Stories from Islamic History (13 page)

***

To preserve faith in times of defeat is easy;
there is nowhere else to go. But preserving faith in times of
victory, to maintain equanimity and not let victory go to head is
the most difficult thing to do, and this is where Mohammed Ahmed
faltered. Proclaiming himself as the Mahdi might have been the
result of an
ijtihad
– either false deduction or compelled
due to the exigency of the situation – the tribes would not have
broken their century old blood feud and rallied around one banner
otherwise.

But what he did next was to order the duty to
perform
hajj
replaced by duty to do further
jihad
under him – against Abyssinia in the south and Egypt in the
North.

The Mahdi did not last long after this. The
angel of death took his soul away. Abdullahi took over. He
continued the war with Abyssinia, an unwise move, because King John
was tolerant to the Muslims. The war, though victorious sapped the
‘mahdia’ of its energy, and didn’t attain much either by means of
converting the populace or adding any worthwhile territories.

In the north, the British were beaten back
but the prospects were too tempting for abandonment – a virgin
territory to harvest as their base, manpower for industries, the
treasures of the Nile, the forests, game, plantations and what
not.

This time they came back with machine guns,
steam locomotives and an even ruthless general – Kitchener.

Abdullahi was in the vanguard to defend
Ombdurmann but when he saw the steam locomotive – a mile of track
was laid and the troops advanced mile by mile - he was terrified
and screamed just as the Persians had screamed at Midan -
“
’Divana’ ‘Divana’
we are fighting demons!”

He preferred flight to fight. But this did
not prevent the British from razing Ombdurmann to dust and giving
chase to Abdullahi deep-south.

On the way, Osman, now retired and devoted to
the study of Islam at his oasis of Gedda gave the British serious
challenge, but then in a hopeless situation, he got what he wanted
– martyrdom.

It was only a matter of days before the
Anglo-Egyptian force caught up with Abdullahi and executed him, and
it was even sooner that the imperialists, by now adept in the game
rekindled old tribe loyalties, jealousies and blood feuds. The
imperialists entered the scene as peace- makers and have never
really quit.

In modern Islamic history, there is no figure
more controversial that Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab. The
salafi
s virtually swear on him, positioning him just next to
the
sahaba
s, for all practical purposes. At the other end of
the spectrum, the barelwis consider him as the modern day
incarnation of the khawarij, and refer to Najd, his stronghold as
the horns of the satan.

Leaving aside the virtues of the
salafi
movement, a student of history would do well to
understand how and why Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab, a commoner by all
means, achieved such spectacular success that brought him to the
centerstage of Islamic polity and fiqh ever since.

Allah takes away religion by taking away the
scholars. In the 7th
hijri
century (13th century CE),
Salauddin Ayyubi and Baybars, may Allah have mercy on them, managed
to strike decisive blows against the twin political threat to Islam
in the form of Crusaders and Mongols.

However the damage had been done.

For almost a generation or two the kufar held
sway over the epicenter of Islamic civilization – Damascus,
Baghdad, Bukhara, and in the case of Spain permanently.

In the absence of a strong central authority
like the Umayyad or the Abbasids to maintain the law of the land,
somewhere in the 7th-8th
hijri
century (13th-14th century
CE), blood feuds, discord, corruption and other forms of barbarism,
all characteristic of the pre-Mohammedian jahiliyyah era, made a
comeback in the Arabian peninsula. The political chaos was, as
always, marked by a social and cultural decline.

The rot spread to religion as well,
especially in the absence of strong religious scholars, most of
them who had succumbed fighting the Mongols and the Crusaders. Such
was the misguidance that had crept into the religion that in
Makkah, there were four different
iqama
s and four different
prayer congregations of each prayer– one each for the Shafi,
Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali madhhabs!

Najd, the vast central part of the Arabian
Peninsula was ruled by numerous petty chieftains. Only two of whom
were comparatively better in administering justice - the rulers of
Dar’iya and Una’yna. The former was ruled by the Saud family and
the latter was under the rule of the family of Muammar.

