The leader of the Saudi restoration was Turkī ibn ʿAbdallāh Āl Suʿūd (r. 1238–49/1823–34), a grandson of Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd’s. He is regarded as the founder of what came to be known as the second Saudi state (1238–1305/1823–87). Turkī was able to rally support among the various Najdī towns, entering Riyadh, which he made his…

Expansion Beyond Najd Al-Aḥsāʾ In 1207/1792f, the Wahhābīs signaled their intention to annex the province, not just raid it. That year, after leading a raid that killed six hundred of the Banū Khālid, the ruling tribe in the area, Suʿūd dispatched two messengers to the people of al-Aḥsāʾ, urging them to submit to the rule…

In his letters to ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, he writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has falsely attributed things to the scholars of Islam (iftarā ʿalā ahl al-ʿilm), including Ibn al-Qayyim,9 and 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…

Ḥanbalī Theology Unlike their Sunnī counterparts in the Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, and Ḥanafī schools of law, the Ḥanbalīs were largely united in their rejection of what is often called speculative theology (ʿilm al-kalām, or simply kalām). Kalām is a rationalist school of thought that employs a dialectical technique and philosophical terminology (e.g., body, accident, substance) to…

In his letters to ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar, he writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has falsely attributed things to the scholars of Islam (iftarā ʿalā ahl al-ʿilm), including Ibn al-Qayyim,9 and 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…

The Arabian Peninsula in the eighteenth century: Najd in the eighteenth century: The Āl al-Shaykh: The Āl Suʿūd: Wahhābī epistles quoted in early refutations: Dated or roughly datable early refutations of Wahhābism: Undated early refutations of Wahhābism:

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was born in 1115/1703f in the settlement of al-ʿUyayna,11 by all accounts the leading town in Najd in the earlier eighteenth century in terms of wealth, population, and political heft. The ruler of alʿUyayna at the time of his birth was ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Muʿammar (d. 1138/1725f), a member of…

In the 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/early 1740s, a number of heated anti-Wahhābī tracts appeared almost simultaneously in and around the Arabian Peninsula. In the Ḥijāz, al-Aḥsāʾ, and southern Iraq,…

The proximity of the Day of Judgment (yawm al-dīn) is emphasized in numerous passages in the Qurʾān, especially in the so-called “Meccan” Sūrahs. According to Nicolai Sinai, these eschatological motifs are among the earliest elements of the qurʾānic proclamations (Nicolai Sinai, “The Eschatological Kerygma of the Early Qur’an,” in Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity:…