well thought and researched.

I could do a long post but basically the Ottoman empire was fighting "terrorism" since the late 1700s to early 1900s in battles taking Mecca & Medina losing it taking it back up until the US agreed to militarily defend them in exchange for oil during World War 2. but they had powerful backers that wanted to end the Ottoman empire the wahabbi cult which is as old as the United States backed by British spies there is even a book.

Confessions of a British Spy

Hempher, only one of the thousands of male and female agents employed and sent forth to all countries by this ministry, entrapped a person named Muhammad of Najd in Basra, misled him for several years, and caused him to establish the sect called Wahhâbî in 1125 [1713 A.D.]. They announced this sect in 1150. Hempher is a British missioner who was assigned the task of carrying on espionage activities in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Hidjaz and in Istanbul, the center of the (Islamic) caliphate, misleading Muslims and serving Christianity, by means of the Ministry of British Commonwealth of Nations.

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-British-Spy-Mr-Hempher/dp/1910220159

The book was published late 1700s alleges he recruited Al-wahhab the theory was if they went very extreme they would "weaken their morals"

This wiki article has been edited from the original informative version well over a year ago the al-wahhab wasn't a "hothead Iraqi" but from Nejd where Saudi Arabia is but it still has something left

In the book, a British spy named Hempher, working in the early 1700s, tells of disguising himself as a Muslim and infiltrating the Ottoman Empire with the goal of weakening it to destroy Islam once and for all. He tells his readers: "when the unity of Muslims is broken and the common sympathy among them is impaired, their forces will be dissolved and thus we shall easily destroy them... We, the English people, have to make mischief and arouse schism in all our colonies in order that we may live in welfare and luxury."[4]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_Mr._Hempher,_The_British_Spy_to_the_Middle_East

Information is very limited on that. Back to the point.


It is difficult to find old information but there was a battle where the religious wahabbis the preachers they executed while they let the politicians go who were only in it for that what I'm looking for explains it better than I can but it was Muslims trying to stop these guys.



(Snip)


Saud bin Abdul-Aziz bin Muhammad bin Saud managed to establish his rule over southeastern Syria between 1803 and 1812. However, Egyptian forces acting under the Ottoman Empire and led by Ibrahim Pasha, were eventually successful in counterattacking in a campaign starting from 1811.[105] In 1818 they defeated Al-Saud, leveling the capital Diriyah, executing the Al-Saud emir and exiling the emirate's political and religious leadership,[91][106] and otherwise unsuccessfully attempted to stamp out not just the House of Saud but the Wahhabi mission as well.[107]

A second, smaller Saudi state (Emirate of Nejd) lasted from 1819–1891. Its borders being within Najd, Wahhabism was protected from further Ottoman or Egyptian campaigns by the Najd's isolation, lack of valuable resources, and that era's limited communication and transportation.[108]

By the 1880s, at least among townsmen if not Bedouin, Wahhabi strict monotheistic doctrine had become the native religious culture of the Najd
One of their most noteworthy and controversial attacks was on Karbala in 1802. There, according to a Wahhabi chronicler `Uthman b. `Abdullah b. Bishr: "The Muslims" – as the Wahhabis referred to themselves, not feeling the need to distinguish themselves from other Muslims, since they did not believe them to be Muslims –

scaled the walls, entered the city ... and killed the majority of its people in the markets and in their homes. [They] destroyed the dome placed over the grave of al-Husayn [and took] whatever they found inside the dome and its surroundings ... the grille surrounding the tomb which was encrusted with emeralds, rubies, and other jewels ... different types of property, weapons, clothing, carpets, gold, silver, precious copies of the Qur'an."[102][103]

After this, the Wahhabis also massacred the male population and enslaved the women and children of the predominantly Sunni city of Ta'if in Hejaz in 1803.[10

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism


Wahhabi War

The Wahhabi War was fought from early 1811 to 1818, between Egypt Eyalet under the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha (nominally under Ottoman Empire rule) and the army of the Emirate of Diriyah, the First Saudi State, resulting in the destruction of the latter.

The Wahhabi movement was a fundamentalist sect within Islam founded by Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab that would lead to creation of the Emirate of Diriyah as he and Muhammad bin Saud launched their campaign to reform Islam and consolidate power in Arabia from their power-base, and its eventual crushing by the Ottoman Empire’s Egyptian khedive Muhammad Ali of Egypt.

In 1802 the Wahhabi sack of Karbala resulted in 5000 deaths and the plundering of the Imam Husayn Shrine and, by 1805, the Wahhabis controlled Mecca and Medina.[2] The Wahhabis also attacked Ottoman trade caravans which interrupted the Ottoman finances.[3] The Saudi amir denounced the Ottoman sultan and called into question the validity of his claim to be caliph and guardian of the sanctuaries of the Hejaz[4] and the Ottoman Empire, suspicious of the ambitious Muhammad Ali, instructed him to fight the Wahhabis, as the defeat of either would be beneficial to them.[3]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi_War


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Nejd

This basically went on until the 1900s and Saudi understood how weak they really were a tribal fundamentalist cult happened to be sitting on a gold mine looking for water which California Oil Company (Texaco) found and the rest is history.

I haven't even got into what the wahabbis were doing in Iraq Kuwait region in the early 1900s but that is another research post. This post is actually the short version because I'm on a tablet. Iraq's history is very fascinating. I've been there it is a beautiful country especially in the morning. There is something a
special about the mornings in Iraq, I can't describe it.