Introduction
In his monograph on the idea of idolatry and the emergence of Islam, Gez Hawting makes the following observation: “Probably the clearest understanding from within Islam that the Quranic attacks on the mushrikūn and kuffār were directed at people who regarded themselves as monotheists is manifested in the writings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792)”.Footnote 1 One short work in which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb displays this understanding with relentless clarity is an epistle setting out four basic principles (qawāʿid). In the version of the epistle that will concern us most, these principles relate consistently to the polytheists of the time of the Prophet. To sum them up in a few lines, the first principle is that the unbelievers against whom the Prophet fought believed God to have created the world and to control all aspects of it. The second is that they believed in lesser beings only because of the closeness of these beings to God. The third is that they prayed to the righteous only to get closer to God themselves. The fourth is that they did at least worship God alone when they were in dire straits. The clear implication is that if the Prophet fought the unbelievers of his day, despite the limited nature of their polytheism, then how much more must it be the duty of the believers of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's time to fight their polytheistic contemporaries, whose unbelief is as bad or worse. My concern here is not, however, with the theological content of the epistle but rather with the roles of writing and orality in the differentiation of its text and the practical uses to which it was put.Footnote 2
There are many texts of the epistle to be found in Wahhābī sources – I have collected over thirty – but the version I translate here comes from outside the Wahhābī tradition. It dates from as early as 1158/1745 – about the time when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb formed his alliance with Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, and in consequence moved from ʿUyayna to Dirʿiyya where they established what we call the first Saʿūdī state. The version is found in a Princeton manuscript containing five short works composed or copied by a contemporary Shāfiʿite scholar of Baṣra, Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Qabbānī.Footnote 3 The last of these works is an anti-Wahhābī tract by Qabbānī himself;Footnote 4 he gives it the title Naqḍ qawāʿid al-ḍalāl wa-rafḍ ʿaqāʾid al-ḍullāl,Footnote 5 and states that he completed it (farightu minhu) on 22 Jumādā I, 1158Footnote 6 – that is, on or about 22 June 1745. Embarrassingly, I was unaware of the existence of this codex at the time I wrote on the origins of Wahhābism.Footnote 7 Later stumbling on Mach's catalogue entries for this and another anti-Wahhābī work contained in the same codex,Footnote 8 I started to use the text of the epistle as an exercise for students taking my graduate seminar. This led one of them, Samer Traboulsi, to edit and publish the other anti-Wahhābī text found in the manuscript – a very early refutation of Wahhābism composed by an Egyptian scholar resident in Mecca and writing in 1156/1743, a couple of years before Qabbānī composed his Naqḍ.Footnote 9
Qabbānī's Naqḍ deserves a study in its own right, and is to receive it from Traboulsi. Here, our concern is solely with its value as a witness to the text of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's epistle, which it is Qabbānī's objective to refute. He begins by informing his readers that an ignorant, misguided man (rajul jāhil ḍāll) called Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb has appeared (qad kharaja) in ʿUyayna – in the region of Yamāma, the land of the liar Musaylima.Footnote 10 This man claims absolute ijtihād, and declares the entire Muḥammadan community to be in error (ḍallala al-umma al-Muḥammadiyya bi-asrihā).Footnote 11 Qabbānī goes on to say that in the present year – which he specifies as 1158 – an epistle of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's had reached “our land” (bilādunā, in other words Baṣra); he had written it as a way of discriminating (lil-tafriqa) between Muslims and polytheists, claiming it to be based on four principles (qawāʿid). Qabbānī then follows a standard commentarial format: he quotes the text a few lines at a time, overlines the quotation and proceeds to refute it.Footnote 12 There is no indication that he omits any passages. Some years ago I collected the scattered quotations into a continuous text and prepared this edition for publication, but it has yet to appear. Here, instead, I provide a translation.
