Wahābi

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article is an excerpt from Castes and Tribes of Southern India By Edgar Thurston, C.I.E., Superintendent, Madras Government Museum; Correspondant Étranger, Société d’Anthropologie de Paris; Socio Corrispondante, Societa,Romana di Anthropologia. Assisted by K. Rangachari, M.A., of the Madras Government Museum. Government Press, Madras 1909.

Wahābi

The Wahābis are a sect of Muslim revivalists founded by Muhammad ibn ’Abdu’l Wahhāb, who was born in A.D. 1691. Wahābyism has been defined as the Puritanism of Islām, “hated by the so-called orthodox Musalmāns, as the Lutherans were hated by Leo, and the Covenanters by Claverhouse.” It is recorded, in the Manual of North Arcot (1895), that since 1806 (the year of the Vellore mutiny) “two alarms have been raised in the district, both at Vellore, which is largely inhabited by Muhammadans. The last alarm occurred in 1869. Early in May of that year, anonymous petitions were received by the Joint Magistrate and the Assistant Superintendent of Police, stating that the Wahābi Muhammadans of Vellore were in league against Government, and had arranged a plot for the massacre of all the European residents, in which the 28th Regiment of Native Infantry, then stationed at Vellore, was deeply implicated. An East Indian subordinate of the Public Works Department also reported that he had overheard a Muhammadan munshi of the Small Cause Court speaking to a shopman of his faith about the seditious preaching of a certain Khāzi. The munshi was sent for, and described what he said had occurred in a certain mosque, where sedition had been openly advocated by a Wahābi missionary who had recently arrived from Hyderabad, as well as by others.” It appeared, from the investigations of the Inspector-General of Police, that the whole affair had been nothing more than a conspiracy among the orthodox Muhammadans to arouse alarm regarding the designs of the Wahābis, and to prevent these sectarians from frequenting their mosques.