The Wahhabis Seen through European Eyes (1772–1830)

A Deistic Revolution in Arabia 41Browne in part adopted and in part rectified the assertions of Niebuhr andVolney, thus creating his own specific version of the new religious doctrine. Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria (1799), over the writing of which Oliviercould exert no influence, offered a more realistic representation of both theconflict between Wahhabis and common Muslims and the limits of the sup-posed tolerance of the Arab innovators towards Christians and Jews, who weresubjected to taxation, in all probability the customary poll-tax or jizya. Follow-ing Muhammad’s guidelines, and differing in part from what had till then beenwritten, the “dogmas” proclaimed by the rebel leader included traditional Is-lamic precepts such as alms, prayers, ablutions and the prohibition of all drinkexcept water, but not the pilgrimage to Mecca or belief in the divine origin ofthe Koran. As a consequence of the profession of faith in a single God, a banwas imposed on the invocation of any deceased human prophet. The only trueprayers were those pronounced beneath the open sky, while mosques werecondemned to systematic destruction.43 p. 142 nt.; Brandes (1999), p. 84; Margoliouth (1934), p. 1177; Philby (1930), pp. 68–69; Philby (1955), pp. 87–88; Vassiliev (1998), pp. 93–94.43 W.G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, London, 1799, pp. 388–90: “About this time, the beginning of June 1797, intelligence arrived, that the Pasha of Bagdad had sent a strong detachment of troops, to be joined by the Arabs friendly to the Porte, to suppress the incursions of Abd-el-aziz ibn Messoûd el Wahhâbé, a rebel against the government, who by the rapid success of his arms, and his increasing number of followers, had lately become formidable. This man, a native of Nedjed, respected among the Arabs for his age and wisdom, had two years before first made public his determination to resist the authority of the Porte. He has since collected a considerable body of men, but it is said that they are only furnished with spears and swords. He pretends to a divine mission, and gives no quarter to those who oppose him. To admit Christians and Jews to his party, he only requires an annual capitation of three piasters and a half. Of the people under his jurisdiction, every house-owner is obliged to serve in person or find a substitute; and, to encourage them, he divides the spoils in five parts. It was supposed he had set his sights on Mecca, which he had threatened to attack. His confession of faith is purely – “There is no God but God”, from which one infers that a prophet, when dead, deserves no homage, and that of course to mention him in a creed, or in prayers, is absurd. He enjoins the abso- lute necessity of prayer, under the open canopy of heaven, and destroys all the mosques he can seize. Of Mohammed’s five dogmas, he admits alms, fasting, prayer, and ablution, but rejects pilgrimage. He denies the divine origin of the Koran, but prohibits the use of all drink except water. Being advanced in age, he had taken care to secure the attachment of his followers to his son, who was generally his substitute in the field”. The point Browne makes in his Travels, that the Wahhabis had declared prayers of intercession to dead saints inadmissible, seems to suggest the existence of a certain doctrinal preoccupation, in their teaching, with the unassailable tradition of religious authorities beseeching the intercession of saints still living – for example the caliph ʿUmar and his prayer that the

42 Chapter 1 Browne’s dependence on Niebuhr was explicit. Indeed, Niebuhr was citedopenly as the first and most credible authority on the subject. Nevertheless,Browne made it clear that he had had to register some “little variation as to thetenets of the founder” of the sect. Rejection of divine inspiration in the Koran,the prohibition of praying to mere men, whether or not they were the recipi-ents of special revelation, were subjects already treated in the Beschreibung.Browne also seemed to confirm Niebuhr’s hypothesis that there was a certaincool indifference to Muhammad. This was based on the formula “There is nogod but God”, chosen by ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, thereby excluding the Prophet. Moreclearly expressed in the Travels is the fact that the popular cult of the saintsand the prophets was to be understood as being prohibited once they weredead. There was even an echo of Volney in recalling the abolition of places ofworship and the imposition of religious practices in the open. Yet Browne’sview of the fidelity of the new divine messenger to Muslim norms was ratherdifferent since, apart from the pilgrimage, he considered them still at leastpartly valid. Politically speaking, the Wahhabi commander was termed a “rebel”, thusmirroring the Ottoman view. The threat to Mecca represented by ʿAbd al-ʿAzizled to the supposition that he had at least a worldly interest in the capital ofthe Muslim religion, while the news of a hostile expedition moving out ofBaghdad against the rebels indicated thirty years later a more intense belli-­ pious ʿAbbas propitiate rain, cf. Pröbster (1935), p. 93 nt. Unverified rumours of special Wahhabi tolerance of Jews and Christians, mentioned by Niebuhr and mitigated by Browne, certainly contributed to European expectations of the development of Deism in Arabia. There is, however, nothing in Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s writings that dif- fers from the Koranic definition of the so-called “people of the Book”, the ahl al-kitāb, or from the formal relations of submission and protection granted by Muhammad to the followers of the earlier monotheistic revelation. The conventional acknowledgement of Jews’ and Christians’ right to prayer, provided it was conducted privately in their own homes, thus exempting them from the obligation to convert, may have contributed to a different interpretation, as did the harsh judgement pronounced by the Wahhabis on the errors of common Muslims, guilty of leaning towards superstition, and in some cases even worse, and open to the supplementary crime of apostasy. It was for deviant Muslims, equated because of their sins with the faithful of other religions, that Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab really intended his most famous work, Kitāb al-tawḥīd (Book of Monothe- ism, or of Divine Unity), cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 56, 60, 64, 71, 98, 239; Laoust (1939), p. 525; Peskes (1993), p. 201; Puin (1973), p. 61; Rentz (2004), p. 75; Vassiliev (1998), p. 78. It therefore comes as no surprise that theological Sunni antagonists should have reproached the Wahhabi leader with the error of applying the same severe judgement to sincere believers in the Koran which had been extended by Muhammad to Jewish and Christian modifications of monotheism, cf. Peskes (1993), pp. 87, 106.

A Deistic Revolution in Arabia 43gerence than the purely internal aggression within the Arabian peninsula reg-istered by Niebuhr. The military organization was mentioned: a poorly armedthough numerous force, all landowners having to serve under arms or send asubstitute. Directions concerning the distribution of generous booty accordingto which four fifths of the spoils went to the warriors (though without any sug-gestion that this might be based on a religious norm) was also discussed, aswas, finally, the transmission of a consecrated dynastic ambition in the form ofthe early designation of a family heir to the throne. All this enriched the previ-ously available information.44 Certainly, a degree of uncertainty and imprecision remained despite the ac-cumulated information. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, not otherwise identified, was none otherthan the firstborn son of Muhammad ibn Saʿud. The same ʿAbd al-ʿAziz was, inturn, the father of the future ruler Saʿud, designated as his successor before thenotables in 1788. But Browne elevated the Saʿudi monarch, first and foremost apolitical leader, to the level of the creator and spiritual guide of the entire newreligious movement, without asking what the connection between the “rebel”ʿAbd al-ʿAziz and Niebuhr’s ʿAbd al-Wahhab might be, as if the two were oneand the same person and the term al-Wahhab some kind of dynastic surname.Acts of vandalism aiming to wipe out such controversial forms of worship asthose already mentioned by Niebuhr, and disliked by the Wahhabis as the ex-pression of a cult deemed idolatrous, increased in the wake of popular indig-nation, and attacks were even said to have been made on buildings reserved forthe worship of God Himself. The frequent destruction by the dreaded sectari-ans of domes, chapels and tombs built to honour Muslim saints was seen asequivalent to the destruction of “mosques” proper, which were sometimes ei-ther an integral part of, or adjacent to, the illicit buildings. All in all, the Deisthypothesis still seemed valid. The strict profession of monotheism, prayer con-ducted outside buildings made for that specific purpose and without a properguide (there was nothing in Browne about an established class of clerics andVolney had declared that none existed), the supposed devaluation of the44 The norms for the distribution of booty, following Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s indi- cations, destined a fifth to expenses for the public good or maṣlaḥa, while the Bedouin tribal custom allotted a quarter to the leader and three quarters to the soldiers, cf. DeLong- Bas (2004), pp. 102, 202, 213–14. For the importance of the 1788 proclamation of Saʿud as the designated successor of his father ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, sanctioned by Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab – Browne assumes wrongly that the latter had intended ʿAbd al-ʿAziz to be his heir – in establishing a law of hereditary dynastic succession in Arabia, cf. Fahad (2004), p. 46; Philby (1930), p. 47; Philby (1955), p. 77; Rentz (2004), p. 209; Vassiliev (1998), pp. 88, 125, who note that this custom was unknown to both settled and nomadic inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula.

44 Chapter 1Koran and the relative tolerance of unrelated religious communities, seemedto give credence to the idea that a movement, albeit of Muslim origin, hadformed in Najd which was hostile to all historic revelation. Only in the second edition of the Travels (1806), in a note of “later testi­mony” for which no source was given – possibly a report by Brydges from Bagh-dad (see infra, Chapter II, note 68) – was this vague and scant informationexpanded. Nevertheless, the note threw considerably more light on the truenature of the phenomenon. We read here that after journeying to Baghdad,Damascus and Mosul for study, a “heresiarch” in Najd by the name of Muham-mad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab had moved away from the original ancient Muslimfaith and had died in 1792 at a great age. His successor as “chief judge” seemedto be a son called Husain. The “rebel” ʿAbd al-ʿAziz was now introduced as theson of one Ibn Saʿud, of uncertain identity, the first political protector of Mu-hammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, and one-time lord of al-ʿUyaina. In this localitythe Wahhabi leader had in fact been under the temporary tutelage of a differ-ent sheikh and, slightly later, Browne himself mentions al-Dirʿiyya as the capi-tal of the new domain. The “new converts”, euphoric in “their fanaticism”, werefeared more for their rapacity than for their “religious innovations”, since their“numerous dogmas” differed little from Muslim Sunni beliefs of Hanbali obser-vance. There was also a generous system for sharing out booty and a fiscal pol-icy of “public spending” – the reference may be to the creation of a deposit forcommunal needs, the bait al-māl, modelled on the system applied by the firstsuccessors of Muhammad – which perhaps compensated in part for the spiritof plunder. Yet the originality of the movement was evident in two ways: onone hand the increased insistence of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab on rep-rehensible idolatry inherent in the invocation of dead prophets and in the con-struction of “splendid tombs”; on the other, the sacred “positive duty” imposedon his followers to wage “perpetual war” on anyone refuting their doctrines, nomatter whether Muslim or dhimmī (the protected Jewish and Christian mi-norities). The boast of the new sect was in fact said to be their ability to “tri-umph over the opinions of others”.4545 W.G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria. Second edition, enlarged, London, 1806, pp. 447–48 nt.: “Later testimony, on which it is believed reliance may be placed, describes Mohammed ibn Abd-ul-wahib, a native of Nejd, as the founder; and assures us that it made its appearance as early as the year 1731 – H. 1143. Mohammed had studied in Bagdad, Damascus and Mosul; and was successively compelled to flee from each of those places on account of the heterodox opinions which he persisted in delivering. Nejd, being divided into small independent sovereignties, each governed by its own Schech, he found refuge at length in the city of Ayéné, in the district of El Ared, called Darayé, or wadi hanifé, the Schech of which became his protector. And although Mohammed’s behavior

A Deistic Revolution in Arabia 45 In the meantime, Browne had been back to Cairo and Istanbul (1801–802)where he may have obtained further clarifications, though what he writesseems at times to show the influence of more recent European publications.Up until 1806 many new events had indeed occurred to modify the perceptionof the sect, giving rise to new writings, without there being any means for thepublic to verify how far the new material in the second edition of the Travelswas the author’s contribution, or whether the information he had acquiredpersonally may not merely have been the original material of 1797.46 Duringthe thirty intervening years since Niebuhr’s initial report, slightly more infor-mation had come to light concerning the political and social background of there was imperious and violent, many neighbouring Schechs, with their tribes, received his doctrines. After some years, the Schech of Ayéné, named ibn Soud, dying, was suc- ceeded by his son Abd-ul-Aziz; and Muhammed, the heresiarch, who expired about 1792, at the advanced age of more than 100 years, was also replaced as chief judge, by his son Hussein. The success of the new converts, towards the close of the last century, became more rapid; and though several of the Arab tribes have opposed them with the sword, it appears to have been rather from fear of their ambition and rapacity, than from any hor- ror of their religious innovations. Their dogmas, as well regarding government as faith, are numerous. Their mode of distributing the spoil, and the rules for levying imposts for pub- lic expenditure, are calculated to conciliate proselytes. And if their religious peculiarities were limited to the maxim, “That the prophet when dead, is not to be invoked, having no longer any concern in the affairs of men” – “that relics and splendid tombs savour of idol- atry, and that therefore it is meritorious to destroy them”, &c. &c: they would not incur any very heavy censure. (In fundamentals they are Mohammedans, of the persuasion of Imam Hanbali.) But their fanaticism, as may be expected, plumes itself on triumphing over the opinions of others. Perpetual war therefore against all, whether Sûnnites or Dhûmmis, who dissent from his doctrines, is the positive duty of a Wahhibi”. After 1799 the most common variation of the name is “Wahhabi”, not yet present in that first edition. There follow considerations on the safety of the capital al-Dirʿiyya, equidistant from Basra and Mecca, remarks on the relatively harmless initiatives of the sharif of Mecca and the pasha of Baghdad, and, finally, an assessment of the probability that the Wahhabis, rather than “strengthening the union between the various Arab nations” and “erecting a potent and durable sovereignty”, are only able to establish an ephemeral dominion des- tined to die out for lack of booty.46 The more detailed information on Browne, assassinated in Persia during his last journey there in 1813, is derived from the “Biographical Memoir of Mr. Browne”, published by Rob- ert Walpole, included in a notable collection of memoirs of travellers in the East, cf. Trav- els in various countries of the East. Edited by The Rev. Robert Walpole, London, 1820. Its components include the “Journey from Constantinople, through Asia Minor”, composed by Browne since 1802 and published by Walpole, based on the manuscript left by the author. None of these mention the Wahhabis. A biographical sketch of Browne is also in Garnet/Baigent (2004).

46 Chapter 1the continuing Wahhabi expansion in Arabia. It was by now accepted thatthere was a close connection between the fortunes of the new religious mes-sage and the firmly established reigning house in Najd, as distinct from thefamily of the movement’s spiritual leader. Theologically speaking, the idea thatthe “new religion” was a heresy within Islam, an offshoot of the Sunni stem,was used as an intermediate explanation between the two poles of the dilem-ma raised by Niebuhr: was the Wahhabi movement a misunderstood orthodoxschool or did it preach a rationalist teaching incompatible with Koranic revela-tion? Two main doubts still remained. One concerned the controversy overMuhammad, the other the sectarians’ astonishing spirit of persecution wherecommon Muslims were concerned. In the first place there was the matter ofdeciding the extent to which the ban on forms of veneration of the Prophet orany of his relatives should also be extended to the divine mission of that su-preme harbinger of Islam and his historical legacy. In the second place an ex-planation was needed for how such violent theological loathing of otherMuslims could be reconciled with sharing the same religious truths as thoseannounced by Muhammad and with the supposed approval by the Wahhabisof the theoretical principles of Deism which implied tolerance – even if thesetoo no longer seemed immaculate in the light of the revolutionary experiencein France. These issues were addressed by two French consuls in the East. Onehad returned from Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign, while the other had grownup in Baghdad and been sent on General Gardane’s Persian mission. These twowriters, who were still under the influence of what remained of the benevolentviews of Niebuhr and Volney and the more recent revolutionary ideas fromFrance, published material destined to influence the European debate on thesubject for many years to come. What emerged clearly was that conquest andfanaticism were spreading a simple religion for the poor across Asia just as Is-lam had originally done. It was not clear, however, whether the new religionwas a continuation of the old one, or some sort of subsequent virulent devia-tion. Indeed, it spread so fast and its military success was so frequent that thephenomenon seemed not to differ greatly from contemporary political revolu-tions in Europe. A dispute between the two consuls over the paternity of thebest information, the involvement of a third witness, the arbitration of alearned Parisian Arabist and international Anglo-French complications allrendered the question ever more exciting. Current political affairs and literarycontroversy now added spice to the Wahhabi debate.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 47 Chapter 2Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims On pourrait les regarder comme des deïstes, aveuglés d’ailleurs par un fanatisme atroce. (…) Ils se donnent réciproquement le nom de frères. Les titres de la vanité leur sont absolument inconnus (…); l’on dirait, à cet régard, qu’ils sont les Quakers de l’Arabie. Notice sur la horde des Wahabis, Le Moniteur Universel, 3 prairial, an 12 ⸪1 Silvestre de Sacy: A Hypothesis of Continuity of the QarmatiansThe capture of Mecca by the Wahhabis which occurred twice, once in April1803 for just three months, and again in November 1805, for seven years, and ofwhich neither Olivier nor Browne knew anything, was a watershed in both thedevelopment of the movement and European knowledge of it. The first suc-cessful assault on the Holy City was apparently totally sacrilegious. The vio-lence it caused, especially in the nearby al-Ta⁠ʾif, followed the model of theprevious savage sack of Kerbela. It confirmed the gravity and the political im-portance of the war of religion which was now spreading across Arabia. Thespiritual implications of the conflict were not the least of the Ottoman govern-ment’s worries and were of evident interest to European observers who hadbeen predisposed by Niebuhr and Volney to expect unrest in the area. An anonymous article published in Le Moniteur in the spring of 1804 in-formed the public of these events.1 It not only explained the situation in theArabian peninsula, even reporting the death of the conqueror ʿAbd al-ʿAziza­ ssassinated in his capital al-Dirʿiyya after a plot had been hatched against him1 Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel, 243, 3 prairial, an 12 (23 mai 1804), pp. 1101–102: “Notice sur la horde des Wahabis”, in the section “Extérieur. Turquie”, including fuller cor- respondence from Istanbul dated 1 March 1804 (with information on Persia, Afghanistan and the pashadom of Baghdad). This is the article already mentioned by Olivier, supra, Chapter I, note 41. Occasional correspondences with the description of the Wahhabis in the Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman seem to confirm the hypothesis that the information therein could have been partly supplemented in the light of the contribution in Le Moni- teur.© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004293281_004

