The early half of the last century was a period of religious stagnation
in Islam, almost as much as it was in Christendom. Faith, morals, and
religious practice were at the lowest ebb among Mussulmans, and it
seemed to Europeans who looked on as though the faith of Mecca had
attained its dotage, and was giving place to a non-curantist infidelity.
Politically and religiously the Mussulman world was asleep, when
suddenly it awoke, and like a young giant refreshed stood once more
erect in Arabia. The reform preached by Abd el Wahhab was radical. He
began by breaking with the maxim held by the mass of the orthodox that
inquiry on matters of faith was closed. He constituted himself a new
mujtahed and founded a new school, neither Hanafite, Malekite, nor
Shafite, and called it the school of the Unitarians, Muwaheddin, a name
still cherished by the Wahhabites. He rejected positively all traditions
but those of the companions of the Prophet, and he denied the claims of
any but the first four Caliphs to have been legitimately elected. The
Koran was to be the only written law, and Islam was to be again what it
had been in the first decade of its existence. He established it
politically in Nejd on precisely its old basis at Medina, and sought to
extend it over the whole of Arabia, perhaps of the world.
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