This book examines the role of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) and his successors in reconsolidating the religious principles of Wahhabism. It explains the role of the Saudi princes in crystallizing the core of the SaudiWahhabi political entity within their tribal society. Key to this explanation is the interrelation between sedentary and nomadic populations and the consequent impact on the development of Saudi political entities prior to the emergence of the Saudi Kingdom. Texts of Wahhabi scholars are compared with those of the early Hanbali scholars, pinpointing the new religious elements introduced to foster the Wahhabi creed. Discussion focuses on the first and second generations of Wahhabi scholars who maintained the Wahhabi creed with great success, keeping its hegemony as the main doctrine in Saudi Arabia, and developing a takfiri discourse (accusing people of being infidels) which by the nineteenth century had become the main religious and political weapon by which the Wahhabis mobilized supporters against their political and religious adversaries. To better understand this development, the meaning of kufr (heresy) in Islam and its implications in various Islamic doctrines is examined closely. The focus on the role of Wahhabi scholars in the nineteenth century sheds new lights on the principles of continuity and discontinuity in the historical development of Saudi political entities and explains the origin of the modern Saudi State. Although major socio-economic and cultural change is now taking place under the leadership of Prince Muhammad ibn Salman, the main religious structures of the state remain firmly in place. It remains to be seen how two diametric societal viewpoints will integrate or clash. This work is essential reading for all scholars and students of religious, cultural, social and political history of Saudi Arabia and Islam in the Middle East.

In the middle of the 18th century, a religious reform movement arose in al-Dir'iyyah, a small town in Najd, central Arabia. Founded by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, and politically and militarily supported by Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud, the chief of al-Dir'iyyah, this movement, known as the Salafiyya, called for a return to the original teachings of the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. This book examines the Najd during the three centuries preceding the rise of the Salafis. It is a fascinating historical narrative that reveals phenomenal developments in the spheres of nomadic migration, settlement, the growth of the sedentary population, and the growth of religious learning, all combined to produce a new society that had new prospects by the middle of the 18th century.

Saudi Arabia is a wealthy and powerful country which wields influence in the West and across the Islamic world. Yet it remains a closed society. Its history in the twentieth century is dominated by the story of state formation. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Ibn Sa'ud fought a long campaign to bring together a disparate people from across the Arabian peninsula. In 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born. Madawi al-Rasheed traces its extraordinary history from the age of emirates in the nineteenth century, through the 1990 Gulf War, to the present day. She fuses chronology with analysis, personal experience with oral histories, and draws on local and foreign documents to illuminate the social and cultural life of the Saudis. This is a rich and rewarding book which will be invaluable to students, and to all those trying to understand the enigma of Saudi Arabia.

Wahhabism is often described as one of the most conservative branches of Islam and its fundamentalist approach seen as fuelling jihadist extremism. But what is the theological basis of Wahhabism? How do Wahhabi beliefs and doctrine differ from branches of Sunni Islam? While previous scholarship has examined Wahhabism as a political phenomenon, this book turns attention to the complex religious issues that are central to its understanding. Tracing its roots in the 18th century up until the present day, Namira Nahouza shows why the Wahhabi movement has opposed traditional Islamic scholarship on the interpretation of the Qur'an and hadith. Of key importance, Nahouza shows, are the differing beliefs about the oneness of God and God's names and attributes, issues on which both Wahhabi and other Salafi groups are united. Based on extensive research into classical and contemporary Arabic religious sources, Nahouza presents the contours of Sunni theological debate and reveals how the Wahhabi movement became the predecessor to the Salafism we see today. In highlighting the far-reaching consequences of these theological divisions - both for Muslim communities and the world at large -the book fills a significant gap in existing research and is essential reading for scholars researching Islamic Theology, Islamic History, Security Studies and Islamic Radicalism.

This book reveals the theories that inspire al-Qaeda. There is no other accessible book on the subject. This is the sect that threatens the stability of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Wahhabism has been generating controversy since it first emerged in Arabia in the 18th century. In the wake of September 11th instant theories have emerged that try to root Osama Bin Laden's attacks on Wahhabism. Muslim critics have dismissed this conservative interpretation of Islam that is the official creed of Saudi Arabia as an unorthodox innovation that manipulated a suggestible people to gain political influence. David Commins' book questions this assumption. He examines the debate on the nature of Wahhabism, and offers original findings on its ascendance in Saudi Arabia and spread throughout other parts of the Muslim world such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also assesses the challenge that radical militants within Saudi Arabia pose to the region, and draws conclusions which will concern all those who follow events in the Kingdom. "The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia" is essential reading for anyone interested in the Middle East and Islamic radicalism today.

Before 9/11, few Westerners had heard of Wahhabism. Today, it is a household word. Frequently mentioned in association with Osama bin Laden, Wahhabism is portrayed by the media and public officials as an intolerant, puritanical, militant interpretation of Islam that calls for the wholesale destruction of the West in a jihad of global proportions. In the first study ever undertaken of the writings of Wahhabism's founder, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1702-1791), Natana DeLong-Bas shatters these stereotypes and misconceptions. Her reading of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's works produces a revisionist thesis: Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements. Rather, he was a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream 18th-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon a monotheism in which Muslims, Christians and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial and treaty relations. Eschewing medieval interpretations of the Quran and hadith (sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad), Ibn Abd al-Wahhab called for direct, historically contextualized interpretation of scripture by both women and men. His understanding of theology and Islamic law was rooted in Quranic values, rather than literal interpretations. A strong proponent of women's rights, he called for a balance of rights between women and men both within marriage and in access to education and public space. In the most comprehensive study of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's interpretation of jihad ever written, DeLong-Bas details a vision in which jihad is strictly limited to the self-defense of the Muslim community against military aggression. Contemporary extremists like Osama bin Laden do not have their origins in Wahhabism, she shows. The hallmark jihadi focus on a cult of martyrdom, the strict division of the world into two necessarily opposing spheres, the wholescale destruction of both civilian life and property, and the call for global jihad are entirely absent from Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's writings. Instead, the militant stance of contemporary jihadism lies in adherence to the writings of the medieval scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, and the 20th century Egyptian radical, Sayyid Qutb. This pathbreaking book fills an enormous gap in the literature about Wahhabism by returning to the original writings of its founder. Bound to be controversial, it will be impossible to ignore.

The fifth volume of the this series examines historical events and cultural, social and political structures which were introduced between the 16th and 18th centuries.