48 Chapter 2by the vindictive inhabitants of Kerbela – the news reached Baghdad in Janu-ary of that year – but it also provided the most recent information about thedoctrine of the leader, still called by the name of ʿAbd al-Wahhab. In contrastto the opinion hitherto derived from Niebuhr, the preacher’s followers, dulycircumcised as Olivier also observes, were convinced upholders of the divineorigin of the Koran and considered Muhammad, although not a “prophet”, ajust man chosen by God to instruct mankind. The bearer of the Koran was tobe regarded as an ordinary mortal, no different from Moses, Jesus and the Vir-gin Mary, and as such was not to be worshipped by the people. Like certainNorth American Quaker communities free of all selfishness and worldly vanity,but with their sense of fraternity strengthened by the stern religious com-mandment to shed the blood of “foreign nations” – a reward in heaven waspromised to those who had fallen in battle – and with the firm belief in a “su-preme eternal being, omnipotent, just and merciful” invoked to recompensegood and punish evil, the Wahhabis had every right to be called “Deists”. It is,however, important to add that they were Deists “blinded by atrociousfanaticism”.2 Going back half a century to the earliest history of the “new cult”, to which aYemeni origin was attributed, the author of the article had learnt that a “fa-mous” Saʿud, father of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, had helped the founder and “pontiff” ʿAbdal-Wahhab (an echo of Niebuhr here) to propagate his religious system among2 Ibid, p. 1102, col. 1: “A l’exemple de toutes les nations de la terre, la base de leur croyance est l’admission d’un Être suprême éternel, tout-puissant, juste et miséricordieux, remunéra- teur des bons et punisseur des méchans: ils ne reconnaissent aucun prophète et accusent d’idolatrie ceux qui en ont. Ils sont circoncis d’ailleurs et ont pour livre l’Alcoran, qu’ils croient être descendu du ciel. Ils confessent aussi que c’est Mahomet qui l’a procuré aux hommes, mais ils ne lui accordent aucune espece de vénération, se contentant de dire qu’il fut un homme de bien, un juste dont Dieu se servit par préférence pour faire connaître ses volontés aux hommes; que n’étant enfin qu’un mortel, qu’une pure créature, l’on ne saurait lui rendre hommage sans offenser la Divinité. Moïse, Jésus-Christ, la Vierge etc., ne méritent pas non plus, par la même raison, selon eux, aucun égard; de sorte qu’on pourrait les regarder comme des déïstes, aveuglés d’ailleurs par un fanatisme atroce qui leur suggere des cruautés révoltantes envers les autres peuples. (…) Rarement on recontre parmi eux de ces disputes et de ces procès que l’intérêt ou l’amour propre enfantent par- tout ailleurs. Ils vivent étroitement unis entr’eux, et se donnent réciproquement le nom de fréres. Les titres de la vanité leur sont absolument inconnus. Ils tutoyent même leur chef, avec lequel ils s’assoient et prennent familiérement leur repas; l’on dirait, à cet égard, qu’ils sont les Quakers de l’Arabie.” News follows of their courage in war, the recompense in Heaven for those killed in action, and of their “précepte de religion de répandre le sang des nations étrangeres.” For the murder of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, ibid, col. 3. The Deistic implica- tions inherent in the reference to the Quakers are evident. We need only recall Voltaire’s four epistles devoted to this sect at the beginning of his Lettres anglaises (1734).

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 49the Bedouin of Central Arabia, described as men of extraordinary physicalhealth and frugality (“when necessary, they slake their thirst with the fetidurine of their mounts”), proud of their independence, though burdened withan ancestral poverty and voluntary ignorance. The expansion of the Wahhabikingdom, with al-Dirʿiyya as its capital and protected by a natural barrier ofinaccessible mountains and desert, was recounted in greater detail. The ad-vance towards the Persian Gulf had led to the conversion of the coastal ʿUtubArabs and had threatened the sultan of Muscat. The ferocious attack on Ker-bela had reawakened the memory of more ancient devastations, starting withthe caliphate of al-Mutawakkil in the mid-ninth century. The temporary occu-pation of Mecca, finally, had also emphasised the value attributed to this reli-gious capital by the new sectarians because of the presence of the Kaʿbah, “theoldest and most sacred temple of the universe”. In Baghdad a preparatory ex-pedition against the desecrators, demanded by the Turkish sultan and the shahof Persia, seemed destined to infinite procrastination, while the regular perfor-mance of the Muslim pilgrimage to the Holy Places that year was most uncer-tain. It would have been under the constant threat of an “immense” hordedominating a large part of Arabia and ready to flow into Mesopotamia andSyria.3 Here the article ended, leaving the reader in perhaps even greater doubt asto the true significance of the events. Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), the greatest exponent of oriental studies in France who was soon to pro-duce his celebrated Chréstomathie arabe (1806), had corresponded withNiebuhr about questions of Yemeni history and was engaged in the prepara-tion of a monumental work on the religion and history of the Druzes.4 He felt3 Ibid: “Il est indubitable que si les Wahabis continuent de même qu’ils ont commencé, ils parviendront insensiblement à s’assujettir toute l’Arabie, et même de-là étendre leurs possessions jusq’à la Mésopotamie et une partie de la Syrie.” Only indiscipline, lack of cannon and the plague had, it was believed, prevented them from taking such well-forti- fied towns as Jiddah and Medina. A letter from the defenders of Medina, dated 14 July 1803, appearing in that same issue of Le Moniteur, reported on how the town had survived repeated incursions by the lieutenants of Saʿud, son and heir of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz.4 In the various discussions about “Orientalism”, of which he is considered to be one of the fathers, Silvestre de Sacy, professor of Arabic at the new École speciale des langues ­orientales vivantes, co-founder and first president of the Société Asiatique (1822), is acknowledged as a typical representative of European erudition based on a purely literary knowledge of Arabic. On his role as the master of an entire generation of not only French orientalists – his pupils included Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, the greatest nineteenth- century Arabist, and Franz Bopp, known as the first comparative linguist – and his predi- lection for the study of the Muslim heresies examined in the light of a personal religious

50 Chapter 2the need to supply an explanation for the recent developments in the ArabianPeninsula. On the basis of the available information and further communica-tions received from Istanbul thanks to “a person rendered familiar by his trav-els and assiduous studies with the history and literature of the East and whowill one day enrich this branch of our knowledge with his works”, he hazardeda fascinating conjecture. Far from being a brand new phenomenon, he sug-gested, the religious movement in Najd might rather be the recrudescence ofsome ancient Ismaʿili heresy. The basis for this hypothesis, proposed in a briefessay modestly entitled “Observations sur les Wahhabites”, was the assumptionthat the Wahhabis were totally hostile to “Mohammedanism”, understood asthe official religion of the Ottoman Empire. Silvestre de Sacy and his unknowninformer went on to suggest that the followers of ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his sonMuhammad should be considered no more than an “offshoot” of the corrupttrunk of the Qarmatians, who seemed to have founded the most aberrant andinsidious sects ever to have appeared in Muslim territories in the distant past:Fatimids, Batinites, Assassins, Druzes, Nusairis, and Mutawallis.5 Surprising analogies seemed to support this conjecture. In the first place theWahhabis came from the extreme east of Najd, known as Bahrain, where theQarmatians had once established their domain. Then there was the repudia-tion of the Muslim precepts concerning ablution and food which the modernsectarians, according to numerous witnesses, also rejected. There was also theimplacable war on pilgrimages to Mecca, which the Wahhabis’ distant prede-cessors would have liked to replace with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Finally, thesack of the Holy City, culminating in the removal of the famous Black Stoneby the Qarmatians, was repeated in an equallly scandalous manner by theWahhabis in recent times. Apparently indifferent to the various opinions ex-pressed in the article published in Le Moniteur only a year earlier, Sacy reached Jansenist sensibility, cf. Irwin (2006), pp. 141–50; Mangold (2006), pp. 72–74; Said (1978), pp. 123–30; Schwab (1950), pp. 316–18.5 S. de S. [Silvestre de Sacy’s initials], “Observations sur les Wahhabites”, in Magasin Ency- clopédique, 1805, t. 4, pp. 35–36: “Les traits de ressemblance qui rapprochent les Wahha- bites des Carmates m’avoient frappé il y longtemps, et je ne doute point que ces nouveaux sectaires ne soient un rejeton des carmates. Les Fatémites (…) étoient aussi une branche des Carmates; et c’est de la même source que sont sortis les Baténiens, les Assassins, les Druzes, les Nosaïriens, les Motawélis, et diverses autres sectes, dont le fanatisme politique et religieux joue un rôle plus ou moins important dans l’histoire.” At this point the article continues under the heading: “Les Carmates ancêtres et prédécesseurs des Wahhabites”, ibid, pp. 36–41; without further mention of the author. It is worth noting that “Observa- tions sur les Wahhabites” is not included in the general bibliography appended to Harwig Derenbourg’s still valuable biography of Silvestre de Sacy, cf. Salmon (1905), pp. iii-cxvi.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 51a conclusion still absolutely in line with Niebuhr and Volney. A “simplified reli-gion”, no longer professing faith in the divinity of the Koran and the mission ofMuhammad, the Wahhabi cult, with its fanatical bellicosity and spirit of rebel-lion, seemed to match the turbulent traditions of the populations relegated tothe eastern borders of Arabia. Hence the renewed impulse to bring about a“revolution”, whether political or religious (another echo of Volney), the morenoteworthy for having reappeared nine centuries later. The ancient impiety, not to say atheism, of the tenth-century Qarmatianmovement was in fact not unknown in Europe. Information about the fanati-cal desecrators had appeared in Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale in 1697.6 Nev-6 About the Qarmatians, “regardez par les Musulmans non comme des sectaires, mais comme des impies & des Athées”, Herbelot writes that their doctrine “renversoit tous les fondemens du Musulmanisme” and that “ils allégorisoient tous les préceptes de la loy Mahometane”, cf. B. d’Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, Paris, 1697, pp. 256–57 (s.v. Car- math). A similar picture (“une secte, dont les principes combattoient ceux de l’Islamisme”) is proffered by the Swedish ambassador, the Armenian Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, after a life spent in Istanbul, only a few years before the diffusion of the first news of the Wahhabis, cf. Tableau Général de l’Empire Othoman, Par M. De M*** D’Ohsson, Paris, 1787– 1820, I, p. 277. More precisely, the Qarmatians, so named after their spiritual leader Ham- dan Qarmat, were a group within the ninth/eleventh century Ismaʿili movement, although they refused to acknowledge the Fatimid caliphs’ claim to the supreme title of imam and were imbued with cosmological elements of neo-Platonic origin, cf. Laoust (1965), pp. 140–43; Madelung (1978). The unforgotten creation of a Qarmatian kingdom in Bah- rain (until 1078), the threat they represented for pilgrims going to the Hijaz and the occu- pation of Mecca (930) lead by Abu Tahir al-Jannabi, with the removal of the famous Black Stone, and perhaps to an even greater extent, the forecast of an imminent final post- Islamic religious era, induced Arab and Ottoman detractors of the Wahhabi movement to postulate an infamous correspondence with such abhorrent predecessors. This may have influenced Silvestre de Sacy and his European informer in the East. The most common comparison among anti-Wahhabi Muslim polemicists during the nineteenth century, however, was, as in the case of the already cited historian of Mecca Ibn Zaini Dahlan (Schwartz [2002], pp. 72, 105), with the earlier seventh-century Kharijite heresy character- ised by the abolition of any distinction between authentic infidels and those Muslims who did indeed profess the Koran though guilty of grave sin and were stigmatised as “apostates”, murtaddun, cf. Bari (1971); Delanoue (1982), I, pp. 50, 210; DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 68, 83, 243; Ende (1981), p. 385; Hartmann (1924), p. 177; Kelly (1968), p. 48; Laoust (1939), pp. 521 nt., 534; Laoust (1965), p. 331; Peskes (1993), pp. 44, 85, 95, 150; Pröbster (1935), p. 67; Puin (1973), p. 47 nt. Such accusations, mainly of interest as an expression of the prevailing mood in anti-Wahhabi circles, received an early reply in the writings of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, who at several points clearly distanced himself from the Kharijites and other heretics guilty of “deducing false conclusions from obscure passages of the Koran”, cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 117, 196.

52 Chapter 2ertheless, a profound change in historical conditions with respect to the MiddleAges now pointed to a possibly more fortunate outcome of the Wahhabis’ re-cent insurrection. While in those distant times Muslim orthodoxy could stillcount on the support of the glorious ʿAbbasid caliphate, at present only theweak Ottoman and Persian rulers were called on to resist the newly blossom-ing heresies. They were indeed ready to decry the impiety of the sect, but thecourt in Istanbul was so rapacious and corrupt as to allow the suspicion that,should the Black Stone be stolen again, a ransom would be paid just as it wasby the caliph al-Muti to the Qarmatians. Everything therefore pointed to thepossibility that, should “a resolute man of genius”, an Arab equivalent of Napo-leon, become head of the sect, he could triumph over the two crumbling em-pires and ensure for the Wahhabis a lasting success of the sort the ancientQarmatians had been unable to sustain. An attack on the Koranic religion amillennium later – the first had been too premature – could at last anticipatevictory over an already exhausted adversary. As history repeated itself, a differ-ent outcome might be expected.77 “Observations sur les Wahhabites”, op. cit., pp. 36–37: “Les révolutions, soit politiques, soit religieuses, dont l’histoire nous offre le tableau varié dans toutes les pays et dans tous les siècles, méritent une attention particulière, quand elles se répètent chez le même peuple, dans le même pays, à de grandes distances de temps. La province de Bahreïn, qui avoisine quelle de Bassora, celle de Yémama, et le golfe Persique, et dont Al-Ahsa (ou Lahsa) est la capitale, est le séjour et le siége des principales tribus Wahhabites. C’est de là que sont sortis ces novateurs ennemis de l’islamisme, qui, reniant la divinité de l’alcoran et la mis- sion divine de Mahomet, et préchant, la fer à la main, les dogmes d’une religion simpli- fiée, ont juré la ruin du mahométisme, et ont commencé à satisfaire leur fanatisme religieux par le pillage des lieux sacrés et de saintes cités de la Mecque et de Médine. Or, et ceci est un fait fort singulier, mais peu connu, c’est cette même province de Bahreïn qui fut, il ya presque mille ans, le siége de la puissance des Carmates, novateurs religieux, qui en tout semblables aux Wahhabites leurs successeurs, professant la même doctrine, ani- més du même esprit de brigandage, se sont, comme eux, révoltés contre l’autorité légi- time du khalife, et ont, comme eux, livré le temple sacré de la Mecque au pillage, et répandu la terreur et l’épouvante dans les provinces voisines; ou, pour mieux dire, ce sont les mêmes tribus, c’est le même peuple, qui conservant toujours le même caractère et les mêmes mœurs, développant sous diffèrens chefs les mêmes principes de religion et d’in- dépendance, a donné deux fois à dix siècles d’intervalle le même spectacle au monde.” A compendium of the doctrines and the exploits of the Qarmatians, ibid, pp. 37–39, sug- gests, finally, that a possible “homme de génie” might help the Wahhabis, and refers to the extreme corruption of the Turkish and Persian Empires, ibid, pp. 39–40.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 532 Rousseau: A Reforming Sheikh of MohammedanismSilvestre de Sacy, protected by his private religious views against any revolu-tionary or atheistic sympathies – Mass was regularly celebrated at his resi-dence during 1793 – was intrigued by the possibility of a hidden continuityrunning from the Qarmatians to the Wahhabis, particularly since it might clar-ify remote events in Arab history and doctrines generally known solely throughsubsequent misrepresentations. Positive confirmation seemed to come fromthe growing doctrinal polemic against the new sectarians in the Muslim campfuelled by the Ottoman authorities. Jean-Baptiste Louis Rousseau (1780–1831)was a promising orientalist and diplomat who had grown up in Asia, had re-cently been nominated consul in Basra, and aspired to intellectual recognition.He was the son of the French Consul Jean-François Rousseau appointed byLouis XVI to Baghdad and Aleppo, of Genevan origin and related to the phi-losopher Jean-Jacques. Silvestre de Sacy therefore entrusted him with the taskof further research.8 The young Rousseau gathered first-hand information on ajourney from Aleppo to Baghdad in May 1807 and to Teheran in October 1807when he prepared for the arrival of the Gardane mission. From May to Decem-ber 1808 he was in Syria where he succeeded his late father as consul in Aleppo. The result was an essay, “Notice historique sur les Wahabis”, published in1809 and included in a collection printed anonymously in Paris and entitledDescription du Pachalik de Bagdad. From that year on, however, further articlespublished by Rousseau under his own name, in the Viennese Fundgruben desOrients (Mines de l’Orient) edited by Baron Hammer-Purgstall and in the An-nales des Voyages edited by the geographer Malte-Brun, left no doubt as to thepaternity of the major work. A treatise on the Yaziydis (suspected of wor­shipping fire and the devil) by Maurizio Garzoni, a missionary in Kurdistan,was added by Silvestre de Sacy to the “Notice historique”, as if to envelop the8 In a letter of 27 August 1806 Silvestre de Sacy asked Rousseau to collect on his behalf devotional texts in Arabic written for Christians in Aleppo as well as information on the so-called Christians of St. John, whose existence in Arabia was confirmed by Niebuhr, and on the Wahhabis. He was indeed sent a communication in February 1807, cf. Dehérain (1938), pp. 66–67. On Rousseau as an “orientalist consul”, cf. Dehérain (1938), pp. 65–92; Poinssot (1899), pp. v-xv, who, basing themselves on archival sources, depict him as an eccentric who grew up and lived in Baghdad and Aleppo until the Restoration, a connois- seur of eastern languages (Arabic in particular, but also Turkish) which he spoke better than French, a literary fortune hunter through Silvestre de Sacy, an unscrupulous collec- tor of manuscripts and eternally frustrated in his aspirations to a diplomatic career under Napoleon and the Bourbons.

