Emirate of Diriyah

The Emirate of Diriyah, better known as the First Saudi State, rose in central Arabia from 1744 to 1818 around the oasis town of Diriyah. The Muraydi clan had farmed Wadi Hanifa since the fifteenth century; in 1744 their chief Muhammad ibn Saud made the pact that changed Arabia, joining the reformer Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who preached a return to stern unity of worship. The imam would rule, the sheikh would preach, and their families would intermarry to this day. Wahhabi zeal turned a town into an expansion: Riyadh fell, then Qasim, then in 1802 Karbala, where the shrine of Husayn was stripped, and Mecca and Medina, whose Ottoman garrisons surrendered the holy cities. An empire of the desert now taxed pilgrims and defied the Sultan. The Porte answered through Egypt: Muhammad Ali's son Ibrahim Pasha landed, fought two years up the peninsula with modern artillery, and in 1818 starved Diriyah for six months, razed its mud palaces, and sent the last imam Abdullah to Istanbul in chains to be beheaded. Najd fell silent, but the alliance of sword and sermon survived in exile, awaiting its second state.