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 the Āl Muʿammar family that had reigned in the town since the fifteenth century.13 As was noted above, each of Najd’s subregions was dominated by a particular town.

1. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was trained to be a religious scholar from a young age, as was his brother, Sulaymān. According to Ibn Ghannām, he received his early education at the feet of his father in al-ʿUyayna. At the age of twelve, in approximately 1127/1715f, he married (or perhaps contracted a marriage) and performed the ḥajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca; afterward he returned to al-ʿUyayna to resume his studies with his father. Sometime later he would leave Najd for a course of study abroad.
2. Ibn Ghannām relates that he traveled first to Medina, then to Basra, and finally to al-Aḥsāʾ, the bulk of his time studying (akthar lubthihi li-akhdh al-ʿilm) being spent in Basra.

According to Ibn Ghannām, it was during his time in Basra that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began spreading his religious views, preaching among certain people (baʿḍ al-nās) in his personal gathering space (majlis).28 The people in Basra would engage him in debate over the matter of visiting graves and supplicating the dead. Ibn Ghannām quotes him as saying: “Some of the polytheists of Basra would come to me and relate their specious arguments [shubuhāt] to me. In this telling, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was beginning to articulate his views on tawḥīd, but only in a limited fashion; he was not yet seeking to lead a movement or cause serious trouble

A more dramatic episode in Basra is related by Ibn Bishr, who suggests that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was preaching there in a more outspoken fashion. According to Ibn Bishr, when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb condemned certain forms of unbelief and religious innovation (ashyāʾ min al-shirkiyyāt waʾl-bidaʿ) in Basra, he was persecuted and driven out of the city, nearly dying from thirst on his way to the nearby town of al-Zubayr. He was saved by a traveler who gave him drink and carried him the rest of the way on his donkey. While this story of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb being violently driven out of Basra is possibly true, it is more likely that he preached discreetly and without fanfare in the city, as indicated by Ibn Ghannām. Ibn Bishr was writing considerably later than Ibn Ghannām, and the Basran scholars who later refuted Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb do not mention his presence in the city, which would seem to confirm that he kept a low profile there.

the alleged polytheistic practices in Najd and elsewhere, including supplicating (duʿāʾ) and seeking the help of (istighātha) saints and prophets, seeking blessings from trees and stones, wearing rings and strings to ward off evil, and sorcery and astrology.

Refutations and Epistles: The al-ʿUyayna Period

In al-ʿUyayna, according to both accounts, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb continued gaining new followers, both in the town and across al-ʿĀriḍ. In a sign of his growing support, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began to take action in his campaign against shirk by destroying certain objects of veneration. On one occasion, he set out with Ibn Muʿammar and a group of men to destroy the domes and mosques built above the graves of certain of the Prophet’s Companions in al-Jubayla, an area near Riyadh. One of these was the tomb of Zayd ibn alKhaṭṭāb, the brother of the second caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his followers also cut down certain trees in al-ʿĀriḍ that were being venerated by the people of Najd. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is said to have taken an axe to one of these trees himself.

The earliest extant refutation of Wahhābism that is dated was written by a Shāfiʿī scholar in Basra named Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Qabbānī (fl. 1159/1746) (. Little is known about al-Qabbānī apart from the names of some of his books (Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 377–79, 382), his Shāfiʿī allegiance (Cook, “Written and Oral Aspects,” 162), and the year of his birth, 1108/1696f (al-Ḥusaynī, “Makhṭūṭ nādir”). Al-Qabbānī was the most prolific anti-Wahhābī scholar during the al-ʿUyayna years of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s preaching, authoring three refutations. The first of these, titled Faṣl al-khiṭāb fī radd ḍalālāt Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (The Decisive Statement in Refutation of the Errors of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), was completed in mid-Shawwāl 1155/mid-December 1742, according to the lone surviving manuscript in Baghdad. Sometime thereafter an unidentified person (baʿḍ al-nās) asked him to compose a commentary on it in order to expose its errors and defend the practices related to the cult of saints.

