74 ISLAM AT WAR
The mystic beliefs of the Sufis were also forbidden. He preached predes-
tination—the absolute nonexistence of free will—as an article of faith.
Public prayers became mandatory; tobacco, alcohol, music, coffee, and
the wearing of silk and gold were forbidden. All Muslims who did not
subscribe to his beliefs were declared idolaters and were liable to whipping
or, in extreme cases, death.
Like Muhammad, al-Wahhab and his family were driven from his home
inÛUyainah and was taken in at DarÛiyah, where Muhammad ibn SaÛud
ruled. Al-Wahhab’s Unitarian creed took root and began spreading.
Armed with a new dogma, Muhammad ibn SaÛud trained his men in
the use of firearms and built up a small army to spread the new creed.
The old traditions of the desert were sharpened by the edge of faith as
they had been 1,000 years earlier. As each tribe was defeated, the Wah-
habis built a fort and garrisoned it with a force of faithful soldiers. They
then installed a mufti and a qadi to instruct the people in Unitarianism.
In 1766 the religious authorities of Mecca became concerned and sum-
moned a Wahhabi delegation to Mecca that it might be examined for
heresy. The Wahhabis were exonerated and continued to expand. After
thirty years of conquest and proselytizing, they had the greater part of the
interior of Arabia under their control.
One of the mechanisms that they employed to expand their control was
to prey on the natural proclivity of the desert people to highway robbery.
SaÛud gave them license to rob and pillage any traveler who was not a
Unitarian. This resulted in tremendous pressures on the caravan trade into
Arabia. The Wahhabis also made two or three raids a year to plunder the
borderlands of their richer neighbors in Iraq and Syria. These raids, which
interfered with the pilgrim caravans to Mecca, forced the Sublime Porte
Selim III to take action, and in 1790 he ordered the sharif of Mecca to
take the field against the Wahhabis. The Meccan army, a motley force of
mercenary Moors and Negroes was quickly slaughtered and the gates of
Mecca were opened to the Wahhabis, who initially came in peace. The
fundamentalist Wahhabis soon found the sights that greeted them in Mecca
offensive to their sense of Islam. The city had, essentially, become a den
of iniquity, with open prostitution, use of alcohol, and other proscribed
behavior brazenly displayed.
In 1802 the Wahhabis went on a raid into central Iraq and sacked the
city of Karbala. Their actions, including the destruction of the dome over
Husain’s tomb and the graves of other Shiite saints, shocked the Muslim
world. The Sublime Porte again ordered action against them, but it came
to nothing. In 1802 a Wahhabi raid attacked and sacked the town of Tayif,