54 Chapter 2W­ ahhabis and the Yaziydis in a common cloak of heresy.9 Silvestre de Sacy wasalso responsible for its presentation at a meeting of the Institut de France. Thecontents, though amplified and updated, justified the conclusion that it wasindeed Rousseau who had written the article in Le Moniteur in May 1804, andthat he must also have either inspired or written the central section of the sub-sequent “Observations sur les Wahhabites” in Millin’s Magasin Encyclopédique.10 With respect to the two previous texts, however, there were some importantvariations in the “Notice historique”. The connection with the Qarmatians, tillthen considered more or less extinct, reappeared without any further support-ing evidence.11 On the other hand, the religious principles and vicissitudes of9 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, suivie d’une Notice historique sur les Wahabis, Paris, 1809, with editorial notes initialled S. de S. (scil.: Silvestre de Sacy), ibid, pp. v-vii. The frontispiece title of the information on the Wahhabis is modified within the volume: “Notice sur la secte des Wahabis”, ibid, pp. 125–82. The first of two articles by Rousseau for Hammer-Purgstall, sent “des bords de l’Euphrate, le 24 octobre 1808”, corre- sponds, except for a few omissions, to the notes of 24 November [sic] 1808 in the author’s diary, published almost a century later, cf. J.L. Rousseau, “Notice sur la secte des Wehabis”, in Fundgruben des Orients, I, 1809, pp. 191–98; Id., Voyage de Bagdad à Alep, Paris, 1899, pp. 93–106.10 Rousseau later confirmed that he had first written on the Wahhabis in February 1804 (infra, note 44) – a date which exactly matches the dispatch of the article to Le Moniteur. His enduring relations with Silvestre de Sacy, the identical location of both the article and the “Observations” (“de Costantinople”, the usual centre for the collection of correspond- ence from the East to Europe), the mention of the Qarmatians and the corresponding remark by Herbelot also found at the beginning of the “Notice historique”, all validated the hypothesis (suggested by Driault [1925], p. iii) that the “Observations” (more precisely the part entitled “Les Carmates ancêtres et prédécesseurs des Wahhabites”, supra, note 5) should also be ascribed to Rousseau in spite of his lasting silence on the subject and despite some evident distortions (the aforesaid incredulity concerning Muhammad and the Koran attributed to the Wahhabis in “Observations”, but not in Le Moniteur or the “Notice historique”). It should also be observed that the tone of a letter from Rousseau dated 4 June 1806, offering friendship, news of his studies and readiness to send manu- scripts in Arabic (mentioned by Dehérain [1938], p. 66), suggests that no stable collabora- tion between Rousseau and Silvestre de Sacy existed until this date, before which their go-between may have been Pierre Ruffin, French chargé d’affaires in Istanbul, who had been in correspondence with Rousseau since 1802.11 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., p. 125. Also, ibid, pp. 126–27: “Quand on considère l’origine, les dogmes, la vie austère et turbulente, le fanatisme reli- gieux des Wahabis, leur ambition dévorante et leur ardeur pour les conquêtes, on est porté à présumer qu’ils descendent directement des Karmates, peuple intrépide et belli- queux, qui en suivant la même carrière, se rendit sous les khalifes Abbassides le fléau du mahométisme et la terreur de l’Empire des Arabes. (…) C’est dans la province de Yemen,

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 55the new movement were described in great detail and with specific reserva-tions as to currently accepted interpretations. It was said that only for lack ofinformation had “Niebuhr and other travellers” believed they could portray theWahhabis “with the hardly unflattering appearance of an obscure and desper-ate sect of Deists, relegated to a corner of Arabia”.12 The sectarians were indeedfaithful to divine revelation in the Koran and the religious practices it con-tained (circumcision, prayer, feast days, fasting, abstinence, ablution, evengenuflection), but not to the “Muslim traditions”. By these the “Notice histo-rique” seemed to mean an extremely varied collection of texts auxiliary to theKoran, firstly the body of received texts on the sentences and deeds attributedto Muhammad, the ḥadīth. Their aim was rather to reform the Islamic faith onthe basis of original glosses to the Holy Book of Islam composed by their ambi-tious founder. They considered that they had been called on to convert or ex-terminate those self-styled followers of Islam, in reality “ungodly” and“blasphemous”, who habitually associated God with mere men. Muhammadwas to be regarded as “wise”, but not a prophet, and to mention him in the pro-fession of faith was a reprehensible act exalting a human being.13 Mosques,devoid of all decoration, domes and minarets appeared to be used as places of le foyer commun de tous ces nombreaux essaims d’Arabes qui en sortirent successive- ment pour couvrir les vastes déserts d’une partie de l’Asie et de l’Afrique, qu’on a vu renaître de ses cendres la secte des Karmates qui n’a fait que changer de nom en prenant celui du père de son restaurateur. (…) Connu sous le nom de Scheikh Mohammed, que ses prosélytes font descendre d’Abd-elwahab, fils de Suleïman”. There is no reference here to the “Observations” of 1805, except in a final editorial note by Silvestre de Sacy, ibid, p. 182.12 Ibid, p. 125.13 Rumours of the Wahhabis’ presumed disregard for the prophetic mission of Muhammad and the omission of half the ritual profession of faith are attributable to theological prob- lems relating to popular belief in miracles and the efficacy of the intercession of saints. Of the latter the Prophet held absolute pride of place, so much so that in some cases he was endowed with semi-divinity as in the title “companion to God” used in the Ottoman world, and even exemption from death, in imitation of Christ. There was, in particular, a debate as to whether praying to him for intercession was permissible. Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab only admitted that it was once the absolute freedom of God not to accept any intercessor had been established, and that the efficacy of Muhammad’s intercession in any case depended on the authenticity of the monotheistic faith professed by the wor- shipper, cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 69–70, 255; Haj (2002), pp. 259–62; Hartmann (1924), pp. 181–83, 187; Laoust (1939), pp. 518–19; Vassiliev (1998), pp. 74, 78. In contrast with the prevalent opinion, the theory that the teaching of the Wahhabi leader in fact implicated degrading Muhammad from the level of respect normally accorded him by Muslims is repeated by Schwartz (2002), p. 70.

56 Chapter 2worship – a silent contradiction of the idea, dear to Volney, that the Wahhabisforbade the use of specific buildings for prayer. The words used here were practically identical to those used in Le Moniteurin 1804 to emphasise the Spartan virtues of the Wahhabis, their devotion to theKaʿbah and their “extreme fanaticism”. Hence the only partial justification ofthe definition of them as “pure Deists”. There was also mention of their unex-pectedly humane treatment of Jews and Christians who, for unexplained rea-sons, were said to have been spared the intolerance shown to commonMuslims. The comparison with the “Quakers”, even if it was in itself fairly evoc-ative in alluding to a possible analogy with some form of Christian Protestant-ism, was dropped without further ado, since such an epithet was obviouslyunsuitable for a warlike population.1414 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 129–31: “La doctrine que préchoit Scheikh Mohammed, avoit pour base les préceptes mêmes du Coran, livre qu’il prétendoit avoir été écrit dans le ciel de la main des anges, mais qu’il commentoit selon son ambition et ses vues, et d’une manière toute différente de celle qui est reçue parmi les Musulmans. Il ne regardoit son auteur que comme un simple instrument dont Dieu s’étoit servi pour faire connoître ses volontés aux hommes; de sorte qu’en admettant ce livre dans son entier, il rejetta cette foule de traditions reçues chez les sectateurs de Mahomet, et devint plutôt le réformatuer du mahométisme, que le fondateur d’une nouvelle croyance. De là il semble que l’on peut conclure que le wahabisme n’est autre chose que la religion même enseignée par le Coran, ramenée à sa pureté primitive. Admettre l’exi- stence d’un Dieu unique, éternel, tout-puissant, juste, miséricordieux, qui récompense les bons et punit les méchans; regarder le Coran comme un livre divin, et se conformer aux dogmes et aux pratiques qu’il enseigne, voilà les fondemens du wahabisme. Quant à Mahomet, le réformateur voulut qu’il ne fût qu’un sage, qu’un homme aimé de Dieu, et rien de plus, et proscrivit tous les hommages que lui rendent les Musulmans. (…) Il ajouta que ceux d’entre les Musulmans qui se roidiroient contre ses instructions et persiste- roient dans leur aveuglement, devoient être regardés comme des impies, des blasphéma- teurs qui méritoient la mort, et qu’il falloit les exterminer tous, parce qu’ils outrageoient la Majesté divine, en lui associant des êtres que sa toute-puissance seule a daigné tirer du néant”. And again, ibid, pp. 145–47: “Nous avons déja vu que conformément au dogme fondamental de leur croyance, qui consiste à admettre l’existence d’un seul Dieu digne de respect et d’adoration, et à rejéter tout autre culte qui a pour objet les créatures, ils refu- sent à Mahomet la qualité de prophète, et ne le regardent que comme un homme juste et vertueux qui mérita par sa piété d’être aimé de Dieu, et de devenir l’exécuteur des volon- tés divines; de sorte qu’en adoptant la profession de foi des Musulmans, ils en retranchent les dernières paroles, et la réduisent à celles-ci, il n’y a d’autre Dieu que Dieu; aussi peut-on les regarder comme de purs déistes, aveuglés d’ailleurs par un fanatisme extrême. L’on a remarqué encore que les Wahabis, en admettant le Coran dans son entier, rejettent les traditions musulmanes; cependant comme ce livre sert de base aux pratiques religieuses, ils ont conservé toutes celles qui sont en usage chez les Mahométans. Ils sont circoncis

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 57 The result was remarkable: however ambiguous the notion of “reform”, anddespite the remaining slightly heretical reference to the Qarmatians, the Wah-habis were at last reinstated among the various movements spawned by theKoran – the first, though the least credited of Niebuhr’s suggestions. Recogni-tion of the exclusive inspiration of the Holy Book, intolerance of anything be-yond the notions it enclosed and of popular Muslim superstitions, even thesystematic demolition of tombs and chapels honouring “holy men”, seemed torecall the original message of the Prophet, but without philosophical embel-lishments. If Consul Rousseau invoked Voltaire once again as a witness, thiswas less for his late Essai sur les moeurs, than for his previous tragedy on Mu-hammad of 1741 aimed against fanaticism.15 Some essential historical annotations followed, partly vitiated by legend.Like an unquenchable fire, following the example of the first Muslims, a call toconquer was apparently announced in the prophetic dream of a “poor shep-herd” called Sulaiman, in whom Rousseau thought he could discern ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s father and the grandfather of Sheikh Muhammad on the basis ofArabic stories distorted by malevolence. As a tacit correction of what was stillmaintained in Le Moniteur, the “Notice historique” specified that only Muham-mad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab should be considered the authentic founder of themovement and that he liked it to be believed that he was descended from the comme eux, ont les mêmes formules de prières, le même nombre d’ablutions, les mêmes abstinences, le même jeûne qui est celui du Ramadan, les mêmes solemnités, et font aussi des génuflexions semblables; mais leur mosquées sont dépourvues de toute espèce de décorations, on n’y voit point de minarêts, ni de coupoles; un Imam y fait aux heures de la prière la lecture de quelques passages du Coran, et chacun s’y acquitte des devoirs reli- gieux, sans que le nom de Mahomet y entre pour rien. D’après la différence d’opinions qui se trouve entre les Musulmans et eux relativement à ce prétendu prophète, les Wahabis ont ses sectateurs en horreur; l’intolérance à l’égard des Musulmans est un précepte de leur loi, et ils l’exécutent à la rigueur: ils sont plus humains envers les Chrétiens et les Juifs, car il est reconnu que lorsque ceux-ci vont dans les pays soumis aux Wahabis, ils n’y éprouvent aucune persécution de ces sectaires, qui ne se mettent pas en peine de les convertir”. About the pilgrimage to Mecca, an “œuvre méritoire” merely as an act of “vénération pour la Caba”, ibid, pp. 148, 165.15 The harsh words of sincerity that Muhammad addresses to Zopire, cf. Mahomet, ou du fanatisme, act II, scene V (from: “Je suis ambitieux”, to the exclamation: “Sur ces débris du monde élevons l’Arabie! Il faut un nouveau culte, il faut de nouveaux fers!”), were noted down by Rousseau in his travel diary, cf. J.-B.L. Rousseau, Voyage de Bagdad à Alep, cit., pp. 97–98; omitted from the article based on these notes for the Fundgruben des Orients (supra, note 9), they reappear in his last text on the subject, cf. [Id.], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, les Wahabis, les Nosaïris et les Ismaélis, Paris-Mar- seille, 1818, p. 4.

58 Chapter 2Prophet.16 Certain events marked the apparently irresistible stages of ascentnarrated both in this main contribution by Rousseau and in those that fol-lowed, sent by him to Malte-Brun and Hammer-Purgstall. These events werethe alliance with the local prince Ibn Saʿud, the enormous expansion under hissuccessor ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, the unsuccessful enterprise of the pasha of Baghdad,the victorious Wahhabi foray into Kerbela and Mecca (in the latter case thanksalso to an alliance with a brother of Sharif Ghalib), a succession of incursionsagainst Damascus and Baghdad, piracy in the Persian Gulf, a stop to regularpilgrimages to Mecca under Ottoman tutelage – in particular the disaster of aSyrian caravan in 1807, believed to be irreligious, abandoned by its own leader,the Damascene pasha, and left to perish in the desert – and, finally, open defi-ance of the supreme spiritual authority of the Turkish sultan by suppressingthe prayer in his honour at the Great Mosque in Mecca.1716 [Id.], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 127–28. Sulaiman was said to have gener- ated a purifying flame and to have asked interpreters about the meaning of this appari- tion. They were believed to have replied that his son (in fact a nephew) was destined to found a “nouvelle puissance” and to subjugate “tous les Arabes du désert” to his laws. This foreboding may have been suggested by the life of the Prophet Muhammad based on the biography by Ibn Hisham, cf. Puin (1973), p. 75 nt. More generally, the diminuition of the family background of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and the insinuation that he claimed to be related to the Prophet reveal the hostile nature of the rumours reported by Rousseau. Rumours that Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was of humble origin, his father a poor shepherd, show in particular how he had been polemically undervalued as illiterate by his detractors, degrading his genealogy even if his family was far from poor. In fact he came from a line of legal scholars who originated from the province of al-Washm. His grandfather, Sulaiman ibn ʿAli al-Musharraf (d. 1668/69), was a judge and legal con- sultant or mufti, at al-ʿUyaina and the main exponent of the Hanbali law school in Najd. His father, ʿAbd al-Wahhab ibn Sulaiman (d. 1740/41), was a judge at Huraimila, and his son’s first teacher. Relations between them deteriorated later and disagreements with his father delayed Muhammad’s public affirmation, cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 17–18, 94, 229; Hartmann (1924), p. 177 nt.; Juhany (2002), pp. 117, 134, 138; Laoust (1939), pp. 506–507; Rentz (2004), pp. 23–24 nt., 26, 37 (who, according to the chroniclers Ibn Ghannam and Ibn Bishr, reports two distinct genealogies for the Wahhabi founder); Vassiliev (1998), p. 64.17 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 40–42, 131–32, 153–70. It is worth noting that the historical account in the “Notice historique” is limited to the con- densed information in the previous article in Le Moniteur, ending with the assassination of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz and the succession of Saʿud. The second conquest of Mecca and the entire Hijaz, with the submission of Ghalib in 1806, can only be inferred from the inclusion of a publication in part of four later reports, personally written by the author in Aleppo and Baghdad between 12 June 1806 and 30 July 1807, but with no indication of the addressee (perhaps Silvestre de Sacy). News about the rejected encomium of the Turkish sultan

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 59 To complete the picture, but without a word about his sources, were somenotes on customs, in particular rumours that the Wahhabis abstained not onlyfrom alcohol, but also from coffee and tobacco, showed unusual respect for thefemale victims of their raids, and were refractory to commercial relations withforeigners. The latest news of the sectarians included a threatened siege of Da-mascus in 1808, a forewarning in 1810 of further incursions towards the Euphra-tes and in particular the Hauran south-west of the Syrian capital, while on theopposite front there were suggestions of manoeuvres by the English navy andthe sultan of Muscat against pirate bases connected with the movement. Theeloquent portrait of the reigning prince Saʿud confirmed the special religiousbasis of his authority.18 The final synthesis was deliberately shocking and ad-hered to a time-worn pattern. In spite of some recent partial failures nearD­ amascus or Baghdad, hordes which the pashas’ soldiers could not withstand during the Friday prayer had been in circulation about the Wahhabis even before they had taken Mecca. It is mentioned, for example by the polemicists Ibn Suhaim and Ibn ʿAfaliq, who attributed the prohibition to Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s teaching, cf. Caskel (1929), p. 6; Peskes (1993), pp. 73, 119–20; Vassiliev (1998), p. 100. This was attended by a somewhat delicate question destined to resurface for some time to come: if and how far the Wahhabis felt that they owed obedience to self-styled “Muslim” authorities, for instance to the sultan and his pashas, thus making themselves potentially ‘seditious”, bugāh. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, for example, was defined as a “rebel” by Browne, cf. Peskes (1993), pp. 47, 238, 241–42. On this point DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 198, 247–48, 256; Oliver (2002), p. 27, deny that Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s writings contain an explicit approval of the overthrow of established authority. This would be unacceptable in prevalent Sunni legal doctrine.18 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 140, 147–52; [Id.], “Nou- veaux reinsegnemens sur les opérations militaires des Wahabis”, in Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie et de l’Histoire, XIV, 40, 1811, pp. 104, 109–12; Id., “Tableau des possessions territoriales de l’émir Sehoude”, in Fundgruben des Orients, II, 1811, p. 159: “Sehoude est un homme de quarante ans, d’une physionomie imposante, courageux et ferme, mais aussi rustique dans ses mœurs que le reste des Wéhabis; il gouverne despotiquement ses sujets, et les punit avec cruauté, quand ils manquent à leurs devoirs religieux ou civils. Aussi scrupuleux dans les pratiques du culte, qu’austère et inflexible par son caractère, il est continuellement entouré de Mollas érudits, qui l’édifient par des lectures spirituelles, et enseignent à ses enfans la théologie et la littérature. D’ailleurs, tous les vendredis il va faire ses prières dans quelque mosquée; plus de vingt mille individus de tous les états le suivent à ces époques. A la fête du Ramadan et à celle des sacrifices, tous les chefs de la nation étant assemblés, il se transporte en grande solennité dans le désert, pour y invoquer le Tout-Puissant, selon l’ancienne coutume des arabes. Sa famille est nombreuse, il a quinze fils cinq filles, trois frères et deux sœurs, et trois femmes”. A brief description of the capital al-Dirʿiyya follows, with twenty-eight mosques and thirty colleges, but without minarets or domes, and no baths or coffee houses.

