Appendix 1: The roots of the Al-Saud–Al-Wahhab family alliance
Appendix 2: The ‘Wahhabi’ family tree in India
Glossary
For ease of reading Arabic, Persian and Pushtu words are shown without stress guides. Archaic spellings are included.
Aal as-Sheikh — the Family of the Sheikhs, descendants of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
Ad Dawa lil Tawhid — ‘the Call to Unity’, the name given to his doctrines by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism.
ahl — people, thus Ahl al-Kitab – ‘People of the Book’, those who share a revealed book with Islam, thus Christians and Jews; Ahl-i-Hadith – ‘People of the Hadith’; see Jamiat Ahl-i-Hadith.
Akhund — teacher, used to describe Abdul Ghaffur, the Akhund of Swat.
Al-muwahhidun — unitarian or monotheist, the name by which the Wahhabis call themselves.
Al-Qaeda — ‘the [military] Base’, the formal title of a loose network of global terrorism headed by Osama bin Laden, drawing on Wahhabi, Salafi, and Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen politico-religious philosophy by way of the Jamaat al-Takfir wa al-Hijra.
Ali — son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet, whose followers broke away to form the Shia community.
alim — one learned in the ways of Islam; plural ulema.
amir — commander, governor, local ruler; thus Amir-ul-Momineen – Commander of the Faithful, official title of the Caliphs, and Amir-e-Sharia – Leader of the Law.
badal — blood feud among Pathans.
Badawin — camel-owners, Bedouin, as distinct from Arab – sheep-owners.
badmash — bad character.
badshah — see padshah.
baiat — oath of religious allegiance.
Barelvi — a Hanafi Sunni religious school established in India in 1870s that incorporated traditional Sufi beliefs and practices and regards the Deobandis as kaffir.
bidat — innovation, a great sin in the eyes of Wahhabis.
Bunerwals — men of Buner, made up of several Yusufzai tribes.
burqa — coverall worn by Muslim women.
Caliph — see khalifa.
cantonment — standing camp or military quarter of the station in British India.
Chamlawals — men of Chamla.
daffadar — sergeant in Indian cavalry.
daftar, dufter — office or register.
dak — post, system of post-relays established in India by the Mughals; thus dak-bungalows for travellers.
dar — domain, thus dar ul-Islam – ‘domain of Faith’, a land under Islamic sharia; dar ul-harb – ‘domain of war or enmity’, a land opposed to the cause of Islam; dar ul-jahiliya – land of ignorance; dar ul-kufr – land of unbelief; dar ul-ulum – domain of Islamic learning, the honorific title accorded to the Deoband Madrassah in 1879.
darb — path; see also tariq. darrah mountain pass. dawa call, invitation. Deen the Way (of Islam). Deoband the religious school established at Deoband in northern India in 1866 by a group of quasi-Wahhabis. It condemns aspects of Sufism and other practices as bidat and promotes a strictly fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam derived from Shah Waliullah and Syed Ahmad; thus Deobandi; see Salafi.
emir — see amir, local ruler in Arabia and north Africa.
Eid — Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan.
fakir — holy man.
faraiz — obligatory duty.
fatwa — legal ruling of a mujtahid or mufti on a matter of Islamic sharia.
fedayeen — men of sacrifice.
fiqh — Islamic jurisprudence.
firman — written order.
fitna — discordance within the Muslim community due to such activities as polytheism.
ghar — mountain, thus Spin Ghar, the White Mountain.
ghazu — war party in the cause of religion; thus ghazi – ‘champion of the Faith’, in British eyes a ‘religious fanatic’.
Hadith — ‘Tradition’, the established statements and examples of conduct of the Prophet as remembered by his Companions, gathered together into a corpus to become, together with the Quran, the basis of sharia; see also Sunnah.
Hajj — pilgrimage to Mecca; one of the five Pillars of Islam; thus Hajji – one who has made the pilgrimage.
hakim — judge or doctor.
Hanbali — the Sunni school of law established by Ahmad bin Hanbal (d. AD 855), the last of the four schools of law accepted in Sunni Islam and regarded by many as the most intolerant and reactionary.
haram — forbidden.
hegira — see hijra.
Hijaz — Arabian province beside the Red Sea containing the holy places of Mecca and Medina and the sea port of Jedda, traditionally ruled over by the Sharifs of Mecca.
hijra, hijrat — retreat, withdrawal, thus the name given to the migration of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina in the year 622 of the Christian calendar, later chosen to mark the beginning of Islamic history, which starts with the first year of the Islamic calendar, usually written AH.
Hindustan — the land of the Hindus east of the Indus, thus Hindustani – an inhabitant of that India, and the lingua franca spoken there.
hizb — party or group, thus Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami – Party of Islamic Liberation, formed to restore the caliphate and establish sharia throughout the world.
ibn/bin — son of.
ijma — doctrine of community consensus, the mainstay of Sunni Islam.
ijtihad — the use of independent reasoning in interpreting a matter of sharia, it being agreed that by about AD 900 all issues had been agreed by ijma, thus ‘the gates of ijtihad were closed’; see mujtahid.
Ikhwan — ‘Brotherhood’; name given to themselves by Wahhabi revivalists of Nejd in about 1912, whose conquest of Arabia under the tribal chief Abdul Aziz ibn Saud led to the formation of Saudi Arabia. In the 1930s the name was taken up in Egypt by the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen – Muslim Brotherhood, a politico-religious revolutionary party formed to liberate Islamic states.
imam — leader of public prayers but also a title denoting a spiritual leader; among Shias the spiritual and temporal head of their community by virtue of his direct descent from the Prophet; Shias and some Sunnis also believe that a last or ‘Hidden’ Imam is still to come, heralding the final victory of Islam and the end of the world; see Mahdi.
irtidad — apostasy, under sharia a capital offence.