Literature on Saudi Arabia often starts by making the obvious observation that the regime derives its legitimacy from Wahhabiyya. Yet not many studies go further than this, for example to analyse the internal dynamics and dialectics of this legitimacy. In this book I have explored the ways in which Wahhabiyya became a hegemonic discourse under the patronage of the state. Rather than being a tradition opposed to modernity, Wahhabiyya flourished and its advocates became prosperous as a result of the immersion of Saudi Arabia in modernity. Wahhabiyya became a dominant discourse because of state patronage, oil and modernity. However, the same factors that consolidatedit have led to its contestation. This has resulted in the emergence of multiple Wahhabi discourses, all constructed against the background of state control.

The creation of the modern state in 1932 consolidated a religious tradition that grew in the shadow of the sultan. After the state eliminated undesirable elements and interpretations in the 1920s, Wahhabiyya became the dominant religious discourse, whose consolidation was dependent on financial and moral support from the political elite. Wahhabi scholars developed intoa class of noblesse dʾétat with its own interests and role in the political realm. This elite originated in the small oases and settlements of southern Najd and Qasim that produced religious interpreters. Until the 1970s aimat al-da ʿwa al-najdiyya represented a close circle of people of knowledge.