Hitherto the academic study of “Wahhābism” – originally a derogatory term that will be used for the sake of convenience – has been primarily based on the study of a number of treatises of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, in particular his Kitāb al-tawḥīd (Book on God’s unity) and Kashf al-shubūhāt (Unveiling of what is unclear). These works had been written under difficult circumstances before Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alliance with the Āl Suʿūd resulted in a successful state formation. They are short and allegedly refer primarily to the Qurʾān and ḥadīth and relatively little to writings of other scholars. This matter of fact has been used to belittle Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s credentials as scholar, as he allegedly lacked sufficient knowledge of the scholarly tradition apart from the works of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328).1 This – problematic – image appears not least politically convenient as it allows dismissing violent aspects of Wahhābī teachings as not rooted in the scholarly tradition, if not as “un-Islamic”.
In contrast to his mentioned earlier writings, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s most extensive work, Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl (Abridgement of the life of the Prophet), hardly attracted attention until 2010, neither in publications on the early history of Wahhābism nor in general works on the biography and veneration of the Prophet. One reason for this might be that Brockelmann wrongly dismissed it as “extract (Auszug) from Ibn Hishām”;2 another one that neither state nor religious authorities in the third Saudi state were very eager to publish this text, for reasons to be discussed. The text was first printed in Egypt based on a manuscript of Sulaymān b. Suḥmān with whom Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā had edited the compendium of Wahhābī writings, Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd (Collection on God’s unity).3 This edition of the Mukhtaṣar was re-edited in Saudi Arabia in 1980. A new edition in 2004 follows that text but contains – in addition to remarks on the ḥadīth quotations – a rejection of the affirmation of qiṣṣat al-gharānīq (the “story of the cranes” or “satanic verses”) by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.4
The few mentions in academic literature before my own contributions in 2013 and 20155 are, besides Brockelmann, to be found in Chase Robinson’s introduction to Islamic historiography, where he briefly characterises this sīra as one example supposed to justify and encourage jihād. The other two examples were written by the Almohad authors Ibn Ḥubaysh and Kalāʿī but Robinson did not realise that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb used the latter as a source for the Mukhtaṣar.6 In his article on the reception of qiṣṣat al-gharānīq Shahab Ahmed points out that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was among the few authors in the later centuries who – against the current – accepted the episode as true. He asserts, however, that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s position differs from the affirmation of Ibn Taymiyya, for whom it served to exemplify his understanding of the prophets’ infallibility (ʿiṣma). As will be shown, he therewith misses completely the centrality of this episode in the Mukhtaṣar where it is mentioned twice.7 Furthermore, it also figures among the six most important episodes of the sīra, to which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb dedicated a short treatise, and will be used here to highlight those episodes that he considered particularly relevant.8 Recently the publication of the text by the Islamic State (ISIS, Daesh) has attracted media attention, but this has not yet resulted in academic studies.9
In the following it will be demonstrated that the Mukhtaṣar was written for the purpose to undermine prophetologic conceptions that were prevalent among Sunnī Muslims in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s lifetime; ideas which had come to dominate their understanding of the Prophet since the twelfth century. The centrepiece of these conceptions is the idea that Muḥammad and the prophets preceding him possessed certain attributes, which elevated them beyond the status of ordinary humans. In Sufi circles it was furthermore held that God had bestowed on the awliyāʾ properties which reflect those of the prophets on a lower level. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, however, did not write his account as a polemical treatise directly attacking the positions and arguments of specific authors. In the Mukhtaṣar, which was like many other works on the life and person of Muḥammad directed at a broader audience than that of the ʿulamāʾ, he works instead with selecting and discarding specific episodes and aspects of the sīra in order to refute or emphasise elements that he objects to or considers central. As the main source of inspiration for much of the later devotional literature on Muḥammad, al-Shifāʾ bi-taʿrīf ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā (The healing through the determination of what the elect is entitled to) by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī (1083–1149) will be used as major reference for these positions, supplemented by some other works as well as by secondary literature.10 For the clarification of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s position, some other works by him and by the following generation of Wahhābī authors are taken into account. References to other puritan authors shall allow for an assessment of the position of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb within the puritan Sunnī current. As I have elaborated on the sources of the Mukhtaṣar in 2015, they are primarily mentioned here where this contributes to the argument.11
2.1 The Structure and Content of the Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl
The most salient aspect of the Mukhtaṣar is that the book deals twice with the lifetime of the Prophet but as well with much more than that. It begins with a long prologue covering elements of Islamic myth and history from the creation of Adam until the era of the Mongol invasions. The sīra proper starts with the genealogy of Muḥammad and ends with the early ʿAbbāsid period, but also contains two “flashbacks” to Nūḥ (Noah) and the institutionalisation of polytheism in Mecca, respectively.
2.1.1 Prophecy in Universal History: The Prologue
The prologue starts with an introductory paragraph in which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb praises the “stories of those before and after Muḥammad” (qiṣas al-awwalīn wa-l-ākhirīn)12 as “true armies of God” against which the enemies have no means of defence as they provide an array of examples for how God kept his promise to send messengers to mankind and to punish the disobedient. In addition, he introduces the ḥadīth which came to serve as the slogan of Wahhābism: “Islam began as something strange, and as something strange Islam will return as it began” (badaʾa l-islāmu gharīban wa-sa-yaʿūdu gharīban ka-mā badaʾa). Arguably it appears pertinent to translate ʿāda as a modal verb with the meaning “to become again”, but as it will become clear in this contribution Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb understands tradition in the sense of a triumphant return into a hostile environment. His understanding conforms to that of earlier reform movements such as the Almohads and that of Salafī and Jihādī circles at present.13
Beginning his account of the prophets with Ādam, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb considers it as most important that, according to Q 7:172, all mankind was drawn out of his back and replied to the question “am I not your Lord?” with “Indeed, we bear witness”. Ādam was then shown the supposed lifetimes of all prophets in the form of candles of different length. When he was told that only sixty years were destined for the lifetime of the prophet Dāʾūd, he donated him forty of his own one thousand years. This gift, however, he would later stubbornly deny when the angel of death appeared to him: “He forgot, as mankind forgot (its oath), Ādam denied, as they denied.” Nine human generations after him would follow Islam. But then, out of an exaggerated love for the pious (ghuluww fī l-ḥubb al-ṣāliḥīn) due to the lack of scholarship, mankind began to commit shirk by erecting and adoring statues of them.
The correction of this deviation was to come with Nūḥ, but Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb points out that even after Nūḥ mankind relapsed into shirk. God responded by sending other prophets, many of whom are unknown or – as in the case of Ṣālīḥ and Hūd – difficult to locate in time and space. Nūḥ serves here to highlight what the author regards as the essential aspects of prophethood.
Whereas the construction of the Kaʿba is arguably the most important feat associated with Ibrāhīm in the Islamic tradition, another aspect ranks first in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s account. For him it seems to be more relevant that in three instances Ibrāhīm consciously did not say the truth according to a report in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: (1) when he simulated an illness before his kin (Q 37:89); (2) when he claimed that it was the largest of idols, and not he, who had destroyed the idols (Q 21:63); and (3) when he presented Sara to the tyrant (jabbār) as his sister.14 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then quotes a long ḥadīth reported by Ibn ʿAbbās on how Ibrāhīm together with his two sons Isḥāq and Ismāʿīl discovered the well of Zamzam, settled in Mecca, and erected the Kaʿba. God granted to Ibrāhīm that all future prophets would come from his offspring, although all but Muḥammad came from the line of Isḥāq, not Ismāʿīl.15 Notably, not all major prophets are treated in the prologue, as Mūsā and ʿĪsā obviously could not serve as good examples for the punishment of unbelievers.
From the construction of the Kaʿba Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb proceeds to the introduction of polytheism to Mecca, which he ascribes to ʿAmr b. Luḥayy. Like the people to whom Nūḥ was sent, he acted out of misguided piety. He imported a statue of the god Hubal from Syria, installed it in the Kaʿba, and acquired the role of a priest-king. Meccans never completely abandoned the rites Ibrāhīm had taught but added further ones which the authorities of the day approved of (istaḥsana) as a positive and thus permissible innovation (bidʿa ḥasana). The purpose of the anachronistic use of fiqh terminology is to equate the idolaters of the past to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s opponents. The new practices also spread throughout the Ḥijāz. He explains the cult of al-Lāt in accordance with a ḥadīth as a practice that started with the veneration of the grave of a pilgrim who died on the way home from the ḥajj. As a result of such violations of the principle of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya (discussed below) Islam became something strange again.16
As for the period before Muḥammad’s birth, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb recounts in detail the idols for which each tribe or clan around Mecca was responsible. He denounces the leaders of the Quraysh who infused innovations (ibtadaʿū) into the ḥajj-rites, as they considered the standing at mount ʿArafāt (wuqūf) not obligatory for the descendants of Ibrāhīm, and ruled that the Kaʿba should be circumambulated with all parts of the body uncovered except for the genitals.17
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then continues with the proofs for the divine message of Muḥammad. The first thing that the Prophet enjoined was the belief in tawḥīd and not prayer. Accordingly, he regards the idea that nobody “who acknowledges the direction of prayer” (ahl al-qibla) may be denounced as unbeliever as flawed. He asserts on the contrary that Islam has always been met with little responsiveness, and in order to guarantee that Islam remains upright (yastaqīm) the believers have to confront those who leave and dishonour this religion with hostility. This reflects most likely the controversy on this issue with Ibn ʿAfālīq, the leading traditional Ḥānbalī scholar on the Peninsula between 1740 and 1745. This is a hint that the text was written in the late 1740s at its earliest.18
One exception to such general reflections on Muḥammad’s prophethood in the prologue is the qiṣṣat al-gharānīq, which is used by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in this instance to illustrate the concept of tawḥid al-ulūhiyya. For him the idea that anybody could possibly act as intercessor between God and man was explicitly refuted by the Qurʾānic verses related to this event.19 Furthermore, he stresses that true belief outweighs the bonds of kinship,20 and it manifests itself in acts.21 Another important, specific point for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is that Abū Ṭālib, Muḥammad’s uncle and the father of ʿAlī, remained an unbeliever until his death and may not expect salvation in spite of his benevolence towards the Prophet and to the first Muslims (Q 9:113). Here he positions himself against the originally Shīʿī opinion that Abū Ṭālib was granted access to paradise. In the time of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, it seems that this idea had reached Sunnī, not least Sufi, circles, a matter that has not yet been studied in depth.22 It is noteworthy that the outstanding anti-Wahhābī author of the mid-nineteenth century Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān wrote a defence of Abū Ṭālib’s salvation, titled Asnāʾ al-maṭālib fī najāt Abī Ṭālib (Excelling claims concerning the question whether Abū Ṭālib was saved). It was directed against a treatise by a certain Muḥammad b. Ḥasab Allāh whose opposing views had caused a scandal in Mecca.23 Throughout this section, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb connects the text again to present issues with the help of an anachronistic language use. Both Meccan Qurayshī and Medinan Jewish opponents of the Prophet are referred to as ʿulamāʾ.
In the discussion of the ridda, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb goes into detail regarding the transgressions for which the tribes that gave up Islam after the death of Muḥammad were to blame. He stresses that all of them were punished with death and confiscation of property in case they did not repent. Their treatment at the companions’ hands thus belies the assertions of contemporary ʿulamāʾ that Bedouins who do not pray and even deny resurrection may not be persecuted as long as they pronounce the first part of the shahāda. Punishment was even meted out against the Banū Ḥānīfa who committed the worst transgressions under the ridda, although they prayed and professed the belief in God. But their example is also used to demonstrate that active repentance – in this case their eager participation in jihād under the rāshidūn – cleanses off the stain of the ridda.24
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then turns to the appearance of extreme deviation in religious thought (ghuluww) during the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid periods. In the case of Mukhtār b. Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī he points out that he prayed and took care that the law was applied in the territories entrusted to him, but when he claimed divine inspiration, the ʿulamāʾ unanimously considered him an unbeliever. The same was the case with Jaʿd b. Dirham, who had been highly estimated for his orthopraxy and his knowledge, but once he denied certain attributes of God and that God had not taken Ibrāhīm as walī and not spoken to Ādam and Mūsā, his pious practice became irrelevant for the assessment of his faith. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb stresses that those who hold such positions are far worse than the Christians and Jews and hence deserve to be burnt alive unless they repent.25
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then skips several centuries and points out that the Banū ʿUbayd (Fāṭimids, ruling in Egypt 969–1171) spread unbelief and hypocrisy while they adhered to the rites of Islam. Therefore, all ʿulamāʾ denounced them as unbelievers and rejoiced when Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (r. 1174–93) put an end to their rule. The last example he refers to are the Mongols who began to pray after their mock conversion to Islam but did not accept the sharīʿa as a whole. Therefore, some ʿulamāʾ opposed them until they were expelled from the realm of the Muslims. Ibn Taymiyya is not mentioned by name, but the hint to his fatwa against the Mongol rulers of Mardin is unmistakable.26
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb concludes the prologue with the accusation that the ʿulamāʾ of his time insist that somebody who says lā ilāha illā Llāh may not be called unbeliever, although all the examples to the contrary are to be found in the very books they refer to.27
2.1.2 The Sīra Proper
2.1.2.1 Ancestors and Events Shortly before Muḥammad’s Birth
The sīra proper is preceded by an account of the campaign of the Aksumite army general Abraha against the Kaʿba, which was protected against the Ethiopian assault by birds throwing stones on the army, thus irritating the war elephants, and the punishment of Abraha with a deadly disease thereafter. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also mentions Muḥammad’s paternal grandfather, Abū Hāshim ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, his father, ʿAbd Allāh (with special consideration of his role in the erection of the Kaʿba), and his paternal uncle Abū Ṭālib. His mother, Āmina, seems not to be worthy of consideration.28
2.1.2.2 The Meccan Phase
The conception and birth of the Prophet as well as their circumstances are passed over in a stark contrast to the importance of these aspects in other sīra works and in the devotional literature about Muḥammad. Moreover, events usually associated with the childhood of the Prophet, in particular the opening of his thorax by two angels who purified and weighed his heart, are not mentioned. The first event from Muḥammad’s life reported is his participation in the mercantile expedition led by Abū Ṭālib to Syria, where they encountered the monk Bahīrā who warned the party to protect Muḥammad from the Jews. It is neither mentioned that he discovered the mark of prophethood between his shoulders, nor that trees and stones expressed their veneration for Muḥammad. The marriage to Khadīja and further expeditions to Syria are related. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then recounts that Muḥammad began to seek reclusion at Ḥirāʾ because he wanted to come close to God and to distance himself from the detested idolatry.29 Much space is dedicated to the restauration of the Kaʿba. After it had been damaged by a flood or landslide, Muḥammad participated in the rebuilding, and he was the one chosen to put the black stone in its place. One event that shows Muḥammad in a less favourable light is referred to as well: like others, he took his loincloth off to bolster his shoulders while carrying stones. As a result, his genitals became visible which earned him a reprimand by “someone”, whereupon his private parts were never again to be exposed to any unbecoming spectator. Regarding this episode he follows Ibn Saʿd as well as Ibn al-Jawzī, but does not specify the person reprimanding Muḥammad, which is mentioned by both as Abū Ṭālib.30
After this episode Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb comes back to Nūḥ as the archetypical prophet, and once more recounts the introduction of paganism in Mecca, apparently in order to contrast it with Muḥammad’s prophethood. The generational model of an establishment and decay of Islam is repeated, as are also the etymological legends for the cults of the various gods, to which he provides some additions. It is equally stressed again that the rites of the dīn Ibrāhīm were never completely abandoned.31