1. In the epistle Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb begins by condemning the association of other beings in worship with God (al-shirk biʾllāh) and warning that the destination for those who commit shirk is hellfire, regardless of one’s piety and good works on earth. He goes on to explain that the supplication of saints and prophets is undoubtedly a form of shirk and gives a few examples of such illicit veneration:
   • So reflect, may God have mercy on you, on the supplication of other than God [duʿāʾ ghayr Allāh] 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 comes to it with his wealth in order to avert robbery [bi-mālihi ʿan nahbihi]; and such and such a person is afflicted by hardship on land or on sea, so he seeks the help of [fa-yastaghīthu] ʿAbd al-Qādir or Shamsān, or a prophet or a saint, that he may relieve him of this hardship.
2. In the Kalimāt epistle, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb urges his readers to desist from appealing to the ṭawāghīt and calls on them to worship God alone. It does not matter, he argues, whether one believes in one all-powerful God while making appeals and vows to these holy men; what matters is that God is unified in practice. Believers must direct all forms of worship, including supplication, to God alone, otherwise they are committing shirk.

For al-Qabbānī, as for the other Shāfiʿī refuters, the practices of istighātha and tawassul were perfectly legitimate, being supported both by the ḥadīth and by reason. On the reason-based argument used by al-Qabbānī and his Ashʿarī forebears, see Lav, “Ashʿarism, Causality, and the Cult of Saints.” As Lav explains it, “[T]his Ashʿarī argument states that when a Muslim appeals to a deceased prophet or saint for aid (istighātha), the request is implicitly, and in truth, directed to Allāh, as He is the true agent ( fāʿil) in the cosmos” (256). Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, by targeting those who engage in istighātha and tawassul, was effectively pronouncing takfīr on the global Muslim community (umma). But for al-Qabbānī, as for most of the refuters, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s meaning was perfectly clear: he was dismissing the vast majority of Muslims as polytheists. In some passages of Faṣl al-khiṭāb, al-Qabbānī ascribes Ibn ʿAbd alWahhāb’s proclivity for takfīr to Satanic influence, as when he claims that “Satan the damned seduced him and whispered to him, ‘You have been filled with knowledge and wisdom and are more knowledgeable of God than anyone in this age, and this Muḥammadan umma has disbelieved and strayed from the path of guidance, worshipping idols.” He also suggests that Ibn ʿAbd alWahhāb is reviving the teachings of Musaylima, the so-called false prophet of Najd who led a revolt against the first caliph of Islam during the “wars of apostasy” in the seventh century. At one point in his refutation, al-Qabbānī asks Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 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,” al-Yamāma being a geographic designation roughly equivalent to Najd.

More often al-Qabbānī identified the source of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s heretical views as twofold: (1) his willingness to engage in ijtihād and (2) his imitation of Ibn Taymiyya. The term ijtihād refers to the use of independent reasoning to examine the foundational Islamic texts, the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth, for the purpose of issuing legal judgments. A practitioner of ijtihād is known as a mujtahid. As another anti-Wahhābī refuter, the Palestinian Ḥanbalī Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Saffārīnī (d. 1188/1774), later put it, “[W]hosoever seeks to exercise ijtihād in these times . . . has sought the impossible” (man rāma ʾl-ijtihād fī hādhihi ʾl-azmina . . . fa-qad rāma ʾl-muḥāl).94 He compared Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s purported claim of ijtihād to Musaylima’s claim of prophecy (al-Saffārīnī, Jawāb, 27–28).

