Intellectual efforts of Baghdad scholars in responding to the Wahhabi call in the nineteenth century (a study in a model)

Abstract

Iraq had a great pioneering impact in confronting the Wahhabi call. Its scholars participated, early on, directly in the intellectual debate taking place in the Arabian Peninsula with the sheikh of Wahhabism and his followers. This is for various reasons: including Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s visit to Basra, where he resided for a period of time and learned from its scholars before its people expelled him from their city in the year 1739 because of his deviant behavior, and the repeated Wahhabi raids on the areas and borders of Iraq, his correspondence with some Iraqi scholars, and the accusation of most of them. His family of disbelief among the Muslims, especially those who glorify the saints and the righteous and seek their supplication to God Almighty, so the scholars of Iraq and Baghdad in particular had a position on the Wahhabi call.