Wahhabism and the World:

Understanding Saudi Arabia's Global

Influence on Islam 1st Edition Peter
Mandaville (Editor)
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/wahhabism-and-the-world-understanding-saudi-arabi
as-global-influence-on-islam-1st-edition-peter-mandaville-editor/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Wahhabism and the World: Understanding Saudi Arabia's

Global Influence on Islam 1st Edition Peter Mandaville
(Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/wahhabism-and-the-world-
understanding-saudi-arabias-global-influence-on-islam-1st-
edition-peter-mandaville-editor/

Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi

Arabia Madawi Al-Rasheed

https://ebookmass.com/product/salmans-legacy-the-dilemmas-of-a-
new-era-in-saudi-arabia-madawi-al-rasheed/

Yemen Endures: Civil War, Saudi Adventurism and the

Future of Arabia Ginny Hill

https://ebookmass.com/product/yemen-endures-civil-war-saudi-
adventurism-and-the-future-of-arabia-ginny-hill/

Religion and the Global Money Markets: Exploring the

Influence of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism
James Simon Watkins

https://ebookmass.com/product/religion-and-the-global-money-
markets-exploring-the-influence-of-christianity-islam-judaism-
and-hinduism-james-simon-watkins/
Employee Motivation in Saudi Arabia: An Investigation
into the Higher Education Sector 1st Edition Rodwan
Hashim Mohammed Fallatah

https://ebookmass.com/product/employee-motivation-in-saudi-
arabia-an-investigation-into-the-higher-education-sector-1st-
edition-rodwan-hashim-mohammed-fallatah/

Rethinking Salafism: The Transnational Networks of

Salafi 'Ulama in Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia Raihan
Ismail

https://ebookmass.com/product/rethinking-salafism-the-
transnational-networks-of-salafi-ulama-in-egypt-kuwait-and-saudi-
arabia-raihan-ismail/

Understanding the New Proxy Wars 1st Edition Peter

Bergen

https://ebookmass.com/product/understanding-the-new-proxy-
wars-1st-edition-peter-bergen/

China's Expansion in International Business: The

Geopolitical Impact on the World Economy 1st ed. 2020
Edition Peter Baláž

https://ebookmass.com/product/chinas-expansion-in-international-
business-the-geopolitical-impact-on-the-world-economy-1st-
ed-2020-edition-peter-balaz/

The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats 1st ed.

Edition Noreen Doody

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-influence-of-oscar-wilde-on-w-
b-yeats-1st-ed-edition-noreen-doody/
Wahhabism and the World
 R E L IG IO N A N D G L O BA L P O L I T IC S
Series Editor
John L. Esposito
University Professor and Director
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-​Christian Understanding
Georgetown University

ISLAMIC LEVIATHAN MAPPING THE LEGAL BOUNDARIES OF

Islam and the Making of State Power BELONGING
Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr Religion and Multiculturalism from Israel
to Canada
RACHID GHANNOUCHI
Edited by René Provost
A Democrat Within Islamism
Azzam S. Tamimi RELIGIOUS SECULARITY
A Theological Challenge to the Islamic State
BALKAN IDOLS
Naser Ghobadzadeh
Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States
Vjekoslav Perica THE MIDDLE PATH OF MODERATION
IN ISLAM
ISLAMIC POLITICAL IDENTITY
The Qur’ānic Principle of Wasaṭiyyah
IN TURKEY
Mohammad Hashim Kamali
M. Hakan Yavuz
ONE ISLAM, MANU MUSLIM WORLDS
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN POST-​
Spirituality, Identity, and Resistance Across
COMMUNIST ROMANIA
Islamic Lands
Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu
Raymond William Baker
PIETY AND POLITICS
CONTAINING BALKAN NATIONALISM
Islamism in Contemporary Malaysia
Imperial Russia and Ottoman Christians
Joseph Chinyong Liow
(1856-​1914)
TERROR IN THE LAND OF THE Denis Vovchenko
HOLY SPIRIT
INSIDE THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
Guatemala under General Efrain Rios Montt,
Religion, Identity, and Politics
1982-​1983
Khalil al-​Anani
Virginia Garrard-​Burnett
POLITICIZING ISLAM
IN THE HOUSE OF WAR
The Islamic Revival in France and India
Dutch Islam Observed
Z. Fareen Parvez
Sam Cherribi
SOVIET AND MUSLIM
BEING YOUNG AND MUSLIM
The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia
New Cultural Politics in the Global South
Eren Tasar
and North
Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera ISLAM IN MALAYISA
An Entwined History
CHURCH, STATE, AND DEMOCRACY IN
Khairudin Aljunied
EXPANDING EUROPE
Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu SALAFISM GOES GLOBAL
From the Gulf to the French Banlieues
THE HEADSCARF CONTROVERSY
Mohamed-​Ali Adraoui
Secularism and Freedom of Religion
Hilal Elver JIHADISM IN EUROPE
European Youth and the New Caliphate
THE HOUSE OF SERVICE
Farhad Khosrokhavar
The Gülen Movement and Islam’s Third Way
David Tittensor ISLAM AND NATIONALISM IN MODERN
GREECE, 1821-​1940
ANSWERING THE CALL
Stefanos Katsikas
Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt
Abdullah Al-​Arian
 Wahhabism and
the World
Understanding Saudi Arabia’s Global
Influence on Islam
Edited by
P E T E R M A N DAV I L L E

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021924413

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​753257–​7 (pbk.)

