ABSTRACT
Popular religion has always tended towards saint-worship; in most cases the survival of older and pre-Islamic beliefs and practices. The annual pilgrimage causes holy cities to be the very heart of Islam and any religious movement there is quickly passed on to the ends of the Muslim world. Before the struggle came to an end the Wahhabi state was visited by the Swiss traveller Burckhardt, himself a convert to Islam, who has left a most interesting and valuable record of his journey in “Notes on the Bedouins and Wahhabis“. During the period of their power the Fulbe did much to extend Islam, largely by warfare on their heathen neighbours, but do not seem to have continued to be so active in missionary work since coming under British rule. In each case the immediate and direct result of the Wahhabi movement was the attempt to set up a theocratic state and to propagate Islam by armed force.