Translation
This translation of Qabbānī's text of the epistle is only lightly annotated. No systematic comparison is attempted with other texts of the epistle, but I make occasional reference to a Wahhābī version that is close to Qabbānī's.Footnote 13 I take a few liberties with tenses to make clear the distinction between the unbelievers of the time of the Prophet and the polytheists of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's own day, and I omit the standard blessings that often – but by no means always – follow mention of God and the Prophet. Also omitted is the initial invocation of the name of God, but this omission is Qabbānī's.Footnote 14 For Quranic verses I make extensive use of Arberry's translation.
§1. Here are four principles mentioned by God in the unambiguous (muḥkam) part of His Book through which a man may come to know the confession that there is no god but God and distinguish between Muslims and polytheists. So reflect on them with your whole heart and attend to them with your understanding, for they are of great benefit.
§2. The first [principle] is that God mentions that the unbelievers of the time of the Messenger of God, whom he killed and whose property he deemed licit, used to affirm that only God creates, without the participation in this of any angel close [to the Throne] or prophet sent [with a message], and that only God provides sustenance, that only God raises up and puts down, that He alone is the lord of the heavens and the Earth, and that all the prophets and the righteous (ṣāliḥūn) are His slaves, subject to His power and will. Once you understand that this was understood by the unbelievers and that they did not deny it, [then] when a polytheist asks you for proof of it [i.e. of the fact that the unbelievers affirmed that only God creates, etc.], recite to him His words regarding the unbelievers: Say: “Whose is the earth, and whoso is in it, if you have knowledge?” They will say: “God's.” Say: “Will you not then remember?” – the two verses (Q. 23:84f). And God says in the Sūra of Yūnus: Say: “Who provides you out of heaven and earth, or who possesses hearing and sight, and who brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the dead from the living, and who directs the affair?” They will surely say: “God.” Then say: “Will you not be godfearing?” (Q. 10:31).
§3. When you have understood this [principle] thoroughly – but where is anyone who understands it? Most people do not understand it! Then get to know the second [principle], which is that despite their knowledge of what has already been stated, they believed in angels, prophets and saints (awliyāʾ) for the sake of God (min jihat Allāh) on account of their closeness to Him. When the polytheist has trouble accepting (tabāʿada)Footnote 15 this [principle], and says, “How can it be that the unbelievers loved the saints and the righteous because of their closeness to Him, and believed in them?”, then recite to him His words regarding those who believed in the angels: Upon the day when He shall muster them all together, then He shall say to the angels, “Was it you these were serving?” They shall say, “Glory be to Thee! Thou art our Protector, apart from them; nay rather, they were serving the jinn; most of them believed in them” (Q. 34:40f). And He said regarding belief in prophets: The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a Messenger; Messengers before him passed away; his mother was a just woman; they both ate food. [Behold, how We make clear the signs to them; then behold, how they perverted are! Say: “Do you serve, apart from God, that which cannot hurt or profit you? God is the All-hearing, the All-knowing] – the two verses (Q. 5:75f).Footnote 16 And He said regarding belief in saints: Those they call upon are themselves seeking the means to come to their Lord, which of them shall be nearer; they hope for His mercy, and fear His chastisement. [Surely thy Lord's chastisement is a thing to beware of] – the verse (Q. 17:57).
§4. When you have understood this principle, namely that they drew near to the righteous on account of their nearness to God, and the polytheist says to you: “I seek [blessings] only from God, but I look to [attain] closeness [to God] by having recourse to them and calling upon them”, then understand the third [principle], which is that God mentions in His Book that the unbelievers did not call upon the righteous except in seeking nearness to God {and seeking [their] intercession [with God]; this apart, they affirm that only God directs the affair, as already stated}.Footnote 17 So when the polytheist asks for the proof of this, then recite to him: They serve, apart from God, what hurts them not neither profits them, [and they say, “These are our intercessors with God”. Say: “Will you tell God what He knows not either in the heavens or in the earth?” Glory be to Him! High be He exalted above that they associate] – the verse (Q. 10:18). And He says: And those who take protectors, apart from Him – “We only serve them that they may bring us nigh in nearness to God” (Q. 39:3).
§5. Once you understand this major point (masʾala), and realize that (taḥaqqaqta anna) the unbelievers knew these three points and affirmed them – the first that only God, alone without companion, creates, provides sustenance, puts down, raises up and directs; the second {that they seek nearness through the angels and prophets because of their nearness to God and their righteousness, and the third}Footnote 18 that they know that benefit and harm are in the hand of God but want from the prophets and angels nearness to God and intercession with Him – then reflect thoroughly on this, and come back to it again and again, for how few are those on earth who know it, especially those who lay claim to knowledge!
§6. Once you understand and are in wonderment, then get to know the fourth point, which is that the unbelievers who [lived] in the time of the Messenger of God did not associate [other beings with God] all the time; rather, sometimes they did so, and sometimes they were monotheists, abstaining from calling upon the prophets and the righteous. For when they were doing well, they called upon them and believed in them, but when they were afflicted by harm, pain and adversity, they left them and worshipped God exclusively, recognizing that the prophets and the righteous cannot confer benefits or inflict harm. If anyone denies that the original unbelievers [of the time of the Prophet] sometimes worshipped God exclusively, then recite [to him] His words: And when affliction visits you upon the sea, then there go astray those on whom you call except Him (Q. 17:67). And He says: When some affliction visits a man, he calls upon his Lord, turning to Him; [then when He confers on him a blessing from Him he forgets that which he was calling to before and sets up compeers to God, to lead astray from His way. Say: “Enjoy thy unbelief a little; thou shalt be among the inhabitants of the Fire”] – the verse (Q. 39:8). This person who belongs to the people of the Fire is the one who at times worships God exclusively and at times seeks the help of (yankhā)Footnote 19 the prophets and the angels; He says: Say: “What think you? If God's chastisement comes upon you, or the Hour comes upon you, will you call upon any other than God if you speak truly?” [No; upon Him you will call, and He will remove that for which you call upon Him if He will, and you will forget that which you associate with Him] – the two verses (Q. 6:40f).
§7. These are four points that God has mentioned in His Book, so reflect on them with great thoroughness, and go over them in your mind again and again; if you understand them, you will be in wonderment.
The epistle now continues in Qabbānī's text with material not to be found in any of the Wahhābī versions I have seen:
§8. So these are four principles of great benefit that [God] has stated in a manner clear and evident to the knowledgeable and the ignorant [alike], supplying parables in such a way that none of the polytheists can deny that God has stated this and made it plain. Yet the polytheist will answer: “All this is correct, and I affirm it, but I don't ascribe partners to God!” When he says that, here are four further points which people witness [for themselves], male and female [alike]. The first [set of] principles are stated by God in His Book, and they are a matter of faith in the unseen; but these [next] four are not a matter of the unseen; on the contrary they are things that people see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears.
§9. The first is that in our time there are people who seek the help of (yankhā) Shamsān, Ḥusayn, Idrīs, Tāj and their like,Footnote 20 call upon them in safety and danger, and make vows to them, asking them to relieve their troubles and supply their needs. It is already clear to you that God has stated that the unbelievers in the time of the Messenger of God used to call upon the angels, prophets and the righteous when in safety but when in danger would worship God exclusively. So the polytheists of our time are worse from two points of view: from the point of view that the original [unbelievers] used to believe in the prophets and angels, whereas these [believe] in Shamsān, Idrīs and their like; and from the point of view that the original unbelievers were sometimes polytheists – in conditions of safety – and sometimes monotheists – in conditions of danger – whereas the unbelievers of our time are always polytheists, in both danger and safety. Someone who is sometimes a polytheist and sometimes a monotheist is less bad than someone who is always a polytheist, and does not alternate it with monotheism.
§10. The second point is that those who are believed in – Shamsān and his sons and Idrīs and his sons, when the polytheists come to them with votive offerings (nudhūr), and tell them that they called upon them in dire straits and found relief through them – receive them and treat them warmly. Some of them [Shamsān, etc.] inform them [the people who made the vows] of the vows before they [the people who made the vows] inform them [Shamsān, etc.], having been informed of this by devils.Footnote 21 And this second [point], namely that the idols (ṭawāghīt) [Shamsān, etc.] that are in KharjFootnote 22 have no objection (yarḍawna) to this, can be denied only by someone who denies [the reality] of the sun at midday.
§11. The third [point] is that we and they – both sides – declare the other to be unbelievers. There are those who say: “The people of the ʿĀriḍFootnote 23 have apostatized and become unbelievers.” They have denounced us (naqalūnā) to Mecca and to the rulers (ḥukkām). And we claim that they are unbelievers, meaning [both] the one who worships and the one who is worshipped. This is the third [point], namely the cutting off of relations and the enmity that is between us; it is well known among [both] monotheists and polytheists, and not denied by any of them.
§12. The fourth [point] is that some people in the ʿĀriḍ, in line with our opponents (maʿa hādhihi l-ṭāʾifa ʿalaynā), claim that we are in error, and that we have declared Muslims to be unbelievers.
§13. If you reflect on the four [points] mentioned by God in His Book, and then reflect on the four that you see with your own eyes, the matter will be clear to you. And God knows best.
Chronology
If we trust the narrative sources, no dogmatic epistle of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's could have been written, or at least made public, earlier than 1153/1741, since it was not until the last month of 1153 that his father died,Footnote 24 and it was only then that he manifested his cause.Footnote 25 Nor could any of his epistles have been composed later than 1206/1792, the year of his death. That leaves us with a window of just over half a century within which our epistle could have been written – an undesirably wide one for historical purposes. The epistle itself is not dated in any text I have seen. Equally, the numerous Wahhābī printings of the epistle provide no help. They are late – the earliest I know is from 1895Footnote 26 – and they never tell us about the manuscripts on which they must proximately or ultimately be based, let alone the dates of those manuscripts. An earlier printing, accompanied by a French translation, appeared in the Journal Asiatique in 1848,Footnote 27 but this is still much too late for our purposes. An older time capsule is the version preserved in his chronicle by the Yemeni historian Luṭf Allāh Jaḥḥāf (d.1243/1827f) under the events of the year 1212/1797f;Footnote 28 but even this still misses the lifetime of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb by a few years. Qabbānī's text is thus the only one that helps us directly with the chronology of the epistle, and it helps dramatically by showing that it cannot be later than 1158/1745, about four years after Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb embarked on his mission.
Qabbānī also helps us with the chronology of the differentiation of the text. As already indicated, the epistle is found in several different versions;Footnote 29 all are recognizably texts of the same epistle, but in some cases they may have little in common beyond the basic structure and ideas – even the choice of Quranic verses varies considerably. Qabbānī's text, if we leave aside the second part of the epistle that occurs nowhere else, is close to what I call the “rare version” among the Wahhābī texts (represented by three printings out of a total of thirty-four that I have collected);Footnote 30 there are many points of difference, but they are divergences, mostly minor, within the same basic text. Of much more frequent occurrence is the “common version”.Footnote 31 Here, there are two standard textual types; for a reason I will come to, I label these the aghlaẓ type (thirteen printings) and the aʿẓam type (nine printings).Footnote 32 Alongside these standard forms of the common version – and closer to them than to the rare versionFootnote 33 – we also encounter what I call “deviant” versions. These share the overall argument and structure of the types just described, and in some places echo their wording, but elsewhere diverge extensively and include material that has no counterpart in them. They come in two distinct forms, which I label the “first” and “second” deviant forms;Footnote 34 beyond them is what I call the “doubly deviant version” (the various deviant texts are represented by nine printings in all).Footnote 35 At the same time, it is easy to find parallels to the ideas and wordings of our epistle elsewhere in the considerable corpus of writings left by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.Footnote 36 These ideas were, after all, central to his doctrinal concerns, and like most of us he tended to repeat the same thing in similar ways. What Qabbānī does for this textual chaos is to establish with certainty that the rare version is early. Meanwhile, Jaḥḥāf's testimony at least fits comfortably with the hypothesis that the common version, to which his text belongs,Footnote 37 was a subsequent development – but one completed at the very latest within a few years of the death of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. In what follows I will assume that the common version is indeed later than the rare version.