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​753256–​0 (hbk.)

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197532560.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by LSC communications, United States of America
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
 Contents

Preface  vii
List of Contributors  xi
Note on Transliteration  xv

PA RT I . O R IG I N S A N D EVO LU T IO N

1. Wahhabism and the World: The Historical Evolution, Structure,

and Future of Saudi Religious Transnationalism  3
Peter Mandaville
2. Wahhabism and Salafism in Global Perspective  35
Natana J. DeLong-​Bas
3. From Dirʿiyya to Riyadh: The History and Global Impact of
Saudi Religious Propagation and Education  53
Christopher Anzalone and Yasir Qadhi
4. Salafi Publishing and Contestation over Orthodoxy and
Leadership in Sunni Islam  76
Andrew Hammond
5. Transnational Wahhabism: The Muslim World League and the
World Assembly of Muslim Youth  93
Reinhard Schulze
6. Humanitarian and Relief Organizations in Global Saudi Daʿwa?  114
Nora Derbal

PA RT I I . C O U N T RY C A SE S T U D I E S

7. Salafism, Education, and Youth: Saudi Arabia’s Campaign for

Wahhabism in Indonesia  135
Noorhaidi Hasan
8. Saudi Influence in Kyrgyzstan: Beyond Mosques, Schools,
and Foundations  158
Emil Nasritdinov and Mametbek Myrzabaev
vi Contents

9. Saudi Arabia: A South Asian Wrecking Ball  186

James M. Dorsey
10. “Working for a Living in the Land of Allah”: Labor Migration
from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia and Remittances of Wahhabism  208
Nazli Kibria and Sultan Mohammed Zakaria
11. Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia: Between Proximity and Distance  221
Terje Østebø
12. Wahhabi Compromises and “Soft Salafization” in the Sahel  238
Alexander Thurston
13. Unpacking the Saudi-​Salafi Connection in Egypt  255
Stéphane Lacroix
14. Arab Brothers, Arms, and Food Rations: How Salafism
Made Its Way to Bosnia and Herzegovina  272
Harun Karčić
15. The Shifting Contours of Saudi Influence in Britain  290
Hira Amin

Index  315
 Preface

The idea that, for more than half a century, Saudi Arabia’s petrodollar-​fueled
export of the austere and rigid breed of Islam known as Wahhabism has had
profound and far-​reaching effects around the globe is by now something of an
article of faith among observers of the contemporary Muslim world. For some,
the kingdom’s vast portfolio of global religious-​propagation activities serves first
and foremost to disseminate ultra-​conservative interpretations of Islam in ways
that generate cultural intolerance and also affect social attitudes toward (as well
as the status and precarity of) women and nonconforming religious groups in
receiving countries. Others, however, go much further, drawing direct links be-
tween Saudi support for religious causes and various forms of violent conflict,
militancy, extremism, and terrorism. Some even see in Saudi Wahhabism the
wellspring of the Salafi-​jihadi worldview associated with groups such as Al-​
Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS). And while bold, often categorical declarations
regarding Wahhabism’s impact in various countries are commonplace, system-
atic research on Saudi religious transnationalism and its effects remains scarce.
The purpose of this volume is to provide an analytical portrait of the Saudi
global daʿwa (religious propagation or “call”) apparatus, explaining its history,
structure, evolution, and role within the kingdom’s broader portfolio of external
relations. Additionally, the various case studies offered in the following pages
seek to contextualize and assess the effects of Saudi religious transnationalism in
various and varying national contexts. Drawing on extensive fieldwork under-
taken by an international team of scholars across multiple world regions, this
study explores the complex—​sometimes counterintuitive and contradictory—​
interplay between religious influences emanating from Saudi Arabia and local
religious actors and religious cultures in receiving countries. It offers assessments
of how transnational Wahhabism has affected various settings around the world
and provides analytic insights which help to explain how and why these effects
differ from context to context. In addition to presenting cross-​cutting research
findings with respect to the broad field of Saudi religious transnationalism, this
study also engages with the debate on the kingdom’s export of Wahhabism as an
object of analysis in its own right and looks at some of the methodological and
epistemological challenges associated with gathering data, navigating indeter-
minate terminology, and identifying clear mechanisms of causality linking Saudi
religious influences to specific social, political, and security outcomes.
viii Preface

