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Islam, Wahhabism, Polytheism & VandalismWithin Sunnī Islām in general and the Ḥanbalī Tradition in particular, the concept of false-gods and intercession between mankind and the divine (shirk) is regarded with extreme hostility, as is the material representation and manifestation of such phenomena. Given the gravity of the sin symbolised by material expressions of false-gods and intercession—particularly shrines and idols—the Ḥanbalī Movement throughout history and their modern Salafī descendants have frequently engaged in acts of vandalism and iconoclasm, ranging from the destruction of the pagan shrines of Ḥarrān during the Middle Ages to the destruction of the Bāmiyānī Buddha statues in the present. This attitude towards the materiality and perceived material representations of sin and sinfulness is logical within traditional Islāmic hermeneutics, culminating in the various extremes of Ḥanbalī iconoclastic and vandalistic religious activism. Although there are many ways in which Materiality has been relevant to Ḥanbalī religious expression, the radical movement’s obsession with shirk and the destruction of material representations of shirk is the most salient.
1.0 Hermeneutics
Within Sunnī-Islāmic Tradition, the greatest possible sin that a human being is capable of committing is the crime of shirk, the act of ‘associating’ anything—particularly a false deity, idol, shrine or some form of intercession—with God. Shirk is often translated into English as ‘polytheism’ and is held within traditional Sunnī-Islāmic hermeneutics to be the antithesis of tawḥīd (‘monotheism’), the foundational belief of Islām. The Qurʾān—held to be the Word of God within Islāmic Tradition—commands Muslims to kill all Mushrikūn (‘Associators’ or Polytheists), and further states that shirk is an unforgivable sin in the eyes of God.[1] The urgency of the anti-shirk polemic in Islāmic Tradition is reflected in the Ḥadīth Literature of Sunnī Islām, which records the Prophet Muḥammad as having commanded his followers to kill all adult male Mushrikūn.[2]
Given the demonisation of shirk in the Qurʾān and Islām, it follows logically—within the interpretative framework of Islāmic Tradition—that any and all material expressions of shirk should be attacked and destroyed. The unforgivable status of shirk in the eyes of God renders the sin a grievous danger to all humans wishing to enter heaven and avoid an eternity in hell – consequently, the destruction and erasure shirk (including material representations and devotions to shirk) would seem logical. Consistent with the hermeneutical worldview of Islāmic Tradition, acts of vandalism and iconoclasm directed towards Mushrikī materiality would logically constitute both an act of piety—in preserving and championing the seminal Islāmic doctrine of tawḥīd—and an act of spiritual protection (against the unforgivable and insidious sin of shirk). The destruction of Mushrikī materiality could even be seen as a symbolic act of pious cleansing (within the traditional Islāmic symbolic system of understanding), given that the Mushrikūn are described in the Qurʾān as unclean (najas).[3]
A hypothetical and speculative link based upon logical extrapolation between the traditional Islāmic conception of shirk and the historical Muslim trend of anti-Shirk vandalism and iconoclasm is unnecessary, however, since Islāmic Tradition itself actually makes this connection explicitly. When the Prophet Muḥammad annexed the city of Makkah, he entered the Kaʿbah sanctuary of the Mushrikūn and destroyed all of their idols, purging the site of shirk and rededicating it to tawḥīd.[4][5] Not only is shirk vilified in the Qurʾān and Islāmic Tradition as an insidious and unforgivable sin punishable by death, but the Prophet Muḥammad himself—as depicted in the Ḥadīth Literature—took the logical step implied by this symbolic system of hermeneutical understanding and promulgated explicit policies to eradicate any sign or expression of the phenomenon. This kind of divinely-sanctioned iconoclastic and vandalistic behaviour—exemplified by the foundational Prophet of Islām, no less—set a time-honoured precedent for Muslim religious activism in relation to Mushrikī materiality and material representations of shirk, particularly within the scripturalist-literalist Ḥanbalī Tradition.