The role of writing in the textual differentiation of the epistle
Did writing play a part in the textual differentiation of the epistle? Without any doubt it did so.
One obvious example is the role of haplography in generating two omissions in Qabbānī's text, one in §4 and the other in §5, where in each case I supplied the missing line from the rare version.Footnote 38 Of these haplographies the second was definitely the work of an upstream copyist, very likely one working for Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in ʿUyayna. We know this because Qabbānī at this point remarks acidly of his opponent: “He was unable to state the third point, and mentioned only two points”.Footnote 39 The first omission could in principle be the work of Qabbānī himself, but it could equally be that of the same copyist upstream of him. In fact, we can pronounce the second possibility more likely for two reasons. First, the amount of text lost is about the same in each case, giving us a line length compatible with the hypothesis that the two instances arose from a copyist's misreading of the same manuscript. Second, the fact that the two cases of haplography are not far apart makes possible a further test. If we take a rough measure of the length of either of the two lines that have been lost, and another of the intervening text, and divide the first length into the second, the result is compatible with there having been five lines of text in the miscopied manuscript between the two lines that the copyist accidentally dropped.Footnote 40 It follows that, as might be expected, the copy that reached Qabbānī was itself a copy.
There is also a possible case of haplography in the other direction. In Qabbānī's text a passage near the beginning of §3 runs: “then get to know the second [principle], which is that despite their knowledge of what has already been stated, they believed in angels, prophets and saints for the sake of God on account of their closeness to Him (li-ajli qurbihim minhu). When the polytheist has trouble accepting this [principle], and says, ‘How can it be that the unbelievers loved the saints and the righteous because of their closeness to Him (li-ajli qurbihim minhu), and believed in them?’, then recite to him His words regarding those who believed in the angels… .” For this, the rare version has only: “The second principle: it is that they believe in angels, prophets and saints because of their nearness (li-ajli qurbihim) to God; God says regarding those who believe in angels…”.Footnote 41 The repetition of li-ajli qurbihim minhu, if both instances came at the beginning or end of a line, would be an invitation to haplography. Perhaps the text of the passage in the rare version results from a combination of haplography on the part of one scribe and a subsequent attempt to make sense of what was left on the part of another.
Another example of the role of scribal error is found at the start of §6. In Qabbānī's text it begins felicitously: “Once you understand and are in wonderment, then get to know the fourth point (fa-idhā fahimta wa-raʾayta l-ʿajab fa-ʿrif ḥīnaʾidhin al-masʾala l-rābiʿa). The rare version, however, reads: “Once you understand this and are in wonderment, then get to know and realize (fa-ʿrif wa-ḥaqqiq)”. The modern editors then start a new paragraph with the heading: “The fourth point: …”.Footnote 42 This dangling “get to know and realize”, with no object for the verbs, is awkward and alien to the style of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb;Footnote 43ḥaqqiq must surely be a misreading of the ḥīnaʾidhin of Qabbānī's text.
A final example relates to the common version. As mentioned above, there are two standard types of this version, and a convenient diagnostic for identifying them is whether they use aghlaẓ or aʿẓam in stating the fourth principle. Specifically, the context here is an unfavourable comparison of the contemporary polytheists with those of the time of the Prophet: “The fourth principle is that the polytheists of our time are worse in polytheism than the original ones”, where the word I translate as “worse” is aghlaẓ in one type and aʿẓam in the other.Footnote 44 The two words are similar enough in the Arabic script that the likely source of the divergence is a misreading of one for the other.
In short, such examples show that the sloppiness of copyists can explain minor divergences between texts of the epistle. But it cannot explain the wholesale differences in wording between the rare and common versions, even leaving aside the deviant and doubly deviant forms.
