“I ENTERED . . . AND I DESTROYED ALL THE TOMBS”: SOME REMARKS ON SAUDI-OTTOMAN CORRESPONDENCE1

Samer Traboulsi

The purpose of this paper is to examine a letter sent to the Ottoman Sultan Selim III (r. 1203–22/1789–1807) after the fall of Mecca to a coalition of Najdī and pro-Saudi troops in 1218/1803. The letter is attributed to Suʿūd b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 1229/1814), then commander- in-chief and heir to the Saudi throne.2 A search for the source of the letter and an analysis of its content in light of historical developments on the Najdī-Ḥ ijāzī front will prove instrumental in discovering the letter’s true provenance.

In Search of the Source

Saʿud to Salīm, I entered Makkah on the fourth day of Muḥarram in the 1218th year of the Hijrah. I kept peace towards the inhabitants, I destroyed all things that were idolatrously worshipped. I abolished all taxes except those required by the law. I confirmed the Qāzī who you had appointed agree- ably to the commands of the Prophet of God. I desire that you will give orders to the rulers of Damascus and Cairo not to come up to the sacred city with the Mahmal and with trumpets and drums. Religion is not prof- ited by these things. May the peace and blessing of God be with you.3 The reader’s first reaction to this letter may depend on his or her view of the rising Saudi state and the Wahhābī hegemony it was establish- ing throughout Arabia. It could be perceived as an offensive letter

1 This paper would not have been possible without a generous grant from the Uni- versity Research Council at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. I would like to thank Jane Hathaway, Avril Dobbelaer and Bryan Sinclair for their valuable comments. Needless to say, all shortcomings are mine. 2 The correct spelling of the Najdī ruler’s name is Suʿūd and not Saʿūd. Though the latter appears more commonly, even in academic circles, the author believes it is inappropriate to use the colloquial spelling in scholarly writings. This, of course, does not apply to anglicized derivatives of the name, such as “Saudi.” 3 This is an exact reproduction of the text as it appears in Hughes, A Dictionary of , 660. See also Vassiliev, The History of , 100. 198 samer traboulsi written by an uncivilized, desert-dwelling Arab lacking the respect and manners appropriate for addressing the Sultan, the Custodian of the Two Holy Sanctuaries, and the supreme ruler of the Ottoman domains. It could also be interpreted as a bold statement by a rising young leader in defiance of the oppressive and “un-Islamic” rule of a non-Arab administration. In any case, this is a highly provocative let- ter that seems likely to have been used for the benefit of polemicists and propagandists on both sides. Surprisingly, however, there was no such reaction. The letter is curi- ously absent from all early Najdī writings. We would expect for con- temporaneous Najdī historians, such as Ibn Bishr (d. 1290/1873), to mention it with pride, but they do not.4 And neither do later Saudi historians, such as Ibn ʿĪsā (d. 1343/1924) or Ibn Ḍuwayyān (d. ca. 1353/1934).5 Not only were the Najdī historians seemingly unaware of the letter’s existence, but it apparently managed to elude nineteenth- century non-Saudi historians as well. It would have fitted well into Daḥlān’s critical and extensive account of the Najdī-Ḥ ijāzī conflict.6 Al-Jabartī and Ahmet Cevdet Pasha could also have been expected to include it in their coverage of the history of the Wahhābī movement and the first Saudi state.7 The earliest appearance of Suʿūd’s letter in literature occurs only in Amīn al-Rīḥānī’s history of modern Saudi Arabia, Tārīkh al-ḥadīth wa-mulḥaqātih, published in 1928. Unfortunately, Rīḥānī

4 Ibn Bishr was present in Mecca in 1225/1810 when Suʿūd performed his sev- enth pilgrimage, see Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-majd, 1:314. The other contemporaneous Najdī historian, Ibn Ghannām, ends his account in 1212/1798, prior to the conquest of Mecca. There is also no mention of the letter in Ibn Luʿbūn (d. after 1257/1841), Ibn Turkī (d. ca. 1250/1834), or al-Fākhirī (d. 1277/1860). See Ibn Luʿbūn, Tārīkh Ibn Luʿbūn, 1:219; Ibn Turkī, Tārīkh Najd, 4:168; al-Fākhirī, Tārīkh al-Fākhirī, 3:113. 5 Ibn ʿĪsā, Tārīkh baʿḍ al-ḥawādith al-wāqiʿa fī Najd, 130; Ibn Ḍuwayyān, Tārīkh Ibn Ḍuwayyān, 3:182. 6 Aḥmad b. Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1304/1886) was the Shāfiʿī Muftī of Mecca and Shaykh al-ʿulamāʾ of the Ḥaram through most of his career. Though Daḥlān was highly critical of Wahhābism, his Khulāsaṭ al-kalām fī bayān umarāʾ al-balad al-Ḥ arām is an invalu- able source for the history of the Wahhābī movement and the first Saudi state. 7 The Egyptian historianʿ Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī (d. 1825) showed great interest in the Wahhābī movement and developments in Arabia in his ʿAjāʾib al-āthār. He was sympathetic to the Wahhābī reforms, to the extent of defending Suʿūd’s seizure of the jewelry and precious items kept at the Prophet’s tomb in . The Otto- man historian and statesman Ahmet Cevdet Pasha (d. 1895) did not share Jabartī’s sympathy for the Wahhābī movement. However, he devoted much space in his Tarih-i Cevdet to developments in Arabia, often supplementing his account with documents in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic.