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Saudi Arabia
Index
The Al Saud originated in Ad Diriyah, in the center of Najd,
close to the modern capital of Riyadh. Around 1500 ancestors of
Saud ibn Muhammad took over some date groves, one of the few
forms of agriculture the region could support, and settled there.
Over time the area developed into a small town, and the clan that
would become the Al Saud came to be recognized as its leaders.
The rise of Al Saud is closely linked with Muhammad ibn Abd
al Wahhab (died 1792), a Muslim scholar whose ideas form the
basis of the Wahhabi movement. He grew up in Uyaynah, an oasis in
southern Najd, where he studied with his grandfather Hanbali
Islamic law, one of the strictest Muslim legal schools. While
still a young man, he left Uyaynah to study with other teachers,
the usual way to pursue higher education in the Islamic world. He
studied in Medina and then went to Iraq and to Iran.
To understand the significance of Muhammad ibn Abd al
Wahhab's ideas, they must be considered in the context of Islamic
practice. There was a difference between the established rituals
clearly defined in religious texts that all Muslims perform and
popular Islam. The latter refers to local practice that is not
universal.
The Shia practice of visiting shrines is an example of a
popular practice. The Shia continued to revere the Imams even
after their death and so visited their graves to ask favors of
the Imams buried there. Over time, Shia scholars rationalized the
practice and it became established.
Some of the Arabian tribes came to attribute the same sort of
power that the Shia recognized in the tomb of an Imam to natural
objects such as trees and rocks. Such beliefs were particularly
disturbing to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab. In the late 1730s he
returned to the Najdi town of Huraymila and began to write and
preach against both Shia and local popular practices. He focused
on the Muslim principle that there is only one God, and that God
does not share his power with anyone--not Imams, and certainly
not trees or rocks. From this unitarian principle, his students
began to refer to themselves as muwahhidun (unitarians).
Their detractors referred to them as "Wahhabis"--or "followers of
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab," which had a pejorative connotation.
The idea of a unitary god was not new. Muhammad ibn Abd al
Wahhab, however, attached political importance to it. He directed
his attack against the Shia. He also sought out local leaders,
trying to convince them that this was an Islamic issue. He
expanded his message to include strict adherence to the
principles of Islamic law. He referred to himself as a "reformer"
and looked for a political figure who might give his ideas a
wider audience.
Lacking political support in Huraymila, Muhammad ibn Abd al
Wahhab returned to Uyaynah where he won over some local leaders.
Uyaynah, however, was close to Al Hufuf, one of the Twelver Shia
centers in eastern Arabia, and its leaders were understandably
alarmed at the anti-Shia tone of the Wahhabi message. Partly as a
result of their influence, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab was obliged
to leave Uyaynah, and headed for Ad Diriyah. He had earlier made
contact with Muhammad ibn Saud, the leader in Ad Diriyah at the
time, and two of Muhammad's brothers had accompanied him when he
destroyed tomb shrines around Uyaynah.
Accordingly, when Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab arrived in Ad
Diriyah, the Al Saud was ready to support him. In 1744 Muhammad
ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab swore a traditional
Muslim oath in which they promised to work together to establish
a state run according to Islamic principles. Until that time the
Al Saud had been accepted as conventional tribal leaders whose
rule was based on longstanding but vaguely defined authority.
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab offered the Al Saud a clearly
defined religious mission to which to contribute their leadership
and upon which they might base their political authority. This
sense of religious purpose remained evident in the political
ideology of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.
Muhammad ibn Saud began by leading armies into Najdi towns
and villages to eradicate various popular and Shia practices. The
movement helped to rally the towns and tribes of Najd to the Al
Saud-Wahhabi standard. By 1765 Muhammad ibn Saud's forces had
established Wahhabism--and with it the Al Saud political
authority--over most of Najd.
After Muhammad ibn Saud died in 1765, his son, Abd al Aziz,
continued the Wahhabi advance. In 1801 the Al Saud-Wahhabi armies
attacked and sacked Karbala, the Shia shrine in eastern Iraq that
commemorates the death of Husayn. In 1803 they moved to take
control of Sunni towns in the Hijaz. Although the Wahhabis spared
Mecca and Medina the destruction they visited upon Karbala, they
destroyed monuments and grave markers that were being used for
prayer to Muslim saints and for votive rituals, which the
Wahhabis consider acts of polytheism
(see Wahhabi Theology
, ch.
2). In destroying the objects that were the focus of these
rituals, the Wahhabis sought to imitate Muhammad's destruction of
pagan idols when he reentered Mecca in 628.
If the Al Saud had remained in Najd, the world would have
paid them scant attention. But capturing the Hijaz brought the Al
Saud empire into conflict with the rest of the Islamic world. The
popular and Shia practices to which the Wahhabis objected were
important to other Muslims, the majority of whom were alarmed
that shrines were destroyed and access to the holy cities
restricted.
Moreover, rule over the Hijaz was an important symbol. The
Ottoman Turks, the most important political force in the Islamic
world at the time, refused to concede rule over the Hijaz to
local leaders. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
Ottomans were not in a position to recover the Hijaz, because the
empire had been in decline for more than two centuries, and its
forces were weak and overextended. Accordingly, the Ottomans
delegated the recapture of the Hijaz to their most ambitious
client, Muhammad Ali, the semi-independent commander of their
garrison in Egypt. Muhammad Ali, in turn, handed the job to his
son Tursun, who led a force to the Hijaz in 1816; Muhammad Ali
later joined his son to command the force in person.
Meanwhile, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab had died in 1792, and
Abd al Aziz died shortly before the capture of Mecca. The
movement had continued, however, to recognize the leadership of
the Al Saud and so followed Abd al Aziz's son, Saud, until 1814;
after Saud died in 1814, his son, Abd Allah, ruled. Accordingly,
it was Abd Allah ibn Saud ibn Abd al Aziz who faced the invading
Egyptian army.
Tursun's forces took Mecca and Medina almost immediately. Abd
Allah chose this time to retreat to the family's strongholds in
Najd. Muhammad Ali decided to pursue him there, sending out
another army under the command of his other son, Ibrahim. The
Wahhabis made their stand at the traditional Al Saud capital of
Ad Diriyah, where they managed to hold out for two years against
superior Egyptian forces and weaponry. In the end, however, the
Wahhabis proved no match for a modern army, and Ad Diriyah--and
Abd Allah with it--fell in 1818.
Data as of December 1992
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