60 Chapter 2would even able to engage one day with a European army, ready as they werefor “martyrdom in the cause of doctrine”. The Wahhabi troops were preparingto “spread terror to the very gates of Constantinople”. Everything seemed toanticipate the birth of “a new monarchy, able to cause other Asian potentatesto tremble in the future, and to focus the attention of European sovereigns ex-clusively on itself”.19 It was not only the erudite curiosity of Silvestre de Sacy that was stimulatedby this picture.20 Rousseau’s evident aim was to satisfy ministerial and Napole-onic instructions which required accounts of any unusual or noteworthy eventin the East and included a request, in concomitance with the Persian missionsof Romieu, Jaubert and Gardane, to be kept up to date about the new kingdomwhich had appeared in Arabia.21 The entire memorial on the pashadom of19 [Id.], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 178–79; [Id.], “Nouveaux reinsegnemens sur les opérations militaires des Wahabis”, cit., pp. 103–104, 107, 109–10.20 Silvestre de Sacy must still have found it compatible with his favourite hypothesis, con­ firmed again that year, cf. Sur la dynastie des Assassins et sur l’origine de leur nom: lu à la séance publique de l’Institut, du 7 juillet 1809 (Extrait du Moniteur, n. 210, an 1809), s.l., 1809, p. 4: “Aux Carmates (…) semblent avoir succédé les Wahabis, qui remplissent aujourd’hui de la terreur de leur nom plusieurs provinces de l’empire Ottoman, et qui sous l’apparence des réformateurs, paraissent destinés à renverser la religion de Mahomet.”21 In 1803 the Foreign Minister Talleyrand wrote: “Il importe au gouvernement d’être le pre- mier en Europe instruit de tout ce qui peut intéresser le sort de l’Asie et faire présumer les changements plus ou moins prochains et les vicissitudes que les Etats de cette partie du monde peuvent éprouver” (letter to General Brune, French ambassador in Istanbul, 8 Vendémiaire year XII – 1 October 1803 – quoted in Dehérain [1930], II, p. 25). In the same year the interest of Napoleonic France in the Saʿudi Kingdom and the religious movement connected with it must have been aroused by the first Wahhabi conquest of Mecca. The following events only fomented such curiosity. The tasks assigned to General Gardane’s mission in Persia in 1807 included the order to “étudier le développement de la puissance des Wahabites de l’Arabie, tâcher de connaître leur chef et de sonder ses dispositions à l’égard de la France”, cf. Driault (1904), pp. 183–84. A report by Ange Gardane, the general’s brother and secretary to his legation (with young Consul Rousseau), even provides the erroneous news that the sectarians had also taken Damascus, and inflates their numbers to 300,000 armed men, cf. [A. Gardane], Journal d’un voyage dans la Turquie-d’Asie et la Perse, Paris-Marseille, 1809, p. 90: “On ne parle à Bagdad que des Vahabites. Ces vain- queurs sortis des déserts de l’Arabie, peuvent mettre sous les armes, environ trois cents mille hommes (…). Ils s’étendent depuis Mosul jusqu’à la Mer rouge. Il y quatre-vingt-dix ans, que Cheh-Mahmad, d’une origine obscure, chassé de Damas, de Bagdad et de Bas- sora, se refugia à Naged. Cette Tribu arabe et son Prince adoptèrent sa religion. Ils adorent un seul Dieu. Il est défendu de se raser la barbe, de boire vin et de fumer: leur habillement ne doit pas avoir de la soie. La Mecque, Médine. Bahren, Mascat, tout le Naged et Damas sont tombés au pouvoir des vahabites”. Later, as Muhammad ʿAli’s Arabian expedition

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 61Baghdad, including the “Notice historique” on the Wahhabis, was intended tocorroborate France’s renewed colonial aims in India and advise the establish-ment of settlements on the Persian Gulf as alternatives to the English tradingposts in the region. “A cruel people and ruthless, these Wehabis! Greedy forbloodshed and booty, they let no-one escape and ruthlessly cut the throats ofall who fall into their hands.” Such ferocious exoticism appealed to Europeanliterary taste, investing the narrative with a grim fascination.22 Rousseau’s perspective, however, was principally that of the victims of Wah-habi ferocity. The article in Le Moniteur had already described in minute detailthe terrible atrocities committed at Kerbela: more than 4,500 inhabitants mas-sacred, pregnant women disembowelled, victims’ blood imbibed by the mostsavage of the assailants. Thus, apart from one small correction – the date ofthat terrible event was moved back to 20 April 1801 (rather than 1802)23 – thesestories reappeared in the “Notice historique” and in the complete Description against the sect was launched, Bernardino Drovetti, French consul general in Egypt, and his friend Colonel Boutin, both considered it advisable to establish some form of contact with the Wahhabis and suggested in 1812 the creation of a vice-consulate at Jidda, “pour connoître en manière positive les Wahabis, leurs projets, leurs liens et leurs influences”. These calculations were never divorced from the fear that the ruler of al-Dirʿiyya might prefer an alliance with the English, cf. Driault (1904), p. 323; Faivre d’Arcier (1990), pp. 121, 160.22 J.-B.L. Rousseau, “Notice sur la secte des Wahabis”, in Fundgruben des Orients, I (1809), pp. 191–92. Among his many observations on the Pashadom, Rousseau also tells of con- tacts between Wahhabis and the English resident in Basra, Samuel Manesty, confirmed in a grim anecdote of punishment inflicted by the “scheikh” on one of his own subjects, guilty of having seized commercial East India Company dispatches, cf. [Id.], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., p. 39. In 1808 Manesty is also accused of sending gifts and military supplies to the Wahhabi leader, cf. [Id.], “Nouveaux reinsegnemens sur les opéra- tions militaires des Wahabis”, cit., p. 106.23 [Id.], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 72–75, 156. The sack of Kerbela, with its grave religious and political implications, had a central role in creating an aura of terror round the Wahhabis and later in equating the slaughter with all kinds of massacres attrib- uted to Muslim “fundamentalists” in the next two centuries. The chronicler Ibn Bishr, innocent of polemical exaggeration since he belonged to the movement, estimates the victims at about 2,000 killed in markets and homes, confirms the destruction of the cupola over the tomb of Husain, robbery of every removable object of value in his mauso- leum, and the collection of booty so voluminous that it took almost the whole day to heap it together and load it. With regard to the contested date of this event, it is by now an established opinion, also in the light of Arabic sources, that the original date of 1802 (in Le Moniteur and in Waring’s Tour, infra, note 72) is the most probable one, on some day between 5 March and 3 April, rather than 20 April, the day of the pilgrimage to al-Najaf possibly given in Shia accounts in order to make the attack as odious as possible, cf. Philby

62 Chapter 2of the pashadom of Baghdad. Letters from Rousseau included with the “Noticehistorique” (supra, note 17) evoked even more vividly the horror felt by the lo-cal populations at the idea of the sect’s dreaded expansion into Ottoman terri-tory. Rumours of renewed slaughter at ʿAna (1807), Syrian pilgrims’ distressingimpression of Mecca in 1806 as a city disfigured by ever greater destruction, theappalled reaction to the caravan massacre of 1807, and news of the altered at-titude of Sharif Ghalib (the mufti of Mecca, as Rousseau called him) who hadapparently espoused the new cause, seemed to transform every brief sigh intoa lament of mourning for the old order which had been obliterated. Perhapsnot even Rousseau could with any certainty interpret the desperation felt, ashe put it, for “mosques demolished, pulpits upturned, external manifestationsof the cult abolished, religious ministries destroyed”, though he clearly reportsthe murder of the members of the pilgrimage to Mecca and the insult to themaḥmal, a splendid palanquin borne on camelback solemnly transporting theprecious cloth sent every year from Istanbul to cover the Kaʿbah. It was in anycase certain that a “sad foreboding of the decadence of Mohammedanism”seemed to oppress the inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia.24 (1955), p. 93; Reissner (1988), pp. 433–38; Vassiliev (1998), p. 96; despite which 1801 is the date again proposed by Schwartz (2002), p. 75.24 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., pp. 170–72 (“Extrait d’une lettre écrite d’Alep, en date du 12 juin 1806”): “La caravane des Hagis ou Pélerins, a dû souffrir considérablement cette année du brigandage de ces sectaires fanatiques. Après avoir massacré une partie des dévots Musulmans qui la composoient, et soumis l’autre à des impositions excessives, ils ont brisé le sacré Mahmel, coffre d’un riche travail et couvert d’un drap vert brodé, qui renferme les pieuses offrandes que le Grand Seigneur envoie chaque année, pour être déposées sur le tombeau de Mahomet. (…) Un tel accident, fait pour jeter l’alarme parmi les Turcs, a plongé notre ville dans la dernière désolation; tout le monde le regarde comme le triste présage de la décadence du Mahométisme. Cependant, malgré tous ces obstacles, les pélerins soutenus par leur sainte ferveur, sont parvenus à accomplir le pieux devoir qui les avoit attirés en Arabie; ils sont entrés dans la Mecque, mais ils y ont trouvé toutes les mosquées démolies, les chaires renversées, les cérémonies extérieures du culte abolies, et les ministres de la religion détruits par le fer des vain- queurs. La Caba qu’ils ont visitée, subsiste seule au milieu des décombres d’un grand nombre d’édifices, tombés sous le coup du fanatisme et d’une aveugle fureur.” On the dreadful end to the Syrian caravan, ibid, pp. 178–79 (“Extrait d’une seconde lettre d’Alep, en date du 14 mars 1807”); on the sack of ʿAna, ibid, p. 181 (“Extrait d’une quatrième lettre datée de Bagdad, le 30 juillet 1807”). Wahhabi opposition to the Mecca pilgrimage was justified simply on the grounds of its supposed traditionally sacrilegious character or, politically, by the argument that the alleged need to protect the pilgrims from possible attacks had turned the caravans into hostile military expeditions. Within a few decades the greater safety against robbers guaranteed to pilgrims under Saʿudi dominion had

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 63 Apart from the fact that by then more was known about the Wahhabis, thisprediction constituted the very thread of continuity with Volney. Profanationof the Holy Places and persecution of superstitious pilgrims (although a cer-tain benevolence seemed to be shown to Persians and Indians25) carried moreweight with Rousseau than the averred fidelity of the sect to Koranic revela-tion, and seemed to confirm the forecast of a political and religious revolutionin Asia. How far this corresponded to the current theological dispute, what rolewas played by national and state motivations – the spirit of Arab insurrectionagainst Turkish authority – and finally how far Rousseau’s assessment was in-fluenced by the old European habit of including all followers of Islam underthe incorrect definition of “Mohammedan”, still less applicable to the newmovement, remained to be seen. The benevolence of Silvestre de Sacy ensuredthat ample credit be given to Rousseau’s exposé well beyond the frontiersof France.26 This, however, was not enough to shield him from the accusa­-tion of using unauthorised information from colleagues whom he had not become a typical feature of pro-Wahhabi historiography, as also in the case of al-Alusi, already mentioned as a historian of Najd, cf. Peskes (1993), pp. 147, 160, 323; Vassiliev (1998), p. 105.25 Rousseau interprets news of the unexpected welcome of Persian Shiʿi pilgrims at Mecca as a sign of interest on Saʿud’s part in an alliance with Persia, or even as proof of a desire for proselytisation. Alternatively, he thought the reason might also be to secure the return home of some Arab tribes still in that country where they had been moved by Tamerlane a good four centuries earlier, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], “Nouveaux reinsegnemens sur les opé- rations militaires des Wahabis”, cit., pp. 104–105.26 The Bibliothek der neuesten und wichtigsten Reisebeschreibungen zur Erweiterung der Erd­ kunde, founded by Matthias Christian Sprengel, promptly included among its volumes the Descrip­tion du Pachalik de Bagdad, cf. T.F. Ehrmann (hrsg.), Neueste Beiträge zur Kunde der Asia­tischen Türkei. Mitgetheilt von Herrn Silvestre de Sacy. Aus dem Französi­ schen, Weimar, 1809. Rousseau is described in the preface as “ein junger talentvoller Fran- zose” who “als mehrjähriger Augenzeuge vollen Glauben verdient”, ibid, p. vi. A review of the Description and versions in the form of compendia of the two contributions sent by Rousseau to Hammer-Purgstall were published in 1809, 1811 and 1814 in the Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden, the journal edited by the geographer Friedrich Justin Ber- tuch. A German translation of part of the original article published in Le Moniteur (1804) had already appeared here in a section entitled Vermischte Nachrichten (initialled D.H.), apparently earlier (November 1803) than the original French. This may have been because of a previous communication by Rousseau – the translator makes a generic mention of “näheren Nachrichten” found in “oeffentlichen Blättern” and something similar seems to be suggested by Seetzen, infra, Chapter III, note 6 – or a delay in editing and printing the German edition (issued, perhaps only nominally, in 1803, but in fact in 1804). In 1811 a ver- sion of Rousseau’s “Nouveaux reinsegnemens” was also included in the well-known peri- odical Minerva directed by Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz.

64 Chapter 2­acknowledged. Suspicion of plagiarism already overshadowed the new investi-gation into the Wahhabis.3 Corancez: The Cult of the Koran in its Original SimplicityIn the autumn of 1804, while the Republic was still in its death throes in Paris,a second longer anonymous article from Smyrna appeared in Le Moniteur, withthe purpose of publicising “historical research” on the origin and existence ofthe Wahhabi sect.27 There was no reference to the previous article in the samepublication, nor was there any indication as to sources. However, the modifica-tion of accepted facts and the reshuffle of commonly held opinions proceeded,at least for French witnesses, with a force equal only to that of Rousseau’s ma-ture “Notice historique” of 1809. The correspondences with this last essay – cer-tain passages were almost identical – must have been evident enough to causethe misconception that the “Notice historique” was an augmented, updatedversion of the second article in Le Moniteur and should thus be attributed tothe same author.28 The correspondent from Smyrna in fact went back to the origins of themovement, recreating a connection with Islam and presenting his opinions asindependent of Niebuhr’s. He knew that a Sheikh Muhammad, originally froma tribe of the Tamim horde (the Najdis), a man of humble birth who had beenon journeys to Mecca, Damascus, Baghdad and Basra, was the true founder ofthe sect. This was in contrast with the usual attribution of that honour to hisfather ʿAbd al-Wahhab, as well as with the evidence of the actual name of the27 Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel, 39, 9 brumaire, an 13 (31 octobre 1804), pp. 137– 39, the article appeared in the section “Extérieur. Turquie”, merely headed: “Smyrne, le 15 sept. 1804 (28 fructidor.)”, in three paragraphs: I. “Origine des Whaabis. Histoire de shek Mahamed et d’Ibn Soout”; II. “Prise d’Imam-Hassem et de la Mecque; défaite des Whaa- bis, et mort d’Abdel-Aziz”; III. “Religion et usages des Whaabis”. It is worth noting that also this second article in Le Moniteur was also rapidly translated and published (1805) in Ber- tuch and Reichard’s Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden, but without relating it to the previous article on the subject (supra, note 26).28 J.D. Barbié du Bocage, review of: Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, in Magasin Encyclope- dique, 1809, t. 5, p. 176: “La Notice sur la secte des Wahabis est une pièce historique du plus grand intérêt. Elle avoit déja été imprimée dans le Moniteur du 9 brumaire an 13 (31 octobre 1804); mais l’auteur l’a considérablement augmentée, et il l’a menée jusqu’à ces derniers temps.” (Review signed B. du B., the initials of the geographer Jean Denis Barbié du Bocage).

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 65“Wahhabis”.29 His preaching could rightly be described as that of a “reformerjealous of the oneness of God” – innovative only when compared with degen-erate religious Muslim practice in Arabia. The acknowledgement of the Koranas a divine work entrusted to Muhammad, albeit requiring emendments to thereceived text and more radical interpretations such as the death penalty forfailure to respect the extension of the ban on alcohol to include tobacco, thesupreme mission attributed to the Prophet and preservation of the honour dueto the Mecca pilgrimage were clear proof of the continuity of the Muslim tradi-tion. At the same time, however, the abandonment of the “tradition acceptedby Mohammedans” (almost the same formula later to appear in Rousseau’s“Notice historique”, supra, note 14), the ban on praying to and honouring sim-ple men, even Muhammad, who was merely a “sage” on a par with Moses, Jesusand other prophets, his name not even to be pronounced during the professionof faith or in public sermons, the unmasking of pilgrims’ presumption of sanc-tity and the ostentation of the title of hajj, and, finally, the obligation to buryeven the most illustrious dead in the bare earth and the destruction of prince-ly tombs, implied a verdict of impiety and a “precept” of intolerance towardsthe “idolatrous Turks”, to whom the above errant practices were all imputedand who, in the person of the Prophet, gave “a companion to God”.3029 Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel, (31 October 1804), cit., p. 137, col. 2: “Les réfor- més furent nommés Whaabis, du nom d’Abdel-Whaab, père du réformateur”. Earlier, ibid, col. 1, Sulaiman’s dream was recounted, “un pauvre Arabe d’une petite tribu des Negdis” and grandfather of Sheik Muhammad, with slightly more detail than in Rousseau, supra, note 16. As they passed, the flames issuing from the dreamer’s body were said to have consumed the tents in the desert and the homes in the cities, from which one was to infer that a “religion nouvelle” [a “nouvelle puissance” in Rousseau’s “Notice historique”] was destined to convert the Arabs of the desert and subjugate the inhabitants of the cities. A similar news item in the Russian press of 1805 may have been based on this article in Le Moniteur, cf. Vassiliev (1998), p. 64.30 Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel, (31 October 1804), cit., col. 1: “Le shek Maha- med adopta une version particuliere du Coran. Il pretendit que ce livre, écrit par Dieu même, était descendu du ciel, et que Mahomet était l’instrument dont Dieu s’était servi pour le faire connaître aux hommes. Il adopta donc les dogmes qu’il enseigne, et les pré- ceptes qu’il contient; mais en admettant ce livre dans son entier, il reduisit à ce livre seul toute sa religion nouvelle, et rejetta les traditions qui sont reçues chez les Mahométans. Ainsi, Mahamed fut plutôt le réformateur du mahométisme que le fondateur d’une secte nouvelle; et la religion des Whaabis est celle du Coran dans sa pureté primitive”. And, ibid, p. 139, col. 2: “Quoique les pelèrîns de la Mecque soient estimés parmi eux, ils [scil.: the Wahhabis] ne souffrent pas qu’ils prennent, comme parmi les Turcs, le nom de Hadgis. Ils ont détruit tous les tombeaux des Cheks et des prophètes. Leurs morts sont mis en terre sans que la place de leur sepulture soit distingué par aucun ouvrage extérieur; cet usage

