1 Hawting, G.R., The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: from Polemic to History (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 63, with a translation of a typical passage from one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's many works.

2 I have given talks related to this paper in three settings: in the Islamic Studies Lecture Series at Georgetown University on 4 November 2010, at the Columbia University Seminar on Religion and Writing on 29 January 2013 and at a colloquium on Controversial Figures in Islamic History at the University of Leiden on 9 February 2013. My thanks are due to Emma Gannagé, Dagmar Riedel and Petra Sijpesteijn for inviting me, and to all who commented on my talks.

3 For this manuscript, namely Princeton, Yahuda 3788, see Mach, R., Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts (Yahuda Section) in the Garrett Collection, Princeton University Library (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar, p. 62 no. 686, p. 140 no. 1601, p. 155 no. 1796 and p. 225 nos 2635–6; S. Traboulsi, “An early refutation of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's reformist views”, Die Welt des Islams 42, 2002, 377–9. For Qabbānī's Shāfiʿite allegiance, see Yahuda 3788, ff. 27b.4, 60a.20.

4 Yahuda 3788, ff. 41b–63a.

5 Yahuda 3788, f. 42a.3.

6 Yahuda 3788, f. 63a.19. Qabbānī describes the copy as an autograph (tamma l-kitāb bi-qalam muʾallifihi, f. 63a.23); the date on which he made our copy could in principle be later than the date on which he finished the work, but the other items in the volume show Qabbānī at work between 1156/1744 and 1159/1746 (see Traboulsi, “Early refutation”, 377–9). The first folio of the manuscript, which is not part of the first item, bears a note that seems to be dated Shaʿbān 1160/1747, although unfortunately the year could also be read as 1260/1844.

7 Cook, M., “On the origins of Wahhābism”, JRAS Third Series, 2, 1992, 191–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Mach, Catalogue, 225 nos. 2635–6.

9 This is the text published in Traboulsi, “Early refutation”, 391–405.

10 Qabbānī clearly thinks of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as in ʿUyayna, not Dirʿiyya (compare the address yā ahl al-ʿUyayna, Yahuda 3788, ff. 44b.11, 46b.2, 57a.8 and cf. 42b.5). This suggests that the move to Dirʿiyya as a result of the alliance with Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd had either not yet taken place or was not yet known to Qabbānī. The date of the move is in fact uncertain: in the Bombay lithograph of Ibn Ghannām's chronicle it is dated “around 1257” (fī ḥudūd sanat sabʿ wa-khamsīn baʿda l-miʾatayn wal-alif), where 1257/1841f is presumably a copyist's error for 1157/1744f (Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār (Bombay, 1337), II, 4.20); Fākhirī dates it to the beginning of either 1158/1745 or 1159/1746 (al-Akhbār al-Najdiyya, ed. ʿA.Y. al-Shibl (n.p. n.d.), 106.1, and see the editor's footnote thereto); and Ibn Bishr gives 1158/1745f (ʿUnwān al-majd fī taʾrīkh Najd (Riyadh, n.d.), I, 15.14; but the editor of Fākhirī in his footnote quotes 1157/1744f from a manuscript of Ibn Bishr's work). Within this range, from 1157/1744 to 1159/1746, the fact that Qabbānī in Jumādā I of 1158/1745 thought of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as still in ʿUyayna is a reason to favour a relatively late date for the move. It also casts doubt on the statement of Ibn Bishr that it was after his move to Dirʿiyya that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began to send out his epistles (thumma inna l-shaykh kātaba ahl al-buldān, ʿUnwān al-majd, I, 14.17).

11 Yahuda 3788, f. 41b.10. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab himself denies any claim to ijtihād in an early epistle (Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 146.5).

12 He describes his polemic as a sharḥ (Yahuda 3788, f. 42a.1), though it is a uniformly hostile one.

13 ʿAbdallāh ibn Saʿd al-Ruwayshid, al-Imām al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fī l-taʾrīkh (Cairo, 1984), II, 9–11Google Scholar. I know of two other Wahhābī printings with texts identical or very close to Ruwayshid's.

14 He opens his quotation of the epistle with the words qāla baʿda l-basmala (Yahuda 3788, f. 42a.10).

15 Presumably in the sense of istabʿada.

16 When the text has “the verse” or “the two verses” after a Quranic quotation, I supply in square brackets any part of the verse or verses not quoted.

