"In the middle of the 12th/18th century, a religious reform movement arose in al-Dir'iyyah, a small town in Najd, Central Arabia. Founded by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, and politically and militarily supported by Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud, the chief of al-Dir'iyyah, this movement, known as the Salafiyya, called for a return to the pure and original teachings of the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. In the later decades of the century, it spread to other parts of Najd, and by the death in 1229/1814 of its third political leader, Sa'ud Ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz, it controlled most of Arabia except for the Yaman and 'Uman, producing a formidable state that unified Arabia and imposed peace and order on its people for the first time since the early caliphs of Islam." "In this book Professor Al Juhany brings scholarship to bear on the scant and often difficult sources available for the study of Najd during the three centuries preceding the rise of the Salafis. The result is a historical narrative that reveals phenomenal developments in the spheres of nomadic migration, settlement, the growth of the sedentary population, and the growth of religious learning, all of which combined to produce a new society, which had new prospects and expectations, by the middle of the 12th/18th century."--Jacket.