66 Chapter 2 Compared with the fanatical violence shown to those guilty of such reli-gious aberrations – still sometimes simply called “Muslims” by the writer of thearticle – the treatment of Christians and Jews could even seem mild. They wereindeed subjected to “the most humiliating discrimination”, and preventedfrom practising their respective cults in public, but their lives and possessionswere preserved. The indignities commonly inflicted by the Turks did not exist.“Some travellers”, struck by such a strong wave of monotheism – the professionof the Muslim faith reduced, according to the writer, simply to the formula: Iln’a de dieu que Dieu (as Browne and Olivier concurred) – might thus have beenmistakenly convinced that they were faced not with a “reformer of Moham-medanism”, but with a sect of “pure Deists”, who only respected the “naturalreligion”, and knew neither prophetic revelation, nor a sacred book, nor anycommandments of redemption.31 The article continued with historical information, some of it echoingNiebuhr and some of it original. A prince, Ibn Saʿud, lord of al-Dirʿiyya and,according to the author, also of al-Ahsaʾ⁠ , had welcomed the preacher, SheikhMuhammad, in order to bring together tribes which had always been divided(Najdi, ʿUtub, ʿAnaza) under the same banner of a single faith and merge themas a “new people”. The two men had agreed to separate the spiritual and tem-poral powers directly transmitted to their respective successors, to the cele-brated ʿAbd al-ʿAziz by the prince, and to Husain, a blind son, by the religiousreformer.32 A military expedition against the Wahhabis, equipped by the pashaof Baghdad (in 1801 in the article) had been unsuccessful only because of the qu’ils observent rigoureusement, s’étend à toutes les conditions. Ils le fondent sur ce pas- sage du Coran: le meilleure tombeau est la terre”.31 Ibid, p. 139, col. 1: “Les Whaabis n’ont qu’un seul dogme, celui de l’existence de Dieu. Quoi­ qu’ils admettent une revelation, cette revelation ne leur enseigne que ce dogme même. En adoptant la profession de foi des Mahométans, il n’y a de dieu que Dieu, et Mahomet est son prophete, les Whaabis en ont retranché la derniere partie, et l’ont reduite à ces paroles, il n’y de dieu que Dieu. Aussi ont-ils eté regardés comme de purs deïstes; et quelques voyageurs ont faussement assuré qu’ils n’admettaient que la religion naturelle”. On the condition of Christians and Jews, despised and barred from practising their cults in public, but safe from monetary fines and maltreatment (like those suffered in the Otto- man territories), ibid, coll. 1–2. As to the Muslims, it is known that the Wahhabi monarch ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, on enjoining them to submit, used to accompany this invitation with a copy of the Koran and the message: “Votre devoir est de croire au livre que je vous envoie. Ne soyez pas comme les Turcs idolâtres qui donnent un compagnon à Dieu. Si vous êtes de vrais croyans, vous serez sauvés; si non je vous ferai la guerre jusqu’à la mort”, ibid, p. 137, col. 3.32 Respectively “général” and “pontife”, or “shek-suprême”, ibid, p. 137, col. 2. News of a son of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab named Husain was confirmed. He held the office of qādī

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 67treachery of an allied Arab leader and the venality of the commander ʿAli Pa-sha, “vicar” (Turkish kahya) of the reigning Pasha Sulaiman, to whom ʿAli latersucceeded. As a result the sectarians who were encouraged to sack Kerbelaremained unpunished despite the horror and the fury of the neighbouringking of Persia.33 Finally, the occupation of Mecca in 1803 had shown the impo-tence of the Damascene Pasha Yusuf, taken by surprise near the Holy City witha caravan of Syrian pilgrims and forced to leave hurriedly after the concessionof three days to complete the customary rites. The flight of Sharif Ghalib tonearby Jidda had completed the humiliation of the traditional potentates. In-discriminate killings of Muslims (at al-Taʾ⁠ if, if not in Mecca), destruction notonly of worthless shops but also of greatly venerated tombs of saints andprophets, including the tomb of Abraham which was not demolished butstripped of all its lavish furnishings – a carpet of silk and gold – caused theauthor to reflect bitterly on the rule of tolerance ascribed to these “Deists” andBedouin, and to conclude: “The farther the sects are divided by hate, the nearerbecome their opinions”.34 at al-Dirʿiyya and died of cholera in 1809, cf. Peskes (1993), p. 172 nt.; Philby (1955), p. 112, (who make not mention of his possibly being blind).33 The article gives the date for the attack on Imam-Husain (scil.: Kerbela) by 12,000 Wah- habis as 20 April 1802, to coincide with the Shia pilgrimage to the tomb of ʿAli (in nearby al-Najaf), leaving the town undefended. The disembowelment of the pregnant women is attributed to their determination to leave no members of the male sex alive. The victims are estimated to be 3,000 out of a population of seven or eight thousand. The booty pil- laged from the tomb of Husain (the votive offerings of centuries robbed, the dome stripped of its gold plating, the mosque and minarets destroyed) is estimated to be so great that at least two hundred camels were needed to transport it, cf. Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel, (31 October 1804), cit., p. 138, col. 1. The only concrete measure taken by the pasha of Baghdad was supposedly the removal of the treasure from the other holy Shia city of Mashad-Imam-ʿAli (scil.: al-Najaf) to a different locality nearer the capi- tal, ibid, p. 138, coll. 1–2 (precisely to Kadhimain, the sanctuary of the Imam Musa). Previ- ously, towards the end of 1798, a second expedition instigated by the pasha of Baghdad against the Wahhabis, armed with cannon and over 2,000 men strong (some sources even mentioned 18,000), set out under the leadership of ʿAli kahya, a native of Georgia and destined to become pasha in 1802. It came to nothing in the fruitless siege of the fortress of al-Kut in the province of al-Ahsaʾ⁠ , when news of reinforcements on their way from al-Dirʿiyya in aid of the besieged caused the Ottoman commander to accept a truce. Fur- ther unsuccessful expeditions were attempted or at least planned in Baghdad in 1805 and 1809, cf. Abu Hakima (1965), pp. 160–61; Brandes (1999), pp. 84, 86–87; Kelly (1968), pp. 99–100, 105; Margoliouth (1934), p. 1177; Philby (1930), pp. 77, 86; Philby (1955), pp. 91–92; Vassiliev (1998), pp. 95, 110.34 What is more: “Les Whaabis ont donc les Musulmans en horreur. L’intolerance à leur égard est un précepte de leur loi”, cf. Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel,

68 Chapter 2 Readers could no longer doubt the strength of the Wahhabis. The victoriesin the Hijaz were indeed still insecure, impeded by natural events – by theoutbreak of an epidemic during the fruitless siege of Jidda, an anachronisticarmy, and even the dagger of an avenger (who had slipped into al-Dirʿiyya aim-ing to murder the old ʿAbd al-ʿAziz). Yet prejudiced rumours of the sect’s defeatwere to be considered unfounded. Saʿud, the son and successor of the assassi-nated monarch, already able to muster 100,000 men in no time (at least accord-ing to “Arab exaggeration”), still had to instil in his troops sufficient militarydiscipline to shake as they did the theocratic authority of the Ottoman sultan,based on his title as protector of the Holy Places and celebrated every Fridaywith a special prayer.35 (31 October 1804), cit., p. 139, col. 1. 1,500 inhabitants of al-Ta⁠ʾif are thought to have been massacred, Muslims and Jews without distinction, ibid, p. 138, col. 2. It appears, on the other hand, that Mecca fell without a fight and almost without violence to the inhabit- ants: “Vingt sheks seulement furent mis à mort pour avoir déclaré qu’ils ne pouvaient admettre la doctrine des Whaabis”, ibid, p. 138, col. 3. Although apparently in contrast with Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s recommendations forbidding the murder of reli- gious leaders (at least in his Kitāb al-jihād, or Book of the Holy War, cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 232, 288), this information concerning the assassination of twenty sheiks in Mecca alleged to have refused to accept the Wahhabi doctrine is confirmed in Philby (1930), p. 83. Before Saʿud’s first conquest of the Holy City (in early April 1803) an alliance had been formed by him with ʿAbd al-Muʾin and ʿUthman ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Mudhaifi, respectively a brother and an emissary of Sharif Ghalib, attracted by the prospect of gain- ing power by deposing the sharif. The brutal occupation of al-Ta⁠ʾif, which claimed about two hundred defenceless victims according to horrified witnesses, was seen by anti-Wah- habi sources as equivalent to the Kerbela massacre but on this occasion directed against Sunni Muslims. After Ghalib had escaped under the protection of a caravan of Syrian pilgrims, which arrived at that very moment under the leadership of the pasha of Damas- cus and had three days in which to complete the ritual, the Wahhabis entered Mecca without having to resort to violence. Their subsequent siege of Jidda, however, failed for lack of military organisation and fear of Ottoman retaliation. It ended when the assailants decided to withdraw to Najd and allow the sharif to resume control of the Holy City, which had only remained in their hands during the spring, cf. Brandes (1999), pp. 87–88; Philby (1930), pp. 82–84; Philby (1955), pp. 94–96; Vassiliev (1998), pp. 99–102.35 ʿAbd al-ʿAziz’s assassination in October or November 1803 in connection with the sack of Kerbela was welcomed in Istanbul and all kinds of rumours emerged, the use of a dagger during ritual prayer evoking ancient Ismaʿili crimes. Even today there is no unanimous agreement among scholars as to who committed the murder, whether a Shia avenging the massacre of Kerbela (according to accounts accepted by early European observers), or a Kurdish dervish (according to Ibn Bishr), or even an Ottoman hired assassin hoping to gain a rich reward for his family by his sacrifice (as reported in the anonymous Lamʿ al-shihāb), cf. Brandes (1999), p. 88; Philby (1930), p. 84; Philby (1955), pp. 96–97; Rasheed

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 69 This fascinating forecast, which had a wide reception, must have helped tokeep alive the author’s legitimate pride in his contribution to Le Moniteur andincrease his displeasure in 1809 at the apparently greater success Rousseau’s“Notice historique” now seemed to enjoy and at the fact that his identity wasoften confused with that of Silvestre de Sacy’s favourite. Hence the decision topropose a more ambitious work of his own. No less than an Histoire des Wa-habis was published in 1810 by the author, Louis Alexandre Olivier de Corancez(1770–1832), a man who had taken part in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, hadlived for some time in Aleppo, and had recently been nominated consul gen-eral in Baghdad (where he never actually resided). Faced with the “obviousanalogy” with Rousseau’s “Notice historique”, identical facts and the same“manner of presenting the objects”, even “the shape of the sentences”, Cor-ancez pointed out in the preface that the earlier research was his own. Hestressed the originality of his essay published in October 1804 and the evidentsuperiority of the complete and attractive monograph on the Wahhabis whichhe finally presented to the public. The semi-anonymous appearance of the lat-ter, in curious contrast to an affirmed desire to clarify, seemed to be derived inboth his case and that of his rival from respect for their consular positions andthe realisation that it was as well to keep the account as impersonal as pos­sible.36 (2002), p. 22; Vassiliev (1998), pp. 102–103. According the columnist on Le Moniteur the assassin must have lost three sons in Kerbela, even if this and other similar details seem to reflect the immediate transformation of the news into legend, perhaps to the benefit of the devotees of the desecrated sanctuary (primarily Shiʿis). Executed in prodigious cir- cumstances, it was said that the man condemned to die at the stake had escaped from the flames and that it was then necessary to decapitate him – the killer was revered by “zelés musulmans” as a “martyr de leur religion”, cf. Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel, (31 October 1804), cit., p. 139, col. 1. Precisely because of their theological “fatalisme”, how- ever, these same “Musulmans” discerned the fall of Mecca as a sign of God’s will unfavour- able to themselves and a disavowal of the Turkish despot, who derived “le fondement de son empire” from the formal possession of those places, ibid, p. 138, col. 2. The language of the writer denotes the constant tendency to oppose Wahhabis to “Muslims”, in spite of his having known that the former adhered to the religion of the Koran. The estimate of 100,000 men under Saʿud coincides with Olivier’s figure (supra, Chapter I, note 37), but is even triplicated by Gardane (supra, note 21).36 [L.A. Corancez], Histoire des Wahabis, Paris, 1810, pp. ii-iv. He too came from a Genevan family – his father, Guillaume Olivier de Corancez, founder and director of the Journal de Paris, was a friend of the philosopher Rousseau, whose death he witnessed. Perhaps anx- ious to avoid publicly offending a colleague, Corancez wanted to spare his antagonist public reproach, making out that the “analogie” with the “Notice historique” was “la meil- leure preuve de l’authenticité des détails” which he had already communicated in Le

70 Chapter 2 The first five chapters of his early text in Le Moniteur were now offered to thereaders by Corancez in a corrected and amplified version, while further spacewas devoted to later events up to 1809, including the second Wahhabi conquestof Mecca, new incursions into Mesopotamia, threats to Syria and Egypt, andeven the designation of a son called ʿAbd Allah as future heir to Saʿud’s throne.However, the Histoire was intended to be more than a meticulous chronicle.The author attempted a synthesis of all that was available in France on thesubject, including Silvestre de Sacy’s suggestions and the latest informationacquired by his rival Rousseau. In line with contemporary taste, further generalremarks on the East betrayed his ambition to compete even with Volney,though the results failed to measure up to his model.37 The hypothesis of Qar-matian descent was barely mentioned and was broached with evident uncer-tainty. The true reason recently advanced by Saʿud to justify his own ruthlesstreatment of the “Muslims” tout court – the equivocal language in Le Moniteurwas still to be found in the Histoire – was simply their infidelity to the HolyBook in spite of their possession of it.38 Moniteur. On the life and appointments of Corancez, from Napoleon’s Egyptian cam- paign to a long journey through Italy in 1822, cf. d’Amat (1961). The merits and defects of his history of the Wahhabis in the European perspective of the early nineteenth century are examined by Burrell (1995), p. xi; Rasheed (1997), who, albeit with various different emphases, expresses the concern that the work contains opinions far from being politi- cally correct and might consequently offend readers no longer used to such language. He refers above all to generalisations in the final chapters on eastern customs which have little to do with the main subject of the Histoire.37 For example, Corancez’s opinions on polygamy and the cloistering of women, typical of despotism but also the result of an excess of girls born in the area, and the need to limit “l’activité des desirs”, more intense in hot climates, cf. [L.A. Corancez], Histoire des Wahabis, p. 157. Included among the corrections in the second version were an earlier date for the expedition to Baghdad against the Wahhabis (1798 instead of 1801) and for the sack of Kerbela (now 20 April 1801, instead of 1802, in evident agreement with the correc- tion made by Rousseau in the Description du Pachalik de Bagdad), ibid, pp. 25, 27. Among the additions is the explicit mention that Niebuhr and Volney were the only earlier travel- lers to have had some vague notions concerning the Wahhabis.38 Ibid, pp. vi-vii: “Notre objet n’étoit pas de retrouver dans les siècles précédens l’origine des Wahabis. Ils paroissent descendre des Carmates (…). Mais ces derniers ayant défiguré la religion de Mahomet, et les Wahabis, au contraire, l’ayant ramenée à sa première simpli- cité, cette circonstance pourra peut-être faire douter que ces derniers aient la même ori- gine.” Ibid, p. 134: “Il [scil.: Saʿud] ajouta que les musulmans seuls étaient coupables, puisqu’ils possédoient le vrai livre de la loi, et qu’ils corrompoient ce livre par une idolâ- trie grossière; que c’étoit contre eux qu’il portoit le glaive; que c’étoit à eux à choisir entre le Wahabisme ou la mort.”

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 71 At this point the author chose to sketch out a rudimentary religious phe-nomenology on the basis of a rather vague similarity to the development ofProtestantism in Europe – the Wahhabis might be called “Muslim reformers”– in which elements from the Enlightenment seemed to coexist with contra-dictory echoes going back to Bossuet concerning the inevitable “variations” ofheretical sects or false religions. Seen historically, each religion appeared ini-tially to be characterised by a prevailing attention to “morality” rather than todogma. Over the centuries, however, with the proliferation of personal inter-ests, dogma would prevail in every case and, supported by “tradition”, so great-ly distort original beliefs as to render them unrecognisable even to theiroriginator – a curious echo of Gibbon transposed to the Muslim camp (supra,Chapter I, note 26). At this point it was natural that a cyclical need of moralrebirth and a popular taste for innovation and equality inspired plans for re-form which even Islam could not evade, and of which the new teaching seemedto have all the characteristics – above all an implacable hatred of deep-rootedsuperstition and abstruse interpretations of sacred texts.39 In the case of the Wahhabis, however, the author seems to see a positiveexception to the usual sterility of these repetitive waves of pious unrest fromwhich, thanks to Napoleon’s concordat, even France had recently escaped. Af-ter innumerable wars of religion fought in every corner of the earth for “oftenridiculous, always incomprehensible, reasons”, it might have seemed that, atthe dawn of the nineteenth century, Arabia presented an almost reassuringpicture. “Here obscure, ignorant men” took up arms, not to restore any particu-lar faith, but to renew among eastern nations the only dogma indispensable to39 Ibid, p. 3: “La religion de Mahomet, très-simple dans son origine, a dû éprouver et a eprouvé toutes ces altérations. De nombreux commentateurs ont dénaturé le Coran par de bizarres interprétations: partout se sont élevés des tombeaux célèbres par de miracles ridicules. La superstition qui les adore, a placé entre l’homme et le seul Dieu prêché par Mahomet, tant de nouveaux prophètes, que l’image de ce Dieu seul en est éclipsée aux yeux de ses modernes adorateurs.” Ibid, p. 18: “En général, le culte des Wahabis est celui du Coran débarrassée de toutes les superstitions qui l’ont défiguré parmi les mahométans. C’est donc moins un culte nouveau que le Mahométisme lui-même dans sa première sim- plicité. Aussi offre-t-il tous les caractères des religions réformées. La tradition, cette mère d’une religion nouvelle, souvent contraire à celle que l’adopte, en est sévèrement pros- crite. La morale en est l’objet important. Le dogme qui l’avoit remplacée n’occupe plus que le second rang. De là le rapprochement qu’on a pu faire à quelques égards entre les Waha- bis et les protestans. Les musulmans réformés ont négligé le dogme pour s’attacher à la morale. Ce dogme est le pur déisme. Pour donner à leur religion cette extrême simplicité, il ne leur a fallu que quelques années.”