Al-Qabbānī, like many of the refuters, accused Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of purporting to exercise ijtihād, an accusation that the latter vehemently denied. In Faṣl al-khiṭāb, after summarizing the contents of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s Kalimāt epistle, al-Qabbānī concludes by saying that “he determined this decisively and stated it absolutely, not confining himself to one of the madhhabs of the imāms [i.e., Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ibn Ḥanbal]. The second alleged source of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s heretical views, according to al-Qabbānī, was Ibn Taymiyya. Indeed, a major theme of al-Qabbānī’s refutation is that the Najdī preacher had taken his ideas regarding istighātha and tawassul from Ibn Taymiyya, in so doing engaging in “reprehensible emulation” (al-taqlīd al-radīʾ) of the earlier scholar. Addressing Ibn ʿAbd alWahhāb, he writes: “It is absolutely clear that you have emulated Ibn Taymiyya in what the most distinguished scholars have counted among his faults and his fictions [hafawātihi wa-khurāfātihi]. You have followed him in this abominable doctrine of his [maqālatihiʾl-shanīʿa] that the scholars of Islam declared to be unspeakable.” By his “abominable doctrine,” al-Qabbānī meant Ibn Taymiyya’s position on the cult of saints. The Kalimāt epistle even appeared to alQabbānī to be something of a Taymiyyan plagiarism.

He writes that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had begun sending epistles to distant lands (arsala ilā ʾl-buldān al-baʿīda) calling on people to worship God alone and that a man from al-Aḥsāʾ had responded with a refutation: “He sent an epistle to alAḥsāʾ, an epistle to Basra, and an epistle to al-Shām. A number of trustworthy persons informed me that one of the distinguished scholars of al-Aḥsāʾ [baʿḍ fuḍalāʾ al-Aḥsāʾ] undertook to refute his epistle. However, I have not come across that epistle or that refutation.” While there were several scholars in alAḥsāʾ who refuted Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb around this time, including the Ḥanbalī ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayrūz (See the fragment in Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 196b–98a. On ʿAbdallāh ibn Fayrūz, see Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:652–53; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 4:487–89), the Shāfiʿī ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf (On Ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, see Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 291–92; al-Nuwayṣir, alMuʿāraḍa, 208–23; al-ʿUṣfūr, Fatāwā ʿulamāʾ al-Aḥsāʾ, 2:499), Mālikī ʿĪsā ibn Muṭlaq (d. 1198/1783f), the most well known of these refuters in al-Aḥsāʾ was the Ḥanbalī Muḥammad ibn ʿAfāliq (d. 1163/1750). It is likely that al-Qabbānī was referring to a refutation by Ibn ʿAfāliq known as Tahakkum al-muqallidīn fīmuddaʿītajdīd al-dīn (The Emulators’ Ridicule of the One Claiming to Renew the Religion), which circulated widely and would be quoted in many of the subsequent refutations

The line attributed to Ibn Taymiyya is found in al-Ḥajjāwī’s al-Iqnāʿ, the Ḥanbalī legal manual. Al-Ḥajjāwī has it as follows, in a section devoted to the acts and beliefs that cause one to apostatize (bāb ḥukm al-murtadd): “[Whosoever] 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.” Ibn ʿAfāliq does not explicitly say to what end Ibn ʿAbd alWahhāb is using this line, but one can infer that it is to pronounce takfīr on those who set up intermediaries (wasāʾiṭ) between themselves and God in the way described. It is wrong to follow this opinion, says Ibn ʿAfāliq, as it was a minority one that got Ibn Taymiyya into a great deal of trouble in his day. He describes it as “an opinion unique to Ibn Taymiyya [min al-masāʾil allatī infarada bihā] and [one] for which he was tried and imprisoned and subject to the fierce opposition of the scholars of his time and those who came after.”122 Like the Shāfiʿī al-Qabbānī, the Ḥanbalī Ibn ʿAfāliq was accusing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb both of ijtihād and of unwarranted reliance on Ibn Taymiyya. As will be seen, it was very unusual for a Ḥanbalī refuter to criticize Ibn Taymiyya in this way. It was more common for Ḥanbalīs to downplay the severity of Ibn Taymiyya’s views, seeking to rescue him from association with Wahhābism. This was the approach that Ibn ʿAfāliq, in his later refutations, would follow.