17 A line has been lost in Qabbānī's text through haplography: the missing passage begins wa-ṭalab, and immediately following the lacuna the text resumes fa-idhā ṭalab. I supply the missing line from Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 10.20, placing it in curly brackets.

18 This is a second case of the loss of a line by haplography in Qabbānī's text: the missing passage begins with annahum, and immediately following the lacuna the text resumes with a second annahum. I supply the missing line from Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 11.4.

19 This verb, which is replaced by yukhliṣu li- in Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 11.24, is one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's colloquialisms. It appears again in §9 below, and see, for example, Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 229.12 (nakhā), 229.24 (yankhawna). The sense of the verb in a secular context is to invoke someone's honour in an appeal for his assistance (see Kurpershoek, P.M., Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia (Leiden, 1994–2005)Google Scholar, V, 314f; the word is by no means confined to Najd – see the references in C. Holes, Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia (Leiden, 2001–05), I, 515). This fits the context of the continuation of Q. 39:8 better than yukhliṣu.

20 For a brief account of the cult of Tāj, a popular saint living in Kharj in southern Najd, see Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 8.3, and cf. II, 8.19. The others mentioned here are doubtless saints of the same ilk. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refers to these cults in his writings but tells us little about them (thus for Tāj, see, for example, I, 84.14, 168.16; for Shamsān, 84.13, 145.19, 156.21, 168.16, 181.4, 200.17, 201.22 and 231.3; for Ḥusayn, 202.17; for Idrīs, 168.16, 200.17, 202.17 and 231.3; for the cult of the saints of Kharj in general, 190.12, and cf. 184.6, 227.15). Qabbānī himself speaks respectfully of al-shaykh Ḥusayn wal-shaykh Idrīs wal-sayyid Shamsān (Yahuda 3788, f. 58b.2). An early epistle written by an enemy of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in Riyadh, Sulaymān ibn Muḥammad ibn Suḥaym, states that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had declared certain local descendants of the Prophet (sāda ʿindanā min āl al-rasūl) to be unbelievers because they accepted votive offerings (li-ajl annahum yaʾkhudhūna l-nudhūr, I, 143.23). See also ʿA.Ṣ. al-ʿUthaymīn, “al-Rasāʾil al-shakhṣiyya lil-shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb”, al-Dāra, 7/3, 1982Google Scholar, 74f, to which I owe some of these references, and Juhany, U.M. Al, Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement: Social, Political and Religious Conditions During the Three Centuries Preceding the Rise of the Saudi State (Reading, 2002)Google Scholar, 154.

21 This sentence is quoted again by Qabbānī, Yahuda 3788, f. 57b.12.

22 A district in southern Najd.

23 The district in central Najd where ʿUyayna and Dirʿiyya are located.

24 Fākhirī, al-Akhbār al-Najdiyya, 104.8.

25 Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, I, 8.22 (thumma aʿlana bil-daʿwa).

26 This is a lithograph volume entitled Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, published in Delhi, and containing writings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others; our epistle appears twice, at 9–11 and 34–6. The date of publication does not appear in my copy but is given as 1895 in Fulton, A.S. and Ellis, A.G., Supplementary Catalogue of Arabic Printed Books in the British Museum (London, 1926)Google Scholar, col. 629a.

27 “Le déisme des Wahhabis expliqué par eux-mêmes. Mémoire extrait du manuscrit des voyages de Mirza-Mohammed-Ali-Khan, dernier ambassadeur de Perse en France, publié et traduit par M. Alexandre Chodzko”, Journal Asiatique fourth series 11, 1848, 179–82Google Scholar (text), 182–6 (translation), drawn to my attention by Samer Traboulsi. While on his way to India by sea the ambassador met a Wahhābī who had a copy of the epistle, and was able to make one for himself (see 175, 178.19). Uniquely, this version turns the four principles into five. The edition is poor and the translation worse.

28 Jaḥḥāf, Luṭf Allāh, Durar nuḥūr al-ḥūr al-ʿīn, ed. al-Raʿawī, ʿA.M.ʿA.F. (Ṣanʿāʾ, 2004), 653–6Google Scholar, likewise drawn to my attention by Samer Traboulsi. What Jaḥḥāf tells us about how he came by this text is of considerable interest, and I will return to it below.

