Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Wahhabi chronicles claimed that the message of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92) in Deriyyah aimed to revive religion by returning to the Quran, Sunna and the tradition of the pious ancestors. While the sheikh and his followers never accepted the label Wahhabis, they considered themselves to be ahl al-sunna wa ʾl-jama ʿa (people of tradition and community), or ahl al-tawhid (al-muwahhidun: the people of monotheism). In contemporary scholarship, they represent one of the Salafi trends within Sunni Islam. The return to the tradition of the pious ancestors was meant to remove religious innovations, and applythe shariʿa at a timewhen the population of Arabia was believed to have degenerated into blasphemy, corrupt religious practices and laxity. This allegedly took place mainly under Ottoman rule, whose religious traditions, particularly Sufism, incorporated interpretations and practices consideredoutside the realm of true Islam. The rhetoric of the return to the pious ancestorsand the sacred text, in addition to rejecting madhahib (schools of jurisprudence), allows Wahhabiyya to be counted as a Salafi movement.

Wahhabiyya painted an image of Arabia as the land of blasphemy and savagery.