72 Chapter 2morality, which is “the dogma of the existence and oneness of God”.40 Althoughit had been rejected as fallacious by Corancez in 1804 in the light of more pre-cise information, the Deistic interpretation, which originated with Niebuhrand was popularised by Volney, then underwent an unexpected partial reha-bilitation in his Histoire, as it did in Rousseau’s “Notice historique”. The irresist-ible temptation to detect in the events signs of a spiritual advance in thecommon religiosity attributed to Muslims meant that in Corancez’s majorwork the Wahhabis’ military advance was represented as a war between oppos-ing factions of Koranic believers, similar to the age-old antagonism betweenCatholics and Protestants. However, it still did not seem to him totally wrong tosee the superior principle of natural religion gradually gaining ground, now inMuslim Asia as it had once done in Christian Europe, albeit by primitive Arabmeans. It almost appeared as if modern theological rationalism was recast inan Islamic mould and cleansed of the most radical European consequences.Hatred of the clergy and repudiation of all written revelation, harbingers ofexclusivism and persecution, were about to spread over Asia thanks to thearms of intolerant, uneducated proselytes. At the end of the historical narra-tive proper, this conjecture developed into a far-reaching prophecy. Three de-cisive factors – climate, religion and government – held out the promise that,once patriarchal customs had been eliminated and despotism, according tothe author indispensable for government in Syria and Egypt, established, thesectarians would include the whole of Asia in their “revolution”, revive the reli-gion of a people fallen victim to superstition and religious indifference, repeatthe medieval conquest of the Arabs, and perhaps experience an advance ofcivilization unknown to the Turks.4140 Ibid, p. 44: “Après tant de guerres de religion, pour des questions souvent ridicules, tou- jours inintelligibles, le dogme de l’existence et de l’unité de Dieu arme enfin, au fond de l’Arabie, des hommes obscurs et ignorans. Leur but est de rendre à ce dogme partout reconnu, mais partout défiguré la simplicité qui en est essence [in a note: “La religion chrétienne n’est nulle part dominante en Orient”]”.41 Ibid, pp. 169–70: ʿAbd-elwhaab [sic, although according to Corancez, his son Muhammad should be considered the founder of the movement] est venu rendre à ce zèle son ancienn­ e ferveur. Les Wahabis sont aujourd’hui plus intolérans et plus fanatiques que ne le furent jamais les mahométans. Réunis sous un seul chef, ces Arabes regrettent leur ancienne puissance, et attendent impatiemment le moment de la rétablir. Tout porte donc à croire, que les Wahabis deviendront, au moins en Orient, ce qu’y furent autrefois les Arabes, et cette révolution ne peut être éloignée”. Corancez vacillated as to how far this religious upheaval would go. According to him, espousal of the “religion réformée” in Egypt and Syria would mark the ruin of “mahométisme”; however, the very “préceptes”

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 73 At this point Napoleonic influence welded the opinions of Corancez tothose of other French observers. After centuries of division the peoples of theArabian Peninsula, united under a single leader – we should remember the“man of genius” recalled in the “Observations sur les Wahhabites” – could re-vive their ancient glory and triumph in the name of a purer faith nobler thandecadent “Mohammedanism” (or at least as it seemed to be practised withinthe Ottoman borders). Like the European upheavals after 1789, it was the dutyof the political and religious renewal of an elect nation in the East to preparethe death of a decrepit order.424 Rousseau, Corancez and their SourcesThere remained the problem of the sources of the two French consuls. Theclaim each one of them made for the originality of his own work was an op-portunity to account to the public for the information he had received. In thepreface to the Histoire Corancez affirmed that he had obtained detailedinformation on the origins of the Wahhabi movement from a Maronite Chris-tian from Aleppo named Diego Frangé (sic), “distinguished for his knowledgeof Oriental languages” – information later verified and enriched through “ac-tive and constant correspondence” with European residents in the most im-portant cities of the Ottoman pashadoms. Of these, particular merit wasassigned to Jean Raymond, a French artillery officer in the service of the pashaof Baghdad. Apart from Niebuhr and Volney, no previous writer was men-tioned, as if to confirm that the Wahhabis had first been investigated in depththanks only to the “historical compendium” in Le Moniteur of October 1804, held in common with the local communities, unchanged since Muhammad’s time, would soon be the vehicle for the fusion of victors and vanquished, ibid, pp. 148–50.42 The at least ideal aspiration to world hegemony by the Wahhabis, which included above all Muslim countries, is sketched out in Ibn Ghannam’s chronicle when the original pact was made between Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and Muhammad ibn Saʿud, cf. Peskes (1993), p. 267. But a quest for analogies between the Wahhabi movement and the French Revolution or the Napoleonic enterprise can be detected not only among European con- temporaries but also in considerably more recent interpretations, tending to see the exist- ence of a sort of Ottoman ancien régime jeopardised by the new faith in Arabia, cf. Ménoret (2003), pp. 58, 61; Philby (1930), p. 58; Rentz (1972), p. 59. Neverteheless scholars generally advocate caution when equating the still vague Arab nationalism of the late eighteenth century with later revolutionary pan-Arab movements in the world of Islam, which developed as a reaction against an increasingly enfeebled Turkish domination and European colonialism, cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 7, 238.

74 Chapter 2used again in guilty silence by Rousseau five years later and finally reproducedby its true author when, after the conquest of Mecca, the Wahhabis had be-come the object of “general attention”.43 In his own support Rousseau invoked a life spent almost entirely in the East,“old, long-standing relations” in Baghdad, Basra and Muscat, but also with Ar-abs from Bahrain, Najd and even al-Dirʿiyya. Again, on the publication in 1818of the Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, a late an-thology of his writings, the author of the “Notice historique” claimed that hehad been the first to make the discovery and that his text on the Wahhabis hadbeen nearly completed since February 1804. However, he failed to mention hisarticle in Le Moniteur, published a few months before that of Corancez andwhich, when compared with the latter, contained evident imprecisions. Onthis slender basis the Maronite Frangé and the Frenchman Raymond, his rival’stwo most reliable witnesses, were denigrated on suspicion of dishonesty, hav-ing supposedly transmitted information to Corancez as if it had derived fromthem, while they had in fact gleaned it from his younger colleague.44 To Silves-43 [L.A. Corancez], Histoire des Wahabis, cit., p. vii: “Un chrétien maronite, habitant de cette ville [scil.: Aleppo], où il est distingué par ses connoissances dans les langues orientales [in a note: Diego Frangé], a réuni sur les commencemens de l’histoire des Wahabis, des détails très-intéressans, qu’il a bien voulu nous communiquer. Nous avions d’ailleurs une correspondance active et suivie en Syrie, en Egypte, à Damas et à Bagdad. Nous devons surtout distinguer dans cette dernière ville, M. Raymond, alors officier d’artillerie au ser- vice du pacha, qui nous a donné, avec une extrême complaisance, des relations que sa place et ses talens rendoient également fidèles et intéressantes.”44 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., p. i: “En faisant réimprimer aujourd’hui ces faibles essais, avec des changemens et des addi- tions considérables, nous sommes obligés de répondre cathégoriquement aux objections de M. C** [scil.: Corancez] qui s’est cru en droit de nous contester la propriété des rensei- gnemens sur les Wahabis, pour les avoir publiés avant nous dans le Moniteur du 1804. Voici le fait. M. C** avait obtenu ces reinsegnemens de Didagos-Frandjié qui le tenait lui- même de nous. Ce chrétien maronite d’Alep dut, par pure vanité, lui laisser ignorer la source d’où ils provenaient; et c’est qui a, sans doute, donné lieu à l’erreur de notre collè- gue, dont, après tout, nous connaissons assez la loyauté et la franchise, pour ne pas l’accu- ser d’injustice envers nous.” As regards Frangé, who was himself the author of an account of the Wahhabis in Arabic, Rousseau let it be known that he was thought to have con- fessed to plagiarism in an authentic declaration sent to Paris in 1810. For his part, Ray- mond was said to have claimed for himself “fort mal-à-propos” the merit of at least part of the information, ibid, p. ii. To make matters worse for Corancez, there was the added insinuation that, through the mediation of Silvestre de Sacy and without saying anything about it, he may have used Rousseau’s “Tableau” of Saʿud’s territorial possessions in his Histoire (supra, note 18), still unpublished at the time, ibid, p. 23 nt. On the original ver- sion of the “Notice historique”, “achevé de rédiger au mois de fèvrier 1804”, ibid, p. 12.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 75tre de Sacy, to whom the contestants turned as their arbiter, the dispute causedconsiderable distress. Initially a solution seemed possible by restoring to Co­rancez his merit as a columnist on Le Moniteur and by Rousseau’s grudgingrecognition of the intrinsic value of the Histoire.45 Meanwhile Raymond, a de-serter who, after service in the East India Company, remained in Baghdad un-der Ottoman protection and rose to the rank of French consul in Basra in 1810,came forward to make his own claim based on a confidential memorandum hehad sent to the ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris in 1808.46 The text, unpublished for over a hundred years and thus having no directinfluence on European public opinion during the nineteenth century, advo-cated French arbitration between the Turkish empire and the Wahhabis. It alsocontained an original account of ʿAli Pasha’s expedition against the Wahhabisin the al-Ahsaʾ⁠ area which had concluded with a truce, and a wholly new justi-45 The Magasin Encyclopédique, having caused, through Barbié du Bocage, the misunder- standing about the real authorship of the second article in Le Moniteur (supra, note 28), made amends the following year. A new reviewer recognized the earlier claim of Corancez and admitted that Rousseau had just “emprunté” from his colleague the contents of his own “Notice historique”, cf. E. Jomard, review of: Histoire des Wahabis, in Magasin Ency- clopédique, 1810, t. 6, pp. 429 nt., 439 (review signed E.J., initials of Edme Jomard). Rous- seau, though annoyed at the belittling of his own work, at least condescended to describe the later work of his rival as “intéressante”, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], “Nouveaux reinsegne- mens sur les opérations militaires des Wahabis”, cit., p. 102. However, the confusion cre- ated by the dispute was such that in 1815 an English reviewer of Rousseau’s Description du Pachalik de Bagdad even attributed the authorship of the “Notice historique” on the Wah- habis to Corancez, thus completely inverting the initial confused identities of the two consuls (“The account of the Wahabis, which follows the description of the pashadom by Mr Rousseau, is the work of Mr Corancez, for long French Consul in Aleppo”), cf. [J. Mack- intosh], “Western Asia”, in The Edinburgh Review, XXV, 1815, p. 438 (attributed to James Mackintosh, cf. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, cit., I, p. 454, nr. 738).46 J. Raymond, Mémoire sur l’origine des Wahabys, Le Caire, 1925, p. iv. According to the editor Édouard Driault, Raymond’s Mémoire, dated 10 July 1806, was “la source plus originale des informations que l’on eut alors sur les Wahabites”. He thus implicitly acknowledged its hypothetical precedence over the major works by Rousseau and Corancez. We know from Gardane that in 1807 Raymond was artillery commander at the pasha of Baghdad’s castle, cf. A. Gardane, Journal d’un voyage dans la Turquie-d’Asie et la Perse, cit., p. 89. On Ray- mond’s activities up to 1815, his arrival in Baghdad during the second half of 1799 as a military instructor sent to the local pasha by the English, his acquaintance with the French Consul Rousseau, father of the orientalist, the hospitality he received in the Rous- seau family at Aleppo in 1805, the three memorials he wrote on Baghdad there, certainly used by the young Rousseau and in which the Wahhabis must have been mentioned, his involvement in Gardane’s Persian mission and his nomination as French consul in Basra (October 1810), cf. Dehérain (1930), II, pp. 47, 68–70, 260–63.

76 Chapter 2fication of the terrible sack of Kerbela. This was described as a reprisal orderedby ʿAbd al-ʿAziz in answer to the pasha of Baghdad’s refusal to give satisfactionto the Saʿudi monarch for the assassination by Arab pilgrims of around thirtycoreligionists, harmless merchants, while they were near al-Najaf on their wayback from the sanctuary. In Raymond’s paper the account of doctrinal mattersproper was no different from Corancez’s in Le Moniteur, which he said he hadread and appreciated as a reprint in the Journal de Francfort, although he de-clared that it was marred by “numerous erroneous dates”.47 In Raymond’s textthe only discordant notes were the assertion that the “prophet” and “sheikh”Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab had simply spread doctrines previously elab-orated by his father – perhaps a clumsy attempt to reconcile differing opinionsas to the effective founder of the sect – and the added specification that whatwas meant by “traditions” concerning Muhammad which were unacceptableto the Wahhabis consisted principally of testimonies of presumed “miracles”attributed to the founder of Islam. It was confirmed that the “false Muslims”deserved extermination for their profanation of the Koranic dictates inherentin their sacrilegious veneration of saints and prophets, by perpetrating whichthe sectarians believed they would be well accepted by God. All that was re-quired was that “practice of all the virtues”, “upright behaviour” and the “obser-vance of exemplary frugality in daily life should compensate for such violence”.4847 The article by Corancez is defined as “la pièce la plus véridique, la plus correcte que j’ai vue en ce genre”, conforming to “les récits multipliés que nous offre ici [scil.: in Baghdad] la tradition”; the author’s deplorable dating errors did nothing to impair this opinion (Corancez acknowledged his mistakes later in his Histoire), cf. J. Raymond, Mémoire sur l’origine des Wahabys, cit., p. 4. The Journal de Francfort, like Le Moniteur, must have been available to European residents of cities such as Aleppo and Cairo.48 Ibid, p. 6: “Ce nouveau prophète [scil.: “Cheik Mahommed”] adopta l’Alcoran dans toute sa pureté, tel que Mahommed prétend l’avoir reçu des mains de Dieu, en retrancha les traditions futiles qui y furent ajoutées pour remplir de miracles la vie de ce prophète, et voulut qu’on le regardât seulement comme un homme sage et un homme juste. Déclarant à ses adhérans que toute espèce de culte n’était dû qu’à la divinité, et que quiconque révé- rait et honorait les pro­phètes et les saints, en leur déférant un hommage qui n’était que l’apanage de Dieu, se rendrait criminel envers sa toute puissance; il leur démontra que le seul moyen de devenir agréable aux yeaux de l’Éternel, était d’immoler à sa vengeance les profanateurs de sa religion; et leur fit croire qu’il était lui-même le ministre de sa colère, envoyé par lui pour exterminer les faux musulmans. Mais il les avertit en même tems qu’ils devaient supporter l’unité du culte qu’ils rendaient au Très Haut par la pratique de toutes les vertus, par la droiture de leur conduite et par l’observance d’une frugalité exem- plaire.” Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was credited by Raymond with effectively descending from Muhammad, while for Rousseau the claim was blatantly fraudulent (supra, note 16). ʿAli Pasha’s expedition is described as having been held up by the

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 77 Through the testimony of this third witness the intricate overlap of informa-tion behind the later works of the two consuls became even more evident.Rousseau’s position, however, was worsened by Raymond’s assertion that thehospitality he had received for seven months in Aleppo in 1805 at the residenceof the consul, the father of the future author of the “Notice historique”, hadbeen repaid by the gift of a previous version of his own memorandum, intend-ed for the son.49 This and the other circumstances mentioned by Corancezcould only diminish the author of the “Notice historique” in the eyes of the bet-ter informed readers and cast him as an “eccentric” like his distant relationJean-Jacques Rousseau. Anyone wishing to compare Rousseau’s original 1804contribution in Le Moniteur (which he never publicly claimed to have written)with his expanded version of 1809 could observe some important modifica-tions corresponding to the same number of items in the article by Corancezand the memorandum by Raymond. There was above all the role of founderattributed to Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab; his putative prophetic dream;the dissent attributed to him over “traditions” concerning Muhammad’s mis-sion; and finally, the preeminently religious motivation for his followers’ vio-lent treatment of the surrounding populations. In an entry in the BiographieUniverselle published by Michaud Rousseau at least had the satisfaction of be-ing recognized as the longest-standing contributor on the subject.50 Nonethe- intrigues of a pro-Wahhabi party at the court of Baghdad and finally undermined by the duplicity of an Arab ally (“Mahommed Cheaouï, le chef de la Tribu des Olubeïtes et des El Bénites”, also mentioned in Corancez’s article) after the fruitless siege of the capital of al-Ahsaʾ⁠ – in fact the fortress of al-Kut, ibid, pp. 10–15. The date proposed by Raymond, between 1797 and 1798 (instead of 1798 to 1799, perhaps due to the erroneous conversions of differing calendars), differs from the even less accurate date given by Corancez in Le Moniteur as 1801, but is identical to Corancez’s further proposal in the Histoire – which proved that he and Raymond had communicated in the meantime (supra, note 33 and 37). On the sack of Kerbela (April 20, the date first given by Rousseau and Corancez and later modified) and the particular motivation ascribed to the Wahhabis, including a digression on the origins of the sanctuary, ibid, pp. 15–21. Completing the memorandum were the descriptions of the two Wahhabi conquests of Mecca, the successful penetration of Oman, the unsuccessful attack on al-Najaf and other localities in the pashadom of Baghdad, thoughts on Arab management of the war, the sect’s spirit of conquest and the illustration of three plans of action (respectively defensive, offensive and diplomatic), according to the author still practicable by the Ottomans, the third depending on the involvement of a European power. Raymond imagined it would be France.49 More precisely, Raymond mentions the existence of “mémoires que j’ai faits pendant mon séjour à Alep en 1805, à la réquisition de M. Rousseau le fils”, ibid, p. 35.50 Biographie Universelle, Ancienne et Moderne, cit., XXIX, 1821, p. 239, s.v. Mohammed (Cheikh): “Ces deux ouvrages [scil.: Rousseau’s “Notice historique” and Corancez’s

