- At some time towards the middle of the twelfth/eighteenth century, the young scholar Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahh?b (1115-1206/1703/92) experienced som like a conversion. From that point on, his understanding of monotheism seems been such that he considered most of the professed Muslims of his day to be polytheists who should be fought till they accepted Islam.
- His two main teachers in Medina were Najd ‘Abdallah ibn Ibrahim ibn Sayf, and an Indian, Muhammad Hayt al-Sind? (d. 1163/1750). Ibn Sayf is recounted to have shown Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab a collection of books which he described as “weapons I have prepared for Majma’a” (his home-town in Najd). The Shaykh is reported to have asked Muhammad Hayt his opinion of those who came to intercede (yad’na wa-yasta’thna) at the tomb of the Prophet ; to this he replied by quoting Moses’s denunciation of the idolatrous tribe whom the Israelites wished to emulate. Both, then, are pictured as reformists, if not very active ones; but neither is clearly identified as the source of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrine.
