1. The Prophet’s Path
2. Returning to the stages of the Prophet’s career, in the telling of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, and of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as well, there were five stages in total. These were (1) secretive preaching, (2) public preaching, (3) voluntary defensive jihād, (4) obligatory defensive jihād, and (5) offensive jihād. The trend is in the direction of greater assertiveness and greater use of force.
3. One major difference between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s career and the Prophet’s is that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was never a head of state. He was not a politician, only a preacher and scholar. In the few places where Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb addresses matters of politics in his writings, he usually does not stray far from traditional Sunnī Muslim dogma, with its emphasis on deference to established authority. In an undated creed, for instance, he stresses the duty of obedience to rulers, whether they are pious or impious, so long as they do not command people to sin. In one of his epistles, he invokes the ḥadīth in which the Prophet states that obedience to a ruler is required even if he be an Ethiopian slave. Yet Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was by no means passive about politics. He believed that Muslim scholars ought to play a significant advisory role in the political realm. In a fragment of writing describing the proper relationship between scholars and rulers, he states that the ruler (amīr) ought to take scholars (ʿulamāʾ) as his advisers and consultants (mishwaratahu wa-ahl majlisihi), adding that it is the duty of the scholars to rally support for the ruler and overlook his flaws. Here, then, is a rare glimpse of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s view on the role of scholars (such as himself) in politics. Unlike the Prophet and his successors, the caliphs, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would not seek to assume the headship of state, but he would seek to exercise a significant influence in political affairs. Indeed, he played a much larger role in the first Saudi state than is commonly recognized.

1. Defensive Jihād In the early years of the war, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb maintained that the military operations of al-Dirʿiyya were strictly defensive in nature, portraying them as defensive jihād. In a letter to an Iraqi scholar, for example, responding to a question about why the Wahhābīs fight, he writes: “To this day we have not fought anybody except to defend ourselves and [our] women [dūn al-nafs waʾl-ḥurma].” “They are the ones,” he adds, “who came to us in our lands and left [us] no choice [atawnā fī diyārināwa-lā abqaw mumkinan].”23 Ibn Ghannām, in his history, likewise indicates that the Wahhābīs’ use of military force was defensive at the beginning of the movement. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he writes, did not order the use of violence until his enemies pronounced takfīr on him and deemed his blood licit: “He gave no order to spill blood or to fight against the majority of the heretics and the misguided until they started judging that he and his followers were to be killed and subject to takfīr.

1. New Obligations, Clarified Roles
2. A town’s adherence to Wahhābism also appears to have entailed a financial obligation to al-Dirʿiyya. While Ibn Ghannām is mostly silent on this matter, Ibn Bishr reports that wealth in the form of the zakāt, a fifth of the war spoils, and other forms of value flowed to al-Dirʿiyya during the reigns of ʿAbd alʿAzīz (r. 1179–1218/1765–1803) and his son Suʿūd (r. 1218–29/1803–14).66 Previously, the Najdī towns levied noncanonical taxes (mukūs) on their people, while the more powerful bedouin tribes extracted tribute (khuwa) from the towns.67 These practices were abolished by the Wahhābīs, but the loss in revenue was more than compensated for by the plentiful supply of war spoils resulting from the Saudi state’s expansion.
3. Gradually, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz came to assume the traditional role of imām, that is, of a Muslim political leader. It does not appear that ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s father ever quite played this role. Throughout Ibn Ghannām’s history, Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb are referred to by the titles amīr and shaykh, respectively. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, by contrast, from the time of the bayʿa ceremony in 1179/1765 onward, is described as the imām, or “the imām of the Muslims” (imām al-Muslimīn).69 During Abd al-ʿAzīz’s reign, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would continue to perform his role as the religious leader—the shaykh—and occasionally he is still depicted as active in politics as well, receiving the bayʿa along with ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.70 But his political role is noticeably diminished after the death of Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd.71 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s last major act in affairs of state was in 1202/1787f, when, according to Ibn Ghannām, he ordered the Wahhābīs to give bayʿa to Suʿūd, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s son, as heir apparent.
4. The Āl Suʿūd were the masters of the state, while the Āl al-Shaykh, together with other Wahhābī scholars, were first and foremost preachers who sought to enforce conformity with the Wahhābī creed and Islamic law. Four of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s sons served as scholars of note. These were Ḥusayn (d. 1224/1809),77ʿAbdallāh (d. 1242/1826f),78ʿAlī (d. 1245/1829f),79 and Ibrāhīm (fl. 1251/1835f).80 According to Ibn Bishr, who attended a study circle with one of these sons in al-Dirʿiyya, the blind Ḥusayn was the chief qāḍī in al-Dirʿiyya (al-qāḍī fī balad al-Dirʿiyya) and the first successor to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (al-khalīfa baʿd abīhi).81 Following Ḥusayn’s death in 1224/1809, ʿAbdallāh took charge as successor to his brother (al-khalīfa baʿd akhīhi Ḥusayn).82 Like their father, the sons would leave behind a corpus of writings to their name, ʿAbdallāh being the most prolific. In addition to numerous fatwās, he authored a long refutation of a Zaydī critic of Wahhābism and a biography of the Prophet

