ABSTRACT
Arab-Islamic civilization had reached a low ebb in the eighteenth century. If it was to lift itself by its own bootstraps, it might have done so in either of two ways. Since religion was central to it, the witness of its past is that resurgence might start with a movement of religious reform that would then work itself into political and cultural life. At least two such movements arose, the Wahhābī that took shape in mid-eighteenth century and gave rise to the Sa<ūdī dynasty in Arabia, and the Sanūsī which was born early in the nineteenth century and one of whose leaders reigned for a while over Tripolitania. Both had their greatest success in desert areas, the least accessible and – until the discovery of oil – the least desirable parts of the Arab world.
