The New International Encyclopædia/Wahabis

WAHABIS, wä-hä'bḗz, WAHHABIS, or WAHABITES. A reforming sect in Islam, named after its founder, Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1691-1787). He was born in Aarad, a district west of Nejd, the central province of Arabia. He traveled as a student of law as far as Basra, and perhaps Damascus, and brought back home with him from his observations the conviction of the necessity of reformation in his faith. He was past forty years of age when he began preaching his new doctrine, which consisted chiefly in the following points: (1) Establishment of the Koran as sole and literal authority, to the rejection of Sunnite or orthodox tradition; (2) rejection of all ecclesiastical and legal authority subsequent to the first four Caliphs, whose successors he disowned; (3) enforcement of the strict discipline of Islam in the matter of prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage; (4) Puritan simplicity of life, which extended to prohibition of liquor, tobacco, gambling, luxury of dress and life, and the use of tombstones; (5) rejection of the superstitious accretions, some of which, such as devotion at the tombs of saints, imperiled the central dogma of Islam. Upon this doctrine Abd al-Wahhab laid his greatest theological stress, giving his sect the name of Muwaḥḥuidūn, i.e. Unitarians. But the rigor of these doctrines was not at first welcome to the free Arabians, and the reformer had to suffer persecution and exile. His political opportunity came with the conversion of Mohammed ibn Saud, Emir of Derayeh, the capital of Aarad (1742). With Abd al-Wahhab as his spiritual counselor, Ibn Saud became the head of the sect, and claimed to be the head of Islam. The Province of Aarad and the greater part of Nejd were conquered before Ibn Saud's death. He was succeeded by his son Abd al-Aziz, who called himself Imam and Sultan, thus defying the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. He carried his kingdom north toward Mesopotamia as far as Basra, and worsted the Turkish troops. He was assassinated by a Shiite, and the murder was revenged by the destruction of the Shiite town of Kerbela, near Bagdad, by the third of the line, Saud (1800). Advance was now made into the independent kingdom of Oman (1803), and a quarrel with the Sherif of Mecca brought that holy city and Medina under Wahabite control, and all central Arabia submitted. By 1810 the State reached to the neighborhood of Bagdad, and Damascus was held for ransom in 1811, while the territory east of the Jordan paid tribute for many years. In 1810 the new power went to the extreme of its iconoclastic principles by despoiling Mohammed's tomb at Medina, and by interfering with the pilgrimages to the holy cities. This endangered the Turkish Sultan's claim as protector of those sanctuaries. He placed the suppression of the rebellion in the hands of the ambitious Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt (q.v.), who pursued tiresome and bloody campaigns from 1811 to 1818 before the generalship of Ibrahim Pasha enabled him to attain his end. In 1823 another member of the Saud dynasty, one Turki, reëstablished the Wahabite power over Central Arabia and the whole eastern coast under the suzerainty of Egypt. In 1838 the Turks again intervened, but the Emir Feysul (1842-65) finally established the independence of the Wahabite State, regaining a great part of its original domain. Since that time there have ensued civil wars and interference of the Turkish Empire, and the political Wahabite State is now a minor factor in Central Arabia. Its centre is Rind, in Aarad. The Wahabite influence is still strong, however, throughout Arabia, although it is said to be less militant and more liberal than of old. From Arabia the reform spread into Africa, where it produced important fruits in the Brotherhood of al-Senussi (see Senussi), and into India. Here a converted bandit, Said Ahmad, a reputed descendant of Mohammed, declared a religious war against the Sikhs, but was finally defeated and slain (1826-31). While the movement has no political status in India, its religious influence is widespread there through its books, the Sirāt al-Mustakīn and the Takwiyat al-Imān. In general, the movement has had its part in the new life of Islam, and promises to contribute still more in the future. Consult: Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys (London, 1831); Palgrave, Central and Eastern Arabia (ib., 1865); Rehatsek, "The History of the Wahhabys in Arabia and India,"; in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xxxviii.; W. S. Blunt, Future of Islam (London, 1880), and in Appendix to Lady Anne Blunt's Pilgrimage to Nejd (ib., 1881).