The account of the first revelation, based on the report ascribed to ʿĀʾisha, is presented by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as a decisive confrontation with paganism. He quotes Ibn Qayyim, who states that Muḥammad was told to address an ever-growing audience, starting from his immediate environment, then extending his call to the Arabs in the vicinity, thereafter to the Arabs as a whole, and finally to both worlds of mankind and jinn. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb adds that God ordered him to practise daʿwa peacefully for ten years, until he allowed him emigration (hijra) and to fight against those who fought him, before engendering upon him to fight all those who associate someone else with God.32
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb continues by naming those who first responded to Muḥammad’s call, without delving into the question of priority. According to him, the Quraysh were first not aware that Muḥammad was proselytising, until they realised that the idols were reviled by Sumayya, the mother of ʿAmmār b. Yāsir, who became the first martyr when Abū Jahl killed her with a lance. When Muḥammad publicly came forth with his daʿwa in the fourth year, this led to fighting during which Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ for the first time shed blood in the name of Islam when he beat up one of the mushrikūn.33
By referring to the plight of the first Muslims in the face of Quraysh persecution and to the first emigration to Ethiopia, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb prepares for the second discussion of the qiṣṣat al-gharānīq in the text. He insists that the wording came from Satan but was physically uttered by Muḥammad (alqā ʿalā lisānihi), upon which the Meccan pagans prostrated. The revocation of the verses then led the Quraysh to intensify the persecution of Muḥammad and the Muslims.34 Thereafter the conversion of ʿUmar, the death of Khadīja, and the confirmation of Jewish scholars on the rūḥ and the Seven Sleepers are briefly mentioned.35
The splitting of the moon, narrated as the central miracle of confirmation (muʿjiza), is treated rather briefly, as responding to the accusation of Muḥammad being a poet and magician. It is followed by elaborations on the relevance of miracles for prophethood, which will be dealt with later.36 As for the stories of isrāʾ and miʿrāj, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb further abridged the already short description in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Zād al-maʿād. His presentation thus contrasts already starkly with Ibn Hishām but also with Ibn al-Jawzī, not to speak of later works. He mentions:
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The nocturnal ride on Burāq
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Muḥammad leading the prayer of the prophets
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The encounter with the earlier prophets
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The vision of the saved in heaven and the damned in hell
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Mūsā’s envy because more members of Muḥammad’s umma than of his own will enter paradise
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The view of al-bayt al-maʿmūr (Q 52:4) and sidrat al-muntahā (Q 53:14)
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The reduction of the numbers of daily prayers from fifty to five37
After the depiction and discussion of these miracles, which did not impress the Meccans, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb relates the negotiations with the Medinan tribes of the Aws and Khazraj, which led to the hijra but also ended a 120-year feud between them, an occasion to stress the pre-eminence of the commitment to Islam over blood ties.38
In the context of the hijra two further miracles of the Prophet get mentioned: the blessing of the emaciated sheep of Umm Maʿbad, which then gives milk to Muḥammad, and this Bedouin woman who praised him for it. The author remarks that Umm Maʿbad exalted the Prophet and his physical traits but did not ascribe anything to him that would elevate him beyond the status of an ordinary human. The other miracle is a poem in praise of him, which was heard over Mecca.39 Events mentioned in relation to the arrival and settlement in Medina are the construction of the mosque, the marriage with ʿĀʾisha, which in breach of the jāhiliyya conventions was concluded in the month Shawwāl, and finally the fraternisation of the muhājirūn and anṣār, which again brings out the priority of religious over family ties.40
2.1.2.3 The Medinan Phase
With the Medinan phase Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb starts to present the course of events in an annalistic style. At the end of each year, he lists eminent persons who passed away during it, a feature that shows the strong formal influence of Ibn al-Jawzī’s al-Muntaẓam fī taʾrīkh al-umam wa-l-muluk (The well-ordered work on the history of the nations and rulers), one of the major sources of the Mukhtaṣar.41 In this section the thematic scope becomes very narrow: Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb focusses on the military campaigns, the abolition of pagan rites after conquests, and some central revelations. He passes over other aspects, as, for example, Muḥammad’s further marriages and his domestic life. To Muḥammad’s special qualities (khaṣāʾiṣ) he dedicates a special paragraph. But even in these passages he emphasises his abilities as leader.42 Nevertheless two events which are not related to conquests are presented and they must hence be considered to be of central importance for the work in general: the so-called necklace affair, and the conversion of the poet Kaʿb b. Zuhayr and his praise of Muḥammad’s military abilities in his famous panegyric Bānat Suʿād.43
After listing the first skirmishes Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb mentions how ʿAmr b. al-Ḥaḍramī was killed as the first opponent of Islam.44 The battle at Badr is then recounted extensively, with a final narration of a miracle of the Prophet: he threw a handful of sand in direction of the enemies, which was carried by the wind and thoroughly impaired the eyes of those who were touched by it.45 The defeat at Uḥud is given equal attention, its unfavourable outcome explained with an intervention of Satan.46
Whereas the defeat of the Jewish tribes in Medina is reported without much detail or explanation, the conquest of Mecca has a central position in the work. Muḥammad expresses his disgust at statues of Ibrāhīm and Ismāʿil with oracle arrows in the Kaʿba and orders the idols to be smashed. Only after it has been converted into a mosque and Bilāl has called to prayer he enters the building. The description of the purification of the Kaʿba is supplemented by the reports on the expeditions of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ and Saʿd b. Zayd, respectively, in which they destroyed the idols of Sawāʾ and the statue of Manāt and eradicated the cults related to them.47 This triumph is, however, followed by the campaign against the Banū Hawāzin who were defeated, accepted Islam, and underlined this by their commitment to prayer. As they soon afterwards (i.e. after Muḥammad’s death) gave up Islam again, the Muslims had for the first time “to taste the bitterness of defeat”.48
Another event of central importance is the siege of Ṭāʾif and its consequences. As the siege did not lead to a victory for the Muslims, and nor did the Banū Thaqīf see the possibility to resist the Muslims for a long time, they sought negotiations. Muḥammad rejected their proposal because it implied a three-year period during which the cult of al-Lāt should remain permitted. To this episode Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb adds a digression on “the legal aspect of the Ṭāʾif campaign”, where he describes the pagan cults with a fiqh terminology which was used to legitimise the veneration of graves. He asserts that none of the pagans believed that the respective gods had created the world and were sustaining it. Nevertheless, they were adored in imitation to established custom (taqlīd). Truth thus was weakened whereas unbelief grew stronger. Such places are, however, never to be tolerated. By alluding to the ḥadīth “Islam began as something strange” he concludes stating that groups who eliminate such innovations would time and again turn up.49
The account of the Tabūk campaign, the first conquest beyond the limits of the Arabian Peninsula, appears markedly in a less triumphalist way. The widespread disinclination to participate in jihād during the summer heat close to the date harvest was reprimanded and overcome by the revelation of Q 9:8. This serves Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as an occasion to highlight the centrality of jihād in Islam.50 In his account of the tribal delegations of tribes which arrived in Medina for declaring their submission to Muḥammad and their allegiance to Islam, he mentions the pseudo-prophet Musaylima among those who came along with the Banū Ḥanīfa and claims that he was already at this point in time exposed by Muḥammad.51
The final illness of Muḥammad and his death, as well as the succession of Abū Bakr after the negotiations at the saqīfa (veranda), are rather briefly treated. He stresses that Abū Bakr was acclaimed as caliph because of his ability to uphold the Islamic realm and guarantee the implementation of the Islamic norms. This reflects the theory of Islamic government as presented by Ibn Taymiyya, according to which leadership is legitimised by the ruler’s ability to expand the realm of Islam and to reinforce its rules within it.52
2.1.2.4 The Ridda
After his narration of the life of the Prophet, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb turns to the topic of the ridda, to which he dedicates the largest portion of his work (30 of 229 pages in the edition used). He starts his account by listing the various forms in which different tribes apostatised, and he stresses once more the necessity to fight apostates until they repent by pronouncing both parts of the shahāda, accepting to pray, and to pay zakāt. Nevertheless, Abū Bakr had to face appeasers who tried to convince him to show mercy and to wait until everything would calm down again, against which he objected that the duty to wage jihād had not ceased with the Prophet’s death. Furthermore, he mentions that ʿUmar finally convinced Abū Bakr not to participate in the campaigns himself, as his possible death in battle might lead many fighters to defect. A justification of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s retreat to Dirʿiyya?53
As source for his account Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refers to Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-ridda, which, however, was most likely lost by then. It is extensively referred to by the Almohad historian Ibn Ḥubaysh (504/1111–584/1188) in his Kitāb al-ghazawāt al-ḍāmina al-kāfila and in its abridged version titled Kitāb al-iktifāʾ bi-mā taḍammanahu min maghāzī rasūl Allāh wa-maghāzī al-thalātha al-khulafāʾ, authored by his pupil Kalāʿī (565/1170–634/1237). The dependence on Kalāʿī is discernible by the order of events, by certain poems, and, most relevant in our context, by the fact that the activities of the pseudo-prophet Musaylima are treated as something that happened during the ridda and not during the lifetime of Muḥammad.54 Both these Almohad texts share with the Mukhtaṣar the intention to justify jihād against persons who declare themselves as Muslims, implying that it is permitted to kill them and to confiscate their property.55 The adoption of an Almohad text by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb is remarkable as even Ibn Taymiyya abhorred this movement and issued a fatwa condemning Ibn Tūmart’s indiscriminate use of violence.56
A characteristic trait of the ridda narrative is the unrelenting description of the violence meted out to the apostates, including massacres in which whole clans were burnt alive. In the Mukhtaṣar these reports as juxtaposed here and in later sections with examples of those who returned to the straight path and in some cases even played an important role in the expansion of Islam. The violence is justified with the fact that the appalling news motivated some tribes to return to Islam.57 Details concerning the specific aspects of each tribe’s apostasy are only briefly listed, as are details about the campaigns. A conspicuous exception is the role Musaylima is supposed to have played among the Banū Ḥānīfa. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb narrates in accordance with the Ibn Ḥubaysh/Kalāʿī tradition that Musaylima used to bless the newborns and to pray for the sick, and that people addressed him with requests for miraculous help. One example is a rich father who saw all his sons die before they came of age. He then asked Musaylima to pray for his two sons to survive. The next day the elder one fell into a well and drowned whereas the newborn was lying in agony. Another example is that a well that Musaylima had blessed became salty immediately.58 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s presentation of Musaylima contrasts with other traditions where Musaylima’s activities are placed in the lifetime of Muḥammad for the first place, and where his thaumaturgical claims are explained by his tribesmen urging him to do “like Muḥammad”.59
2.1.2.5 Further Events after the Ridda
From the ridda Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb proceeds to the ensuing conquests beyond the Arab Peninsula, but in a striking contrast with the campaign against the ridda he mentions them rather in passing, as if to convey the message that the internal consolidation of Islam was much more relevant than the external expansion. Both aspects are connected in the mention of the repentant pseudo-prophet Ṭulayḥa, who fell in the jihād against the Persian Empire, as one of the important events under the caliphate of ʿUmar.60
Accusations of nepotism, which do often explain the opposition to ʿUthmān, are not repeated by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. Instead, he explains the rift among the Muslim community that started under his reign with political dissatisfaction among the Kufans, which was exacerbated by the conspiracies of the converted Jew ʿAbd Allāh b. Sabaʾ. He anachronistically calls the assassins of the third caliph mujrimūn khārijiyyūn, and thus anticipates the fragmentation that was to ensue from the following events.61
According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ʿAlī came forth with the claim to be caliph after ʿUthmān’s death, but only after the ahl al-Badr had pledged allegiance to him. He thus discounts the Shīʿī allegation that his claim was based on a designation by Muḥammad. He briefly mentions Muʿāwiya’s refusal to pledge allegiance to him, implying his intention to revolt. But the account then moves quickly on to the Battle of the Camel, which according to him started after ʿĀʾisha’s emissaries Ṭalḥa and Zubayr had been expelled from Basra and her attempt at reconciliation had failed. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then claims that it was the Khārijites, instigated by ʿAbd Allāh b. Sabaʾ, who were to be found in both camps and who provoked fighting, which without them would not have taken place.62 In the context of the battle he mentions another miracle. After ʿĀʾisha’s camel had collapsed, Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr, who was supposed to guard her, sacrilegiously extended his hand into her howdah, to which she responded saying, “the one to whom belongs this hand violates the ḥaram of the Messenger and shall be punished!” to which the malefactor responded, “with the fire of this world or the next world?” upon which she responded, “No, from this world!” whereat his hand was burnt off immediately. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb then stresses that ʿAlī treated ʿĀʾisha respectfully and let her return to Medina.63
About the Battle of Ṣiffīn he shortly notes only the most important aspects, whereas he dedicates much more attention to one event in its aftermath, that is, the address of ʿAlī’s emissary Ibn ʿAbbās to the Khārijite defectors in their camp at Ḥarūrāʾ. Being asked which acts of ʿAlī they object to, they responded:
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The mediation contradicts Q 12:40.
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Had the opponents been believers, it would have been unlawful to combat them; if they were unbelievers, however, it would have been permitted to persecute them, to take them as prisoners, and to take their property. But ʿAlī allowed neither to take prisoners nor booty.
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He accepted to abstain from using the title amīr al-muʾminīn.
Ibn ʿAbbās responded to (1) that the Qurʾān encourages to mediate in case of marital disputes and the danger of retaliation and to (3) that the Prophet had abstained from using the title rasūl Allāh for tactical reasons. To objection (2), which is lacking in many accounts other than Ibn al-Jawzī’s, Ibn ʿAbbās replied that, with ʿĀʾisha, one of the ummahāt al-muʾminīn was on the battlefield. Would they, then, enslave their mothers and have intercourse with them? After this argument, all but a few repented.64
After this episode Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb briefly mentions the insurrection against ʿAlī by the remaining Khārijites, without naming Nahrawān, and his assassination by Ibn Muljam. Ḥasan is praised for giving up his claim for the caliphate and it is argued that his stance was preferable to that of his father, as he too should have acknowledged that he had a majority against him. Nevertheless, one should not denounce followers of one camp as unbelievers – this term should be reserved for the Khārijites – but nonetheless the most praiseworthy are those who abstained from siding with one of them. Ḥusayn’s death at Karbalāʾ is briefly mentioned, as is also the second fitna, with regard to which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not express any preferences. Under ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz the community supposedly returned for a brief period to circumstances similar to those under the Rightly Guided Caliphs, whereas with Jaʿd b. Dirham somebody claimed for the first time that the Qurʾān was created. According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Yazīd b. al-Walīd was the last generally accepted caliph, and the umma has never recovered from the split that the third fitna (i.e. the overthrow of the Umayyads in 750) had caused.65
In the early ʿAbbāsid period, the author discerns all the problems which in future were to haunt the Muslims. As the main culprit he singles out Maʾmūn, who had Greek books translated while true Muslims like Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal were subjected to the miḥna. The Mukhtaṣar closes with a remark about the decay of scholarship due to becoming text based, a process that had started under Manṣūr, when tafsīr and ḥadīth (Mālik b. Anas, ʿAmr al-Awzāʿī, Sufyān al-Thawrī, Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā), raʾy (Abū Ḥanīfa), and maghāzī (Wāqidī) were written down.66 For the question of why Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb finishes the Mukhtaṣar with such a rant against the text’s own prerequisites I cannot yet offer a satisfying explanation.
2.2 Objectives of the Mukhtaṣar
The Mukhtaṣar has two interconnected main objectives. For the first, this sīra is obviously designed to justify concrete policies of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his Āl Suʿūd allies, as well as to ward off criticism of their position. The other objective is to formulate a puritan prophetology which is embedded in a circular (or better undulate) concept of history and supposed to serve as a general legitimisation of the Wahhābī project of religious reform.
2.2.1 The Justification of Specific Measures
An iterating topic in the Mukhtaṣar is the well-known Wahhābī concept of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya and the idea that its violation is to be considered shirk amounting to apostasy. This is reflected in many instances where Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb remarks that the mushrikūn do not deny the existence of God and his status as the Highest Lord, but that they rather violate his rights by asking beings inferior to him for intercession. One prominent example is the double affirmation of qiṣṣat al-gharānīq, where the concept of praying for shafāʿa, held by Muḥammad’s Qurashī opponents, is contrasted with Islam. Another one is the digression on the legal content of the campaign against Ṭāʾif, where Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb equates the pagan rites and their institutionalisation with anachronistic terms derived from fiqh and Sufism, in order to demonstrate how reprehensible the veneration of graves is, leading to the conclusion that such practices are to be abolished immediately.
By choosing Ibn al-Jawzī’s version of Ibn ʿAbbās’s speech to the Khārijites at Ḥārūrāʾ, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb addresses a legal issue as well. The second objection, that ʿAlī did not allow the combatants in the Battle of the Camel to make prisoners and booty, is lacking in most other accounts of the event. Ibn ʿAbbās explains this prohibition by alerting to one specific circumstance: with ʿĀʾisha, one of the ummahāt al-muʾminīn, present on the battlefield, enslaving her, and – implicitly – thereafter having sex with her would be like fornicating one’s own mother. The selection seems to have been motivated by the intention to dismiss the use of ʿAlī’s injunction in the Battle of the Camel as a valid example for one legal objection which was raised against Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his allies: the distinction between jihād, where prisoners and booty may be taken, and the struggle against Muslim rebels (bughāt), who are supposed to be repelled and impeded, but who shall not be persecuted and captured.67
2.2.2 The Transformative Reformulation of Prophetology
2.2.2.1 Undermining the Mawlid-Complex: The Denial of the Prophet’s Pre-existence
The insistence on Ādam as the first human and the neglect of the begetting, birth, and childhood of Muḥammad are intimately related. With both, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb tries to undermine the belief in the pre-existence of Muḥammad as a divine light preceding all other creation. This concept is perhaps the most salient aspect of the devotion for the Prophet Muḥammad that began to flourish in the eleventh century. The transmission of the Prophetic light completed with ʿAbd Allāh’s impregnating of Āmina, as reported in Ibn Hishām, does not imply the concept of Muḥammad’s pre-existence, but in the course of the centuries and most likely under the influence of Shīʿī prophetology and imamology this idea gained ground in Sunnī circles.68 The concept has also led to the development of new rituals. Given that Muḥammad is conceived of as pre-existent, his birthday is worth being commemorated as the manifestation of this light in the earthly world.69 The most important expression of these beliefs is therefore the celebration of Muḥammad’s birthday, a tradition that emerged among Sunnīs in Syria and the Arabian Peninsula in the late twelfth century, most likely inspired by the state-sponsored celebration under Fāṭimid and/or Twelver Shīʿī practices, although no definite proof for this has been established. The Shīʿī connection was harped upon by Sunnī opponents of the mawlid.70 In the course of centuries its celebration spread among Muslims in all regions, and it played a particular role in many regions to which Islam came in close connection with Sufism. It was, however, constantly resented by puritans like Ibn Taymiyya who denounced it as bidʿa together with other place- and time-related rituals apart from Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr.71
A typical element of mawlid-related poetry is the emphasis on the begetting, birth, and childhood of Muḥammad associated with the mentioned variety of ominous signs, whereas his life in the phase of prophethood gets little attention. Related to the denial of Muḥammad’s luminal pre-existence are miraculous events linked to his conception like Āmina’s pregnancy, during which she saw the city of Bosra, and the idols breaking and the holy flames extinguishing at the moment of his birth.72 This selection is thus completely reverted in the Mukhtaṣar with its clear focus on revelation and the establishment of a society based on the revealed laws, and its neglect of Muḥammad’s childhood.
In addition to the Muḥammadan light, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refrains from mentioning other characteristics which could suggest that Muḥammad possessed characteristics that transcend those of ordinary humans. When he relates the encounter with the monk Bahīrā, he does not mention the mark of prophethood, and also passes over the veneration which the trees and stones in the vicinity allegedly expressed for Muḥammad. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb equally omits the purification and weighing of Muḥammad’s heart by two angels, an episode which in Ibn Hishām and many other sīra works is associated with the childhood of the Prophet. Tied with this complex is the question of Abū Ṭālib’s status as unbeliever. Katz shows that mawlid texts tend to ascribe a salvific status to personal relationships to Muḥammad and thus consider persons who were attached to him during his childhood as saved.73
The lack of any hints to the effect that Muḥammad and the prophets possessed personal characteristics that set them apart from ordinary humans is a clear response to the ascriptions of such traits, a phenomenon which is not restricted to devotional literature. A very good example is Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s assertion that only the physical side of the prophets, including death and decay, is human, whereas their souls and interior (bawāṭin) resemble that of the angels, as they have to encounter the angels when revelation occurs, which would exceed the capabilities of ordinary humans.74 For Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, only the revelation and his actions are aspects which single out Muḥammad, and therefore deserve to be noted.
The question remains whether this implies that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb objected to the idea of the Prophetic light, the mark of prophethood, and the purification of the heart as presented by Ibn Hishām, or whether he considered them to be hardly relevant and unsuited for those lacking firm knowledge, who are thus prone to the temptation of shirk. An indication tending towards the latter is the Mukhtaṣar sīrat al-rasūl written by his son ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. This more voluminous work lacks the embedding of Muḥammad’s life in the universal history of prophethood, but repeats many of the episodes his father had considered particularly important with regard to the ontological status of Muḥammad.75 He dwells, however, more extensively upon the childhood of Muḥammad and follows the sīra of Ibn Hishām when it comes to the auspicious signs accompanying begetting, pregnancy, and birth, purifying of the heart, and the encounter with Bahīrā, although the space dedicated to Muḥammad before prophethood remains limited in this work as well.76 Another indication that Wahhābīs and most probably Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb considered these aspects as not necessarily untrue but of little relevance or potentially dangerous is an ordinance issued after the conquest of Mecca which prohibits the recitation of childhood events from the sīra exclusively, without his actions as a prophet.77
With regard to the neglect of the childhood in the Mukhtaṣar, one further aspect deserves to be mentioned. According to Katz the strong role of female figures in this kind of devotional literature might explain the popularity of this genre among women, as it compensates for the lack of female role models in the Islamic tradition in general. Seen in this perspective, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s narrative has a very “male” focus.78
2.2.2.2 Readjusting the Understanding of ʿIṣma
ʿIṣma is an attribute which Muslims ascribe to the prophets, and in the Shīʿī case also to those whom they regard as their legitimate successors. Frequently, the term is translated as “infallibility”, but this choice means siding with one specific understanding of it, which prevailed in Shīʿī circles from early on. Many Sunnīs, however, objected to such an interpretation, and it became never uncontested among them. Nevertheless, a tendency to understand the term increasingly as being free from sin and error among Sunnīs is unmistakable, and it is a decisive element in the devotion to the Prophet Muḥammad flourishing in Sufi circles. It would, however, be wrong to associate this notion with “popular Islam”, an expression of “lived religion” or a “low tradition” opposed to a more scripture-based “high tradition”. Justifications for this position were formulated by eminent theologians like Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and by leading fuqahāʾ. The most important example of the latter was articulated by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ. His emphasis on the complete freedom of the Prophet from error and sin is, however, not derived from Sufism, but from Mālikī legal scholarship with its emphasis on the Medinan tradition.79
The main opponent of this tendency among Sunnī Muslims in the post-classical period was Ibn Taymiyya, who insisted that ʿiṣma does not preclude that prophets say false things or commit minor sins. The term has to be understood in the sense that God guarantees that falsehood will not prevail, and that the prophets will correct what was untrue, and even repent.80 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb follows Ibn Taymiyya on ʿiṣma and highlights this position within his choice of episodes from the life of Muḥammad and the other prophets. The most salient example is the affirmation of qiṣṣat al-gharānīq which appears twice in this work, and also in the shorter “Fī sittat mawāḍiʿ manqūla min sīrat al-nabī” (Six issues reported from the vita of the Prophet). Hence it can be regarded as being of central importance for the overall purpose. Therefore, Shahab Ahmed’s position that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has diluted Ibn Taymiyya’s stance because he lets Satan put the frivolous words on Muḥammad’s tongue can be dismissed. With respect to this episode Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb follows Ibn Taymiyya, who discussed and affirmed it in his Minhāj al-sunna, and in his special treatise on the topic, which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb apparently was aware of. In contrast to this opinion, the episode was anathema to Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, who dismissed it on the basis of the unsoundness of the relevant traditions. In addition, he uses the prophetological circular argument that it cannot be relevant as it contradicts the general image of Muḥammad.81
Like other ideas of Ibn Taymiyya his position on this event was rediscovered and propagated in the circle of the Kurdish scholar Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (1025/1616–1101/1686), which played a decisive role in the resurfacing of puritan doctrines from the eighteenth century onwards, and in the surge of puritan movements in that period: Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was a disciple of the Indian scholar Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī, a disciple of Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī’s son Abū l-Ṭāhir al-Kūrānī. Ibrāhīm had written a treatise on this subject where he considered the idea that the words were laid on Muḥammad’s tongue by Satan.82 Presumably that had led to a renewed interest in the issue in the Ḥijāz, as witnessed by the extensive discussion of the episode in the chronicle Simṭ al-nujūm al-ʿawāli fī anbāʾ al-awāʾil wa-l-tawālī (The chain of sublime stars on reports of the first ones and the followers) by the Ḥijāzī historian al-ʿIṣāmī al-Makkī.83 Nevertheless it is apparent that the affirmation of the qiṣṣat al-gharānīq was a minority position in the period when the Mukhtaṣar was written. A rare late example from outside this circle is Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, who in Itḥāf al-sāda al-muttaqīn, his commentary on Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ, briefly states that this event happened with reference to Ibn Ḥajar.84 In contrast to that, many scholars otherwise inspired by Ibn Taymiyya do not accept the story. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya does not mention it in Zād al-maʿād, neither does Ibn Kathīr when he deals with the life of the Prophet in his Tārīkh: he explicitly refutes the story with reference to Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ when he elaborates on Q 22:52–54 in his Tafsīr.85 His position was adopted by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Shawkānī, an inspiring figure for the puritan Ahl-i Ḥadīth as well as for Rashīd Riḍā, in his tafsīr, Fatḥ al-Qadīr.86 As a consequence Rashīd Riḍa objects strongly to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s affirmation of the episode in a footnote to “Sittat mawāḍīʿ”.87 For the strong rejection by the latter and by other followers of Ibn Taymiyya from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards it has to be taken into account that the episode played a major role in Christian polemics against Islam. In the most recent Saudi edition of the Mukhtaṣar the editors have added a footnote where they reject the historicity of the episode with reference to Albānī’s criticism of the relevant ḥadīth material in his Naṣb al-majānīq ʿalā qiṣṣat al-gharānīq (Positioning the catapults in direction of the story of the cranes).88
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s presentation of this episode is clearly motivated by his tendency to distinguish between tawḥīd and the demand for intercession. The fact that it is treated as one of the most important topics in his sīra ties in with his stress on the merely human essence of Muḥammad. Apart from qiṣṣat al-gharānīq two other episodes are supposed to undermine the idea that prophets are completely free from sin, error, or affliction by Satan. Whereas the discussed episode demonstrates that Muḥammad was not protected from satanic interference, even after he had received divine revelations, the story of the restoration of the Kaʿba implies that the Prophet was not yet aware of what is forbidden and licit, and that he could even be reprimanded by one of his pagan contemporaries. Notably, the idea that Muḥammad’s genitals were ever seen by anybody is rejected by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, for whom all of the prophets were protected against major transgressions even before receiving the divine message.89
The intention to readjust the understanding of ʿiṣma with regard to the prophets in general explains as well the choice of the three instances where Ibrāhīm said factually incorrect things as one of the two relevant aspects from the life of this prophet.
2.2.2.3 Downplaying the Importance of Miracles
Miracles have always been an important element in biographies of the Prophet, as well as in other genres associated with his person. Concomitant with the development of the idea of Muḥammad’s pre-existence and the understanding of ʿiṣma as complete freedom from error and sin an incremental tendency with regard to miracles ascribed to Muḥammad is undeniable. The little importance attached by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to miracles in the Mukhtaṣar is therefore one of the salient characteristics of this text.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote the Mukhtaṣar in an apparent protest against the exuberance of miracles that characterises later biographies of Muḥammad, although he does of course not deny miracles as expressions of divine omnipotence. A look at the miracles affirmed by him provides some clues as to how he considers their importance. As the central miracle of affirmation (muʿjiza) the splitting of the moon is of course mentioned, but rather in passing. So is the miʿrāj, which is connected to central elements of the revelation, not least to prayer and Last Judgement. But Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s treatment consists of an abridgement of the already rather short treatment in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Zād al-maʿād, and thus contrasts markedly with the inflation of reports relating to this event in other biographical accounts and in the mawlid poetry, where the ascension serves to illustrate Muḥammad’s outstanding qualities.90 The divine intervention in the Battle of Badr, and the milk which the emaciated ewe of Umm Maʿbad suddenly could provide, contributed to the success of Muḥammad’s prophetic mission. Only the voice praising Muḥammad which could be heard over Mecca at the time of the hijra to Medina is a miracle that serves no other purpose than to glorify Muḥammad. Miracles are also mentioned in association with earlier prophets (Nūḥ and the Flood, Ibrāhīm healing the paralysed hand of the tyrant), with the Kaʿba, which was protected against Abraha’s army, and with the family of Muḥammad after his death when Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr was punished with the loss of his hand for holding it into ʿĀʾisha’s howdah.
The selection of miracles does not only differ with regard to number but also with regard to quality from the literature reflecting a devotional attitude to Muḥammad. Many miracles are supposed to glorify Muḥammad, whereas others help to solve concrete problems of the believers, like hunger and sickness, and they are apparently modelled after the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels. Moreover, the miracles are detached from a function related to the success of the prophetic message and they are rather not explained as divine intervention interrupting the ordinary course of matters (kharq al-ʿāda) but as events emanating from the essence of the prophets, which implies the control of the elements or the ability to communicate with animals.91 In this sense baraka is associated with water touched by Muḥammad and even his urine and blood, substances otherwise impure.92 Water emerged from between his fingers,93 he brought forth water with his baraka to saturate the believers, and multiplied food for them,94 and he made his weakened wet nurse Ḥalīma able to breastfeed again.95 He was venerated by and communicated with animals, plants, and minerals, and he was even able to resurrect dead animals.96 Ṣāliḥī goes even further than Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ in emphasising the centrality of miracles with regard to Muḥammad by attributing to each single one the same value as to the Qurʾān.97
But Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb clarified his stance on the role of miracles in prophecy not only with the help of the selection and omission of material from the tradition. Immediately after mentioning the splitting of the moon, he adds a theological explanation as to why miracles are of so little importance in the life of Muḥammad in comparison to that of the other prophets, and what implications this has for the present. With regard to Q 17:59, which is considered a response to the contemporary opponents’ challenge to transform silver to gold or to remove the mountains around Mecca, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb points in particular to the miraculous punishments described in the Qurʾān in which whole nations have perished. With the prophethood of Mūsā and ʿĪsā the focus shifted already to repentance and conversion. But with the appearance of Muḥammad there occurred a further shift. He was supported by miracles, but central to his prophethood was the institutionalisation of jihād and the ḥadd punishments, two devices which the believers are enjoined to apply for the punishment of the obstinate or for forcing them to repent. Nevertheless, one would be mistaken to consider the attitude of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and other puritans as a kind of rationalism, as in fact some modernists like Sayyid Aḥmad Khān have done. Miracles as expression of divine omnipotence are possible, and they are to be accepted if attested by the Qurʾān or by sound ḥadīth. That the authority of these sources even applies to matters of cosmology led to negative responses to modern science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.98
2.3 The Denial of ʿIlm bi-l-ghayb
One of the few non-military events in the Medinan phase which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb deems worthy of mention is the so-called necklace affair when ʿĀʾisha lagged behind the campaign and returned to it in the company of Ṣāfwān b. Muʿaṭṭal. In spite of her excuse that she was searching for a necklace she had lost and was discovered by the young companion, who accompanied her to protect her, numerous ṣaḥāba, most prominently ʿAlī, accused her of zinā and demanded her to be punished accordingly, putting stress on Muḥammad who tried to avoid a decision. According to the standard account, the problem was solved for Muḥammad by the revelation of Q 24:11–26, which in addition to the punishment of adulterers contained the punishment of those who falsely accuse others of zinā.99
The reason for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s choice of this episode is most likely that Muḥammad’s wavering until the revelation could serve him as argument in another issue puritans had with the devotional attitude of the Prophet. This was the question whether “knowledge of the hidden” (ʿilm bi-l-ghayb) was one of the ontological attributes of Muḥammad, against which they maintained that any such knowledge could only result from divine revelation. In a moderate form this idea can be found with Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ: he does not claim that the prophets had full knowledge of worldly affairs as their preoccupations are the hereafter and the rules of the sharīʿa,100 and information of future and past events are described as iʿjāz,101 but he claims that the knowledge about the revelation (sharīʿa) has been complete from the start102 as exemplified by neither Ibrāhīm nor Muḥammad ever being in doubt.103