The role of orality in the textual differentiation of the epistle
It is thanks to Jaḥḥāf that we know for a fact that there was oral transmission of the epistle. In introducing his text he remarks that he has reproduced it entire, although he has not seen the written text (aṣl) of the letter.Footnote 45 As we will see later, he had in fact obtained his text from visitors from ʿAsīr who had learnt it orally and had it by heart. Just what effects transmission by these ʿAsīrīs had on his text is hard for us to say because, like Jaḥḥāf, we do not have the precise text of the epistle as it reached ʿAsīr; there are nonetheless a couple of places where the text is defective in ways that might reflect unsophisticated oral transmission.Footnote 46
But the key role of orality in the differentiation of the text is probably not oral transmission but rather oral composition. Let us consider a passage from the statement of the first principle. According to §2 of Qabbānī's text, the unbelievers of the time of the Prophet “used to affirm that only God creates, without the participation in this of any angel close [to the Throne] or prophet sent [with a message], and that only God provides sustenance” (kānū yuqirrūna annahu lā yakhluqu illā Allāh lā yushārikuhu fī dhālika malak muqarrab wa-lā nabī mursal wa-annahu lā yarzuqu illā Allāh). In the parallel passage in a text that exemplifies the common version, we read that they “were affirming that God is the creator and sustainer, the giver of life, the giver of death, the one who confers benefit, the one who confers harm, who directs all matters” (kānū muqirrīna anna llāh huwa l-khāliq al-rāziq al-muḥyī al-mumīt al-nāfiʿ al-ḍārr alladhī yudabbiru jamīʿ al-umūr).Footnote 47 The opening words of the two passages have enough in common that the difference could be due to written transmission (yuqirrūna against muqirrīna); but soon they diverge so widely that they share little beyond the basic idea. The simplest explanation of this divergence is that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb himself was responsible for it. In other words, he had in his mind the framework of the epistle, but he might dictate it to his scribes with different wordings on different occasions. He was, after all, engaged in a far-flung literary propaganda effort without the benefit of a printing press. His situation is not unlike a contemporary professor giving the same lecture using different words from one year to the next.
There are also some very deliberate editorial changes that we can plausibly attribute to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.
One significant change is the enlargement of the introduction. That of Qabbānī's version (§1) is bare and functional, whereas that of the common version is expansive – typically the best part of a page – and not without rhetoric.Footnote 48
Another change, and a more substantive one, is a revision affecting the second and third principles. As we have seen, in Qabbānī's version these principles are as follows:
(2) The polytheists believed in lesser beings only because of the closeness of these beings to God (§3).
(3) The polytheists prayed to the righteous only to get closer to God themselves (§4).
In the common version, by contrast, they are:
(2) The polytheists prayed to unspecified lesser beings only to get closer to God themselves.
(3) Different polytheists worshipped different things, but it made no difference.Footnote 49
The second principle of the rare version has thus been dropped, the third principle has moved up to take its place and a new principle now occupies the place of the third. A plausible explanation is that the old pair were a bit too similar for comfort, since both are concerned with being close to God. Of course there is a difference – in the second principle it is the lesser beings who enjoy this proximity, whereas in the third it is the polytheists who aspire to it. But the similarity could easily have been confusing for simpler souls; even Qabbānī was confused, not realizing which principle was missing from his text of the epistle.Footnote 50 Moreover the new third principle is polemically effective.
