514 Martin Riexinger
had to distance himself from the latter’s theology when he addressed
an audience from the newly emerging middle class with secular edu-
cation. In the 1920s a conflict with similar characteristics arose in the
realm of the future Saudi kings. The fact that the ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz did not
fully endorse the position of the Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ with regard to Thanāʾ
Allāh’s tafsīr reflects that the new Saudi administration had to come
to terms with a similar problem when it started a secular system of
education in the mid 1920s. The Egyptian Salafi Ḥāfiẓ Wahba, one of
the ruler’s key advisors, recounts that he was taken aback by the ultra-
conservative mindset of the ʿulamāʾ on the Arabian Peninsula which
reminded him of the European Middle Ages. According to him, many
scholars protested vehemently against geography text-books which
did not accord to the concepts of Sunna-cosmology.^76 In the Saudi
case the creation of an administrative élite fitting the most important
needs of a modern state, demanded that certain elements had to be
introduced into the system of education which did not conform to Ibn
Taymiyya’s worldview. Therefore it may be suspected that Ibn ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz regarded attempts to accommodate Salafi creeds to the exigen-
cies of a modern state and secular education with some sympathy.^77 As
a result of Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s reforms jahmī thought seems to have
made considerably inroads into the staunchest Wahhabi circles. Today
even in this milieu the interpretation of istiwāʾ as physical sitting is no
longer defended. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ibn Bāz (d. 1999), chief mufti of Saudi
Arabia and (in)famous for his 1964 fatwa in which he declares every-
body claiming that Earth orbits around the sun an unbeliever (kāfir)
merely interprets the term as attribute of God’s governance, because
even he had given up the idea of compact heavens.^78
Like those who came from a tradition imbued by the ideas of Ibn
Taymiyya, and wanted to accommodate it to modern challenges, the
76 Wahba, Hafiz: Arabian Days, London 1964, pp. 48–52.
77 Salmān Sulaymān Manṣūrpūrī (1867–1930), a lawyer, civil servant and one of
Thanāʾ Allāh’s most prominent lay supporters was according to his son invited
to serve in the administration of the kingdom, however, he died during the pas-
sage (Manṣūrpūrī, Salmān Sulaymān and Manṣūrpūrī, ʿAbd al-Bāqī: Safarnāma-i
ḥijāz maʿahu sīrat-i Salmān, Lahore n. d., p. 278).
78 Ibn Bāz, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: al-Adilla al-naqliyya wal-ḥissiyya ʿalā imkān al-ṣuʿūd
ilā al-kawākib wa-ʿalā jarayān al-shams wal-qamar wa-sukūn al-arḍ, Riyadh
1982, pp. 7–17; on the controversy stirred by this fatwa: Ende, Werner: Reli-
gion, Politik und Literatur in Saudi-Arabien. Der geistesgeschichtliche Hin-
tergrund der heutigen religiösen und kulturpolitischen Situation, in: Orient 22
(1981), pp. 377–390; 23 (1982), pp. 21–35, 378–393, here pp. 381–385.
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