29 I discuss this variation in more detail in my unpublished edition of the epistle.

30 For printings of the rare version, see al-Ḍubayb, A.M., Āthār al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: sijill bibliyūjrāfī li-mā nushira min muʾallafātihi wa-li-baʿḍ mā kutiba ʿanhu (Riyadh, 1982)Google Scholar, 28 nos 25–7 (Ḍubayb gives this version the title Arbaʿ qawāʿid dhakarahā llāh fī muḥkam kitābihi, reflecting the way the text begins). For the printing of the rare version cited in this article, see above, n. 13. It is worth noting that the comparison of Qabbānī's text with the rare version makes it clear that in the first part at least he did not at any point falsify his original for polemical purposes, or deliberately suppress anything.

31 For an extensive but incomplete list of printings of the common version, see Ḍubayb, Āthār al-Shaykh, 25–7 nos 4–19 (Ḍubayb calls this version the extended one, al-risāla al-muṭawwala, and those of the texts he lists that I have seen are all of what I call the common version), and 27f nos 20–24 (Ḍubayb calls this the “summary” version, al-risāla al-mukhtaṣara, and I classify it as a deviant form of the common version). This leaves some further items in Ḍubayb's list that look as though they might be texts of our epistle but in fact seem not to be (29 nos 28–30, 34–5).

32 An example of the aghlaẓ type is to be found in a collection of writings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others with a title that begins Hādhihi thalāthat al-uṣūl wa-adillatuhā wa-yalīhā Shurūṭ al-ṣalāt wa-wājibātuhā wa-arkānuhā wa-Arbaʿ qawāʿid (Cairo, 1340), 24–7Google Scholar; an example of the aʿẓam type is included in a volume containing writings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others entitled Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd (Damascus, 1962), 72–7Google Scholar (all further references to Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd are to this volume). There are, however, some indications of contamination between the two types. As a rule, the aghlaẓ type is characterized by an interpolation explaining that there is good and bad intercession (shafāʿa manfiyya, shafāʿa muthbata; for the use of these terms by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, see his Kitāb al-tawḥīd alladhī huwa ḥaqq Allāh ʿalā l-ʿabīd, ed. Shākir, A.M. (Cairo, 1974, 45.1)Google Scholar. Thus the interpolation is found in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others, Hādhihi thalāthat al-uṣūl, 25.12, representing the aghlaẓ type, but it is absent from Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 74.8, representing the aʿẓam type. Yet there are also texts of the aʿẓam type that contain the interpolation (see, for example, Ruwayshid, Imām, I, 340.18), suggesting contamination.

33 But again there are indications of possible contamination (see below, nn. 48, 51–3).

34 For an example of the first deviant form, see Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 16–18. For an example of the second, see Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 19–22. The text published in “Le déisme des Wahhabis” is related to the first deviant form (compare the use of akhaff at 182.6 and in Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 18.23; and compare “Le déisme des Wahhabis”, 179.13 with Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 16.11).

35 For an example of the doubly deviant form, see Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 13–15. This form is closest to the texts of the second deviant form but still differs extensively from them in wording, and includes many more Quranic verses.

36 For example, such parallels are to be found in a responsum of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's in Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 228.20, 228.25, 229.14, 229.22 and 230.16. This text as a whole is definitely not a version of our epistle, and does not share its structure. There is, however, an epistle of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's that briefly deploys the basic ideas of our epistle in a familiar four-principle structure (Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 94–6). The relevant passage (ibid., 95.3) fills a little under a page of the epistle, and is preceded and followed by material that bears no resemblance to our epistle; even in the passage that concerns us the wording is distant. Nevertheless, this passage is clearly related to our epistle, and perhaps ancestral to it.

37 Specifically it is an example of the aghlaẓ type (Jaḥḥāf, Durar, 656.3).

38 This kind of haplography occurs when two successive lines begin or end with the same word (ṭalab in the first case and annahum in the second), and the eye of a tired or feckless scribe skips from the first to the second.

39 Yahuda 3788, f. 44a.11 (ʿajaza ʿan bayān al-masʾala al-thālitha hunā wa-lam yadhkur illā masʾalatayn). In fact, of course, Qabbānī had the third point in the text in front of him; it was the second point that had gone missing.