1. Unlike al-Qabbānī and Ibn ʿAfāliq, al-Ṭandatāwī avoids mentioning Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb by name. Also unlike them, his refutation was not in response to one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s epistles. Rather, as he writes at the beginning of Kitāb radʿ al-ḍalāla, he learned of the unnamed man’s many heresies from written reports (khuṭūṭ) by the scholars of Najd that reached him in Mecca. In these reports, he explains, he learned of a person who pronounces takfīr on holy men, including ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, as well as their devotees; prohibits people from practicing tawassul of the Prophet, his Companions, and his family members; reprimands people for visiting the Companions of the Prophet buried in al-Jubayla; and opposes the taqlīd of the great scholars of previous generations, instructing everyone to draw directly from the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth. 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) (Ibid., 393, 402. For the ḥadīth, see Ibn Mājah, Sunan, 2:1303 (Kitāb al-fitan, bāb al-sawād al-aʿẓam, no. 3950). Cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 45:200 (ḥadīth Abī Baṣra al-Ghifārī, no. 27224); al-Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:466 (Kitāb al-fitan, bāb mā jāʾa fī luzūm al-jamāʿa, no. 2167); Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Sunan, 4:98 (Kitāb al-fitan, dhikr al-fitan wa-dalāʾilihā, no. 4253).
2. Later on, al-Ṭandatāwī calls for action to be taken against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to stop him from spreading his heresies further. “It is incumbent on those Muslim rulers [wulāt al-Islām] who are capable of doing so,” he writes, “to restrain him and hinder him till he repents of his horrific acts (Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 401). One of them, the Ḥanafī Amīn ibn Ḥasan al-Mīrghanī (d. 1161/1748), writes that if Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is insane (in kāna majnūnan), then he should be detained and isolated, but “if he is of sound mind, then he is an unbelieving heretic [kāfir zindīq] whose killing is a duty for all who are capable of getting hold of him (Ibid., 409. On al-Mīrghanī, see Abū ʾl-Khayr, al-Mukhtaṣar, 134–35).

The author of another encomium, a Ḥanafī named Asʿad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAtāqī (d. 1169/1755f), states that if Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is insane (in kāna bihi junūn), then “he should be imprisoned, beaten, and treated with medication for insanity”; but if he is not insane, and if he refuses to repent, then “it has become clear that he is a misled misleader [ḍāll muḍill] who should be killed after being publicly denounced so as to deter the likes of him. . . . If my hands could reach him I would kill him myself.” (. Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 411–12. On al-ʿAtāqī, see Abū ʾl-Khayr, al-Mukhtaṣar, 309). A few years later, in late Muḥarram 1158/late February 1745, the Moroccan-born Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Maghribī (d. 1170/1756f), a Mālikī scholar in Medina, would react similarly to a report that came his way, declaring that “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 without delay”.

1. The bulk of the epistle consists of a list of fifteen of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alleged innovations and errors (min bidaʿihi wa-ḍalālātihi), which may be summarized as follows:
   • 1. He has destroyed the tombs in al-Jubayla, including that of Zayd ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, as well as a mosque there.
   • 2. He has burned the Ṣūfī books Dalāʾil al-khayrāt and Rawḍ al-rayāḥīn.137
   • 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 said to be buried, and replace the gilt waterspout (mīzāb) of the Kaʿba with a wooden one.
   • 4. He has said that Muslims have ceased to be Muslims for six hundred years (al-nās min sitt miʾat sana laysū ʿalā shayʾ).
   • 5. He has pronounced takfīr on those who do not agree with everything that he says (man lam yuwāfiqhu fī kull mā qāla).
   • 6. He has written an epistle to us saying that none of his teachers possessed his understanding of the religion.
   • 7. He has pronounced takfīr on Ibn al-Fāriḍ and Ibn ʿArabī, two well-known Ṣūfī scholars of the thirteenth century.
   • 8. He has pronounced takfīr on the descendants of the Prophet among us (al-sāda ʿindanā min āl al-rasūl) on account of their accepting vows (li-ajl annahum yaʾkhūdhūna ʾl-nadhr).
   • 9. He has said, against the view that “difference among the imāms is a mercy” (ikhtilāf al-aʾimma raḥma), that “difference among them is an abomination” (ikhtilāfuhum naqma). 10. He has deemed 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 him a sinner ( fāsiq).
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   • 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 pronounced takfīr on those who say things to ward off the evil of the jinn (dafʿ sharr al-jinn) in the course of ritual slaughter.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s comment here is doubly provocative. Not only does he claim that none of his teachers understood the meaning of “there is no god but God,” but he suggests that his knowledge of tawḥīd was given to him by God in the form of a blessing (khayr). This was nearly to suggest a divine origin of his religious knowledge. In their view, he was brashly dismissing previous generations of Muslims as ignorant unbelievers and behaving as pseudoprophet, believing himself to be the bearer of divine revelation. Thus in Kashf al-ḥijāb, al-Qabbānī describes Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as “the pretenderprophet of al-ʿUyayna” (mutanabbī ʾl-ʿUyayna) and “the pretender-prophet of the lands of al-Yamāma” (mutanabbī nawāḥī ʾl-Yamāma). According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he writes, mankind was in a state of disbelief for six hundred years, “until the pretender-prophet of al-ʿUyayna was sent [by God] calling to the religion of Islam.