The timing of this study is also significant. It comes in the context of a polit-
ically ascendant crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman (“MbS,” the kingdom’s
most powerful figure by any measure other than his formal title), who has issued a
range of intriguing pronouncements and has undertaken actions that suggest he
may be preparing to throw the standard Saudi playbook on religion—​or, at least,
aspects of it—​out the window. However, in many dimensions of his ambitious
and aggressive agenda, MbS is forced to confront inevitable tensions between his
unorthodox instincts and the vast equities that have been built up around pre-
vious Saudi ways of doing business. This is no different with respect to religion
and the religious dimensions of the kingdom’s external relations. It is therefore
my hope that detailing and explaining the nature and evolution of Saudi religious
transnationalism over the past half century will also aid in assessing the extent to
which prevailing structures and norms may shape what MbS can (and cannot)
do in the realm of religion, both domestically and around the world.
While not usually one to self-​consciously insert authorial position into my
writing, I do feel in this case an obligation to explain certain aspects of my per-
spective on the issues treated in this volume. As someone born in Saudi Arabia,
the third generation of my family to live and work in the kingdom as an American
expatriate, I grew up regularly hearing accounts of how Saudi Arabia nefariously
funded the “Wahhabization” of the Muslim world. My tendency was to regard
such narratives with skepticism, not least of all because they seemed so at odds
with my personal experience of most Saudis who—​while certainly socially con-
servative and religiously observant—​invariably came across as warm, kind, and
generous. So while I did not doubt that certain Saudi and Saudi-​funded reli-
gious activities outside the kingdom’s borders might have negative effects (after
all, I had had enough of my own run-​ins with the kingdom’s notorious mutawa,
or religious police, to know that rigid and aggressive religiosity was a reality in
Saudi Arabia), the idea that Saudi religious transnationalism was having a sys-
temic impact on global Islam struck me as rather far-​fetched, or an idea most
likely to be promoted by political opponents of the kingdom. However, over the
years, and as my research on comparative Muslim politics took me to more and
more settings across the Muslim majority (and minority) world, I could not ig-
nore the fact that, almost everywhere I went, I encountered in local informants
and interview subjects some version of a narrative that talked about how things
“used to be” before the arrival of religious influence from Saudi Arabia, and how
things had changed as a result of those influences. And as pervasive as this dis-
course on global Wahhabization seemed to be, one was always hard pressed to
find much in the way of detailed and systematic analysis of the phenomenon.
I therefore felt the desire and need for a more thorough, objective, nuanced, and
research-​driven analysis of Saudi religious export activity, and this is what led me
to embark on the process of producing this volume.
 Preface ix

This volume would not have been possible without the support of a great
number of people and institutions, several of which I would like to acknowledge
by name. The Carnegie Corporation of New York made the project possible in
the first place, and I owe a great debt of gratitude in particular to Hillary Wiesner
for her encouragement and early championing of the core idea. She and her
Carnegie colleague Nehal Amer have been unwaveringly supportive throughout.
The Henry Luce Foundation and especially Toby Volkman also provided impor-
tant support that helped the project to get off the ground. I was fortunate to spend
a year at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World
Affairs while the project was in its most active phase. The Center’s leadership
and staff—​particularly Shaun Casey, Tom Banchoff, Michael Kessler, Claudia
Winkler, Randolph Pelzer, and Ruth Gopin—​provided an incredibly warm and
supportive environment in which to work. My thanks also to Ray Kim and Grant
Marthinsen for their research assistance. Henry Brill shepherded the manuscript
through the copyediting process with amazing skill and efficiency. In addition
to benefiting from early brainstorming with Will McCants, several colleagues
offered valuable feedback at an author workshop in December 2019, namely
Nathan Brown, Duke Burbridge, Yasmine Farouk, Sarah Feuer, Shadi Hamid,
and Annelle Sheline. I owe special gratitude to Christopher Anzalone who, in ad-
dition to coauthoring one of the volume’s chapters, provided invaluable support
in preparing the final manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank Cynthia Read,
Drew Anderla, Brent Matheny, and the entire team at Oxford University Press.

Peter Mandaville
Washington, DC, September 2021
 Contributors

Hira Amin holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She is currently
a Visiting Associate Professor in the Islam and Global Affairs division of the College of
Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Her research interests include Muslims
in the West and global Muslim trends and thought in modernity. She is working on a
monograph about Salafism and Islamism in Britain, as well as a new project on disability
in Muslim communities. She is the cofounder of the Maker-​Majlis, an annual experiential
conference that explores the Sustainable Development Goals in the Muslim world.

Christopher Anzalone is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, History, and

Government at George Mason University and a Visiting Scholar at the Ali Vural Ak Center
for Global Islamic Studies. He has a PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University and an
MA in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from Indiana University, Bloomington. His
research focuses on political Islam, radical and militant movements and organizations,
Shiʿi Islam, Islamic visual cultures, and religious narratives of martyrdom and self-​sacri-
fice. He has published articles and book chapters, including with Oxford University Press
and Princeton University Press. He blogs about his research at https://​ibn​siqi​lli.com/​ and
on Twitter at @IbnSiqilli.

Natana J. DeLong-​Bas is the author of Shariah: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford
University Press, 2018, with John L. Esposito), Islam: A Living Faith (Anselm Academic,
2018), and Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (rev. ed., Oxford
University Press, 2008, translated into Arabic, Russian, and French), among other books,
and is Editor-​in-​Chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online—​Islamic Studies. Past President of
the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS), she is an expert on Islam
and Christianity, women and gender, Islamic law, the environment, and the Arabian Gulf
countries. She is Associate Professor of the Practice of Theology and Islamic Civilizations
and Societies at Boston College.

Nora Derbal is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows (MBSF) in the
Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She holds a PhD
in Islamic Studies from Freie Universität Berlin. Before joining the Hebrew University in
2019, she spent two years as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the American University
in Cairo (AUC). She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia since 2009, with
long-​term fellowships at the King Abd al-​Aziz University and Effat University in Jeddah,
as well as the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies

and Middle East Institute in Singapore, co-​director of the Institute for Fan Culture of the
xii Contributors

University of Wuerzburg in Germany, and the author of the globally syndicated column
and blog, “The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.”

