EGYPT IN THE WORLD OF ISLAM 75brutally slaughtering everyone. This was a prelude to the attack by Mu-
hammad ibn SaÛud against Mecca.
Mecca was besieged and taken in 1803. Medina was taken in 1804.
SaÛud ordered his men to strip the Prophet’s Mosque of its treasures and
to tear down the dome over it. The destruction of the dome was stopped,
however, after several Wahhabis were injured in falls. They contented
themselves with the wrecking of the tombs of Muhammad’s family and
companions. SaÛudi soldiers then roamed the streets with staves, forcing
the male population into the mosques where a roll was called of all the
citizens. All Turks were ordered to leave the city, and those who were
slow to obey had their beards cut off.
Initially the Turkish sultan accepted the transfer of power in Mecca, but
this soon changed and he ordered Mehmet Ali, sultan of Egypt, to send a
military expedition to recover the holy cities. The first attempts were com-
plete failures, but by 1817 Mehmet Ali launched a campaign well supplied
with artillery. At the wells of Mawiyah the Wahhabi cameleers were no
match for the Turks under Mehmet Ali’s general, Auzun Ali. In the fol-
lowing year the Turks steadily slaughtered the armies the Wahhabis sent
against them, ravaging their heartland and destroying DarÛiyah in Septem-
ber. The Turkish forces pillaged the city and a particular vengeance was
directed against the religious leaders of the town. The qadi had his teeth
pulled out before he was killed, and the grandson of MuhammadÛAbd al-
Wahhab was forced to listen to the hated music of a guitar before he was
executed.
The power of the Wahhabis was broken for the time, but the House of
SaÛud remained a power within the tribal structure of Arabia. Its principal
rival for dominance of all of Arabia was the family of Ibn Rashid. The
Rashids took dominance when the House of SaÛud fell and would domi-
nate the Arabian peninsula until World War I, when they were ousted,
along with the Turks.
Abd al-Aziz ibnÛAbd ar-Rahman Al Faysal Al SaÛud, better known as
Ibn SaÛud, the leader of the House of SaÛud at the time, led a force of
forty friends and relatives into the desert. With this tiny force he suddenly
appeared at the gates of Riyadh and in a brilliant military feat captured
the castle and killed Ibn Rashid’s governor on January 16, 1902. With this
act Ibn SaÛud began the march of his family to the throne of Saudi Arabia.
The British signed a treaty with Ibn SaÛud at the beginning of World War
I, seeking to use his forces to further discommode the Turks.
A battlefield success by the SaÛuds in 1919 caused the British to attempt
to reconcile the two sides in 1923 without success. When the Republic of
Turkey was formed, the office of the caliphate was abolished and Husain