In Jumādā I 1158/June 1745, approximately ten months after finishing Kashf al-ḥijāb, al-Qabbānī put the finishing touches on his third refutation of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, which he titled Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl wa-rafḍ ʿaqāʾid alḍullāl (Criticizing the Principles of Error and Rejecting the Doctrines of the Misleaders) (al-Qabbānī, Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl, f. 63a. On this manuscript, which is the original version in al-Qabbānī’s own hand, see Mach, Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts, 225 (no. 2636); Traboulsi, “Early Refutation,” 379; Cook, “Written and Oral Aspects,” 162f). This new Wahhābī epistle was a statement of four principles (qawāʿid), though unlike the one refuted by Ibn ʿAfāliq, this one was devoted to the issues of tawḥīd and shirk. The epistle in question was an early version of what would come to be known in the Wahhābī tradition as Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn (Four Principles Concerning Religion), which in various forms became one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s most influential of catechisms.155 The Arbaʿ qawāʿid fī ʾl-dīn is cast as an epistle for distinguishing between Muslims and polytheists,156 and in it Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb seeks to show that the shirk of the modern-day cult of saints is the same as—and in some ways worse than—the shirk of the pagan Arabs at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad.

There followed a long war between al-Dirʿiyya and Riyadh. From this point forward, the Wahhābīs were regularly fighting their opponents in warfare, which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb contended was legitimate jihād against polytheist unbelievers.

1. A similar statement is found in a refutation by Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz (d. 1216/1801), the Ḥanbalī scholar in al-Aḥsāʾ who emerged as one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s most outspoken critics in the al-Dirʿiyya period (On him, see al-ʿAtīqī, Tarjamat Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz; Ibn Sanad, Sabāʾik al-ʿasjad, 290–98; Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-wābila, 3:969–80; Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 3:882–86; alQāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 2:226–28; al-Nuwayṣir, al-Muʿāraḍa, 224–33; al-ʿAssāfī, Tarājim alfuḍalāʾ, ff. 43a–59a. Al-ʿAtīqī, a student of his, depicts Ibn Fayrūz as “an unsheathed sword against the people of innovation” (sayf maslūl ʿalā ahl al-bidaʿ), claiming that he was so active in taking on “the innovation of the people of al-ʿĀriḍ” (bidʿat ahl al-ʿĀriḍ) that Ibn ʿAbd alWahhāb placed a bounty on his head (Tarjamat Muḥammad ibn Fayrūz, ff. 75a–76b).
2. In an undated refutation written in the context of the war between al-Dirʿiyya and Riyadh, Ibn Fayrūz accuses the Wahhābīs of fighting the people of Riyadh and others on the grounds that they are polytheists. “Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb,” he writes, has pronounced takfīr on a great many Muslims, including the people of Riyadh and others. He has deemed their blood and property licit [waabāḥa dimāʾahum wa-amwālahum], and he has gone about the lands making pacts with their people to fight the people of Riyadh and others. He has deemed their blood and property licit, and made them out to be as the polytheists whom God commanded His Prophet to fight (Ibn Fayrūz, al-Radd ʿalā man kaffara ahl al-Riyāḍ, 25–26). Ibn Fayrūz condemns Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for comparing his opponents to the unbelievers of the Prophet’s time, for the people of Najd, Ibn Fayrūz argues, unlike the pagan Arabs, confess that “there is no god but God”; they pray, pay the alms tax (zakāt), and believe in the afterlife, the Qurʾān, and the Prophet; and they do not deny the hour (al-sāʿa) or the resurrection (albaʿth) or assign partners to God. In their behavior, Ibn Fayrūz observes, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his followers 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 [maqām rasūl Allāh ṣ wa-aṣḥābihi], whom God commanded to fight the unbelievers.”

