Sheikh Mohamed Ibn Abdelwahab

Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab: biographical landmarks

• Full name: Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi al-Najdi (محمد بن عبد الوهاب), of the Al Musharraf family.
• Birth: in 1115 AH, corresponding to 1703, in al-Uyayna, in Najd, at the centre of the Arabian Peninsula.
• Family: his father was judge of al-Uyayna and later of Huraymila. His grandfather, also a judge, owned a library the child frequented from an early age.
• Education: the Quran memorised before the age of ten, Hanbali fiqh under his father, then two stays in the Hijaz with studies in Madinah, and time in Basra and al-Ahsa.
• Writing: he composed كتاب التوحيد, his best-known work, during four years of retreat in Huraymila.
• Diriyah: expelled from al-Uyayna, he settled in Diriyah in 1157, corresponding to 1744, where he concluded with the emir Muhammad ibn Saud the pact at the origin of the first Saudi state.
• Death: in Shawwal 1206, corresponding to June 1792, in Diriyah, at close to ninety years of age.
• Output: a series of short texts on creed, several of which are among the first primers memorised in the curricula of the Arab world.

A small-town judge who wrote to be learned by heart

His biography reads first of all as a geography of small Najdi towns: al-Uyayna, where he was born in 1115 into a family of judges; Huraymila, where his father later served and where he spent four years writing; then al-Uyayna again, which he had to leave under pressure from a neighbouring emir; and finally Diriyah, where he settled in 1157 and died fifty years later.

Between those stages, two journeys beyond the peninsula mattered. In Madinah he studied under scholars who directed him towards hadith and towards the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. In Basra he met with a hostility that forced him to leave. He returned to Najd with a settled conviction: the essential is decided in creed, and the essential of creed can be said in few words.

That explains the form of his writings. He composed no summas. He wrote short texts, sometimes two pages long, designed to be learned by heart and then explained orally by a teacher. His preaching was contested during his lifetime, including by scholars of Damascus and Madinah to whom he had submitted his Kitab al-Tawhid, and he himself replied in writing to the objections in several of his letters. The alliance concluded at Diriyah with Muhammad ibn Saud in 1157 gave him the means to spread his teaching far beyond his native towns.

The matn, a genre of its own

To understand why his books are so short, one has to understand what a matn is.

In the teaching tradition of the Arab world, a matn is a primer condensed to the extreme, which the student memorises in full before receiving its explanation. The text develops nothing: it states, enumerates, defines. The explanation comes from the teacher, or from a commentary written by another scholar, sometimes centuries later. A ten-page matn can thus carry a three-hundred-page commentary.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab is above all an author of matns. The Three Fundamentals, the Four Rules, the Nullifiers of Islam, the Six Fundamentals: each of these texts fits in a handful of pages, and each still opens the curriculum of thousands of students today, in Arabia and far beyond. Kitab al-Tawhid, though longer, belongs to the same genre: a succession of brief chapters made of verses and hadiths, with a minimum of commentary.

The consequence for you is direct. His texts are not read on their own. They are memorised, then studied with a commentary. Buying the matn without the sharh is buying the table of contents without the book.

His works

كتاب التوحيد

His best-known work, whose full title specifies that it concerns the right of God over His servants. A succession of short chapters, each composed of verses and hadiths on a point of creed. Commented on dozens of times, notably by Sheikh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaymin in القول المفيد, and by Sheikh Salih al-Fawzan in إعانة المستفيد.

الأصول الثلاثة

The Three Fundamentals: a few pages on what every Muslim must know of his Lord, his religion and his Prophet ﷺ. Very often the first text a student memorises.

القواعد الأربع

The Four Rules, two pages on the distinction between tawhid and its opposite. A companion text to the preceding one, learned straight after.

كشف الشبهات

The Removal of Doubts, often presented as the complement to Kitab al-Tawhid: a series of replies to objections raised against his teaching.

نواقض الإسلام

The Nullifiers of Islam, one page. One of the most commented-on texts in proportion to its length.

الأصول الستة

The Six Fundamentals, a few pages. Memorised at the start of the curriculum, commented on by many contemporary teachers.

مسائل الجاهلية

An inventory of the points on which, according to the author, Islam distinguished itself from earlier practice. List format, very brief.

مختصر سيرة الرسول

His abridgement of the Prophet's biography, drawn from the classical works. One of his rare narrative texts, and the most accessible for continuous reading.

كتاب الكبائر

His collection on the major sins, composed of verses and hadiths arranged by theme.

To these should be added فضل الإسلام, آداب المشي إلى الصلاة, his abridgement of Ibn al-Qayyim's Zad al-Ma'ad, and numerous letters and replies gathered in the collections of his writings.

Buy the collection rather than the single text

This is the most useful buying advice for this author, and it follows from the brevity of his texts.

A two-page matn sold on its own, under its own cover, costs the price of a booklet and gets lost. Yet his main texts are almost always available together in collections of matns, in a single bound volume: the Three Fundamentals, the Four Rules, the Nullifiers, the Six Fundamentals, Kitab al-Tawhid and Kashf al-Shubuhat, sometimes accompanied by other classical texts on creed. These collections are designed for the student following a curriculum: everything is there, in the order in which it is learned, on paper made to last.

Two exceptions to this rule. If you want a pocket edition of a single text for memorisation, buying it on its own is justified. And if you are looking for a commentary, it is of course sold separately, in one or several volumes depending on the author.

Every listing in our catalogue states whether the item is the bare text, a collection of matns or a commentary, with the list of texts included and the actual page count.

Buy Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab's books in Arabic

Every book sold by My Maktaba is in Arabic, in its original edition, and every one is new. For each title, the listing states the publisher, year, number of volumes, format and whether the text is vocalised, this last point being decisive for texts meant to be memorised.

For a reader learning Arabic, these texts offer a rare advantage: they are short, vocalised in most editions, and their vocabulary is that of the Quran and hadith, which you will meet everywhere afterwards. Start with a collection of matns, learn the Three Fundamentals, then take a commentary of moderate length. You will thus have, on a single text, the complete experience of the traditional method of study.