Indian Antiquary Vol 10

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 90

68
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1881.
and brotherhood, what were previously hostile was, however, honoured by Saúd no longer than clanships became now amalgamated into a king- necessary. In 1801 Saúd at the head of 20,000 dom 38 peaceful internally as it was formidable to Wahhabis attacked and captured the town and its neighbours. At the close of the eighteenth shrine of Kerbala, in which 5,000 persons were century the Wahhabi power was established massacred. Rich in gold and jewels, the accumuover the whole of the province of Nejd, and the lated votive and devotional offerings of ages of Sherif at the head of the government of the Shikh superstition, the shrine was stripped of holy city of Makka not thinking it politic everything that had even the semblance of preto withhold his amity from a people at once so ciousness. It proved no mean booty to Saud disposed towards opposition and so powerful, and his rapacious hordes. The following year granted the Wahhabis permission to perform saw the Wahhabis at Taif, where the shrine their pilgrimage to the temple of the Kaaba. of Abbâs, the uncle of the Prophet, received no This was the first time that the Wahhabis were more honour, though, perhaps, it yielded less acknowledged politically as a nation.
booty than that of his grandson. On the 27th Sherif Ghalib was the first that opposed of April of the following year the Wahhabi the Wahhabis. He carried on, with varying axes were operating as lustily on the walls of success, a sort of Badawi warfare with them. the Temple of Makka-the qiblah, on bowing But finding that, alone and unassisted, he was point of the Muhammadan world. not able to cope with a body of men that fought The "thrill of horror that passed through the with a newly-infused religious fervour and zeal orthodox Musalman world" was the parent of a for their very existence, being opposed, on his feeling of intolerant hatred which was soon kinside, as he knew, by men who, at the best, had dled in the breast of the surrounding Musalman no very large interests at stake, he gave up the Powers, and the remaining portion of the life of unequal contest, and began to persuade the Saúd was one of unremitting warfare, which, Porte to make common cause with him for the with the variety of chances peculiar to it, somedestruction of a power which ere long would times resembled the career of a victorious general grow too powerful to quail before the joint and sometimes the struggles of a man hanted to efforts of any two Eastern Governments. death. On his death his son Abdullah faced
These coupled with the unceasing complaints the enemies of his father and his race with the of the Turkish officers and Pashảs of territories same tenacity and courage, but in 1812 "the bordering on the Wahhabi frontier, against strong arm" of Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt, Wahhabi encroachment and aggression, at last helped by the stronger arm and energies of sacceeded in drawing the attention of the Porte Britain, helped to complete his ruin and the fall towards this new enemy. The officer then in of the Wahhabi power. Abdullâh was led in charge of the Pashalic of Bagdad-Suliman captivity to Constantinople, where he was pubPasha-in consequence of orders from the Porte licly beheaded in 1818 as a heretic and a rebel. to the effect, in 1797 despatched an army from With their Chief no more at their head, and Bagdad consisting of 5,000 Turkish troops and their resources utterly crippled, the Wahhâbis, twice that number of allied Arabs. Bat, instead from a flourishing and a powerful people, dwin. of proceeding to Deraiah, the head-quarters dled into a quiet and isolated community. of Wahhabi power, they attacked the fortified They have gradually recovered from the blow citadel of El Hassa and laid siege to it for a that once prostrated them, and though curtailed month, which it was well prepared to resist. in limits and shorn of many possessions, "the Sa úd, the son of Abdul Aziz, however, coming Wahhabi Empire" has not been expunged from to the rescue of the besieged party, compelled the map of Arabia,' with its seat of Government the beleaguering forces to retire, and, their at Riad. motion being considerably retarded by Saud The religion that Abdul-Wahh a b taught having injured the water in the wells on their was in no way opposed or foreign to the spirit route by putting camel-loads of salt into them, of Islâm: it was substantially identical with the they withdrew with great loss and privation. At creed of Muhammad. Belief in and absolute length a trace for six years was concluded. It reliance on one God, a less extensive acknow
* Vide Palgrave's Arabia, chaps. ix and xiii.