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Nejd comes first as we move southward: impinging as it does on Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Hejaz, its politics are involved in theirs to a certain extent and its affairs require careful handling. It is certainly no field for unrestrained missionary effort, but there is no reason why a medical mission should not be posted at Riadh if the Emir is willing.
The Wahabi state founded by Abd-el-Wahab in the Nejd was modelled on the theocratic democracy of the Meccan caliphs, and when Abd-el-Wahab's princely disciple, Saud, loosed his fanatic hosts upon the holy cities, he dreamed that this was but the first step in a puritan conquest and consolidation of the whole Moslem world.
On 31st August, after praying "a two-bow prayer," he bade adieu to Shaykh Hamid, and with Nur and the boy Mohammed, joined the caravan bound for Mecca, the route taken being the celebrated road through the arid Nejd made by Zubaydah, wife of Harun al Rashid.
Yet the town held out until long after the armistice, and its surrender had eventually to be brought about by putting pressure on the Turkish Government at Stamboul. On the other hand, the two great provinces which impinge upon the Hejaz, namely, Nejd and Yamen, have given ample proof that they can hammer the Turks without outside assistance.
The caravans take twenty-five days on the journey to Saihut, and five to Makalla; they go also to Nejd, but we could not find out how long they take.
He established it politically in Nejd on precisely its old basis at Medina, and sought to extend it over the whole of Arabia, perhaps of the world. I believe it is hardly now recognised by Mohammedans how near Abd el Wahhab was to complete success.
Sheikh Sehel promised to take us across the Gara border into Nejd if we wished; but as it would have entailed a considerable delay and parley with the sheikhs of the Nejd Bedouin, and as we could see from our present vantage ground that the country would afford us absolutely no objects of interest, we decided not to attempt this expedition.
I have described elsewhere the historical vicissitudes of the sect in Arabia, and the decline of its fortunes in Nejd, but a brief recapitulation of these may be allowed me. The early half of the last century was a period of religious stagnation in Islam, almost as much as it was in Christendom.
For years he wandered up and down Arabia, and at last he converted Mahommed, head of the great clan of Saud, the most powerful chieftain in all the Nejd. This gave Abd-el-Wahab both moral prestige and material strength, and he made the most of his opportunities. Gradually, the desert Arabs were welded into a politico-religious unity like that effected by the Prophet.
Mahommed ibn Abd-el-Wahab was born about the year A.D. 1700 in the heart of the Arabian desert, the region known as the Nejd. The Nejd was the one clean spot in the decadent Moslem world. We have already seen how, with the transformation of the caliphate from a theocratic democracy to an Oriental despotism, the free-spirited Arabs had returned scornfully to their deserts.
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