Wahhbism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement
(Hardback)
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Publishing Details
Wahhbism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement
By (Author) Cole M. Bunzel
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
22nd August 2023
United States
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Political ideologies and movements
297.81409
Physical Properties
Hardback
408
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
Description
An essential history of Wahhbism from its founding to the Islamic State
In the mid-eighteenth century, a controversial Islamic movement arose in the central Arabian region of Najd that forever changed the political landscape of the Arabian Peninsula and the history of Islamic thought. Its founder, Muammad ibn Abd al-Wahhb, taught that most professed Muslims were polytheists due to their veneration of Islamic saints at tombs and gravesites. He preached that true Muslims, those who worship God alone, must show hatred and enmity toward these polytheists and fight them in jihd. Cole Bunzel tells the story of Wahhbism from its emergence in the 1740s to its taming and coopting by the modern Saudi state in the 1920s, and shows how its legacy endures in the ideologies of al-Qida and the Islamic State.
Drawing on a wealth of primary source materials, Bunzel traces the origins of Wahhb doctrine to the religious thought of medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyya and examines its development through several generations of Wahhb scholars. While widely seen as heretical and schismatic, the movement nonetheless flourished in central Arabia, spreading across the peninsula under the political authority of the l Sud dynasty until the invading Egyptian army crushed it in 1818. The militant Wahhb ethos, however, persisted well into the early twentieth century, when the Saudi kingdom used Wahhbism to bolster its legitimacy.
This incisive history is the definitive account of a militant Islamic movement founded on enmity toward non-Wahhb Muslims and that is still with us today in the violent doctrines of Sunni jihds.
Reviews
"The single most significant event in the publication history of the scholarship on Wahhbismperiod. Theres no book that rivals it . . . in scope, erudition, and breadth. . . . It's one of these books that will set the agenda for future scholarship."---Omar Anchassi, Islamicate Book Review
"[A] must-read book."---Aaron Y. Zelin
Author Bio
Cole M. Bunzel is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