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 of al-Dirʿiyya and accept Islam and warning of the consequences of not doing so. The actions taken included destroying grave sites (al-maʿbadāt waʾl-qubab waʾlqubūr) and places of Shīʿī ritual (kanāʾis al-rafḍ waʾl-bidaʿ), imposing communal prayer (iẓhār al-ṣalawāt fīʾl-masājid), and banning a number of practices contrary to Islamic law (ibṭāl mā khālafa ʾl-sharʿ min al-aḥkām), such as usury (al-ribā) and noncanonical taxes (al-ʿushūr waʾl-amkās). . Not long after Suʿūd’s departure, a revolt broke out against the new Wahhābī masters, led by a group described as Shīʿī heretics and miscreants (rafaḍa wafujjār). In early Shawwāl 1207/mid-May 1793, they attacked and killed the several Wahhābī preachers sent by al-Dirʿiyya, as well as certain other representatives of the Saudi state. The total killed was close to thirty.96 Three months later, in Muḥarram 1208/August 1793, Suʿūd and his forces returned to the area with a vengeance. After several fierce battles, sieges, and punitive raids, including one battle that killed some sixty fighters from the town of alMubarraz, the leader of the Banū Khālid, Barrāk ibn ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, sued for peace. Barrāk assured Suʿūd that the people of al-Aḥsāʾ would reenter the faith, and Suʿūd agreed to return to Najd on the condition that Barrāk oversee the conversion.

There was to be one more attempt at revolt in al-Aḥsāʾ, in 1210/1796, but this time the conspirators were thwarted before they could strike. As Ibn Ghannām relates, when a Wahhābī commander caught wind of what was afoot, he quickly put sixty of the suspected conspirators to death. The executions continued for days as more suspects were rounded up. In addition, Suʿūd ordered the destruction of more shrines, forced people to give up their weapons on pain of death, ordered the walls and towers surrounding the dif­ferent towns of al-Aḥsāʾ torn down, and built a massive fort with a permanent contingent of forces. Ibn Ghannām ends his description of these events by quoting Q. 8:60: “And make ready for them what you can of strength and troops of forces, to strike terror. The first was a campaign led by Thuwaynī ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. 1212/1797), chief of the Muntafiq tribe of southern Iraq, acting at the behest of the Ottoman governor of Baghdad. The British traveler John Jackson, who passed through Iraq in the late 1790s, describes “Sheik Twyney” as “a very powerful Arab prince; having under his government the whole of the right banks of the Euphrates, from nearly as high as Hilla down to Bussora.”99 In 1211/1796f, the Ottoman governor of Baghdad, Sulaymān Bāshā (d. 1217/1802),100 recruited Thuwaynī to prepare a large-scale operation to oust the Wahhābīs from al-Aḥsāʾ. According to Ibn Ghannām’s account, when Thuwaynī stopped in Basra to gather additional forces, some of the antiWahhābī scholars there wrote poems for him encouraging the effort.

1. 
   Another challenge came the following year, when Sulaymān Bāshā ordered his deputy governor, ʿAlī Kahyā (fl. 1222/1807), to lead a second expedition against the Wahhābī presence in al-Aḥsāʾ. ʿAlī set out from Baghdad with his forces in Rabīʿ II 1213/October 1798, but returned in Ṣafar 1214/July 1799 after inconclusive military operations.

The Ḥijāz

On two occasions, in 1185/1771f and 1204/1789f, the Wahhābī scholar ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥuṣayyin (d. 1237/1822)104 was sent to Mecca to explain Wahhābism to its ruler, the sharīf, and to engage the scholars of the city in debate. The first mission was preceded by correspondence with the Sharīf Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd (r. 1184–86/ 1770–73). Ibn Ghannām preserves a letter, respectful in tone, from ʿAbd alʿAzīz Āl Suʿūd and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to the sharīf.105 The debate in Mecca between the local scholars and al-Ḥuṣayyin that followed, according to Ibn Ghannām, revolved around the issues of generalized takfīr (al-takfīr biʾlʿumūm), the destruction of tombs at grave sites, and the supplication of righteous persons, including asking them for help (istighātha) and asking them for intercession (shafāʿa). Al-Ḥuṣayyin denied that the Wahhābīs engaged in generalized takfīr but was adamant that tombs be destroyed and that supplication amounted to shirk.

This kind of mission to Mecca would be repeated one more time by another Wahhābī scholar, Ḥamad ibn Muʿammar (d. 1225/1811),109 who came to Mecca at the request of the sharīf in 1211/1796f. Ḥamad performed the ʿumra (the secondary pilgrimage to Mecca), and a debate was held with the city’s scholars. At its conclusion, they asked Ḥamad to put his arguments into writing, which he did. According to Daḥlān, this was a preemptive attack aimed at preventing the Wahhābīs from gaining control of the Ḥijāz. During that year, after a crushing battle at al-Khurma, the sharīf and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Suʿūd reached a truce that allowed the Wahhābīs to participate in the ḥajj, which they were previously forbidden from doing. Suʿūd set out for Mecca and performed his first ḥajj in 1214/1800. By all accounts, the siege ended in a massacre. Ibn Bishr records that nearly two hundred were killed in the streets and in their homes, while Daḥlān describes an even more gruesome scene without specifying the number of casualties. Suʿūd entered Mecca and set about destroying tombs with his followers. Before leaving, he stationed troops in a fort outside the city walls and appointed Ghālib’s brother, ʿAbd al-Muʿīn ibn Musāʿid, as Mecca’s ruler. Suʿūd remained in the city for two or three weeks.