2.0 Background
The Ḥanbalī Movement has its origins in the Ahl al-Ḥadīth (‘People of Tradition’ or Traditionalists) of early Islām. The Traditionalists were a religious movement who championed the view that “human reasoning and personal opinion” were inferior and subordinate to the aḥādīth (traditions) that contained the recorded knowledge and wisdom of the Prophet Muḥammad. Within the hermeneutics of the Traditionalists, the Prophet was the ultimate authority on any given matter and his Sunnah (exemplary behaviour) a blueprint for how all pious Muslims should live their life.[6]
Out of this Traditionalist impulse emerged the Ḥanābilah or Ḥanbalī Movement, a school of theology and law that was strictly scripturalist and literalist in nature.[7] First articulated by Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855) in the 9th Century C.E.,[8] the Ḥanābilah gained popularity in Mediæval Mesopotamia and often conflicted violently with the adherents of other Muslim schools of theology and law.[9] One of the most important and influential scholars in the history and development of the Ḥanbalī Movement was Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), who championed the conviction that all pious Muslims should emulate the Islām practiced by the Salaf aṣ-Ṣāliḥ (Pious Predecessors). The Salaf wa al-Khalaf (Predecessors and the Successors) were the first generations of the early Muslim community, whose version of Islām was considered by Ibn Taymiyyah to be the most accurate reflection of the Prophet’s Islām. Ibn Taymiyyah rejected the law, theology and practice developed by later Muslim scholars and insisted that anything unfounded literally or logically upon the Sunnah (as expressed by the Salaf and recorded in the authentic Ḥadīth Literature) was a heretical or sinful innovation (bidʿah).[10]
This obsession with bidʿah was further championed and expounded by the 18th Century Arabian Ḥanbalī revivalist and reformer Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), who derived most of his inspiration from Ibn Taymiyyah and similar Ḥanbalī scholars from the past. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb not only despised various non-Sunnī sects of Islām—such as the Shīʿah, the Muʿtazilah and the Khawārij—but also denounced certain expressions of Sunnī Islām as heretical, particularly Ṣūfism and Kalām (Theology). Following in the footsteps of Ibn Taymiyyah before him, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb considered these dimensions of Sunnī Islām to commonly nurture and promote bidʿah (although Ibn Taymiyyah never entirely rejected Ṣūfism). Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also denounced the pre-Islāmic practices and customs that survived amongst the nomadic Badawī tribes of the Arabian Peninsula and embarked on a campaign of violent expansion to purify the land of bidʿah and shirk. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s expression of Ḥanbalism became known as Wahhābiyyah, whilst his followers became known as the Wahhābiyyūn. Although initially unsuccessful in his efforts, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s fortunes changed when he allied himself with the Suʿūdī family. This politico-religious union culminated in the establishment of a Wahhābī-Suʿūdī amīrate, centred upon town of ad-Dirʿiyyah in the Najd region of Arabia. Over the course of the 18th and 19th Centuries the Wahhābī-Suʿūdī polity experienced varying degrees of success and defeat until the early 20th Century, when the modern Kingdom of Suʿūdī Arabia was established. The official creed of the Suʿūdī state is Ḥanbalī Islām and over the course of the last century the Wahhābī-Suʿūdī establishment as spent billions of petro-dollars propagating their Wahhābī-Ḥanbalī ideology—often packaged as Salafism—throughout the Muslim world. The modern popular Salafī Movement of Islām—regardless of its varied origins and heterogeneous nature—is at present a revived form of the Ḥanbalī Tradition and virtually synonymous with Wahhābism.[11]
3.0: History
The Ḥanbalī Tradition—particularly in its modern Wahhābī and Salafī manifestations—has a long history of iconoclasm and vandalism towards perceived material representations of shirk. The scripturalist-literalist nature of the Ḥanbalī Movement makes this historical trend the logical outcome of the implications of traditional Sunnī-Islāmic hermeneutics and the Sunnah-precedent set by the Prophet Muḥammad himself. Although this tense relationship between Ḥanbalī religious expression and perceived material representations of shirk has existed since the inception of the Ḥanbalī Movement—to take but one example, the Ḥanābilah of Mediæval Ḥarrān destroyed all of the pagan temples in the city during the 11th Century[12]—the most notable examples of Ḥanbalī iconoclasm and vandalism have taken place comparatively recently.
