The Wahhabi Massacre at Tha’if

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

One of the worst abominations perpetrated by the Wahhabis under the leadership of ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was the massacre of the people of Tha’if.  Upon entering that town, they killed everyone in sight, slaughtering both child and adult, the ruler and the ruled, the lowly and well-born.  They began with a suckling child nursing at his mother's breast and moved on to a group studying Qur’an, slaying them, down to the last man.  And when they wiped out the people they found in the houses, they went out into the streets, the shops and the mosques, killing whoever happened to be there.  They killed even men bowed in prayer until they had annihilated every Muslim who dwelt in Tha’if and only a remnant, some twenty or more, remained. 

These were holed up in Bayt al-Fitni with ammunition, inaccessible to their approach.  There was another group at Bayt al-Far to the number of two-hundred and seventy who fought them that day, then the second and third until the Wahhabis sent them a guarantee of clemency; only they tendered this proposal as a trick.  For when they entered, they seized their weapons and slew them to a man.  Others, they also brought out with a guarantee of clemency and a pact to the valley of Waj where they abandoned them in the cold and snow, barefoot, naked exposed in shame with their women, accustomed to the privacy afforded them by common decency and religious morality.  They, then, plundered their possessions: wealth of any kind, household furnishings and cash. 

They cast books into the streets alleys and byways to be blown to and fro by the wind among which could be found copies of the Qur’an, volumes of Swahih al-Bukhari, Swahih Muslim, other canonical collections of ahadits and books of fiqh, all amounting to the thousands.  These books remained there for several days, trampled upon by the Wahhabis.  What is more, no one among them made the slightest attempt to remove even one page of Qur’an from under foot to preserve it from the ignominy of this display of disrespect.  Then, they razed the houses and made what was once a town a barren waste land.  That was in the year 1217 AH / 1802 CE.