‘Koweit [Kuwait]. A report compiled in the Intelligence Branch, Quarter Master General’s Department’ [‎6] (20/66)

6
sary, in order to understand the connection of events, to sketch,
as briefly as may be, the rise and development of that strange
phenomenon the Wahabi movement and power.
It was about 1740-50 that Sheikh Mohammed, son of Abdul
Wahab of Basrah, disgusted with the laxity and corruption of
Turkish Islam, first started the puritanical movement which has
ever since borne his father's name. The Wahabis carried their
victorious propaganda far and wide. They first came into con
tact with the British Government as the custodian of the peace
of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. . From their stronghold in the Nejd, 250
miles inland from El Katr, and from their capitals Dereiyah and
Riadh, on that mountainous plateau, they soon made their in
fluence felt along the maritime littoral and, at different times in
the 19th Century, subjugated or extorted tribute from almost
every Arab tribe from EI Katif to Cape Mussandim, and from
Cape Mussandim to Ras al Hadd.
It was in 1787 that the first mention of the Wahabis is
found in the Bombay Records. The British Government was
careful not to involve itself in hostile proceedings against the
Wahabi Amir. By 1818 Ibrahim Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , marching from Egypt,
had captured the Wahabi capital and razed it to the ground, had
sent the Wahabi Amir in chains to Constantinople, where he
was decapitated, and had apparently stamped out the heretical
and schismatic authority. Within a few years, however, Turki,
son of the deceased Amir, had expelled the Egyptian Governor,
was proclaimed Sultan of Nejd, and by a judicious payment of a
small tribute to Egypt, retained the throne, till murdered in 1831.
His son and successor, Feysul, was at first rash enough to re
pudiate the Egyptian Suzerainty ; whereupon Nejd was again in
vaded, El Hasa and Katif temporarily occupied by Egyptian
troops, and himself banished to Egypt. In 1843 he managed to
return, and from then till his death in 1865 continued to rule in
Nejd, and to push his sovereignty far and wide among the sur
rounding tribes.
Four times in this period, the vigorous remonstrances of
Great Britain, and the apparition of a naval force off the threaten
ed ports, whether of Bahrein or Muscat, were required to com
pel the retirement of the aggressive Sultan.
His son, Abdullah bin Feysul, succeeded him in 1865, and
entered into an agreement with Great Britain not to molest the
Arab tribes under British protection, particularly those of
Muscat, A prolonged struggle ensued between Abdullah and
his brother Saood, in which the latter was at first successful, but
Abdullah, flying to Turkey, invoked that expedition from
Baghdad which ended in the formal and permanent occupation
of El Hasa by Turkey.
The conflict being renewed upon Saood's death in 1874,
Abdullah ultimately regained the throne, and held it until 1886,
when events occurred which heralded the rise of another power
in Nejd.