Kitab al-Tawhid

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab composes Kitab al-Tawhid at Huraymila

The date printed as 1736 is more precise than the evidence. A detailed source study could say only that the manuscript was finished before the author's father died in 1740.

A short book written at Huraymila

The composition of Kitab al-Tawhid is conventionally placed in 1736, though the sources support only a range. According to the early chronicler Ibn Ghannam, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab wrote it while residing at Huraymila in Najd.

The concise treatise set out his understanding of God's unity, of shirk, and of the religious consequences of particular acts and utterances, chiefly through Quranic passages and hadith reports.

It addressed theology and ritual rather than supplying a program of Islamic law for everyday life.

Read aloud, copied by hand

Students and sympathizers gathered to read its chapters with the author, and handwritten copies moved from one Najdi town to another.

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had returned to the region after study and preaching elsewhere, especially in Basra, with a developed concern about practices he classified as violations of tawhid. Sources disagree about how directly particular teachers or writings produced the treatise.

What the year cannot carry

Abd Allah Salih al-Uthaymin's source study places the work in the Huraymila residence, says it was complete by the father's death in 1740, and states explicitly that how long before that it was finished cannot be determined. The workable bracket is probably after 1147 AH (1734/35) and completed by 1153 AH (1740).

The treatise was foundational to the movement, but it did not create a named, organized Wahhabism in a single moment.

Preaching had begun earlier; the book's wider prominence appears to have followed the father's death in 1740, and the alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud came around 1744.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~1736.

What the sources leave uncertain

No consulted scholarly source establishes 1736 as the exact year. Al-Uthaymin’s source study places the work in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s Huraymila residence, says it was complete by his father’s death in 1740, and explicitly states that how long before that it was finished cannot be determined.
Some accounts connect the book’s intellectual genesis to hadith study in Basra, while Ibn Ghannam locates its actual writing at Huraymila.
The “beginning of Wahhabism” is not a datable consequence of finishing one manuscript. Preaching had begun earlier, while the public movement and political alliance developed later.