3.1: The Wahhābiyyūn in Karbalāʾ
In April of 1801, Suʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—the son of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Suʿūd, the second Amīr and Imām of the nascent Wahhābī-Suʿūdī polity—invaded the holy Shīʿī city of Karbalāʾ in Mesopotamia. The Wahhābī-Suʿūdī army was 12,000 men strong and in the course of their rampage they slew over 3,000 inhabitants of the city, looted the houses and bazaars, and destroyed the holy Shīʿī and Ṣūfī shrines.[13]
The symbolic nature of this act within Ḥanbalī hermeneutics and in regards to the historical relationship between the Ḥanābilah and perceived material representations of shirk is significant. According to the Ḥanbalī-Wahhābī conception of reality, the traditional Shīʿī veneration of the graves of great Shīʿī imāms and saints constitutes an act of shirk.[14] Concordantly, the Ḥanbalī-Wahhābī destruction of Shīʿī grave-shrines—within the Ḥanbalī-Wahhābī system of symbolic understanding—was an act of pious vandalism against the physical embodiment and material representation of the gravest sin imaginable. This act of pious destruction was made more symbolic by the fact that Karbalāʾ is one of the holiest cities in Shīʿī Islām and the site of Shīʿī religious pilgrimage and devotion. The reason for this sanctity is the presence therein of the grave-shrine of Al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, a seminal figure in Shīʿī religious tradition and the central figure in ʿĀshūrāʾ, one of the most significant Shīʿī holy days. The sacred domed-temple of Al-Ḥusayn was specifically targeted and destroyed by the Wahhābiyyūn during their sack of Karbalāʾ, a symbolic act that was celebrated in the Wahhābī-Suʿūdī capital of ad-Dirʿiyyah:
When Suʿūd and his troops returned home to ad-Dirʿiyyah, his father, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and the entire city turned out to congratulate them. The soldiers had destroyed Al-Ḥusayn’s dome, the most evil idol of all because it was the centre of the Shīʿī heresy. The rest of the world was horrified; to this day, the reputation of the Wahhābiyyūn has never fully recovered.[15]
In this way, the destruction of the Dome of Al-Ḥusayn in particular and the Shīʿī shrines of Karbalāʾ in general was perceived within Ḥanbalī hermeneutics to be a pious purge of material representations and manifestations of shirk. The magnitude and symbology of this act of vandalism and destruction (given the sanctity of Karbalāʾ within Shīʿī Tradition) stands out prominently in the history and relationship of Ḥanbalī Islām towards materiality and perceptions of materiality.
3.2: The Wahhābiyyūn in Makkah
The actions of the Wahhābiyyūn in the city of Makkah were less bloody than their activities in Karbalāʾ, but no less symbolic. Makkah was the hometown of the Prophet Muḥammad according to Islāmic Tradition and the site of the holy Kaʿbah, to which all Muslims are religiously obligated to conduct a ritual pilgrimage at least once in their lives. After nearly a millennium of various regional and foreign dynasties and regimes, control over the city fell to the Ottoman (ʿUthmānī) Sulṭānate in 1517. The authority of distant Constantinople (Qusṭanṭīniyyah) was maintained in Makkah for several centuries – it wasn’t until the rise of the Wahhābī Movement in Arabia that Ottoman dominion over the region was threatened.[16] In April of 1803, Suʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz entered the city of Makkah with a Wahhābī army, claiming the region for the Wahhābī-Suʿūdī Amīrate of ad-Dirʿiyyah. In the course of this occupation the Wahhābiyyūn destroyed all of the Ṣūfī and Shīʿī tomb-shrines in the city. The common Ṣūfī and Shīʿī practice of venerating the tomb-shrines of notable historical Muslim figures in order to achieve saintly intercession for prayer was held by the Ḥanābilah to be a form of shirk, material expressions of which needed to be destroyed.[17] Such was the motivation behind the iconoclastic Wahhābī policy in Makkah, where even the tombs of the Ṣaḥābah (Muḥammad’s companions) and the Ahl al-Bayt (Muḥammad’s family) were effaced.[18] This religiously-inspired act of mass-vandalism was one of the most symbolic instances of the relationship between Ḥanbalī religious expression and Materiality in history. The Wahhābiyyūn, enacting the logical implications of traditional Ḥanbalī hermeneutics, purged the holiest city of Islām—the heart and centre of tawḥīd—of all perceived material representations and manifestations of shirk.