40 Conversely, the hypothesis would have been in serious trouble if the two dropped passages had been of clearly unequal length, or if the ratio of the length of the intervening text to the length of the dropped lines had not been a whole number or very close to it.

41 Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 10.6.

42 Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 11.9. The other two printings of the rare version are identical at this point, suggesting that no more than one of these three printings can have been based directly on a manuscript.

43 We find him using the form taḥaqqaqta but with a following subordinate clause (idhā taḥaqqaqta annahum muqirrūn bi-hādhā, Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 75.9; idhā taḥaqqaqta anna lladhīna qātalahum rasūl Allāh..., 82.24; fa-idhā taḥaqqaqta anna baʿḍ al-ṣaḥāba..., 89.6; and see the beginning of §5 in Qabbānī's text, and Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 11.1).

44 For aghlaẓ, see, for example, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others, Hādhihi thalāthat al-uṣūl, 27.4; for aʿẓam, see, for example, Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 76.11.

45 Jaḥḥāf, Durar, 653.7.

46 Thus in one place the common version as given in the Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd reads: fa-idhā ʿarafta anna llāha khalaqaka li-ʿibādatihi fa-ʿlam anna l-ʿibādata lā tusammā ʿibādatan illā maʿa l-tawḥīd (73.1). In Jaḥḥāf's text, we have only: fa-idhā ʿarafta anna l-ʿibādata mā tusammā ʿibādatan illā maʿa l-tawḥīd (Durar, 653.19). The passage omitted begins with anna and the text resumes with it, but it is too short to make a line in a manuscript.

47 Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 73.10.

48 As, for example, Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 72.10–73.9. Oddly, in the second deviant form and the doubly deviant form we find only a very brief introduction: fa-hādhihi arbaʿ qawāʿid min qawāʿid al-dīn, yumayyizu bi-hinna l-Muslim dīnahu min dīn al-mushrikīn (Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 19.11); hādhihi arbaʿ qawāʿid min qawāʿid al-dīn, yumayyizu bi-hinna l-Muslim bayna madhhab al-muslimīn min madhhab al-mushrikīn (Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 13.16).

49 To spell this out, the Prophet encountered the devotees of a variety of cults, ranging from the worship of angels, prophets and saints to that of trees and stones, sun and moon, but he fought all of them without distinction (see, for example, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others, Hādhihi thalāthat al-uṣūl, 26.2, and Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 74.9).

50 See above, n. 39.

51 See Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 10.18. Likewise, compare the openings of §3 and §6 with Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 10.6 and 11.11. Oddly, such transitions reappear in what I call the first deviant form of the common version (see Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 17.17, 18.2, although there is no transition here between the third and fourth principles; such a transition does appear in the text published in “Le déisme des Wahhabis”, 181.20). These parallels suggest contamination. Note also that the dangling fa-ʿrif wa-ḥaqqiq of the rare version looks like a misconstrued residue of the transition found at the beginning of §6 in Qabbānī's text (see above, n. 42).

52 For its absence in the rare version see Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 11.28. Note that a concluding sentence, though a quite different one, appears in the deviant form of the epistle that contains the transitions just mentioned (see Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 18.21).

53 Oddly, the doubly deviant form shares with the rare version the absence of this contrast (see, for example, Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 15.12).

54 The obvious technical terms for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to deploy would be tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya and tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya (see Hawting, Idea of idolatry, 63). He uses them frequently (see, for example, Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 228.18, 229.4), and he provides a simple explanation of them in a short catechism written for the laity (Talqīn uṣūl al-ʿaqīda lil-ʿāmma, in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb et al., Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd al-Najdiyya, (Cairo, 1375), 257.22; for other printings of this text, see Ḍubayb, Āthār al-Shaykh, 38f nos 92–4 and 96–9). At the end of Jaḥḥāf's text of the epistle, the informants report a passage of their lesson (dars) that likewise explains the two terms (Jaḥḥāf, Durar, 656.7). Yet our epistle makes no use of them, except that the second deviant form makes mention of tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya in its statement of the first principle (Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 19.13).

55 For this ḥadīth of Abū Wāqid al-Laythī, see, for example, Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 76.3.

56 For the scholars whose views Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb cites in such writings, see the survey in Cook, “On the origins of Wahhābism”, 198–201.

57 Yahuda 3788, f. 41b.14.

58 Jaḥḥāf, Durar, 653.6. For Abū Nuqṭa, see Haykel, B., Revival and Reform in Islam: the legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkānī (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar, 62.

59 See above, n. 10.

60 For the relevant passages in the rare versions, see Ruwayshid, Imām, 9.20, 10.21, 11.17. As pointed out to me by Daniel Stolz and Amin Venjara in my graduate seminar, no such wordings are found in the common version. Note also that the introductory sections of both the aghlaẓ and aʿẓam types lay particular emphasis on the need for the addressee himself to escape from the net of polytheism (see Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and others, Hādhihi thalāthat al-uṣūl, 24.11, and Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, 73.6).

61 The verb used is talā, which could indicate either reading from a written text or reciting from memory.

62 Jaḥḥāf, Durar, 653.8. The term dars appears again, in the mouth of the informants, at 656.7 (thumma naqūlu baʿda hādhā fī l-dars…).

63 Jaḥḥāf, Durar, 656.15.

64 Muʾallafāt al-Shaykh al-Imām Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ed. al-Rūmī, ʿA.Z. et al. (Riyadh, n.d.)Google Scholar, V, 323.2. I owe my knowledge of this passage and that cited in the next note to Nadav Samin (see his “The dark matter of tribal belonging: genealogical representation and practice in Saudi Arabia”, PhD dissertation. Princeton, 2013, ch. 2).

65 Burckhardt, J.L., Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys Collected During his Travels in the East (London, 1831)Google Scholar, I, 250.

66 Yahuda 3788, ff. 47a.23, 55a.21. For the verse in question, see Būṣīrī, Dīwān, ed. Kaylānī, M.S. (Cairo, 1955)Google Scholar, 200.9 = Basset, R. (trans.), La Bordah du Cheikh El Bouṣiri: poème en l'honneur de Moḥammed (Paris, 1894)Google Scholar, 131 verse 163. For more on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's concern with this issue, see Traboulsi, “Early refutation”, 386.

67 Yahuda 3788, f. 47a.21 (fī risālatihi al-ūlā).

68 Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 67.1. This epistle is quite long (59–68) and, as Qabbānī says, the passage comes near the end (fī ākhirihi, Yahuda 3788, f. 47a.22). For other printings. see Ḍubayb, Āthār al-Shaykh, 57 nos 225–7.

69 A passage quoted at Yahuda 3788, f. 43a.1 (introduced as qawluka fī risālatika al-ūlā) is found in the text published by Ruwayshid at 64.7; one quoted at f. 47a.21 (immediately preceding that relating to Būṣīrī) is to be found at 62.1; and one quoted at f. 57a.22 (introduced with fī l-risāla al-ūlā) at 65.26.

70 In fact the current research of Bernard Haykel and Samer Traboulsi on the two refutations of Wahhābism written by Qabbānī before he refuted our epistle demonstrates conclusively that the “first epistle” was already known to Qabbānī in 1155/1742f (for these earlier refutations, see Traboulsi, “Early refutation”, 382).

71 Ms. Berlin, Pm 25, ff. 56a–73b. For this epistle, see W. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss der arabischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin, 1887–99), II, 477 no. 2158; Peskes, E., Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703–92) im Widerstreit: Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der Frühgeschichte der Wahhābīya (Beirut, 1993)Google Scholar, 57; Cook, “On the origins of Wahhābism”, 200 n. 88.

72 Compare Ibn ʿAfāliq, Risāla, ff. 64b.17, 66a.8, 68b.12, 69b.1, 70a.5, 70a.20 and 71a.9 with the text of the Kashf al-shubuhāt in Ibn Ghannām, Rawḍat al-afkār, I, 74.13, 75.11, 74.20, 84.2, 84.11, 84.16 and 84.21 respectively. There are numerous and sometimes serious divergences that would merit a detailed comparison, and one passage quoted by Ibn ʿAfāliq (Risāla, f. 65b.1) seems not to be found in the Kashf al-shubuhāt but does appear in the text referred to by Qabbānī as the “first epistle” (Ruwayshid, Imām, II, 65.13).

73 See Traboulsi, “Early refutation”, 383f; as Traboulsi points out, he does not even mention his antagonist's name.