The first Saudi state and the Wahhabi alliance

In the early eighteenth century Najd, the arid heart of Arabia, was a patchwork of small oasis towns, each with its own ruling family, and of Bedouin tribes who raided and protected them. No outside empire had real control there; the Ottomans held the Hejaz with its holy cities, but not the interior.^•

The preacher and the prince

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, born in 1703 in the town of al-Uyayna into a family of Hanbali judges, studied in Medina and Basra and came home convinced that Arabians had fallen into idolatry: praying at the tombs of saints, venerating trees and stones, and seeking intercession from anyone but God. He preached a strict tawhid, the absolute oneness of God, and denounced such practices as shirk, associating partners with God. His preaching, and his destruction of a revered tomb, got him expelled from al-Uyayna.^•

He found refuge in Diriyah, whose ruler since 1727 was Muhammad ibn Saud. Around 1744 (some sources say 1745) the two men swore a pact: the emir would support the preacher’s mission, and the preacher would support the emir’s rule. Saudi tradition records the oath as one of “blood for blood, destruction for destruction”. Their families intermarried, and the arrangement, political power for the Al Saud and religious authority for Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s descendants, the Al al-Sheikh, became the template of the Saudi state.^•

Expansion

Over the following decades, Diriyah’s forces conquered the towns of Najd, including Riyadh in 1773. Under Muhammad’s son Abd al-Aziz and grandson Saud, the state spread east to al-Ahsa on the Gulf and raided into Iraq and Syria. In 1802 its forces sacked the Shia shrine city of Karbala, killing thousands. They briefly took Mecca in 1803 and held both Medina and Mecca from 1805–06, banning practices they saw as idolatrous, demolishing domed tombs, and for some years blocking Ottoman-sponsored pilgrim caravans.^•

A name and a label

Followers called the movement simply al-da’wa, “the call”, or described themselves as muwahhidun, “those who affirm God’s oneness”; today many prefer “Salafi”. “Wahhabi” was a name used mainly by opponents, and many Saudis still reject it. Historians debate how far the movement was a genuine religious revival and how far a vehicle for Saudi expansion; most agree it was both.^•

1727 or 1744?

For most of the kingdom’s history, the alliance of 1744 was treated as the founding moment. In January 2022 King Salman decreed that 22 February would be celebrated as Founding Day, marking the start of Muhammad ibn Saud’s rule in Diriyah in 1727, seventeen years before the pact. Many observers saw this as a deliberate shift towards a national and dynastic story, in line with the crown prince’s push to curb the clergy’s influence; the government presents it as recognising three centuries of continuous Saudi statehood.^•

The first state’s capital did not last. The Ottoman sultan, humiliated by the loss of the holy cities, ordered his governor in Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to destroy it, and in 1818 Diriyah fell. Its mud-brick ruins, At-Turaif, are now a UNESCO World Heritage site and the centrepiece of a vast heritage and tourism project.^•

Why it matters today