Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab
Islamic Saudi scholar, jurist and eponym of Wahhabi movement (1703-1792) · Academics · Died at 89
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Something wrong?An 18th-century Arabian scholar who called for stripping Islam back to scripture alone - no tombs, no saints, no medieval commentaries - and forged a pact with a tribal chief that became the theological backbone of Saudi Arabia.
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Born in 1703 in Najd to a family of jurists, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab studied Hanbali jurisprudence but grew convinced during travels to Hejaz and Basra that Muslims had drifted into idolatry through shrine worship and blind reliance on tradition. He demanded direct engagement with the Quran and Hadith, insisted every believer - male and female - read scripture personally, and condemned practices venerating tombs of saints as heretical innovation. His doctrine of tawhid, drawing on Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, rejected even the standard Hanbali manuals of his era, alienating most mainstream scholars. In the 1740s he struck an alliance with Muhammad bin Saud, a local emir: religious authority for political power. That pact founded the Emirate of Diriyah, the first Saudi state, and locked his descendants - the Al ash-Sheikh family - into a power-sharing arrangement with the House of Saud that survives today. He died in 1792, but the state he theologized endures.
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