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb never elaborated more explicitly on this issue. Other early Wahhābī texts, however, corroborate the impression that the nature of Muhammad’s knowledge was a relevant topic at that time. His son explicitly connects the episode to this question104 and his grandson ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥasan insists that Muḥammad was only aware of future events including “the Hour” when God had revealed them to him.105
2.3.1 Delegitimisation of the Awliyāʾ
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s attempt to undermine the belief in the special status of Muḥammad implies an attack on the claims of the awliyāʾ whose exalted status is inferior to that of the Prophet, but nonetheless derived from it. By depriving the person of Muḥammad of all superhuman aspects not related to revelation and divine intervention to support it, any claims that would lift the saints out of the flock of ordinary humans is implicitly denied. But Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not restrict himself to attacking the concept of sainthood indirectly, as his presentation of Musaylima can be seen as a caricature of what was expected from awliyāʾ and often claimed for them by themselves or at least by their entourage. Whereas it is commonplace that miracles with unintended consequences occur with pseudo-prophets and expose them as liars,106 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb deselected a tradition of reports where Musaylima responds to requests to effect miracles “like Muḥammad”. Instead, he opted with Kalāʿī for a tradition that does not presuppose that the most remarkable aspect of Muḥammad was that he effected miracles providing relief in worldly matters.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s caricature does not aim at “official” Sufi doctrines. Sufi literature treats karāmāt in association with secrecy or insecurity of awliyāʾ about their status, whereas brazen self-advertisement is denounced.107 In contrast it presents a realistic assessment of what the popularity of the awliyāʾ was based on in real life. Miracles of healing were associated with awliyāʾ and considered a reason for visiting graves from early on,108 and they are an important feature of hagiographic literature.109
2.4 The Vision of Muḥammad and the Concept of History
The sīra never developed into an official discipline within traditional Muslim scholarship, and actually many of the works dedicated to the life and characteristics of the Prophet were written quite late.110 Nevertheless, it would be false to downplay the importance of the genre. Biographies of the Prophet are supposed to function as fiction of coherence in the sense of Assmann, that is, a text or narrative supposed to demonstrate the “connection between … the whole and the parts”.111 With regard to the function of the sīra genre in the Islamic context this means that the purpose is to explain Muḥammad’s role in universal history, usually in a kind of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history), in order to make the related norms plausible.112 The targeted audience were not least the laymen who listened to recitations – combined with explanations – from the sīra in edifying sessions in mosques. In this respect the Mukhtaṣar resembles other biographies of the Prophet, whereas it differs radically with regard to purpose and content of the fiction of coherence.
2.4.1 Transformative, Not Thaumaturgical
It can be problematic to identify emic categories in a religious discourse with theoretical concepts from the sociology of religion. In the particular case of this sīra-cum-pamphlet, we indeed find Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb juxtaposing two religious attitudes that practically coincide with goals of religious actions that the sociologist of religion Stephen Sharot has labelled as “thaumaturgic” and “transformative”. Whereas with the help of thaumaturgic actions “special dispensation and release are sought from specific ills within a nature and a society whose basic features are not expected to change,” the goal of transformative religious action “is to produce a fundamental or pervasive change in nature, society, and individual being or nonbeing”.113 Sharot does not consider both functions mutually exclusive; instead he shows that the thaumaturgic and the transformative have in the course of history often been combined in compromises if not syntheses. He does not identify these goals with any specific religions either but rather asks which role these goals play in different religious traditions and how they can be related to elite–laymen relations in these religions. A common feature of the tension between the transformative and the thaumaturgical is the delegation of the thaumaturgical function to beings inferior to the “high gods”, but more susceptible to the supplications and demands of humans as well as to their rewards.114
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was far from formulating such a synthesis. In contrast he defines a transformative understanding of Islam as mandate to order society according to the blueprint of the divine law. To this he juxtaposes a misunderstanding of religion as a means to alleviate life. Hence Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not only reject the cult of graves and the veneration of saints, because they are directed at beings inferior to God, but objects to such practices because they are based on a faulty assumption about the purpose of religion. He makes this explicit by quoting Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in the prologue: “belief is not adornment (taḥallin) and desire (tamannin), it weighs heavily on the heart, and deeds bear witness to it.”115 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb himself repeats again and again that belief manifests itself in correct acts. The correct relation to Muḥammad is thus an obligation. In contrast to this, the devotional attitude to Muḥammad, and the relations to the saints modelled after it, have the character of a deal within an “economy of salvation” where baraka is paid for with devotion.116
The Mukhtaṣar addresses Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s concern about a misconception regarding the person of Muḥammad on the basis of the corruption of religion. Where Muḥammad should be a model for emulation, he has been transformed into the supreme thaumaturge.117 Miracles, of which only a few are true and relevant according to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, have overgrown the message. Therefore, he straightens them out of the narrative. His attitude towards miracles is far from Islam-specific but has parallels in other religious traditions, where reformist currents wanted to establish a clear primacy of the transformative over the thaumaturgical aspects by establishing the primacy of the word (“rede”) over the miraculous deeds (“wercke”, “wunderthaten”), as Luther does in his preface to the New Testament.118 This is most aptly illustrated by one episode from the Medinan phase. In a competition between the two poet brothers Muslim Bujayr and pagan Kaʿb b. Zuhayr, the latter finally submits, becomes a Muslim, and composes the panegyric on Muḥammad, titled Bānat Suʿād. The poem is characterised by the imagery of jāhiliyya poetry and emphasises the warrior qualities of Muḥammad. This fits perfectly into Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s concept, who hence quotes numerous lines. No mention, however, is made of the cloak Muḥammad allegedly bestowed on Kaʿb. The legend of this cloak implies the transmission of Muḥammad’s baraka to privileged believers, and it does not least provide the starting point for Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burda, one of the most popular texts glorifying the thaumaturgical Muḥammad.119 The implicit attack on the panegyric, devotional poetry with its strong emotive character can be interpreted as a statement against what Harvey Whitehouse has defined as the imagistic mode of religiosity, which leads to arousal through relatively rare and highly emotive rituals. The mode of religiosity Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s understanding of Islam represents is as opposed to that doctrinal, based on routinised, less emotive practices supposed to support the internalisation of norms.120
The reduction of the miraculous in the sīra has one more function. It is supposed to stress the commonality between Muḥammad and ordinary humans in all matters not related to revelation. It thus also serves the purpose to demonstrate that his actions not related to revelation can be emulated. This aspect has to be seen in connection with Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s concept of history, the final aspect of our discussion.
2.4.2 Back and Forth, Not a Radical Shift: The Concept of History and the Implicit Mandate for Action
In his analysis of the veneration of Muḥammad, Tilman Nagel has demonstrated that literature dedicated to the devotion of Muḥammad divides history sharply up in two radical different phases, the darkness before and the “new eon” illuminated by the Muḥammadan light.121 As opposed to this, the concept of history underlying the Mukhtaṣar is quite pessimistic, with a tendency towards the negation of a Heilsgeschichte.
The life of Muḥammad is part of a sequence of continuous movements backwards and forwards. Ādam had been instructed in tawḥīd but generations later, his descendants succumbed to the veneration of their pious ancestors and established paganism. Nūḥ was the first prophet assigned with the task to call for a return to tawḥīd. Divine punishment led to a re-establishment of Islam, which, however, was succeeded by further relapses, only to be corrected by further prophets within a specific regional setting. With Mūsā and ʿĪsā the purpose of divine intervention shifted from punishment to confirmation. With Muḥammad not only prophecy came to an end, but the establishment of the divine order was from now on imposed on the believers, with the example of Muḥammad’s founding of an Islamic society by the means of jihād and the ḥadd punishments. Muḥammad is not the central purpose of creation in this concept of history, contrary to a common opinion expressed in the unsound but often-quoted ḥadīth qudsī “law lā-ka mā khalaqtu l-aflāka”.122 Instead, he has a function within creation and for the created beings.
