324 REV. 8. M. ZWEMER, F.R.G.S., ON THE WAHABIS: 
Ill. PRESENT CONDITION AND INFLUENCE.—Our knowledge 
of the exact numbers and condition of the Wahabi sect is 
necessarily imperfect, and that for two reasons. Their old 
centres of power in Arabia have not been visited by 
European travellers for the last twenty years, and statistics of 
population are mere guesswork for all of the countries where 
there is no European government. Secondly, in India, 
where otherwise statistics would be valuable, the name of 
Wahabi received such a bad odour at the time of their jihad 
on the Sikhs, and in other frontier rebellions, that adherents 
of the sect have adopted other names to conceal their creed. 
According to the report of the census of India (1881, Vol. I, 
p- 27), Wahabis are found to some extent in every part of 
India; they are most numerous in the Patna district, and in 
the city of Umballa alone, according to Hubert Jansen, there 
are over 6,000 Wahabis. Yet the census of 1881 gives the 
total Wahabi population of all India as only 9,296! It 
seems to be the fact that not only are the Wahabis of India 
to some extent followers of Ibn Hanbal,* but that even in 
Arabia they no longer call themselves by their old name. 
I have just spoken with a Wahabi from Deraiah whom I met 
in the bazaar at Moharrek. He emphatically denied that the 
Wahabis were a sect at all, and said that he was a Sunnite 
of the Hanbali school, but followed the teaching of the great 
reformer Abd ul Wahab! Even the author of our MSS. on 
the Wahabi faith calls himself a Hanbali (see List of 
Authorities, p. 329). If this view has become general, it is 
evident that statistics of the Wahabis are out of question. 
According to Arnold (Preaching of Salem, p. 230), the 
remarkable revival of the Moslem faith in Bengal was due 
to Wahabi influence. ‘ Nineteen years ago in Bengal proper 
Hindus numbered nearly half a million more than Moslems 
did, and in the space of less than two decades, the Moslems 
have not only overtaken the Hindus, but have surpassed 
them by a million and a half.” 
In Arabia the chicf strongholds of the Wahabis are along 
the Oman coast of the Persian Gulf, especially Sharka, Abu 
* The Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal, founder of the fourth orthodox sect 
of Sunnis, was born at Bagdad a.p. 780. He died a.p. 855, and such was 
his reputed sanctity that 860,000 people are said to have atteaded his 
funeral, and on the same day 20,000 Jews and Christians embraced 
Islam. His teaching was not different in any important matter from the 
other sects, only more austere in its morals. (Cf. Hughes’s Dict. of Islam.) 
