Journal of Arabian Studies 6.1 (June 2016), pp.

115–123

REVIEWS

MICHAEL CRAWFORD, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (London: Oneworld, 2014), 152 pages; £30.00
hardback.

Reviewed by COLE BUNZEL, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Prince-
ton, NJ, USA, cbunzel@princeton.edu.

Into Oneworld’s Makers of the Muslim World series, which solicits concise, accessible biogra-
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phies of the major thinkers and actors of Islamic history by leading experts, comes this study of
the founder of Wahhābism, Muh.ammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), by scholar and former
British foreign service officer Michael Crawford. The author of several pioneering articles on
different periods of Wahhābī history, Crawford draws on his more than thirty years studying
and writing about the Wahhābī movement to deliver a portrait of its founder that is both
timely and authoritative. In addition to a biography, the book is also a broad introduction to
Wahhābī ideas and history, as well as the scholarly debates surrounding them, examining Wah-
hābism’s evolution across three successive Saudi states and bringing the story up to the present
day.
The book comprises nine chapters, in addition to an introduction and a concluding chapter
on “Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s legacy”. The first chapter, on “the Wahhabi phenomenon”, sets the
stage for the next six on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his doctrine. This is done by showing the dif-
ficulty of situating Wahhābism in the standard narrative of Middle Eastern modernization and
Western imperialism. In 1798, as Crawford tells, in the midst of Napoleon’s invasion and occu-
pation of Egypt, the Ottoman sultan feared that a French assault on the Holy Cities of Mecca
and Medina was imminent. Yet it was the Wahhābīs, not the French, who would soon
occupy the Hijaz. Then as now, Wahhābism has been upsetting to the thought patterns of
many observers.
Crawford is keen to emphasize Wahhābism’s pre-modern character. Emerging from the
largely isolated central Arabian region of Najd, the movement did not arise in response to
foreign ideas or intrusions. Nor was it “representative of wider intellectual trends” in the eight-
eenth-century Islamic world (p. 6). These points are important to bear in mind in considering
the paradoxical fact of Wahhābism’s modern appeal, in the guise of “Salafism”. Wahhābism
did not “borrow from the ideological armory of the West”, and so enjoys a pre-modern authen-
ticity unlike modernist Islamic movements (p. 13). It has a further advantage in its simple, scrip-
turalist doctrine that appeals to a modern emphasis on individual empowerment and textual
engagement.
Chapters two and three follow Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s life and career: his upbringing in an
oasis town in Najd, his travels to Medina, Basra, and al-Aḥsāʾ, and the launching of his cam-
paign for what Crawford calls “a regime of godliness”. As is usual in studies of Wahhābism,
much of the information is drawn from the two major Wahhābī chronicles, those of Ibn
Ghannām (d. 1810/11) and Ibn Bishr (d. 1873). But the more important and original insights
— here as elsewhere in the book — are derived from a careful reading of the mass of letters
and epistles that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote over the course of his long life. These lead Crawford
to pay particular attention to the oft-neglected pre-Saudi period of Wahhābism. Before moving
to al-Dirʿiyya in approximately 1744 and allying with the Āl Saʿūd family, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
 116 Reviews