Andrew Hammond is a historian of modern Islamic thought, with a focus on Turkey,

Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Currently teaching Turkish history at the University of Oxford,
he is the author of The Islamic Utopia: The Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia (Pluto Press,
2013), Popular Culture in North Africa and the Middle East (ABC-​CLIO, 2017), and nu-
merous journal articles on Salafism, Arabic media, and Middle East politics. He previ-
ously worked as a journalist with BBC Arabic, in Egypt and Saudi Arabia with Reuters,
and as a Middle East policy analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Noorhaidi Hasan is a Professor of Islam and Politics at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic
University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Currently he also serves as the Dean of the Graduate
School at the same university. His research interests are broadly interdisciplinary, cov-
ering topics such as Salafism, identity politics, religious diversity, popular culture, and
youth. He received his PhD from Utrecht University, the Netherlands (2005). Apart from
his active participation in various academic forums at home and abroad, he has published
books, papers and articles with academic presses and refereed international journals.
Recently he was appointed as a member of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI), a
state institution formed by the Indonesian president for the advancement of the sciences
and humanities.

Harun Karčić is a journalist and political analyst based in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
covering the Balkans, Turkey, and the Near East. He has written extensively on Islam in
the Balkans, religious revival after communism, Islamic norms in a secular state, and
has compared Saudi, Turkish, and Iranian Islamic influence in the region. He is also a
Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies (CNS) in Sarajevo and the author of A Short
Introduction to Shariʿa (2017) and Shariʿa and Legal Pluralism in Europe (2018), both
published in Bosnian.

Nazli Kibria is Professor of Sociology at Boston University. A scholar of migration, iden-

tities, and families, her books include Muslims in Motion: Islam and National Identity in
the Bangladeshi Diaspora and Race and Immigration (with Cara Bowman and Megan
O’Leary).

Stéphane Lacroix is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po and a re-

searcher at Sciences Po’s Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI). His work deals
with religion and politics, with a focus on the Gulf and Egypt. He is the author or editor of
Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (Harvard
University Press, 2011); Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic
and Religious Change (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with Bernard Haykel and
Thomas Hegghammer); Egypt’s Revolutions: Politics, Religion, Social Movements (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016, with Bernard Rougier); and Revisiting the Arab Uprisings: The Politics of
a Revolutionary Moment (Oxford University Press, 2018, with Jean-​Pierre Filiu).
 Contributors xiii

Peter Mandaville is a Professor of International Affairs at the Schar School of Policy and
Government and Director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, both at
George Mason University. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He is the author of the books Islam
and Politics (4th edition, 2020) and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma
(2001), and has also edited several volumes of essays in the fields of Islamic studies and
international relations.

Sultan Mohammed Zakaria is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Peace and
Justice, BRAC University, and a Researcher at Amnesty International. His research
interests include democratic transitions, political developments, and human rights issues
in South Asia.

Mametbek Myrzabaev is Director of the Research Institute for Islamic Studies, Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan. Since completion of his PhD in the Sociology of Religion from Ankara
University, Turkey, he has been engaged in a large number of research projects on reli-
gion and the religious situation in Kyrgyzstan. He also taught at the Theology faculties of
Arabaev Kyrgyz State University and Osh State University.

Emil Nasritdinov is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Anthropology,

Urbanism and International Development Master’s program at the American University
of Central Asia (AUCA). He is also the director of AUCA’s Social Innovations Lab
Kyrgyzstan (SILK). His main areas of research and teaching expertise are migration, reli-
gion, and urbanism. He teaches undergraduate and graduate subjects and publishes in all
three fields.

Terje Østebø is currently the Chair of the Department of Religion and Associate
Professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University
of Florida—​and the founding director of the UF Center for Global Islamic Studies. His
research interests are Islam in contemporary Ethiopia, Islamic reformism, ethnicity and
religion, and Salafism in Africa. His publications include Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict
in Ethiopia: The Bale Insurgency (1963–​ 1970) (Cambridge University Press, 2020);
Muslim Ethiopia: The Christian Legacy, Identity Politics, and Islamic Reformism (Palgrave-​
Macmillan, 2013, co-​edited with Patrick Desplat); Localising Salafism: Religious Change
among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill, 2012).

Yasir Qadhi is the Dean of The Islamic Seminary of America based in Dallas, Texas,
and the Resident Scholar of the East Plano Islamic Center. He has a BSc in Chemical
Engineering from the University of Houston; a BA (Ḥadīth) and an MA (Theology) from
the Islamic University of Medina (Saudi Arabia); and a PhD from Yale in Islamic Studies.
His research focuses on early Islamic theology, Salafism, Ibn Taymiyya, and Qurʾanic
studies. He is extremely active on social media, where he has large followings, and has also
established himself as a voice for modern American Muslims, straddling both clerical and
academic roles.
xiv Contributors

Reinhard Schulze, after studying at the University of Bonn, has held professorships in
Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies at the Universities of Bochum and Bamberg
and has occupied the Chair of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of
Bern since 1995. Since 2018, he has directed the Forum Islam and the Middle East at the
University of Bern. His research mainly deals with Islamic history from early modernity
to the present, as well as early Islamic history.

Alexander Thurston is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of

Cincinnati. His research focuses on Islamic scholars and movements in northwest Africa,
including both nonviolent and violent actors. He is the author of three books, including
Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups (Cambridge
University Press, 2020). He has conducted fieldwork in Mali and elsewhere in the Sahel
region and West Africa. He writes regularly at Sahel Blog, where he has been analyzing
Sahelian politics since 2009.
 Note on Transliteration

This book uses a modified form of transliteration from Arabic to English, based
on the system used by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. In order
to simplify the text for general and nonspecialist readers, diacritical marks
(macrons and microns) are not used, with the exception of ʿ for the ayn (for ex-
ample: ʿulama) and ʾ in some instances for hamza (for example: Qurʾan). Names
and words from languages other than Arabic are transliterated according to the
preferences of the individual chapter authors. Words originating in foreign lan-
guages which have entered into common usage in English are not italicized (for
example: “Qurʾan” and “jihad”). Names of organizations are not italicized. All
other words in the book originating in foreign languages are italicized.
 PART I
ORIGIN S A N D EVOLU T ION
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wardens of
Cape Cod
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Wardens of Cape Cod

The achievements of the Coast Guard Patrol

Author: Henry Beston

Release date: April 15, 2024 [eBook #73401]

Language: English

Original publication: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and Co,

1923

Credits: Steve Mattern. This file was produced from images

generously made available by The Internet Archive

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

WARDENS OF CAPE COD ***
 The Wardens of Cape Cod
The Achievements of the Coast
Guard Patrol
By Henry Beston
The World's Work - December, 1923
Volume 47, Issue 2
 THE WARDENS OF CAPE COD
There are two Cape Cods in the world, one the picturesque and
familiar land of toy windmills, picnickers and motorists, the other the
Cape which the sailors see, the Cape of the wild, houseless outer
shore, the countless tragic wrecks, the sand bars and the shoals.
This unknown Cape begins at Monomoy; Monomoy where the silver-
gray bones of ancient wrecks lie in mouldering lagoons; it leaps the
open waters of Chatham and Orleans, and beginning again at
Nauset sweeps on, league upon lonely league, to the hook of
Provincetown.
Beyond the broad swath of the churning breakers, lies the North
Atlantic, most masculine of seas. Now betrayed by a long smear of
churning water in the outer green, now buried treacherously under
an unrevealing tide, off-shore bars lie hid. Standing well enough in,
the greasy one-stack tramps, the fishing schooners coming and
going from the Georges, the vanishing steel windjammers with their
Mediterranean or Negro crews, the little unromantic “sugar bowls,”
and the big tugs with their solemn barges linked behind, all day pass
to and fro.
Once a sailor has picked up Nauset Light on his way north to
Provincetown, the only signs of life he will find along the beach will
be the coast guard stations and the little cottages which the surfmen
build about them for their families. Thirty miles of the thunder of the
breakers, thirty miles of Nature in the elemental mood, thirty miles
where night reveals no welcoming window light, and the world
vanishes into a darkness full of unutterable mystery, keen, moist,
ocean smells, and thundering sound.
It is the task of the surfmen to warn vessels standing into danger, to
rescue them and their crews from positions of peril, to furnish fuel
and food and water to ships in distress, and even, should occasion
arise, to navigate a ship into the nearest port.
Including the Monomoy and Chatham region, the patrols of the outer
Cape cover a length of fifty wild, breaker-beaten miles. The little
harbor openings which have been mentioned alone break the line,
elsewhere along it men go south and men go north, and station links
with station through the night.
There is nothing quite like the night patrol of the Cape in all the
seaboard world.
The stations on the Cape stand on an average some six miles apart,
and house a crew of eight men together with the life boat and life line
cannon used in case of a wreck. The men upon patrol, however, do
not walk from station to station, but to a halfway house built in some
more or less sheltered nook upon the bank. A man going south from
the Highland station for example, leaves a kind of brass ticket to be
collected at his southern halfway house by a man coming north from
Pamet River; a man going north from the Highland exchanges
tokens with a man coming south from Peaked Hill.
In summer the night patrols go smoothly enough, though it is
something of an experience to walk the beach through a midnight
thunder squall. The wild flare of lightning upon the confused and
foaming sea, the organ-like note of the drenching rain, the echoing of
the crashes in the solitary dunes, all these are the very properties of
romance. But when the bitter northern winter descends, each patrol
is an adventure in itself. It may fall to your lot to step out of the
station door into a February night, cold as the circle of the pole and
overhung with great unsullied stars, a night when the long crumbling
line of the bank stands clear against the sky, and the frozen sands
are good walking under foot; it may fall to your lot to force your lonely
way through the full fury of a northeast storm when the wind is
blowing a gale and a tremendous sea is thundering unseen in a
dissolving dark of snow.
In the depth of winter the steep bank becomes a glare of coated ice
and sand and snow strangely intermixed. Sand covers snow till the
new surface seems a secure part of the land, and then a new snow
hides the deceit from view. It can be extraordinarily treacherous
under foot.
For days, for weeks even, if the weather is miraculously good, the
surfmen may accomplish their patrols without untoward incident, but
any night the luck is liable to change and adventures begin. A young
friend, walking the beach, head down to a bruising sleet, suddenly
finds himself trapped between the ice cliff and the tide, and with the
breakers sweeping to his encumbered shoulders, fights for his life
there alone in the tremendous dark; another just escapes the fall of a
great ice-rooted mass of the headland by running ahead of it into the
sea, and tells of it, laughing, too, at the morning’s mess; a third slips
on the fantastic path up the slope to the halfway house, and fights
his way with numbed fingers to the top. Life in Nature is far more a
matter of purest melodrama than the world believes.
There are dreaded nights when a certain north wind blows directly
down the Cape carrying everything before it, flying sand, fragments
of ancient wrecks, cobbles that have rolled out of the bank and been
caught up by the wind as they fell, barrel staves, and stinging
spume.
It was the privilege of the writer to spend a part of last winter living
and patrolling with the Coast Guards of the Cape, and on one
occasion to go patrolling “through the sand.”
THE WRECKS OF THE CAPE
The Blizzard Nor’easters that blow ships directly on the sands
have strewn the southern shoals and the off-shore bars with
wrecks which the shifting sands hide, reveal and hide again.
 WHEN THE SAND IS FLYING
I was staying at the Race Point Station on the back shore of
Provincetown. It was close upon eight o’clock at night, the lamps
were lit, the living room was still, and at the end of the cleared and
covered dining table a surfman off duty was reading the day’s paper
and puffing a quiet pipe. It was so quiet I could vaguely hear the
scratching of the pen. Suddenly this quiet world woke to a faint
sound, the sound grew of an instant to a dull and hollow roaring; a
whirl of unseen sand swept like sleet against the northern panes.
“There you are,” called my host through his door, “the wind’s
changed, and if you go on patrol to-night you’ll find some sand flying.
Hear that?”
A fierce, crystally patter of sand was striking at the pane; the hollow
roaring had become a wintry howl. Presently I noticed that other
sand storms had given the northern windows an opaque surface of
ground glass. At the Race and several other stations there are sets
of windows which must be renewed every single year.
Then slowly, very slowly midnight came, and I dressed to go on a
patrol in an old suit with socks pulled over the trouser ends, a watch
cap, and my old navy pea jacket snugged round me with a poilu’s
army belt. The sand takes the surface from oilskins. My fellow
patrolman, Mr. Morris, was clothed in one of those excellent navy
wind proof suits which are ousting oilskins from the Cape; the jumper
has a hood attached to it and the whole suit has a kind of polar
explorer air. After looking to see that he had his flare light signal
safely tucked away, Morris threw open the station door.
The night was bitter cold and overcast, and the air was full of the
strangest dry hissing in the world. Along the frozen strand, and
through the dead beach grass of the inland dunes, loose sand was
flying, hissing as it was borne along upon the ground. The wind was
thick with sand; invisible sand that blew directly into our faces, struck
at our eyes, and set us to blinking, blowing, and weeping; it forced its
way into the nostrils, it invaded the pouches of the ears, it gathered
in the crease of one’s lips and set one to chewing out grit, one’s eyes
in gritty anguish all the while. Sand and dust of sand began to gather
like snow in all the hollow creases of our clothes; sand sifted down
into our boots, sand found a mysterious way through our collars and
down our necks, grit lodged in the eye hollows, in the eyebrows, and
in the short hairs above the ears. And it came to us hissing and
stinging, the cold, dry crystals falling upon the face like the myriad
blows of some tiny cruel whip.
We walked that night along a spectral sea. A wind had moved the
harbor ice out of the hook of Provincetown, and this ice had drifted
ashore on the outer side. Here and there a single cake lay stranded
on the beach, but the great mass of it had gathered together to form
a vague, broad band along the shore. It was afloat, and as the outer
breakers dived beneath it and coursed ashore, the ghostly mass
rose and fell, churning and groaning in the cold. Now here, now
there along it, spectral eyes and slow glows of coldest
phosphorescence, appeared, smouldered, and died, and our steps
kicked phosphorescent patches in the sand. Presently my
companion’s sharp and watchful eye saved me from stumbling over
something on the border of the floe. We stooped, sheltered our
tingling faces as well as we could, and flashed on an electric torch.
A loon crouched there in the hissing and mysterious night, its breast
feathers matted stiff with sand and fuel oil. The oil kills the wild fowl
by thousands on the Cape, for it gums their feathers together when
they have settled in a pool of it, and allows the cold to strike in
through openings of unprotected flesh. The motionless, calm ray of
the electric lamp lent an ironic serenity to the vast, wild dark, and the
dying creature lifted its eyes to the white ray, dark uncomprehending
eyes awaiting something incomprehensible and dread.
We hurried on, and, coming to a wide turn, found ourselves exposed
to the full fury of the sand. A wind with never a lull or a whirl, a wind
with the directness of a channeled river, roared by us doubling the
tiny lashes in number and in force. But we luckily had but a little taste
of this, and soon reached the end of the first half of our patrol by
Race Point light.
The squat white tower stood close at hand, its placid and unearthly
beam glancing along a length of the bordering floe. One could see
the cakes rising and falling in great, heavy-laden curves, and the
ghostly spurts and tosses of the water in between. Then Morris and I
returned to the Coast Guard station with the sand at our backs,
shook and slapped and stamped away as much of the sand as we
could, and closed the hospitable door of Race Point upon the
strident, inhospitable world.
THE SANDS OF CAPE COD
“Beyond the broad swath of churning breakers lies the North
Atlantic, most masculine of seas.”

THE FACINATING AND DESOLATE DUNES

That furnish the stinging ammunition for the artillery of the wind
 A WRECK UPON THE CAPE
Ever since the early days of European exploration, the back shore of
the Cape has been feared by mariners. The vast shoals to the south,
the off-shore bars to the north, the blizzard nor’easters that blow
ships directly on the land, all these have strewn the outer shore with
wrecks. To this day the sands hide and reveal and hide them again.
It is an easy enough thing to say that the day of the great wrecks is
over. Yet one of the greatest disasters in modern maritime history
occurred on the Cape as recently as the first year of the war, and the
winter of 1922 to ’23 saw wreck follow wreck upon the shore. But
coast guard crews have seldom been called to such a battle as was
theirs on that bitter winter morn of February 17, 1914.
On the night of the 16th a nor’nor’west wind, the wind which brings
the snow and cold, had been blowing squally gales, and a heavy fall
of powdery snow was blowing about upon the moors. The sea was
running high, running to the very foot of the frozen bank, and the
broad beach was but a mass of breaking waves and foam. Through
the wild night, fighting his way through the thickets of beach plum,
the bitter wind, and the snow smother whirling in the dark, went the
patrol, Joseph Francis, a surfman from Cahoons. The dawn began to
pale, and presently Francis made out a large square-rigged bark
stranded in the breakers some two hundred and fifty feet from shore.
The vessel was thick with ice, the seas were breaking over her,
flinging spray as high as the crosstrees, and this spray was freezing
where it fell. In the main rigging were the indistinct figures of the
crew.
The wreck was the Italian steel bark Castagna bound for Weymouth,
Massachusetts, with a cargo of fertilizer from the Argentine.
An ill chance of the sea had dogged her. Twice had she picked up
Boston Light, twice had nor’west gales blown her out into
Massachusetts Bay. Lying off the coast bewildered in the flurrying
gale, her barefooted Italian crew exhausted and ill-prepared for our
northern weather, the second storm had wrecked her on the Cape.
Her anchors and anchor gear were iced solidly in, her rigging was a
mass of ice, and the sails she displayed were but glassy gray sheets
of ice solid as so many boards.
Doomed, and so tragically helpless that she made neither sign nor
sound, the great bark lay in the thunder of the breakers, now vaguely
glimpsed, now lost in the snow squalls blowing from the moors.
A little after five o’clock the news of the disaster reached Cahoons,
and from there the tidings were telephoned to the Nauset station
eight miles to the south. The Castagna lay at the southern end of the
Cahoons patrol, close to the halfway house used by Nauset and
Cahoons. Realizing that the life-saving apparatus would have to be
carried overland along the moors, Captain Tobin of Cahoons and
Captain Walker of Nauset arranged to divide the load. The wreck lay
a good four miles from either house, four miles of nor’west squalls,
and deep, unbroken snow upon a wild, uneven waste.
Each station kept a horse to pull its heavier apparatus to the beach,
and these poor creatures were presently harnessed to their loads
and urged to their hard but necessary task. Tugging, pushing and
trudging on as best they could, the crews arrived by seven at the
wreck. The snow squalls were petering out, but the buffeting wind
still shrilled under the ragged sky, and the ebbing sea was still a vast
width of rollers, seething white with foam. Fierce currents of tide,
stirred by the long-shore wind, were moving underneath the surface
fury; it was a sea in which no boat could be launched, or being
launched could live.
Sea after sea burst and poured from the Castagna’s deck. There
were faint yells from aloft as the greater seas swung in out of the
storm and came rolling down upon the ship.
Working as fast as they could in the tumult, the coast guards set up
their life-saving apparatus on an edge of the beach left bare by the
ebbing tide. Then, like the opening crash of a battle, the life-saving
cannon fired its first thin line across the width of sea.
The shot was a good one and passed well aboard, but the men in
the rigging strangely made no attempt to get the cord. The fact was
that the barefooted men on the mast were clad only in cotton
trousers, shirts, and thin coats, and that the hands and feet of those
who were not dead were but lifeless and unwieldy clods of ice. With
the sailor’s instinct “to get out of the water,” the crew had scrambled
aloft the minute their vessel struck. A second charge remained
likewise unattended. Two men suddenly dropped “like ripe plums”
into the confusion of the sea.
A figure moved in the rigging and a great powerful giant of a young
seaman, Nils Halverson his name stands on the book, was seen to
work off his coat, and wrap it round the mess boy who was dying in
the cold.
The cannon now crashed a third defiance at the sea, and this third
line fell nearer to the men. Frozen as they were, the giant and one or
two others descended to the breaker-beaten decks, and managed to
secure the line. But knots cannot be made with frozen fists big as
boxing gloves, and all stood as it did before.
More than ever now all depended upon the guards. The crew of the
wreck were unable to help themselves in any way.
It was now nine o’clock and the sea had dropped enough to permit
an attempt at the launching of the boat. The task was one of crudest
difficulty, and it was only after several hard battles and a show of
finest courage and boating skill that the coast guards’ vessel was
tugged to the Castagna’s pouring side. Two of the crew of thirteen
had perished overside, two were dead in the rigging, their faces and
bodies glassing over in strange mummy shrouds of ice, a third lay
dying in the racing waters of the deck. The eight left alive, forlorn,
swarthy Giovannis, Giuseppes, Angelos, and Carlos were in terrible
condition. But to this day they tell of how the big man, refusing aid,
walked to the near shelter on his frozen feet, his great frozen hands