• Similarly, a certain Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Najdī, in Medina, would accuse Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of assuming the prophetic office (maqām al-nubuwwa), of casting his followers as emigrants and supporters (al-muhājirīn waʾl-anṣār), and of likening their warfare to the jihād of the Prophet and his Companions (jihād al-ṣaḥāba maʿa rasūl Allāh) (Ibn Dāwūd, al-Ṣawāʿiq waʾl-ruʿūd, ff. 82b–83a, Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh, 1:424, 428).

• While earlier refuters had accused Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb of behaving like a prophet, in the al-Dirʿiyya period they accuse him of imitating the Prophet Muḥammad in the conduct of warfare. Al-Saffārīnī condemns Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb for demanding that people either follow his religious opinions or be fought, saying, “He has deemed licit the blood of those who do not follow him in his error [wa-abāḥa dimāʾ man lam yattabiʿhu ʿalā ḍalālatihi]” (al-Saffārīnī, al-Ajwiba al-najdiyya, 129).

• In saying this, he compares Ibn ʿAbd alWahhāb (hādhā ʾl-aḥmaq) not to the Prophet but 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. An even more fitting comparison, he goes on to say, is the early Khārijite leader Nāfiʿ ibn al-Azraq (d. 65/685). As he explains, the Azāriqa Khārijite sect, like the Wahhābīs, was known for killing Muslims and deeming their blood, property, women, and children licit (Ibid., 128).

• Sulaymān emerged at this time as one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s foremost refuters in Najd. The only extant refutation by Sulaymān takes the form of a long letter to Ḥasan ibn ʿĪdān (d. 1202/1787f), a man from Ushayqir in al-Washm who appears to have been living in al-Dirʿiyya at this time (Āl Bassām, ʿUlamāʾ Najd, 2:51–52; al-Qāḍī, Rawḍat al-nāẓirīn, 3:37).

• In 1306/1889, Sulaymān’s letter was printed in Bombay as alṢawāʿiq al-ilāhiyya fī ʾl-radd ʿalā ʾl-Wahhābiyya (The Divine Thunderbolts in Refutation of Wahhābism), a title that was likely invented by the publisher.

• Sulaymān’s letter is one of the longest refutations to appear thus far. Unlike some of the others, it does not quote Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s words directly, though it engages with several of his arguments.

In refuting Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb on the points of takfīr and qitāl, Ibn al-Amīr makes many of the same arguments as the refuters before him, including noting that the Prophet forbade killing those who confess that “there is no god but God” (al-Amīr, Irshād dhawī ʾl-albāb 113-116). Like some of the Ḥanbalī refuters, Ibn al-Amīr draws attention to the distinction between al-shirk al-akbar and al-shirk al-aṣghar, which he relates to two types of unbelief (kufr): unbelief in creed (kufr iʿtiqād) and unbelief in action (kufr ʿamal). Those who call on saints and make vows to them, among other such practices, have only committed kufrʿamal, not kufr iʿtiqād. The proper response is therefore not takfīr but, rather, admonishment and instruction to dispel their ignorance (waʿẓuhum wa-taʿrīfuhum jahlahum).

Abdul Wahhab:

In 1170/1756f, after facing a raft of criticism by scholars far and wide, Ibn al-Amīr changed his mind about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, recanting his earlier praise poem by authoring a new poem together with a commentary thereon. What caused Ibn al-Amīr to revise his views was not the criticism being leveled against him but, rather, the arrival in Sanaa of a new epistle by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.

Wahhābī epistles quoted in early refutations: