Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was a religious leader, Sunni Muslim reformer, Islamic scholar and theologian from Najd in central Arabia, founder of the Islamic doctrine and movement known as Wahhabism. The name "Wahhabi" is not claimed by his followers but rather employed to stigmatize his doctrine as the ravings of a misguided preacher. Born to a family of jurists, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's early education consisted of learning a fairly standard curriculum of orthodox jurisprudence according to the Hanbali school of Islamic law, which was the school most prevalent in his area of birth. He promoted strict adherence to traditional Islamic Law, proclaiming the necessity of returning directly to the Quran and hadith, rather than relying on medieval interpretations and insisted that every Muslim -male and female- personally read and study the Qur'an. He opposed taqlid(blind following) and called for the use of ijtihad(independent legal reasoning through research of scripture). Despite his initial rudimentary training in classical Sunni Muslim tradition, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab gradually became opposed to many of the most popular Sunni practices such as the visitation to and veneration of the shrines and tombs of Muslim saints, which he felt amounted to heretical religious innovation or even idolatry. His call for social reform in society was based on the key doctrine of Tawhid. Despite his teachings being rejected and opposed by many of the most notable Sunni Muslim scholars of the period, including his own father and brother, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab charted a religio-political pact with Muhammad bin Saud to help him to establish the Emirate of Diriyah, the first Saudi state, and began a dynastic alliance and power-sharing arrangement between their families which continues to the present day in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Al ash-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia's leading religious family, are the descendants of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, and have historically led the ulama in the Saudi state, dominating the state's clerical institutions.