WAHAI3EE. Muhammad ibn Abd-u1-1Vahab, a native of the province of Nejd, belonged to the pastoral tribe of Temin. He was born at El Ayneh in 1691, and from him sprang a sect which assumed the name of 1Vahabee. The doctrines which they adopted were severe and puritanical. They acknowledged one God, and believed that the Koran was an inspired writing. They also acknow ledged Mahomed to be the prophet of God, but deprecated any peculiar homage being paid to him, as they considered him a mortal like themselves, though gifted with a divine mission. These doc trines spread with amazing rapidity through the various tribes of Nejd, and the reformers soon obtained a preponderating' influence in the north ea.st part of Arabia ; while by his powerful ser vant, Sheikh Mekrani of Nerjan, Abd-ul-Wahab carried his victorious arms into Yemen. On his death he was peaceably succeeded in his temporal and spiritual power by his son Abd-ul-Azeez, during whose reign the doctrines of the new sect were received through the greater part of the Peninsula. Mecca and Mednia were added to their conquests in 1803 and 1804, the treasuries were plundered, and all the holy tombs, which were an abomination to these reformers, were destroyed. The power of the Wahabees continued to increase until 1813, when Muhammad Ali Pasha took up arms against them, and restored the holy cities of Medina and Mecca to the nominal protection of the Porte, but virtually made himself inaster of the Hejaz, and during the years 1814-15 con ducted operations with varied success. On his return to Cairo, he sent his son Ibrahim Pasha, and the campaign which followed, characterized by a series of the most barbarous cruelties, resulted in the conquest of Deria, and the capture of Abdulla-ibn-Saood., the Wahabee chief. Ibrahim returned to Cairo, embarking from Jedda for Cosseir on the 16th November 1819 ; but under another leader progress Was made in bringing the rulers in Yemen, and particularly the Iman of Senaa, under the yoke of Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad ibn Abd-nl-Wahab was not an innovator but a reformer, whose aim was the restoration of Islam to its primitive purity and simplicity, by insisting that its fundamental dogma, There is no deity but God,' absolutely forbade all veneration to man, prophet, or apostle, living or dead, however highly distinguished by the divine favour. There can be no doubt tha,t
beyond this utter exclusion of human merit, the formula, as originally proclaimed by Mahomed, „implied the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God in a sense which reduced all created beings to a mass of unconditional passiveness. Palgrave gives a splendid dissertation on the full import of this synibol of Islam. The great Wa habee appears to have grasped this theory, but it is highly probable that his efforts to explain it only added to its abstruseness, thereby giving some colour to the charge brought against his writings by the orthodox, that they consisted chiefly of sophisms and speculations.' It is equally reason able to suppose that a very limited number of his disciples were capable of appreciating the more recondite views. which his power of abstraction enabled him individually to entertain of the nature and attributes of the Supreme Being. Less difficult of general comprehension, however, was that part of his system which denounced all honours paid to saints and tombs as heretical innovations, detracting from the worship due solely to the Creator, and therefore to be regarded and dealt with as idolatrous. To say nothing of pagans and Christians, whom all Muhammadans hold to be polytheists, the doctrine thus revived placed Sunni and Shiala, Ibadhiyah and Rafidlii, alike in the same.category, and, moreover, sanc tioned their being dealt with as such; despite their negation of any deity save one, by a strict adher ence to the orthodox formula. Hence it was that they legalized the despoiling of the Muham madans, taking their wives in marriage before they are legally divorced from "their husbands, and without observing the Iddh,- and.also the enslave ment of their children.' All these outrages, from the Wahabee standpoint, were solemn duties iin posed upon theni by their obligations to God and IsIam, which they could not forego without risk ing their own salvation. Wahabeeism, in fact, apart from certain speculative notions respecting the Supreme Being,—in the main perfectly in accordance with the theology of the Koratt,—may be defined as politico-religious confederacy, which legalizes the indiscriminate plunder and thraldom of all peoples beyond its own pale.