 

ibn

  a

bd

al

-W

ahhab

 (d. 1792), Wahhabism is the most 

important form of militant Islamic reformism to 

arise in the Arabian Peninsula. The designation 

was first coined with derogatory connotations by 

Muslim opponents and observers in Europe and 

North America. It refers to a set of doctrines and 

practices and to a sectarian movement comprised 

of those who embrace them. Allied to the clan 

of the Al Saud from the Najd in central Arabia, 

the Wahhabis, who prefer to call themselves the 

muwahhidun (unitarians, or those who affirm 

the unity of God), played an essential role in the 

formation of the modern state of s

aUdi

  a

rabia

.

They have had a significant impact on the ways 

Muslims understand and practice their religion in 

many parts of the world today.

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was educated by his father 

and other 

Ulama

 in the h

anbali

  l

egal

  s

chool

,

which was the chief school followed by the tribal 

communities of the Najd. His thinking was also 

shaped by his encounters with reformist scholars 

in Mecca and Medina, and by his antipathy for 

local religious practices associated with 

saint

shrines,  s

hiism

, and folk medicine. Around 1740 

he began to proclaim publicly his reformist mes-

sage about what he believed to be the true Islam. 

Basing his ideas on a literal reading of the Quran 

and hadith, his teaching affirmed the absolute 

oneness of God (

tawhid

), adherence to the 

sUnna

of the prophet Muhammad, and performance of 

basic duties of Islamic worship (prayer, almsgiv-

ing, fasting, and hajj). Performance of the F

ive

p

illars

 alone was not sufficient in his opinion, 

however. Any belief or practice that fell outside 

this narrow definition of Islam was held suspect 

as an illegitimate innovation (

bidaa

) or 

idolatry

(

shirk

) that could put a Muslim, even an obser-

vant Muslim, outside the bounds of the faith. Ibn 

Abd al-Wahhab also called upon Muslims to reject 

belief in intercession of saints and Shii Imams; he 

wanted them to cease practices such as praying to 

the dead and the 

Jinn

, performing votive sacrifices, 

worshipping sacred trees, and building shrines. 

Indeed, a hallmark of Wahhabi religiosity is the 

destruction of domed tombs and the burial of the 

dead in unmarked graves. The sectarian character 

of Wahhabism was not based only upon rejection 

of local religious practices that were linked to Shi-

ism and s

UFism

, however. It also was opposed to 

key doctrines held by most Sunni ulama, such as 

adherence (taqlid) to the cumulative tradition of 

jurisprudence (

fiqh

), recognition of the sunna of 

the c

ompanions

 

oF

 

the

 p

rophet

 and the four first 

caliphs on a par with that of Muhammad, and 

W

---

acceptance of a Muslim’s faith on the basis only of 

declaration of the 

shahada

 and performance of the 

Five Pillars of worship, without regard to other 

beliefs and practices.

Many in the Najd did not readily embrace Ibn 

Abd al-Wahhab’s condemnation of their dearly 

held traditional beliefs and practices, including 

many in his own home town, which had expelled 

him. Others, however, appear to have been open 

to the doctrinal and legal simplicity of his mes-

sage. Without doubt, his reformist agenda bene-

fited greatly from the alliance that he entered with 

Muhammad ibn Saud (d. 1765), the head of the 

clan of the Al Saud of Diriyya, a settlement located 

near the oasis town of Riyadh. The Saudi 

shaykh

supported the preacher’s campaign to realize his 

reformist vision through proselytization (

daawa

) 

and warfare (

Jihad

), in exchange for obtaining 

the right to collect zakat (alms) and obtain reli-

gious legitimation for Saudi rule throughout the 

Najd. The first Saudi state, which was created in 

1744 and lasted until 1818, was one governed 

both by the Wahhabi understanding of the sharia 

and tribal custom. It survived the deaths of both 

Muhammads, and the alliance between the reli-

gious and the political was carried on by their 

heirs, who extended Saudi-Wahhabi rule to the 

Shii region of Hasa in the east (1780) and to the 

holy cities of Mecca and Medina (1803–04) in the 

west. Their jihad depended on the recruitment 

of young warriors who came from settlements 

that had accepted Saudi-Wahhabi rule and were 

attracted to the cause of Islam and the promise of 

booty. Additional raids were conducted into Iraq, 

where the Shii holy city of k

arbala

 was pillaged 

and the shrine of Husayn ibn Ali (d. 680) was 

destroyed, and Syria. In 1814 Ottoman authori-

ties retaliated by invading the Najd, destroying 

Diriyya, and taking the Saudi leader, Muhammad 

ibn Saud’s great grandson Abd Allah, to Istanbul, 

where he was executed in 1818.

A second, weakened Saudi state based in 

Riyadh subsequently arose and lasted until 1891, 

when it was brought down by a rival tribal con-

federacy led by the Rashidis of Hail. The third 

Saudi-Wahhabi state was created by Abd al-Aziz 

ibn Saud (1880–1953), who used his clan’s alli-

ance with the Wahhabis to establish the Kingdom 

of Saudi Arabia in 1932 and place it under sacred 

law, the sharia. Ibn Saud had relatives among the 

Al al-Shaykh, descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, 

and he had been educated in religious matters by 

them. When the Saudis retook Riyadh in 1902, 

the Wahhabis swore allegiance to Ibn Saud and 

proclaimed him their 

imam

, or community leader. 

Among his strongest supporters were the mutaw-

waa, teachers and ritual specialists who had been 

propagating Wahhabi doctrines and practices 

through madrasas in the oasis settlements of 

the Najd since the 18th century. In exchange for 

supporting Ibn Saud, they claimed the authority 

to enforce the sharia and punish violators. They 

stood in the forefront of a revival of the Wahhabi 

brand of Islam that swept across the Arabian Pen-

insula under Ibn Saud’s leadership. They had also 

indoctrinated a new fighting force known as the 

Ikhwan (Brotherhood), recruited from b

edoUin

Abd al-Aziz’s Wahhabi army (the Ikhwan) on the 

march in eastern Arabia, 1911

(Courtesy of the Saudi Infor-

mation Office)