The other rulers and the Bedouins tribes, by
now totally ignorant of the laws of Allah, were blinded by lust,
prejudices and mad impulses. They plundered houses and lands, slew
people without reason, captured women and sold them in the slave
markets of Hejaz and Africa, and burned date palms at whim.

The vilest of the chieftains was the
amir
of Riyadh - Daham ibn-Dawas, a tyrant and hypocrite of
the first order. He would sew the mouths of women, cut the tongues
of innocent people, break their teeth, slash flesh from their
bodies and force them to eat their own roasted flesh.

In such a state of affairs, the teachings of
Prophet Mohammed, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was all
but forgotten. Belief spread that certain shrines, tombs, stones
and trees possessed power to harm and protect people. People
offered sacrifices and sought the intercession of such idols They
also consulted soothsayers and oracles, considering them to be
successors of Al-Ablak al-Saadi, the (in)famous oracle of pagan
Najd.

People called on the (in)famous palm tree
‘al-Fahhal’ in Bleida to provide sustenance, lighten distress, cure
sicknesses and provide husbands or children. The tree of Tarjiya
was worshipped in the same way. Women begetting a male child would
hang a rope or a piece of cloth on the tree, asking it to grant a
long life for the child. So numerous were the people who venerated
the tree as such that the branches, leaves and stems were hidden
amidst the piles of rope and pieces of cloth.

One deceiver, on the lookout to gain easy
money spread stories about a female saint in the cave of Dar’iya.
This cave also became a major center of pilgrimage.

It was in the background of such pitch
darkness that
sheikh
Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab started his
dawah
work.

***

Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab was born in 1115 AH
(1703 CE.) He was descent from the Musharraf family, a branch of
Banu Tamim. His father Abdul Wahab was an
alim
and chief
qadi
of Dar'iya. He personally taught his son all the
sciences of Islamic learning and made him memorize the Quran while
still a child.

By the age of twenty, Mohammed ibn Abdul
Wahab had grown too big for the small town of Huraimila in Nejd,
where he lived, and accordingly proceeded to Makkah and Madinah to
continue his education. His tutor,
sheikh
Ibn-Saif of
Madinah initiated him to study the life and works of
Imam
Ahmad ibn-Hanbal and the ‘Sihah Sitta,’ the six famous compilations
of
hadeeth
. He soon became influenced by the teachings of
sheikh
-ul-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on
him.

Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab eventually returned
to Huraimila and started his
dawah
against pagan beliefs
that had crept in to Islam. However, the so-called
ulema
of
Huraimila, the direct beneficiaries of the people’s pagan cult
beliefs and superstitious offerings, rose against him and nearly to
murder him.

Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab fled to Una’yna, the
provincial big town. Here, he was welcomed by the town’s chieftain,
the
amir
, Uthman ibn Mu'ammar, who gave the daughter of his
son Abdullah ibn Mu'ammar to him in marriage and pledged support
for his cause.

The first test came when Mohammed ibn Abdul
Wahab invited people to pull down the sacred tree at Una’yna and
demolish the idols worshipped therein. People feared some divine
curse would befall them if the act was committed. The tree was
nevertheless pulled down and the idols removed. When no curse
descended from the heavens as the ‘
ulema
as su’ (the
ulema
of ignorance) warned, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab’s stock
rose.

The next challenge was to demolish the tomb
over a grave ascribed to Zaid ibn-al-Khattab, brother of Umar ibn
al Khattab. This tomb was a major center of pilgrimage and people
indulged in open idolatry here. It was demolished in the presence
of the ruler of Una’yna. People were now even more scared of divine
afflictions, but when no such thing came their faith in Mohammed
ibn Abdul Wahab was further strengthened. Soon Una’yna and its
suburbs were cleared from all such trees, stones and domes.

The horrified
ulema as su
, made
completely irrelevant in Una’nya made common cause with the Bedouin
warlords of the area, who were anyway in a state of perpetual
warfare with the
amir
of Dar’iya and everyone else. Once
such ruler, Suleiman Ibn Mohammed al-Hamada, the chief of Al-Hasa
and Qatar, threatened the ruler of Una’yna with withholding land
tax, if he did put an end to the menace of Mohammed ibn Abdul
Wahab. The
amir
of Dar’iya depended on such land taxes for
his sustenance, and as such asked Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab to leave
Una’nya.