held out a little from his sides. The lad he had tried to help was dead.
After receiving skillful first aid from their rescuers, the crew of the
Castagna were hurried to a Boston hospital, one to die there, others
to suffer amputations. And from the hospital and the kindly care of
the Sisters of Mercy, these tragic children of the sea disappear into
the world again, Heaven alone knows where.
On the following morning those who went aboard the ship found the
Captain’s cabin to be reasonably secure and dry. Had the crew taken
refuge there, instead of in the rigging, they might possibly have all
been saved. The fire was out in the stove, but a tiger cat was waiting
for its rescuers, and a silent, wet canary stood in a tarnished cage.
The bird soon died, but the cat lived out the rest of its eight lives on a
Truro farm.
The captain of the vessel had been one of the two figures to drop
into the sea. His body, curiously preserved in some unaccountable
manner, suddenly appeared two years later, twelve miles away in the
marshes of Orleans. And this is one of the mysteries of the Cape.
The rescue of the men of the Castagna by the crews of Cahoons
and Nauset does honor to the great traditions of the guard. It was a
feat which called not only for daring and skill, but also for
resourcefulness, perseverance and endurance. Toward the end of
the struggle Captain Tobin of Cahoons, overcome by the long strain,
toppled into the waves and was himself in gravest danger. At low-
course tides, the wreck may still be seen. Being built of iron, her
sides have rusted and fallen in, but bow and stern rise twisted and
black above the waves. Her steep spars lie beside her where they
fell. On a sunny summer day when the rollers advance up the beach
in the face of a southwest wind, and the sharp, musketry-crack and
deep-voiced roar of the breakers travel down the empty sands,
nothing remains to tell of the Castagna and her men.
THE LAST STAND
Old wrecks that finish out their lives resisting the cannonading
surf
A sandspit of marshland and low dunes, some twelve miles long and
scarce two thirds of a mile wide, runs south into the Atlantic from the
elbow of the Cape, its seaward rim continuing the line of the great
beach to the north. East of it and south, far flung into the sea, lie the
great shoals of the Cape, Bearses, the Stone Horse, the
Handkerchief, Great and Little Round, Shovelful, and Pollock Rip. No
tide uncovers them, but on clear, sunny days, from the watch house
at Monomoy Point, their place is marked by vast, vague mottles of
yellow-green lying on the water with fierce blue-black rivers of tide
running high between.
At the end of the dunes, on a table land of sand that might be the
very end of inhabited world, stands the Coast Guard Station of
Monomoy Point, watching over ship and shoal.
There are strange regions in the world where a brooding melancholy
dwells, regions where much that is tragic in the lives of men seems
linked with a tragic something in the world. The ancient Roman
towns of the Adriatic, now far from the shrunken sea, and slowly
sinking into marshes that once were ports, are haunted thus, but in
our own new land, this sense of ruin in a ruined world is all unknown.
Yet you will find precisely this at Monomoy. The dreadful lonely quiet
of the place, the haunting memory of the great wrecks of the shoals,
the thin piping of sea birds in the scummy marsh, the endless
cataract chatter of the shoaling seas, all these weigh with a strange
solemnity upon even an unimaginative mind.
Tales of wrecks upon the shoals have something of this uncanny
character. I recall a story which my friend Mr. Tarvis of the Highland
Station told me as I sat talking with him one quiet winter night. He
had spent some time at Monomoy Point.
There was a schooner called the Mary Rose, and she was missing.
There had been a storm on the shoals about the time she was due to
go through, but nobody at the station had a sight of her, though we
kept a sharp lookout on what we could see of the shoals. When you
can see off in stormy weather, all the shoal water to the east and
south is one big boiling smother of white. When the weather cleared,
I had the morning watch, and I was up in the watch house, standing
at the open window, looking over the shoals through the telescope.
Pretty soon I saw something sticking up out of the water that looked
like a schooner’s topmast. The captain was with me so I said to him
to come and take a look, and he thought we ought to go out there
and see what it was. So the Captain and I took the big dory and
rowed out there, and it was this missing schooner, the Mary Rose.
She was sitting right on the bottom on even keel, just the topmast of
her showing above the waters, her hoisted sails moving a little down
below there in the sea. The water was clear and you could see her
deck and her dories all lashed in. They never found what had
happened to her, never found even one of the bodies of the crew.
Pretty soon she began to settle in the sand, her topmast broke off or
went under the water, and that’s the last we saw of the Mary Rose.
A land of utter loneliness, a land of lagoons opening and closing to
the sea, of marshes sunken in the dunes and afloat with scum thin
and black as watery tar, marshes in which the hulks of ancient
wrecks are slowly rotting with the years, a No Man’s Land of the long
and endless war of the ocean with the earth. Strange things lie in
those shifting sands, wreckage washed up from the shoals; the
carcasses of innumerable birds killed by the fuel oil and ravined by
the skunks; great, queer Southern-looking shells.
In the summer time there is a tiny settlement of Chatham fishermen
at the point, but when winter comes, the dozen weather-beaten huts
and shacks are deserted and the men of the station are left to their
own pursuits. All along the Cape they regard Monomoy Point as “the
end of creation,” and surfmen, married men in particular, do not like
to be sent there. But youngsters of the gunner and roustabout type
seem to get accustomed to life there, and make out very well.