Najd before the Salafi Reform Movement:
Social, Political and Religious Conditions during the Three

Centuries Preceding the Rise of the Saudi State
Uwaidah M. Al Juhany. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, in
association with the King Abdul Aziz Foundation for

Research and Archives, Saudi Arabia, 2002. 223 pages.

As the Muslim world searches for the right formula for reform, scholars
and intellectuals are invited to study Islamic reform movements and the
conditions that made their successes possible. In this context, Najd before
the Salafi Reform Movement is a timely contribution to the literature on
social conditions of reform in Muslim societies. The author correctly notes
that pre-Salafi Najd (central Arabia) was neither a center of religious learn-
ing nor the site of large urban communities, which might be expected to
produce a reform movement of a size and significance of the Salafi move-
ment. Nevertheless, the Salafi movement managed to establish a strong
state that unified Arabia and imposed peace and order on its people for the
first time since the period of the early caliphs (pp. 1-2). 

This book, originally a Ph.D. dissertation, seeks to solve this puzzle.
A six-page bibliography and a thirteen-page index are suffixed, along with
several maps and tables, and both the Hijri and the Gregorian calendars are
used to mark the general time periods. This book is particularly useful for
students of history, sociology, anthropology, or genealogy in an early-
modern context, such as that of Najd between the mid-ninth/fifteenth and
mid-twelfth/eighteenth centuries. The author argues that nomadic migra-
tion and settlement; the growth of a sedentary population, as well as
migration and resettlement; and the growth of religious learning combined
to create a new Najdi society that produced the Salafi reform movement
(p. 2). Each of these factors is addressed in one chapter. 

The first chapter, “The Geographical and Ecological Background,”
demonstrates how Najd’s geographical setting and climatic conditions
(viz., a desert region with an unpredictable climate) dictated its people’s
hard lifestyle and activities. For example, a persistant drought could turn a
settlement, a region, or even the entire emirate into a wasteland (pp. 36-37).
The second chapter, “An Historical Background,” surveys Najd’s inhabi-
tants at the rise of Islam and follows its demographic and political devel-
opments throughout the first 9 centuries of the Islamic era. On the eve of
Islam, Najd was populous and prosperous;  however, by the third/ninth cen-

Book Reviews 109



tury, its sedentary-nomadic equilibrium had become disturbed, mainly to
the advantage of the nomads. This was a result of fresh nomadic migrations
and the `Abbasid government’s waning authority. As the local emirate only
had limited power, it could not protect the settled population. The nomads’
reign, however, was interrupted in the mid-ninth/fifteenth century by the
short-lived rule of the Jabrids (pp. 54-55).

The third chapter, “The Nomads of Najd,” details how Najd received
waves of nomads from regions to the west and southwest during the 3
centuries that preceded the Salafis. New tribal groups and confederations
dominated the emirate and forced out the old groups. When the nomadic
population grew so large that Najd’s natural resources could no longer
sustain the people, fierce competition among the nomadic groups intensi-
fied. However, this problem was moderated as some nomadic groups
elected to migrate to the Syrian desert or southern Iraq, while others set-
tled the land (p. 89).

The fourth chapter, “The Sedentary Population of Najd,” proves a clear,
but gradual, movement of resettlement and repopulation from the mid-
ninth/fifteenth century, especially during the 150 years that preceded the rise
of the Salafi movement. A majority of the settlements were either newly
established or old settlements revived by groups other than their original
inhabitants. This population growth resulted in a considerable number of
Najdis migrating to the eastern coast of Arabia and southern Iraq (pp. 126-
27). The fifth chapter, “The Growth of Religious Learning in Najd,” shows
a substantial increase of Najdi ulama between the tenth/sixteenth and the
twelfth/eighteenth centuries, due mainly to two factors. First, many Najdi
ulama traveled to Syria and Egypt to study with the leading Hanbali schol-
ars and, upon their return, were initiated and began to contribute to an enthu-
siastic movement of learning. Second, the growing sedentary population not
only needed, but could also support a large number of ulama, who served as
imams, teachers, preachers, judges, and muftis (p. 139).

The final chapter, “Political, Social, and Religious Conditions in
Najd,” focuses on the sociopolitical unrest in Najd evident in the conflict
among the inhabitants of each individual settlement, particularly within
the town’s ruling families, and the continuous fighting among the various
towns and settlements. The sharifs of Makkah and the chiefs of al-Ahsa’
(eastern Arabia) did not use their authority to impose peace or protect the
settled population from the nomads’ raids and extortions. The sedentary
population appears to have grown frustrated by this endless strife and
wanted peace and order to protect their lives and economic activities (pp.

110 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:2



155-56). The rise of the Salafi reform movement provided answers to
these new problems.

A major strength of this study is its excellent use of local sources, both
oral and written. Given that Najd was historically isolated and remote from
the centers of culture and political life, the author had to gather pieces of
information from mostly unpublished pre-Salafi sources as well as chro-
nologies, biographies, popular poetry, genealogical and legal sources, and
geographical dictionaries written during different periods. Unfortunately,
the study did not shed much light on non-materialistic factors that con-
tributed to the Salafi reform movement’s rise, leaving the readers with an
impression that only geography and economics matter in the making of
history.

If Najd succeeded in producing such a great Islamic reform move-
ment despite its extremely hard conditions, then no Muslim country can
be excused from developing and nurturing Islamic reform movements on
the same scale.

Ahmed Ali Salem
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

Book Reviews 111