ABSTRACT
The spirit of the desert dominated Arabia even at points remote from the great stony central plateau or the sandy wastes of the Dahna or the Rub’ al-Khali – the Empty Quarter. This sense of superiority, of the desert Arab over the city dwellers of the Hejaz, has its origins in the early days of Islam, for although the first Muslims came from Medina, and latterly Mecca, it was the tribes and confederations of the interior which provided the mainspring of Islamic expansion. The pattern has repeated itself in more recent history, for the powerful Wahhabi movement of puritan Islam, headed by the Saud family of the Nejd, imposed the values of the desert upon the decadent cities. An observer of the Wahhabi conquest of Mecca in 1807 noted with some surprise:
they never steal neither by force nor by trickery, except when they believe an object to belong to an enemy or an unbeliever; everything they buy and every service rendered them they pay for with their money. Blindly following their leaders, they silently endure every kind of hardship, and will let themselves be led to the ends of the earth.
