The Sufi Shaykh of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb? An Overview of the Writings of the Madinan Ḥadīth Scholar Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī

Abstract The pronounced Sufi affiliations of nearly all notable eighteenth-century scholars active in the eighteenth-century, with the notorious exception of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, most often appear in academic literature as a secondary consideration: a vestige of ‘tradition’ still in process of ‘reformation’. Described as the ‘bearer of the banner of the Sunna in Medina’, Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī (d. 1750) was situated at the heart of scholarly networks in the eighteenth-century Hijaz. He was allegedly the direct teacher of such influential figures as Shāh Walī-Allāh (d. 1762), Muḥammad al-Sammān (d. 1775), and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792). This article explores his writing on pedagogy, ḥadīth, jurisprudence, theology, and Sufism to argue that this key scholar articulated a coherent identity as a Sufi intellectual within the Akbarian-influenced networks of eighteenth-century Arabia. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s alleged affiliation to al-Sindī was the exception that proved the rule of dynamic theological and mystical scholarly exchanges within the period.