78 Chapter 2less, uncertainty as to attributions remained, as did the impression that ahidden competitive desire for notoriety and reward had ended up by destroy-ing his own efforts and those of Corancez. Raymond, for his part, admitted thatit was solely for lack of literary skill that he had not sought publication. Theepisode ended up by blighting the whole period during which the writings ofthe two consuls had at first had the fascination of novelty and first-hand infor-mation, thus preventing, for the time being, a more balanced recognition oftheir real merits. To do Rousseau justice, the written Arabic documents he con-sulted were quite different from those of the disputed Maronite Frangé, andthus appeared as a truly original aspect of his work. His claim to be acquaintedwith a “chaplain” of Saʿud in the title of his article in the Fundgruben des Ori-ents of 1811, intended to increase credibility in the originality of his sources,soon provoked the sarcasm of Burckhardt, who was irritated by the misuse ofthe Christian term.51 However, two works in Arabic really do seem to have add- Histoire] ont donné lieu à quelques discussions entre les deux consuls, qui paraissent avoir travaillé sur les mêmes matériaux; mais la priorité doit être accordée à M. Rousseau” (item signed A-t: for Audiffret). Even now critics have never fully explained the dispute between Corancez and Rousseau. Indeed, Corancez’s version has been accepted without question by recent commentators who never even mention Raymond, the odd man out, cf. Burrell (1995), p. viii; Faivre d’Arcier (1990), p. 175; Kelly (1968), pp. 48–49. The likely hypothesis that, wishing to gain Silvestre de Sacy’s approval, Rousseau chose to avoid mentioning his debt to his two compatriots was backed by Ruffin, who blamed the young consul for his superficiality and felt the obligation to thank Silvestre de Sacy for having helped to settle the unfortunate quarrel, which he did in a letter of 13 November 1811, cf. Dehérain (1930), II, pp. 259–60; Dehérain (1938), pp. 66–67, 72–73. But there is no refer- ence here to Rousseau’s first article in Le Moniteur, or his apology in 1818.51 The date of this acquaintance, apparently made in Aleppo, is given by Rousseau as 22 September 1809 (according to the subtitle of his “Tableau”, supra, note 18: “Dressé d’après des renseignemens exacts donnés par son propre chapelain, à Halep, ce 22 septembre 1809”). We gather from his travel diary, however, not only that the term “chapelain” should be understood as the equivalent of the Arabic khatīb (“preacher”), but that there had probably already been a brief encounter with someone designated thus at the court of Saʿud during his return journey from Baghdad to Aleppo. On this occasion the caravan with which the consul was travelling had apparently been subjected to extortion by the Bedouin guarding that very same “grave et impertinent” man, “vénéré à cause de son pré- tendu savoir et de ses saintes pratiques”, cf. J.-B.L. Rousseau, Voyage de Bagdad a Alep, cit., pp. 123–24 (4 December 1808). For Burckhardt’s irony concerning this “Chapelain du Saoude”, infra, chapter III, note 77. This, however, did not deter the English traveller Pal- grave many years later from designating as “chaplain of the palace” (for the Arabic mutawwa⁠ʾ, “an educated man”) a nephew of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, whom he had met in person at al-Riyad, (probably ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Hasan, infra, Chapter III, note 64), cf. W.G. Palgrave, Narrative of a year’s journey through Central and Eastern

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 79ed to the French consul’s information. He must have had the first, a Dialogueentre Schéikh-Muhammed et Ibn-Seoûd edited by a certain Sheik al-Zubair, athis disposal during a stop on the diplomatic trip from Aleppo to Teheran andback.52 The second, a manuscript from al-Dirʿiyya on the ancient history of theWahhabis and their military expeditions up to 1810, was published in French inhis Mémoire of 1818 under the title “Précis historique sur l’origine du Wa-habisme”. No indication was forthcoming as to where such a remarkable, al-beit undated, manuscript had been found. Apart from the note that a nototherwise identified Sheik Sulaiman, a native of Najd, was the putative author,the date on which Rousseau had entered into its possession was not even men-tioned.53 The wealth of information on ancient Wahhabi history in the “Précis” Arabia, London-Cambridge, 1865, I, p. 379; II, p. 18. The existence of a “chaplain” at the Saʿudi monarch’s court appears to be confirmed by Philby (1955), p. 100, who notes the presence of a “Chaplain to the Imam” at al-Dirʿiyya around the beginning of the nine- teenth century going by the name of ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Khamis.52 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., p. 3. For more extensive information dated 1809, though a different title is mentioned and no author given, cf. [Id.], “Notice sur la secte des Wehabis”, in Fundgruben des Orients, cit., p. 193: “J’ai lu, pendant mon dernier séjour à Bagdad, un petit livre arabe, intitulé: Dialo- gues entre Abdul Wehabe et Abdulazize. Cet ouvrage, écrit dans un style nerveux, et plein de traits curieux, réunit le double intérêt de faire connoître le caractère de ces deux chefs, et de donner une juste idée de la croyance et des mœurs du peuple qu’ils ont organisé. L’on y voit surtout le premier déployer dans ses discours cette éloquence mâle et persua- sive, si efficace dans la bouche d’un esprit enthousiasmé, et possédé du désir de la gloire, surtout lorsqu’on en est à l’endroit où d’un côté il rappelle à son collaborateur la noblesse et l’ancienne prépondérance des arabes, leur énergie et ce qu’ils sont capables de faire encore, et de l’autre, l’état de foiblesse et de dégénération où sont tombées la Turquie et la Perse, toutes deux incapables de mettre obstacle aux progrès de la nouvelle secte”.53 “Précis historique Sur l’origine du Wahabisme et sur les expéditions militaires de Schéikh- Muhammed, d’Ibn-Seoûd, d’Abd-il-Aziz et de Seoûd”, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., pp. 27–35. An Arab manuscript from al-Dirʿiyya, composed by the mysterious Sheikh Sulaiman and narrating events until 1810 (1224 AH), must be at the root of the French text. In the preface Rousseau defines thus: “Un précis tout neuf, (…) morceau très-curieux, que nous avons rédigé à Alep, d’après un manuscrit original reçu de Dréié”, ibid, p. iii. The author may have been Sulaiman ibn ʿAbd Allah (d. 1818), a grandson of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, a victim of the Egyptian conquest and a man with considerable historical culture, if it is true that his father ʿAbd Allah compiled a summary of the first capture of Mecca (including the destruction of the famous tombs there) and the principal Wahhabi doctrines, which became accessible to the public in 1874 (thanks to James O’Kinealy with the title: “Translation of an Arabic Pamphlet on the History and Doctrines of the Wahhábis”, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, XLIII, 1874, pp. 68–82). For this identification, cf. Cook (1992), p. 192 nt., who

80 Chapter 2was a definite advance on both the “Notice historique” of 1809 and his rivalCorancez’s Histoire. Only in 1823 was it superseded by a manuscript with simi-lar but much more extensive contents, for which another future protagonist inthe European field of information on the Wahhabis was responsible: FélixMengin, a French agent in Cairo. Had it been known around the time of thedispute, the “Précis” could have enhanced Rousseau’s reputation considerably,although it seems more than likely that in the years leading up to 1814 he hadnot had access to this particular source. In France during the Restoration, withthe splendours of the Empire barely past, the Mémoire sur les trois plus fa­meuses sectes du musulmanisme was hardly noticed and the publication of thisprecious Arabic manuscript did nothing to prevent the author’s silent return tothe East after eighteen months in France on the lookout for a better office un-der the new king.54 The contest had thus drawn to a close. Corancez withdrew to private life inFrance; Rousseau resumed service in Tripoli, Libya, in 1824, far removed fromthe scenes of his youthful activities. Only Raymond remained on the locations observes that both Sulaiman’s al-Tawdīh ʿan tawḥīd al-khallāq (Clarification of the Creative Divine Unity) and “Précis” maintain that young Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab visited Basra and the Hijaz (in Rousseau’s text: “First Basra, then Mecca”), the sequence inverted with respect to the order of his journeys mentioned in the main Wahhabi chronicles.54 Numerous new details in the “Précis” effectively add to our knowledge of ancient Wah- habi history, although they are at times inexact: thus the birth of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab placed in Huraimila (in reality the site of his first sermon); his first studies under the guidance of a mullah from Sanʿa; the friction with his father, a man seen as a usurer; his travels, only to Basra and Mecca (not Persia or Syria); his flight to al-Dirʿiyya, attributed to the uproar caused by his ordering an adulteress to be stoned; and finally, the alliance with Muhammad ibn Saʿud and the consequent conflicts with Ibn Muʿammar, sheikh of al-ʿUyaina, his one-time protector and brother-in-law (later captured and killed), and then with Dahham ibn Dawwas, sheikh of al-Riyad, and Sulaiman, emir of al-Ahsaʾ⁠ (predecessor of the bellicose ʿUraiʿir, already known to Niebuhr) etc. In general the account reflects the Wahhabi prejudice that “extrême ignorance sur la religion qu’a enseignée le Prophète” and “une superstition qui conduisait insensiblement à l’idolâtrie” prevailed in Arabia around the middle of the eighteenth century, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., p. 27. Only one curious omission puzzled Rousseau. The manuscript does not mention the appalling sack of Ker- bela, ibid, p. 35. The “Précis” may be based on an Arabic transcription of the only Wahhabi chronicle of the time known today, by Husain ibn Ghannam (d. 1811), who included among his pupils at al-Dirʿiyya the aforesaid Sulaiman ibn ʿAbd Allah, grandson of the Wahhabi founder. If this is so, Rousseau had published the information before his fellow Frenchman Mengin, commonly held to be the first European writer to have worked on Ibn Ghannam (infra, Chapter III, note 64).

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 81of the controversy, but was ignored and abandoned until his old English supe-riors, recalling his desertion, claimed him from the Ottomans and deportedhim to Bombay in 1826.55 Even Silvestre de Sacy had to relinquish the hypoth-esis of Qarmatian ancestry and accept the position Burckhardt had adopted inthe meantime (infra, Conclusion, note 7). Their individual disappointmentsapart, the protagonists undoubtedly succeeded in advancing the discussion ofthe “new religion” – the term, though no longer accepted, reappeared in Co­rancez’s article in Le Moniteur and in Raymond’s unpublished memorandum.It was by now an established fact that the Wahhabis derived from a Koranicmatrix and used the same resources – simple doctrine, bellicose fanaticism –which had already assisted the original spread of Islam. Further establishedpolitical and social facts were the existence of a dynasty, a capital, a rudimen-tary concept of property, taxation, and an army. In anthropological terms theconviction persisted that the simpler Wahhabi religiosity best corresponded tothe instinctive sobriety of the Bedouin. An affinity was also seen in their man-ner of warfare and with the scanty acquaintance of these nomads with Islamas practised by the sedentary population.56 Hesitation and uncertainty still prevailed. In particular, greater clarificationwas needed on the points of actual disagreement about the doctrine preachedin Najd and the contemporary form of historic Islam, the religion of a commu-nity united under the spiritual and temporal authority of the Ottoman sultan.It seemed indubitable that the cult of the saints was prohibited, as was the useof honorary titles and practices otherwise tolerated, such as the use of tobacco.It was not equally clear how far agreement went about the diminished regardby the Wahhabis for Muhammad, the omission of his name in professions offaith, the destruction of popular places of worship, and abstention from cere-mony and stages on pilgrimages. Finally there was the rejection of unspecifiedSunni “traditions”. Did this include collections of ḥadīth, commentaries on the55 His sentence was remitted in view of the long intervening period and mutual relations with France, cf. Lorimer (1915), I, p. 1292 nt. In 1829 there was also a friendly epilogue to the troubled relations between Corancez and Rousseau when a ministerial commission, which also included Corancez, absolved Rousseau, now consul at Tripoli, of having pur- loined the papers of the Scottish explorer Alexander Laing, assassinated near Timbuktu in 1826, cf. Dehérain (1938), p. 90.56 In a long list of tribes which had gone over to the Wahhabi faith Rousseau felt the need to specify that some of the conversions should be considered partial and that adherence to the new cult had often caused migrations and divisions, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., p. 145 nt. On the Wahhabis’ military conduct – the tactics of the Bedouin – only applied on a large scale, cf. [L.A. Corancez], Histoire des Wahabis, cit., p. 24.

82 Chapter 2Koran, customs validated by one or other of the four law schools recognized bythe Sunnis, and so on? Corancez even stated that only a “faithful” version of theHoly Book – a “particular” version according to the 1804 article (supra, note 30)– was permitted by the leader of the Wahhabis, as if the latter had initiated atextual revision of the Koran not dissimilar to the one on the Biblical canon inEurope undertaken in the Protestant camp and in particular by rationalisttheologians.57 The search for analogies with the Reformation did indeed seem promising.The comparison, only mentioned by Corancez and still implicit in Raymond(according to whom a ‘spirit of reform” was, ultimately, a threat to “Moham-medanism”), was clearer in Rousseau’s final Mémoire. He recalled how, fromthe origin of the Church to the birth of the principal Protestant movements,Christians had always stigmatised heretics by using the names of those guiltyof starting each deviation, thereby incurring the displeasure of the membersthus named. The new sectarians in Arabia seemed to be equally irritated by thename “Wahhabi”. In the al-Dirʿiyya manuscript, for example, they simply calledthemselves “Muslims”, in contrast to their enemies who were branded as of-fenders against monotheism, mushrikun, literally “associationists”, or in Rous-seau’s paraphrase, “all those who share their incense between God and men”.In the meantime a real dispute was taking place about the theological defini-tion of the sin which corresponded to the Arabic term shirk. “Associating” Godwith simple humans worshipped as idols was regarded as blasphemy. Conse-quently the French consul did not hesitate to call the new cult “Musulmanismeréformé”, as opposed to a widespread Islamic religiosity seen as superstitious,external and caesaropapistic, close, in short, to Catholicism as seen by Protes-tants.58 A kind of traditionalist “church” going back to Muhammad, if not Is-lam as such, seemed to be heading towards inevitable exposure to a perhapsdevastating attack by these reformers within the very city of Mecca. Wahhabitolerance of Christians and Jews, but not of other Muslims, added credibility tothe impression of a real similarity with the earlier wars of religion in Europe. This was why, when explaining the phenomenon, Rousseau and Corancezoften introduced the same Deistic themes to which they had objected in the57 [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., p. 7.58 Ibid, p. 28, nt. Note the change with respect to the former conviction, not only of Rous- seau, that the name “Wahabys” was spontaneously assumed by the “nouveau peuple” in Arabia, cf. [Id.], Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., p. 135; J. Raymond, Mémoire sur l’origine des Wahabys, cit., pp. 7, 9.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 83work of their predecessors.59 There was a widespread conviction that the Ref-ormation had more or less consciously prepared the way for rationalism, asCondorcet and Maistre had maintained, albeit on opposite fronts. That an in-discernible spiritual line connected Protestantism to Islam was a longstandingsupposition in theological controversy. However, the originally negative sig-nificance of this juxtaposition, typical of both a Catholic perspective and thecontroversies on predestination in the Protestant camp, no longer existedamong philosophers. If elements of “pure Deism” could be detected in Mu-hammad’s Holy Book, incompatible with the polytheistic superstitions ofmore primitive civilisations, even if intermixed with the fierce prejudices of awarrior society stirred up by the Prophet’s ambitions, there seemed to be noth-ing to prevent the Wahhabi movement from developing, perhaps in spite ofitself, in the direction sketched out by Volney.60 Such a return to primitive Is-lam gave rise to the hope that the pure natural religion would one day flourishin Asia on the ruins of chapels once erected in superstitious honour of thesaints, spurious legends about Muhammad and self-serving customs surround-ing the Mecca pilgrimage, just as had occurred in Europe as a result of Re-formed attacks on the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. A fleetingreference to a recent text on Islam by the former Jacobin Conrad EngelbertOelsner, a thorough repository of typical reflections on rationalism and fanati-cism during the Enlightenment, revealed the lasting influence of these viewson Corancez’s Histoire, at least behind the scenes.6159 Only Raymond, the least learned of these writers, resists the temptation to mention “Deism”; Rousseau, who still uses the term “déistes”, supra, notes 2 and 14, only omits it in the revised version of the “Notice historique” included in the Mémoire of 1818, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., p. 7.60 At least according to Barbié du Bocage and Jomard in their respective reviews of the main articles by Rousseau and Corancez in the Magasin Encyclopédique, still based on the con- viction that “déïsme pur” must of itself inform Wahhabi theology, cf. J.D. Barbié du Bocage, review of: Description du Pachalik de Bagdad, cit., p. 177; E. Jomard, review of: His- toire des Wahabis, cit., p. 430. Jomard even repeated, after Volney, that the sectarians allowed “ni révélation ni prophète” and foresaw in their vast expansion “l’abolition, ou du moins la réforme du mahométisme”, ibid, pp. 427, 440. With greater caution the aforesaid geographer Malte-Brun concluded from the principal works of the two consuls (men- tioned in a note) that “les Wahabis ont les Mahométans en horreur. Ils ont cependant retenu d’eux beaucoup de pratiques”, cf. Précis de la Géographie Universelle. Par M. Malte- Brun, Paris, 1810–29, III, p. 204.61 [L.A. Corancez], Histoire des Wahabis, cit., p. 169 nt. Oelsner postulated an “accord parfait” between “islamisme” and “religion naturelle” concerning “l’unité de l’Être suprême, sa providence, sa sagesse, sa justice et sa bonté”. In contrast to Volney he rehabilitated the Koran – a book “qui donne de la divinité des idées saines, très-élevées et bien dignes