A further editorial change, this time a stylistic one, is the elimination in the rare version of the transitions between principles that are a characteristic feature of Qabbānī's text, and their replacement with a straightforward listing of the principles. Thus in Qabbānī's text the transition from the second to the third principle has the form: “When you have understood this principle, namely that … and the polytheist says to you … then understand the third [principle], which is that…” (§4). By contrast, in the rare version the third principle is introduced in this way: “The third principle: it is that God mentions in His Book…”.Footnote 51 Perhaps associated with this change is the dropping of the sentence with which Qabbānī's text rounds off the presentation of the four scriptural principles (§7).Footnote 52
Of course, the largest editorial change of all takes place between Qabbānī's text and the rare version: it is the dropping of the continuation of the epistle that we find only in his text (§§8–13). If there was any reason to think of this as a late change, we might seek to explain it as a deletion of material that was no longer relevant thanks to the success of the Wahhābī cause. But given the absence of any trace of this continuation in the Wahhābī sources, it seems more likely that the change was an early one. The best explanation might then be that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb felt that his second set of four points was just not very effective: the idea of four empirical points to match four scriptural points is elegant, but the actual execution is not. The continuation could thus have been an early experiment that went nowhere. The deletion nevertheless created a problem: it left the rare version without any explicit comparison of the unbelievers of the time of the Prophet with the contemporary polytheists. As we have seen, this deficiency is made good in the common version through a reworking of the fourth principle to make the point that the polytheism of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's time is worse than that of the time of the Prophet.Footnote 53
But are such revisions necessarily oral? Could Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb not have had a written text in front of him and, for example, marked these changes in the margin for his copyists to implement? In the case of the deletion of the continuation this was surely what took place, since the first part of the epistle in the rare version remains so close to Qabbānī's text. But in the case of the changes that take us from the rare to the common version, this is unlikely. Marginal changes, however drastic, would leave blocks of intervening text intact; but what we actually find is that divergence in wording is pervasive. Though I have not examined it closely, the distant relationship between the deviant texts and the standard (aghlaẓ and aʿẓam) types of the common version might have to be seen in the same way. The role of orality in the shifting text of the epistle is clearly a major one.
Writing and orality in the use of the text
Before we come to the role of writing and orality in the use of the epistle, it may be worth emphasizing a rather obvious point: this is a text composed for the laity, not for scholars. The language and ideas are simple, there are no technical termsFootnote 54 and only the Quran and (in the third principle of the common version) a single tradition from the Prophet are quoted.Footnote 55 By contrast, when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb writes for his peers, he regularly cites earlier scholars.Footnote 56 This does not, of course, tell us whether he intended our epistle only for the literate laity, or for all and sundry.
Turning now to the question of the written and oral use of the epistle, its use as a written text is not in any doubt. Qabbānī tells us how an epistle composed by Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb reached Baṣra (wa-qad waṣalat ilā bilādinā… minhu risāla waḍaʿahā…).Footnote 57 Jaḥḥāf explains how the text of the epistle he himself knew only from oral sources originally reached ʿAsīr: the local chieftain Abū Nuqṭa, a Wahhābī convert, sought help from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd (ruled 1179–1218/1765–1803), asking him for a written text for the doctrinal instruction of his people (wa-saʾalahu kitāban fīhi taʿlīm al-nās amr al-iʿtiqād).Footnote 58 More generally, the chronicler Ibn Bishr tells us that after his move to Dirʿiyya, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb began to send out epistles (thumma inna l-shaykh kātaba ahl al-buldān).Footnote 59
But this did not preclude the oral use of the text. Let us first note an interesting feature shared by Qabbānī's text and the rare version: they contain stage directions for oral performance. Thus §2 instructs the monotheist: “when a polytheist asks you for proof of it, recite to him His words regarding the unbelievers…”. In §3 he is told: “When the polytheist has trouble accepting this, and says, ‘How can it be that the unbelievers loved the saints and the righteous because of their closeness to Him, and believed in them?’, then recite to him His words regarding those who believed in the angels…”. In §4 we read: “So when the polytheist asks for the proof of this, then recite to him…”. In §6 we find: “If anyone denies that the original unbelievers sometimes worshipped God exclusively, then recite [to him] His words…”. And in §8 we have: “Yet the polytheist will answer: ‘All this is correct, and I affirm it, but I don't ascribe partners to God!’ When he says that, here are four further points….” In these passages lay people are being told how they too can join in the doctrinal fray, using apt Quranic quotations to block the moves made by polytheists. But how seriously should we take this? The very fact that these instructions appear only in Qabbānī's text and, somewhat reduced, in the rare version means that they are uncommon;Footnote 60 this could be another early experiment later discarded.