had sought to establish his “regime of godliness” in another Najdī oasis town, al-ʿUyayna.
Significantly, the Wahhābism of al-ʿUyayna was not proactively militant. It did not sanction
offensive jihad in the service of an expansionary, imperial state, as later the Wahhābism of
al-Dirʿiyya would.
This finding, previewed in Crawford’s 2011 article “The Daʿwa of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb before
the Al Saʿūd” published in this journal,1 contributes here to a somewhat revisionist take on the
nature of early Wahhābism and the first Saudi state. It is fleshed out in chapter seven on “the
regime of godliness and the political order”. Crawford casts a skeptical eye on the so-called
“pact” between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and Muh.ammad ibn Saʿūd (d. 1765), which supposedly
enshrined a partnership between Saudi rulers and Wahhābī preachers that lasts to this day. The
evidence for such a pact, with its neat division of political and clerical labor, is scant. Ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb was at first as much a political leader as he was a spiritual one. The familiar features
of the first Saudi state emerged gradually, not by design. Crawford concludes that “there was
nothing preordained about the rise of Wahhābism” (p. 105). He also reviews — and discounts
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— several other theories about Wahhābism’s genesis. These attempt to explain it in terms of
social and economic trends. As with the pact theory, he finds little evidence in their favor. All
of this is compelling, but it leaves unresolved the question of why Wahhābism emerged when
and where it did.
Chapters four, five, and six offer a detailed treatment of the main concepts of Ibn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s doctrine: the Oneness of God (tawh.īd), association and dissociation (al-walāʾ waʾl-
barāʾ), excommunication (takfīr), emigration (hijra), and war (jihād). As the author rightly
points out, what ties these concepts together — and what many miss in the study of Wahhābism
— was Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s single-minded focus on matters of theology/creed (ʿaqīda) as
opposed to matters of jurisprudence ( fiqh). For Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, there could be no diversity
in the fundamental tenets of creed, the central component of which was tawh.īd. All those espous-
ing a different creed were thus not true Muslims, and could be exposed to the doctrinal concepts of
al-walāʾ waʾl-barāʾ, takfīr, and jihād. Those unable to espouse the creed in their lands were
encouraged to emigrate to those under Wahhābī control. Today, one encounters many efforts to
downplay the severity of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s doctrinal views. None of that is to be found
here. A follower of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s “had to be openly hostile to polytheists and proclaim
his hatred of them” (p. 66). The “polytheists” were fellow Sunni Muslims of different doctrinal
persuasion.
Yet, despite the harsh ideological rigidity of its theory, Wahhābism showed remarkable flexi-
bility in practice. This was evident already in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s lifetime, when he “avoid[ed]
confrontation with his enemies” during the period of his preaching in al-ʿUyayna (p. 45). It was
even more evident in the subsequent course of Wahhābī history, charted in chapters eight and
nine. That history would be defined by a “struggle to balance ideological purity and political prag-
matism”, with pragmatism finally winning the day with the founding by King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d.
1953) of the third and final Saudi state, known today as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(p. 107). The “once monolithic Wahhabi movement” thereafter showed signs of internal
tension, with more hardline Wahhābīs seeing in the kingdom a betrayal of their radical heritage
(p. 122). Hence, the movement of Juhaymān al-ʿUtaybī leading to the siege of Mecca in 1979, the
S.ah.wa (“Awakening”) movement of the 1990s, and the Wahhābī-inspired jihadism threatening
the kingdom today. In this discussion there is just one off-balance remark concerning the way
“modern Islamic radicals … tend to disown any debt to Wahhabism just because it is the official
creed of the conservative Saudi state” (p. 137). To the contrary, today’s jihadis proudly lay claim

1
Journal of Arabian Studies 1.2 (2011), pp. 147–61.
 Reviews 117

to the Wahhābī heritage; it is the Saudis who tend to disclaim certain parts of it. Yet Crawford’s
final point here is accurate and important. “These new hybrid Wahhabis”, as he calls the jihadis,
“are more politically driven than Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab ever was” (ibid.). Like many others, they
would do well to read this book.

© 2016, Cole Bunzel

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21534764.2016.1195124

YOEL GUZANSKY, The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East: Between Iran and the
“Arab Spring” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 156 pages; $70.00 hardback, $54.99
electronic.

Reviewed by ROBERT MASON, Department of Political Science, British University in Egypt,

Downloaded by [Princeton University] at 07:29 13 July 2016

robert.mason@bue.edu.eg.

First and foremost, this volume explores the Arab Gulf States’ relationships with the USA,
Iran, and Israel, and includes an analysis of their capacities in coping with regional turmoil
and the competition between them. It is not really about reform in the Middle East as the
title infers, which is a shame because a volume that explores Gulf state susceptibility to press-
ures for reform, and instances of reform, would have been an interesting additional area to
explore.
The volume is well written and is a useful introduction to the recent and historic relations
between Iran and what would become the GCC member states in 1981 (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman). It succeeds in sketching an overview of
relations, but with less detail and background than in some other volumes on the same topic.
This is reflected in the footnotes and length of some chapters. For example, the chapter on
Yemen which is of vital strategic importance to Saudi Arabia, and therefore to the GCC, runs
to a little over two pages.
The book’s value lies primarily in filling some gaps in the current literature on the regional and
international relations of the Gulf, such as the chapter on GCC state relations with Israel. This is
especially useful since Guzansky worked on the Iranian nuclear issue at Israel’s National Security
Council, which is linked to the prime minister’s office. Although this could also be seen to dimin-
ish the overall thrust of the work on Iran given the Israeli government’s hawkish position on the
Iranian nuclear programme, Guzansky does a good job at remaining impartial in his academic
analysis.
The timing of the chapter on Israel is also interesting. Israel opened a diplomatic office in
the United Arab Emirates in November 2015, although it is accredited to the International
Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) rather than the UAE government. Any permanent
engagement in the Gulf beyond the Israeli trade offices in Qatar and Oman in the 1990s, and
meetings on the sidelines of international meetings such as non-proliferation talks, is therefore
significant.
In part IV, “Is the Enemy of My Enemy My Friend? Israel and the Gulf States”, Guzansky
draws attention to the GCC states’ fears of perceived US de facto recognition of Iranian hege-
mony following the conclusion to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and
argues that this alone is not enough to build better relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This assertion would have been a prime opportunity to explore the issue further through reference
to a number of personal interviews.