The Destruction of the First Saudi State

The Wahhābī occupation of the holy cities was an embarrassment for Constantinople, and after decades of ignoring the Wahhābī threat, the Ottomans were determined to restore order in the Ḥijāz. The initial campaign was led by Muḥammad ʿAlī’s son, Ṭūsūn Bāshā, who arrived in Yanbuʿ in late 1226/late 1811. Within a year his army captured Medina, and in 1228/1812 Mecca fell without a fight. Despite some military difficulties over the next two years, including the resistance of ʿAsīr and of some of the tribes of the Ḥijāz, Ṭūsūn’s forces were soon in control of the entirety of the Red Sea coast. Meanwhile, Muḥammad ʿAlī’s military mission in Arabia had evolved. No longer was his objective the eviction of the Wahhābīs from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Muḥammad ʿAlī now resolved to destroy the Saudi state in its entirety. Recalling Ṭūsūn to Egypt, he entrusted the command of this larger expedition to another son, Ibrāhīm Bāshā, who began “a slow but irresistible” advance into Najd. The Wahhābīs were no match. By early 1233/late 1817, Ibrāhīm had penetrated into al-Qaṣīm and was threatening al-Washm and Sudayr. In Dhū ʾl-qaʿda 1233/September 1818, after a months-long siege, al-Dirʿiyya finally submitted to the invaders. Ibrāhīm remained in Najd for nine more months, razing al-Dirʿiyya to the ground before his departure. The devastation was captured by George Foster Sadleir, an Irish captain in the army of the East India Company who passed through al-Dirʿiyya in August 1819.

• ʿAbdallāh Āl Suʿūd did not enjoy a long or prosperous rule. Upon the capture of al-Dirʿiyya, he surrendered to the invaders and was taken to Cairo and then Istanbul, where he was publicly beheaded. The execution took place in Ṣafar 1234/December 1818. For more on ʿAbdallāh’s journey and execution, see Crawford and Facey, “ʿAbd Allāh Al Saʿūd and Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha.”

• One member of the Āl al-Shaykh who was not spared execution was Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1233/1818), one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s grandsons and a rising star in the Wahhābī religious establishment. He was executed shortly after the fall of al-Dirʿiyya. According to Ibn Bishr, Sulaymān was forced to listen to music before being brought to a cemetery and shot by a firing squad (Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:384–85).

1. Conclusion
2. Contrary to the claims of his critics, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not see himself as a prophet. He and his followers did see themselves, however, as following in the Prophet’s footsteps. In their understanding, they had begun by preaching in a nonviolent but assertive manner, exhibiting enmity to the polytheists around them as the Prophet had done in Mecca. Then, after being attacked, they fought their enemies in defensive jihād before progressing to offensive jihād for the purpose of eliminating shirk and expanding the realm of the faith. After Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s death, his successors continued to see themselves as soldiers on the prophetic warpath, as evinced by Suʿūd’s intended expansion to Iraq and Syria and invocation of the Prophet’s menacing letter to Heraclius. In a sudden reversal, however, the leaders of the first Saudi state were unable to follow the course of the early Islamic caliphate to its end point. In subsequent decades, the Wahhābī scholars had to come to terms with the destruction of their foundational polity. Why had God visited His wrath upon the first Saudi state?
3. Obviously, in their view, it was not because the Wahhābī movement had been flawed in conception. The answer, given by one of the leading scholars of the second Saudi state, Ḥamad ibn ʿAtīq, was simple. The Egyptian invasion had been a divine test (ibtilāʾ), similar to the test faced by the Muslims of Ibn Taymiyya’s age in the Mongol invasions. “The people of Islam [i.e., the Wahhābīs],” he wrote, “were tested with things resembling what the Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya, may God have mercy on him, mentioned concerning the occasion of the appearance of the Tatars [i.e., the Mongols].” The empowerment of the unbelieving Ottomans (al-turk al-kuffār) over Najd was a result of the wisdom and justice of God (min ḥikmat Allāh waʿadlihi), being punishment for the sins (dhunūb) of the people of Najd.163 Such thinking allowed the Wahhābī scholars of subsequent generations to avoid any kind of critical reassessment of their doctrine. There was nothing wrong with what they had been preaching or the way their state had been functioning. What was needed, then, was to reestablish the Wahhābī daʿwa and to reestablish the theopolitical order of the first Saudi state. To do so, the scholars believed, they would have to abide by their doctrinal principles with the same commitment and tenacity as before. Their efforts to do so form the next chapter in the history of Wahhābism.