It is at this point that Jaḥḥāf's contribution is of unusual value. He does something the Wahhābī sources never do: he provides us with a dash of ethnography. He tells us, on the authority of his ʿAsīrī informants, how the epistle was actually put to use in a Wahhābī community: “They related that Abū Nuqṭa would be in session every morning. The tribes, chiefs, jurists, and administrators would be present and would listen to what he readFootnote 61 to them in the regular observance (wird) which they call the ‘lesson’ (dars), and the hearers would memorize it, so that in his lands there did not remain anyone – old or young, man or woman, free or slave – who did not have it by heart, reviewing it with him (ʿaraḍahu ʿalayhi) and vying in giving it his entire attention”.Footnote 62 After reproducing the text of the epistle, he comments: “You will not find one of these people – young or old, learned or ignorant – who does not know it and teach it to his family, and to whoever of his fellow-humans (ahl al-arḍ) he is able to call to it”.Footnote 63 The programme is clear: every lay person is to be instructed and, just as in Qabbānī's text and the rare version, he or she is then to go on to instruct others.
It is conceivable that Abū Nuqṭa's use of the epistle was idiosyncratic and innovative, but it is more likely that what we see here was standard Wahhābī practice. If that is so, then the conclusion must be that while the text of the epistle was indeed copied and distributed in writing, there was also a potentially much larger system of oral distribution, very likely extending well beneath the lower boundary of literate society. It is in the nature of our written sources for Wahhābī history that they scarcely give us a glimpse of this grassroots orality in action.
And yet we should probably not be surprised. In one of his letters Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb writes to the addressees: “Tell them that a man has the duty of instructing his family and household [about the need for monotheist activism]; this is a more stringent obligation than teaching ablutions and prayer”.Footnote 64 What is significant here is not what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb would like to see but what he takes for granted: that men are in fact instructing their families about their basic ritual duties. With this we can compare a remark of Burckhardt's that in Najd “the Wahabys have established schools in every village, and oblige the fathers of families to superintend the instruction of their children”.Footnote 65 Nor should we necessarily think of this as altogether exceptional in the pre-modern world. The ancient Israelites had a similar duty: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children… . And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates” (Deut. 6:6–9). Yet more striking is the prophecy of Jeremiah: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord” (Jer. 31:34). Here the prophet takes it for granted that in the Israelite society of his day, every man was indeed teaching his neighbour and his brother.
Appendix
I give here two further examples of the usefulness of external sources in putting constraints on the dating of the works of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.
Qabbānī in his Naqḍ twice quotes a passage in which Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb detects an element of polytheism in the Qaṣīdat al-Burda of the seventh/thirteenth century poet Būṣīrī, in a verse relating to the intercession of the Prophet at the resurrection.Footnote 66 In introducing his first quotation of the passage, Qabbānī attributes it to a “first epistle” of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.Footnote 67 And indeed the passage is found in a known epistle of his.Footnote 68 There are in fact three further passages that Qabbānī quotes from the same epistle.Footnote 69 This shows that this “first epistle” of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, like ours, dates from no later than 1158/1745.Footnote 70 It is worth noting that this earlier epistle differs strikingly from ours in the absence of systematic structure.
Qabbānī is not alone in helping us in such ways. An eastern Arabian scholar, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAfāliq al-Aḥsāʾī, wrote an anti-Wahhābī epistle to ʿUthmān ibn Muʿammar of ʿUyayna which cannot be later than 1163/1750, the year in which Ibn Muʿammar was assassinated.Footnote 71 It quotes passages from an epistle that turns out to be a well-known tract of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's, the Kashf al-shubuhāt.Footnote 72 We can infer, then, that this tract cannot have been composed later than 1163/1750.
It is a pity that Ṭandatāwī in his attack on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb does not quote any of his writings.Footnote 73
