HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE RISE AND DECLINE OF WAHHABISM IN ARABIA.
Compiled principally from Materials supplied by Lt.-Colonel E. C. Ross, H.M.’s Resident at Bushire.
At the beginning of last century, Nejd, and Arabia generally, with the exception of Oman, Yemen, and Hejaz, was divided into a number of independent districts or townships, each ruled by a tribal chief on the principle already explained of self-government under Bedouin protection. Religion, except in its primitive Arabian form, was almost forgotten by the townspeople, and little if any connection was kept up between them and the rest of the Mahometan world.
In 1691, however, Mohammed Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, was born at Eiyanah in Aared, his father being of the Ibn Temim tribe, the same which till lately held power in Jebel Shammar. In his youth he went to Bussorah, and perhaps to Damascus, to study religious law, and after making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina returned to his native country, and soon after married in the village of Horeylama near Deriyeh. There and at Eyaneh he began his preaching, and about the year 1742 succeeded in converting Mohammed Ibn Saoud, Emir of Deriyeh, the principal town of Aared.
The chief features of his teaching were:—
1st. The re-establishment of Mahometan beliefs as taught by the Koran, and the rejection of those other beliefs accepted by the Sunis on tradition.
2nd. A denial of all spiritual authority to the Ottoman or any other Caliph, and of all special respect due to sherifs, saints, dervishes, or other persons.
3rd. The restoration of discipline in the matter of prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage.
4th. A strict prohibition of wine, tobacco, games of chance, magic, silk and gold in dress, and of tombstones for the dead.
Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab lived to an advanced age at Deriyeh, and died in 1787.