84 Chapter 2 The results were unstable, however, always subject to disclaimers in thelight of new events and affected by the resurgence of outdated beliefs. In 1818the Magasin Encyclopédique (by then the Annales Encyclopédiques), which hadbeen so important in the dispute, offered a new description of the Wahhabis,very slightly updated with respect to Rousseau’s latest information in his Mé-moire of the same year which included no event after 1813.62 The author, Au-guste de N., does not mention his fellow Frenchmen, the two quarrelsomeconsuls who had supplied the fullest information on the Wahhabis then avail-able. He still believed that ʿAbd al-Wahhab was the founder of the movementand thought that the famous ʿAbd al-ʿAziz was ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s adopted sonand head of the Banu Tamim tribe, the grandfather (not the father) of the am-bitious and successful leader Saʿud who was ruling at the time. Niebuhr wasstill cited as the most authoritative source on conditions in Arabia, at leastuntil more information had been provided by the research of Seetzen andBurckhardt – in particular by Burckhardt, who had also died recently and hadbeen a friend of the writer.63 In view of these imprecisions and the reference to accounts still barelyknown, the interest of the article consisted primarily in a renewed attempt togive a doctrinal explanation of the phenomenon. The author started with theassumption that, after the demise of the Caliphate, the tribes in the ArabianPeninsula slowly relapsed into idolatry, thereby reducing the religion of Mu-hammad to an almost foreign entity in its land of origin. He was evidentlyaware that the new cult involved simple belief in one God, creator, preserver, d’elle”, corresponding to “déisme pur”, cf. C.E. Oelsner, Des effets de la religion de Moham- med, pendant les trois premiers siecles de sa fondation, Paris, 1810, pp. 19–20, 30 nt. The work, rewarded in 1808 by the Institut de France and also published in German (Frankfurt a. M., 1810), contains no reference to the Wahhabis. On the other hand the austerity of the first Muslims is compared to that of the Presbyterians, at least where their hostility to the fine arts is concerned, ibid, pp. x, 168.62 When, in this last work, Rousseau mentions the evacuation of Medina and Mecca by the Wahhabis, expelled by the Egyptians, and the insurrection in Bahrain which took place at the same time, he again expresses his confidence in the sectarians’ invincibility: “Tous ces revers ne peuvent les [scil.: the Wahhabis] avoir découragés; et l’on connaît assez leur systême de guerre, ainsi que le fanatisme religieux qui les anime, pour ne pas douter qu’ils ne cherchent, dans l’inaction même où ils paraissent plongés, les moyens de recouvrer leur ancienne prépondérance”, cf. [J.-B.L. Rousseau], Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, cit., p. 50.63 A. de N***, “Notice sur les Arabes et sur les Wahabis”, in Annales Encyclopediques, 1818, t. 5, pp. 15, 17. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, should if anything have been understood as the grandfather of king ʿAbd Allah, the son of Saʿud and still in office in 1818 – hence perhaps the author’s confusion.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 85dispenser of good and evil, and obedience to the precepts of the Koran. Heknew that it also rejected the supplication of dead saints and prophets; that itheld that epitaphs and sepulchres in their honour should be destroyed as wellas books and Koranic commentaries praising the virtues of Muhammad andhis companions; that it banned tobacco, music and dancing, and perhaps evencoffee and silk. He realised too that it suppressed honorific titles and ceremo-nies and released its adherents from any and every duty to the Turkish sultan.Nonetheless, uncertainty remained about the major question raised byNiebuhr: were such teachings the fruit of a strong Muslim reaction to a relax-ation of the authentic faith, or were they derived from the spiritual refinementof the rough, popular Bedouin religiosity which had always been indifferent toIslamic orthodoxy?64 In the meanwhile there had been the Egyptian conquest of Hijaz, but theauthor only seemed to have heard of the early successes of the victorious army.The final eulogy of Muhammad ʿAli and the inauspicious forecast for the Wah-habis, who had seemed invincible shortly before, but were now subjected tothe reversals of fortune which always accompany too rapid a rise, concealedfrom the reader the insufficiency of the available data.65 The main lesson to bedrawn from the entire French controversy was that no further progress couldbe made without a more permanent stay in Arabia and close contact with thesect – something which had in fact already taken place although it was as yetunknown to the public. There were, however, a few valuable new items of in-64 Without specifying whether the Wahhabi doctrine should be considered the result of the weakened Muslim observance of the Bedouin, or rather a reaction to it, the author intro- duces an account of the preaching of ʿAbd al-Wahhab (“un cheïkh du Dréïyé”, the adop- tive father of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, “chef de la puissante tribu des Béni-Témim”) by recalling the already well-known prophetic dream, but which is here attributed to the leader himself, specifying that the flames had burst from the spurt of his urine. There followed a descrip- tion of the main dogmas, ibid, pp. 20–24. The writer’s contribution to the controversial question of the supposed Wahhabi tolerance of the followers of other religions, variously subject to accusations of idolatry, was more precise and original. If the sectarians origi- nally “ne fasoient point de quartier aux chrétiens et aux juifs, et encore moins aux musul- mans qui refusoient d’embrasser le Wéhâbisme”, the Emir Saʿud later became more interested in gain, (“commençant à devenir financier”) and, mindful that “le corân recom- mandoit la tolérance envers les nations qui reconnoissent une loi écrite” (probably an allusion to the so-called “peoples of the Book”), he was reported to accept twenty piasters from the followers of Moses and Jesus as an alternative to conversion, ibid, pp. 25–26.65 The main causes of disagreement in the sect were an acquired habit of easy booty and a dislike of the tax system introduced by Saʿud. According to the writer, “activité, constance et ressources” had secured the lasting glory of Muhammad ʿAli, the instigator “en Arabie des entreprises qui feroient honneur aux plus illustres génies”, ibid, pp. 28, 30.

86 Chapter 2formation from another area of the international geopolitical stage. Writingsby English travellers and diplomats were circulating, their preoccupations re-flecting those of their Napoleonic counterparts. Nor were their aspirations tojoin the ranks of European informers about the Wahhabis negligible. TheSaʿudi kingdom, hostile to both the Persians and the Turks, occupied a strategicposition on the route to India. This made it of interest not only to the French.The dispute was more than purely literary. It now extended to the ambitions ofthe great colonial powers.5 Waring: The Fractured Foundation StoneThe astonishing new politico-religious organisation in Arabia was discoveredby the British earlier than the French – at least a decade before even Browne’sinformation. The existence of the Wahhabis was noted in the registers of theEast India Company for the first time in 1787.66 A few years later, around 1793,an incursion against an outpost at Grain, an English corruption of al-Qurain,another Arabic name for the port of Kuwait, led to an awareness that the bel-licose innovators, the subject of growing rumours in Basra, had even appearedin the Persian Gulf. On this occasion John Lewis Reinaud, a local emissary ofthe Company, was sent to re-establish good relations at the Saʿudi court andwas the first European to visit al-Dirʿiyya. He produced a short account in 1805,which was dispatched to Europe by the German traveller Seetzen.67 The propa-gation of the sect caused considerable anxiety to the Bombay government,66 In 1819 Francis Warden, a member of the Company’s governing body with access to the archive documents, (his Historical Sketch of the Wahabee Tribe of Arabs, with later addi- tions, was not published till 1856) wrote: “This sect was founded about the year 1516 [sic] by an Arab of the name of Shaikh Mahomed, the son of Abdool Wahab, whose name they have taken (…) the first mention made of this in the Bombay records is in the year 1787”, cf. F. Warden, Historical Sketch of the Wahabee Tribe of Arabs, in R. Hughes Thomas (ed.), Arabian Gulf Intelligence. Selection from the Records of the Bombay Government, Cam- bridge-New York, 1985, p. 428.67 U.J. Seetzen, “Auszug aus dem Briefe des Hrn. Reinaud an Dr. Seetzen”, in Monatliche Cor- respondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmels-Kunde, XII, 1805, pp. 237–41 (from Aleppo, 2 April 1805). Seetzen hardly mentions his acquaintance with Reinaud (about whom he speaks more extensively in his travel journal, infra, Chapter III, note 1) and says he gave his letter back “im Original”, ibid, p. 234. It was in fact published only in part in a German translation with a single chronological reference: the fact that ʿAbd al-ʿAziz was alive, portrayed as a man of about sixty. This estimate is not incompatible with the period of the Wahhabi attack on Kuwait, where there was a British station from 1793 to 1795.

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 87which exercised both extreme caution in its approach to the new kingdom inArabia and considerable tolerance towards the piracy of the coastal tribes evenwhen it damaged British trade. Harford Jones Brydges (1764–1847), the English resident in Baghdad whohad served in Basra and in Kuwait under Manesty, wrote an important initialreport in 1799. It was long unknown and was only published in 1834 after athorough revision by the author. By then Burckhardt’s Notes had already con-firmed the idea of the new sectarians’ essentially Muslim orthodoxy alreadymentioned by Brydges in his draft.68 In the early nineteenth century the publicwas influenced, rather, by a merely indirect account written in the spirit ofBrowne and contained in the narrative of a private journey to Persia in 1802 byEdward Scott Waring, a young employee of the East India Company who hadgrown up in India where his father, John Scott Waring, had been agent to War-ren Hastings and had acted as his spokesman at home during the sensationalBengali embezzlement trial. In the Tour to Sheeraz, by the route of Kazroon andFeerozabad (1804, 18073) an entire chapter is dedicated to the followers of themysterious prophet who had appeared in Najd (chap. XXXI: Of the Wuhabees).68 “The Religion they possess is Mohammedan according to the literal meaning of the Koran, following the Interpretations of Hambelly. (…) They term themselves true Mus- sulmans”, cf. Khan (1968), p. 42. This first report, simply entitled The Whabee, perhaps the source of Browne’s enlarged notice of 1806 (Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s travels, son, office and precepts, particularly the “positive duty” he instituted for “every Whabee … to join waging Continual War against all unbelievers” – it does no matter if Christians, Jews or unprincipled Muslims – but with a clearer distinction here between his stays and protectors in al-ʿUyaina and al-Dirʿiyya), was delivered in a letter dated 1 December from Brydges to Jacob Bosanquet, president of the East India Company’s Court of Directors. In the final draught of 1834, published under the title “A brief history of the Wahauby” and marginal to the account of his Persian mission, Brydges asserts that, as to Wahhabi doc- trine, he follows Burckhardt, cf. H.J. Brydges, An Account of the transactions of His Majes- ty’s Mission to the court of Persia, London, 1834, II, p. 106. Brydges gives, however, a new description of the Wahhabi incursion in Kuwait (wrongly dated 1792 and with no mention of British military involvement) with news of a consignment of gifts from Manesty to al-Dirʿiyya, ibid, pp. 12–16. More generally, “A Brief History of the Wahauby” is a European source of undoubted interest for the political and military history of the first Saʿudi reign. On the life of Brydges, who spent twenty-five years in the East, in Basra, Shiraz, Baghdad and Teheran, narrated, at least at intervals, in his Persian account, cf. Henderson/Mat- thew (2004); Lorimer (1915), I, pp. 1291, 1294, 1894. For Brydges’ first report on the Wah- habis, written in Baghdad and now edited by Khan (1968), pp. 41–44, the previous activity at Grain and the establishment of an East India Company base following friction between the Jewish community in Basra and the English resident Manesty, who chose to move to Kuwait for three years, cf. Kelly (1968), pp. 32–33, 49, 50 nt., 54–55; Khan (1968), pp. 33.

88 Chapter 2Although the narrator was hardly a model of factual accuracy and still derivedmuch of his information from Niebuhr, his contribution, together with the sec-ond edition of Browne’s Travels, nonetheless signified, for the British reader, athorough revision of the Deist hypothesis in parallel to what was also takingplace in France.69 Like his predecessors Waring appeared convinced that what he had beforehim was a “new religion”. He noted, however, that to judge it as new meantcontrasting the sectarians with “orthodox” Muslims. The leader ʿAbd al-Wah-hab, or alternatively his son, the mullāh Muhammad, who had been instructed“under the principal Moohammedan doctors at Bussora and Bagdad”, had al-ways publicly defended “the purity, excellence and orthodoxy of his tenets”,first in Damascus, then briefly at Mosul, and finally in his own country in thecity of al-ʿUyainah in the province of al-ʿArid where he had married the daugh-ter of the local “governor”. Nevertheless, his adversaries and majority opinionimputed various “doctrines subversive of the Moosulman faith” to the preach-er: the admission of a single God of justice, belief in the mere humanity of theso-called “prophets” and the refusal to accept any divine revelation depositedby a holy writer in an “inspired work”. The conventional features of the Wah-habi creed as reported by Niebuhr’s camel merchant were here presentedagain by Waring, albeit with the benefit of the doubt as to the limited reliabil-ity of partisan testimony. Waring is never quite explicit about the sources of his information on theseconflicting views. He very probably used stories he had heard in Persia inte-grated with what he had read in Niebuhr, the only writer he mentions. Basra,where he stayed for three weeks between September and October 1802, seemedonce again to be the hub of this information. Indeed, he described the city asbeing in a state of panic over a possible Wahhabi attack. He was convinced thatthe interests and prejudice of the sect’s denigrators had caused this agitation.“Orthodox sheiks” seethed with indignation at their own “legends and tales”being rendered ridiculous. Generally speaking, “bigoted and rancorous” Mus-lims tended to describe all that differed from their inveterate convictions inominous tones. It seemed that the other main accusation levelled against theobscure innovator and his followers, apparently incompatible with their69 E. Scott Waring, A Tour to Sheeraz, by the route of Kazroon and Feerozabad, London, 1807 (the date of the preface, concluded at Puna on 13 October 1804, is the terminus ad quem for information on the Wahhabis). It had first been printed and appeared in Bombay in 1804, but was “spoiled by numerous and absurd errors of the press”, ibid, p. vi; a second in London in 1805 (as vol. VI in the series: A Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages and Travels, sect. II: “Original Voyages and Travels”).

Literary Disputes and Colonial Aims 89supposed Deism, and the cause of the same theological loathing, was that of“religious furor”, “intolerant zeal and holy cruelty”. However well-founded, not-ed Waring, the blame lay on the Wahhabis no less than on their Muslim critics,and on the earliest and most venerated followers of Muhammad.7070 E.S. Waring, A Tour to Sheeraz, cit., pp. 119–20: “The priests were alarmed at the tendency of his [scil: ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s, or mullāh Muhammad’s] doctrines; he was obliged to fly from his city [scil: Damascus]; and on his arrival at Mousul, he publicly supported the purity, excellence, and orthodoxy of his tenets. After a short stay at Mosoul, he returned to his own country, and had soon the good fortune to convert the governor of his native town, and many of the principal Sheikhs. It is alledged that Moolla Moohummud received the sister of his protector in marriage, and that soon after he had the ingratitude to mur- der his benefactor, affirming, that he was an oppressor and a tyrant, and that his love of justice would not allow him to overlook such detestable crimes, even in a beloved rela- tion. This story does not appear to me to be worthy of credit; I notice it as I have made mention of Moolla Moohummud, but it was the invention of some bigoted and rancorous Moosulman, willing to describe the character of this religious innovator in the blackest colours. Ubdool Wuhab was regarded by his new proselytes in the light of an independent lawgiver; and he prudently exerted his authority to compose the differences existing among his converts, and by this means put himself at the head of the most powerful party in Najd. His religious furor induced him not only to propagate his opinions by argument and persuasion, but with all the intolerant zeal and holy cruelty which marked the rise and progress of Mahometanism. Ubdool Wuhab greatly extended his conquest, and in a short time gained possession of nearly the whole of Ool Urud. On his death Ubdool Uzeez succeeded him, and continued to follow the same measures for conciliating the Arab Sheikhs as had been pursued by his father. This new religion, which had sprung up in the midst of Arabia, excited the attention, and roused the indignation of the orthodox Sheikhs, who could not bear the notion of the Wuhabees ridiculing with contempt the legends and tales which they so conscientiously believed. The Wuhabees are accused of professing the following belief: “That there is one just and wise God; that all those persons called prophets are only to be considered as just and virtuous men, and that there never existed an inspired work nor an inspired writer.” In his report of 1799, Brydges unhesitat- ingly attributed the murder of “Ibn Mahamer”, sheikh of al-ʿUyaina, to “Moollah Moham- med”. He also knew of some of the audacious preacher’s earlier misadventures in Damascus and Mosul, cf. Khan (1968), p. 41. Waring seems to regard with suspicion this particularly slanderous episode in the stories he heard of the life of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab – that is the murder of ʿUthman ibn Muʿammar, emir of al-ʿUyaina, his first political protector in 1745 and father-in-law to the future Saʿudi monarch ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. This may have been the source of the rumour that Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab had had his father-in-law murdered, since he was often confused with ʿAbd al-Aziz. In fact ʿUthman was a nephew by marriage of the Wahhabi leader, who had not received a daughter of ʿUthman’s in marriage, but an aunt on the father’s side. ʿUthman, having been forced to break with Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab on the insistence of Sulaiman, emir of al-Ahsaʾ⁠ (great uncle and predecessor of the already mentioned ʾUraiʾir ibn Dujain),

90 Chapter 2 So eager was Waring to avoid appearing credulous by repeating all the hor-rors attributed to the “new religion” that he even classified clearly doctrinaldispositions such as the identification of Muslims deviating from the Koran asthorough “infidels” and “the destruction of magnificent tombs” ordered as an“act of necessary devotion”, among the “civil ordinances” which also includedthe zakāt, the tax mentioned by Niebuhr, and the criteria for the distribution ofconquered lands and goods. He described these more precisely than didBrowne (supra, Chapter I, note 43), and was apparently unaware of the factthat they were the same precepts as those of the Koran.71 Even the gravity ofthe sack of Kerbela, here dated 1802 and recounted to the narrator by numer-ous survivors still appalled by the horrendous profanation suffered by the “holysepulchres” of the progeny of ʿAli, had, according to him, been exaggerated byPersian anger. More benevolent opinions were therefore called upon to coun-terbalance this view, such as that of some Armenian travellers, very probablyChristians, who tended to credit the Wahhabis with considerable honesty andhumanity.72 was slaughtered in 1750 by Wahhabis remaining in the city after their leader had been exiled. Whether they were praised or blamed for this act by Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wah- hab is a matter of disagreement among Wahhabi chroniclers. Ibn Ghannam reports Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s displeasure, while Ibn Bishr maintains that, from a reli- gious point of view, the crime was praiseworthy, and was justified by the suspicion that Ibn Muʿammar had himself tried to have Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab put to death while he was fleeing to al-Dirʿiyya. The problem, therefore, was not the fact in itself, but its representation by the Wahhabis, cf. DeLong-Bas (2004), pp. 37–38; Peskes (1993), pp. 57, 268–73 (with an explanation of the differences between the accounts of Ibn Ghan- nam and Ibn Bishr in the light of the latter’s intention to discredit the dynastic claims of a nineteenth-century descendant of Ibn Muʿammar); Philby (1955), pp. 44–45, 60; Rentz (2004), pp. 46–47, 52, 62–63, 66. Only Khan (1968), pp. 36–37, is doubtful as to the reality of ʿUthman’s assassination.71 E.S. Waring, A Tour to Sheeraz, cit., p. 121: “Among a number of civil ordinances of the Wuhabees, are the following: – illegal to levy duties on goods the property of a Moosul- man; on specie, the Zukat, or two and a half per cent.; land watered naturally to pay ten per cent.; artificially five per cent.; the revenues of conquered countries to belong to the community; the revenues to be divided into five parts, one to be given to the general treasury, the rest to be kept where collected, to be allotted for the good of the community, for travellers, and charitable purposes; a Moosulman who deviates from the precepts of the Koran to be treated as an infidel; the destruction of magnificent tombs a necessary act of devotion.”72 Ibid, p. 123: “A party of the Wuhabees last year (1802) attacked Kurbulu, celebrated among the Persians as being the burial place of the sons of Ali, destroyed the tombs, and plun- dered the town and pilgrims. I met several of the people who had been there at that period, and they all agreed in complaining most bitterly of the cruelty of the reformers. It