The expulsion from Una’nya, was in a way a
blessing in disguise for Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab. Seeking
patronage, he ended up with Ibn Saud, the
amir
of Dar’iya, a
more powerful ruler than the
amir
of Una’yna. Dar’iya was a
mainstream town of Najd, far important than backwater Una’nya.

The
ulema
as su, and the tribal
warlords were not yet ready to give up though. The
amir
s of
Al-Ahsa, Riyadh, Al-Katif and Basra made an alliance against Ibn
Saud. The war reached a stalemate and ranged for twenty seven
years. Bedouin hordes swarmed the plains and heights of the desert
plundering and murder. The sudden death of
amir
of Al Ahsa
in 1188 AH (1774 CE) tipped the scales of war in favour of Ibn
Saud, ending the war for the time being..

Side by side with the warfare, the enemies of
Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab, mainly those who had a stake in the pagan
money generating practices hired criminals to kill the
ulema
who preached pure superstition free Islam. All the
ulema
,
judges, notables, preachers and guides of al-Kasim were killed in
1196 A.H. (1782 CE), without discrimination. Buoyed by this
success, they conveyed a conference to decide the fate of all those
who preached reform. The unanimous decision of the conference was:
"... to get rid of the
ulema
by murder. Every town and
village would slay its
ulema
in a single day.” On the
specified day, a Friday the
ulema
of Al-Khabra and Al-Janah
were slain as they proceeded for jumuah. However, as the adage
goes, no force can stop an idea whose time has come.

Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab passed away in 1206
AH (1792 CE), but the mission started by him continued under the
patronage of the house of Saud. The family of Abdul Wahab and the
house of Saud strengthened their bond by intermarriage, which
continues to this day.

However, just as the
salafi
dawah
continued, so did opposition and hostilities. The
Sherief of Makkah, alarmed at the growing popularity of the Saudis
restricted them from performing
hajj
. This prompted the
house of Saud and the al-al
sheikh
s to make a bid to capture
the two holy sanctuaries. The Sherief of Makkah was defeated in an
encounter in 1215 AH (1801 CE). The next year, Karbala, the most
holy of the Shiite shrine was raided and the edifice built over the
grave of Hussain bin Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, raised to
the ground.

Makkah, Medina and Karbala were under the
Ottoman empire, and an attack on these places made them sit up and
get frightened. Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mohammed Ali, the Turkish
governor of Egypt, was sent to crush the movement by force, and
this he did in April 1233 AH (1818 CE).

Dar’iya was raised to the ground and men and
women, old and young and infants were slain.
Amir
Abdullah,
the Saudi ruler and his companions was arrested and sent to Turkey,
where they were executed at the Aya Sofia Square with humiliation.
Most of those who survived spread far and wide, some established
themselves at Ras al Khaimah in present day United Arab
Emirates.

Thus ended the first Saudi state.

***

In 1239 AH (1824 CE) Turki bin Abdullah bin
Mohammed, one of the few surviving member of the house of Saud
captured Riyadh, three miles south of Dar’iya and established the
Second Saudi state.

Having learned from the disaster not to let
religious zeal endanger them into making unsustainable raids, the
Saudi’s now focused on securing their hold over central and Eastern
Arabia. In this process of consolidation, they were preoccupied
with fractious nomads, rebellious towns, and ambitious vassals.
Although this prevented the Saudi takeover of Makkah and Madinah
for almost a century, the
Salafi
ideas nevertheless spread
in the holy sanctuaries, and pilgrims in turn took it back to all
over the Islamic world.

During this time, various rumors spread, some
honest, some deliberately seeded by the enemies of the movement.
The most serious rumor, which gained circulation in the Indian sub
continent was that Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab having claimed
Prophethood One of the most amazing lies that spread was that
portions of the Holy Quran, allegedly deleted by Uthman, the third
Kalifah
, was still in possession of the “Wahhabis!” Other
allegations, such as Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab undermined the
Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and allowed for free
interpretation of the Quran and the
sunnah
are still topics
of live debates.