That the re-establishment of Islam would constantly become necessary is demonstrated with various examples. Already during Muḥammad’s lifetime the Banū Hawāzin apostatised, and after his death the Muslims had to face the challenge of the large-scale defection known as ridda. Thereafter various heretics and pseudo-Muslim rulers appeared but were defeated by scholars and/or military and political leaders. The clue to the interpretation of these examples is delivered by the ḥadīth “Islam began as something strange”, which also exists in a longer version, which concludes with a blessing of those who re-establish (yuṣliḥūna) what the people have corrupted from Muḥammad’s sunna. By an implicit description of the present times in the framework of the terminology used for the pre-Islamic jāhiliyya, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s concept of history emphasises the necessity to follow the model of Muḥammad and to re-establish the divine order.123
And this is the junction where prophetology and the concept of history merge: whereas the clearing of the image of Muḥammad of every superhuman aspect is supposed to demonstrate that this act of emulation is feasible, the description of the present shall highlight that this emulation is urgent.
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Riexinger, “Der Islam”.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 9; here ākhirīn seems to supplement the Qurʾānic asāṭīr al-awwalīn (Q 6:25); see: Tottoli, Biblical Prophets, 13.
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Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 12–13.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 13–16.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 16–17.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 18–24.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 24–25; the preaching of tawḥīd and the admonition against shirk are the first two of the “Sittat mawāḍīʿ”, 103–5; for the polemics against those who judge mildly those who do not pray, see: 31, 33, 35, 37; cf. Peskes, Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb, 49–58, 83–89.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 25–26.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 26–27.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 28.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 25; Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, “Sittat mawāḍīʿ”, 106.
Rubin, “Abū Ṭālib”; Brockelmann, GAL S II, 500–501.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 29–33; Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, “Sittat mawāḍīʿ”, 108–10.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 34–35. On Mukhtār al-Thaqafī, see Halm, Shiʿism, 16–18; on Jaʿd b. Dirham, see van Ess, Theologie, 2:449–58, 4:388–89.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 36–37. On the recent reception of Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa in Jihādī circles and its importance for them, see Michot, Muslims; Said, “Konferenz”.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 38.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 39–48.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 48–49.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 49–51; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 1:93–95; Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 2:320–27.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 51–56.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 57–58; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zād, 1:20.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 59–61.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 62–68; with regard to qiṣṣat al-gharānīq (63) he follows the wording in Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 1:137.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 68–76.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 77–82.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 83–84; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zād, 1:47–48; cf. Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 1:403–8; Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 3:25–32; Ibn al-Jawzī, Wafāʾ, 218–24; Qasṭallānī, Mawāhib, 2:339–98; Vuckovic, Heavenly Journeys, 47–72; Schöller, “Biographical Essentialism”, 167. “The visited house” and “The lote tree of the outer limit” mentioned under (6) are two enigmatic Qurʾānic terms mostly interpreted as a heavenly correspondent of the Kaʿba and a plant in the highest heaven, respectively, on the basis of the miʿrāj traditions.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 84–91.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 94–95.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 98–101; the central importance of the hijra is also highlighted by the fact that it is one of the “Sittat mawāḍīʿ”, 106–8.
Riexinger, “Der Islam”, 19.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 105–5.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 161–63; Sells and Sells, “Bānat Suʿād”.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 106–7.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 108–13.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 115–20.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 140–149.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 149–55.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 155–59.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 164–69.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 170–74.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 174–82.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 184–87.
Dunlop, “Ibn Ḥubaish”; Pellat, “al-Kalāʿī”. For further details see Riexinger, “Der Islam”, 24. On the diverging chronology in Ibn Ḥubaysh’s account, see Al Makin, Representing the Enemy, 102.
Ibn Tūmart, Kitāb aʿazz, 261–66; Urvoy, “La pensée”, 32–33.
Laoust, “Une fetwâ”.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 184–209.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 196–98.
Riexinger, “Der Islam”, 38–39.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 215–19.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 220–26.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 226–27.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhatṣar, 227.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 228–29; Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 5:124–25; Riexinger, “Der Islam”, 29–30.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 230–35.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 235–36.
Abou El Fadl, Rebellion, 34–37.
Rubin, “Pre-existence”; Katz, Birth, 13–24; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 157–58; the question of the nūr muḥammadī and Muḥammad’s pre-existence was a central controversial issue between puritans and Sufis: Riexinger, S̱anāʾullāh Amritsarī, 243; Preckel, “Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke”, 478–83. The question of whether Muḥammad cast a shadow (Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:731) was very controversial in South Asia but seems not to have been considered relevant among Wahhābīs; on the concept as an expression of psychological essentialism, see Svensson, Människans Muhammed.
Katz, Birth, 13–15, 24–29.
Katz, Birth, 1–7, 158; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 301–14.
Memon, Ibn Taimīya’s Struggle; Katz, Birth, 153–68; Ukeles, “Sensitive Puritan”.
Katz, Birth, 29–39.
Katz, Birth, 123–28.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 2:224–27; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 164–66: “unirdischer Wesenskern”.
Ibn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 23–24 (exposure of the private parts during the rebuilding of the Kaʿba), 93 (qiṣṣat al-gharānīq).
Ibn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 13–14, 16; as opposed to that he also mentions that Muḥammad’s private parts became visible during the reconstruction of the Kaʿba (24) and he affirms qiṣṣat al-gharānīq as well (93).
Ibn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, “al-Risāla al-thāniya”, 47–48; Margoliouth, “Wahhābiyya”, 187; Katz, Birth, 171.
Katz, Birth, 49–50.
Rāzī, ʿIṣmat; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 183–84.
Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyyah”, 71–78, 86–90, 123.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 2:288–310.
Guillaume, “Lumʿat”; Nafi, “Taṣawwuf”; Nafi, “Teacher”.
ʿIṣāmī, Simṭ, 327–31; Guillaume, “Lumʿa”; Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyyah”, 116; Riexinger, “Der Islam”, 42–43.
Reichmuth, Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, 293, 305.
Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 1987–90.
Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 3:628; on the general aspects of his works and the influence on puritan movements, see Haykel, Revival; Riexinger, S̱anāʾullāh Amritsarī, 108–21; Preckel, “Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke”, 120–33.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, “Sittat mawāḍīʿ”, 105n1.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 24n4; Albānī, Naṣb.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:159, 2:335–39.
On the general conception that these two are the most important miracles of Muḥammad, see Gramlich, Wunder, 23.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:617–35.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:157–59, 249–50.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:550–54.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:555–62.
Katz, Birth, 41.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:563–616; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 105–6, 202, 287–88, 293, 323.
Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 296.
Riexinger, “How Favourable?”; Riexinger, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview”; Tamer, “Curse of Philosophy”.
Schoeler, Charakter, 119–70.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 2:269–70.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 1:518–21.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 2:272.
Yaḥṣubī, al-Shifāʾ, 2:231–33, 236–37.
Ibn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 279.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥasan, “Bayān”, 253–54.
Gramlich, Wunder, 57.
Gramlich, Wunder, 60–63.
Beránek and Ťupek, Temptation, 29, 37–40.
Gramlich, Wunder, 306–15.
Schöller, Mohammed, 86–87.
Assmann, Ägypten, 17–18.
Schöller, Exegetisches Denken, 32.
Sharot, Comparative Sociology, 36; the other two goals, “nomic” (to maintain the order of the world) and “extrinsic” (non-religious goals), are not relevant in our context.
Sharot, Comparative Sociology, 247–29.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Mukhtaṣar, 28.
Katz, Birth, 63–103; Svensson, Människans Muhammed, 176–93.
On this tension, see also Svensson, Människans Muhammed, 98–101.
Luther, “Vorrede”, 11; I thank my colleague Hans Jørgen Lundager for alerting me to this parallel.
Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 320–21: “Der inhaltlich, insbesondere der dogmatische Abstand zwischen beiden Mantelgedichten ist riesig”; Svensson, Människans Muhammed, 162–75.
Whitehouse, Arguments; Katz, Birth, 104–23, 128–39; Svensson, Människans Muhammed, 264–75.
Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 253–54.
Nagel, Allahs Liebling, 326–27.
Thus, the text is an example for the monotheist self-perception as “counter-religion” (Gegenreligion) as a radical break with the polytheist past and for the recurrent emergence of puritan movements within monotheist religions which claim to reenact this secession after periods of decay: Assmann, Mosaische Unterscheidung, 26, 53; Assmann, Totale Religion, 16–17.