3.3: The Ṭālibān in Afghānistān
The Ṭālibān Movement emerged in the 1980s amongst the Afghān refugee-population of Pākistān, when Afghānistān was in the midst of a protracted civil war. Beginning in October of 1994, the Ṭālibān embarked on a militant struggle to conquer Afghānistān and by the late 1990s they controlled most of the nation. The leadership of the Ṭālibān was a generation of religious clerics who had received their education in the ultra-conservative madrasah-system of north-western Pākistān and Balūchistān, whose ideology was a synthesis of the indigenous Dēobandī Tradition of India and the Wahhābī Tradition imported from Suʿūdī Arabia.[19]
As with the Ḥanābilah in other regions of the world, the quasi-Wahhābī Ṭālibān regarded any perceived material representation of shirk with extreme hostility and on the 26th of February in 2001, Muḥammad ʿUmar—the leader of the Ṭālibān and the Amīr of Afghānistān—declared that all pre-Islāmic statues within the country were to be destroyed. The main target of this iconoclastic policy was the ancient Buddhist ruins and antiquities present in Afghānistān, including two giant Buddha-statues in Bāmiyān. On the 9th of March in 2001, members of the Ṭālibān blew up the Bāmiyānī statues, and also destroyed many other ancient Buddhist effigies throughout Afghānistān.[20]
This act of religiously-inspired mass-vandalism was highly symbolic within the Ṭālibān’s ideological system of understanding, as with the many other famous instances of Wahhābī iconoclasm. For the Ṭālibān, the religion of Buddhism and the creation and worship of Buddha-statues is a form of shirk. As per traditional Ḥanbalī hermeneutics, material representations and manifestations of shirk—even if they are no longer worshipped—are unacceptable and must be erased. For the Ṭālibān (as with the Wahhābiyyūn in Karbalāʾ and Makkah), the destruction of ancient Buddhist religious paraphernalia in Afghānistān represented a pious cleansing of the material presence of shirk and the defence of tawḥīd against the insidious influences of shirk. As Muḥammad ʿUmar (the leader of the Ṭālibān and the ruler of Afghānistān) once said:
“All the statues in the country should be destroyed because these statues have been used as idols and deities by the non-believers before. They are respected now and may be turned into idols in the future too. Only God, the Almighty, deserves to be worshipped, not anyone or anything else.”[21]
In this way, the religiously symbolic mass-vandalism perpetuated by the Ṭālibān was the logical outcome of the traditional Ḥanbalī and Wahhābī worldview.
Conclusion
Given the insidious and evil nature of shirk as depicted in Islāmic Tradition, it comes as no surprise that Muslims throughout history—especially the Ḥanbalī Movement and its various offshoots—have routinely engaged in iconoclastic and vandalistic activity. The consistently destructive nature of Ḥanbalī religious activism is logically and symbolically consistent with the Ḥanbalī system of hermeneutics and worldview, itself the logical outcome of Muḥammad’s recorded Sunnah and traditional Sunnī-Islāmic perceptions of shirk. To reiterate an earlier point: Although there are many ways in which Materiality has been relevant to Ḥanbalī expressions of religious activism, the pious destruction of perceived material representations of shirk is the most salient.
[1] Daniel Gimaret, ‘Shirk’, in Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri J. van Donzel, Wolfhart P. Heinrichs & Gerard Lecomte (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 9: San–Sze (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1997), pp.485-486. For the command to kill all Mushrikūn, see Qurʾān 9:29; for the unforgivable nature of Shirk, see Qurʾān 4:48 & Qurʾān 4:116.
[2] Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh at-Tabrīzī & Al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Masʿūd al-Baghawī (Translated by James Robson), Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ, Volume 2 (Lahore, Pakistan: Shaykh Muḥammad Ashraf, 2006), p.838: “Samurah ibn Jundub reported the Prophet as saying, “Kill the old men who are polytheists, but spare their sharkh;” i.e., their children. At-Tirmidhī and Abū Dāwūd transmitted it.”
[3] As-Saʿīd M. Badawī & Muḥammad A. S. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, Arabic-English Dictionary of Qurʾānic Usage (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N.V., 2008), p.918. Also see: Qurʾān 9:28.
[4] Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Khiyār (Translated and Annotated by Alfred Guillaume), The Life of Muḥammad: A Translation of Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.552.
[5] Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr (Translated by Trevor le Gassick), The Life of the Prophet Muḥammad (As-Sīrat an-Nabawiyyah), Volume 3 (Reading, U.K: Garnet Publishing Ltd., 2006), pp.407-410.
[6] For the Ahl al-Ḥadīth, see: Joseph Schacht, ‘Ahl al-Ḥadīth’, in Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Johannes H. Kramers, Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Joseph Schacht, Bernard Lewis & Charles Pellat (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 1: A–B (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1960), pp.258-259. For the Sunnah, see: Gautier H. A. Juynboll, ‘Sunna’, in Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri J. van Donzel, Wolfhart P. Heinrichs & Gerard Lecomte (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 9: San–Sze (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1997), pp.878-881.
[7] For an overview of the history and articulation of the Ḥanābilah, see: Henri Laoust, ‘Ḥanābila’, in Bernard Lewis, Victor L. Ménage, Charles Pellat & Joseph Schacht (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 3: H–Iram (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1971), pp.159-162.
[8] Henri Laoust, ‘Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’, in Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Johannes H. Kramers, Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Joseph Schacht, Bernard Lewis & Charles Pellat (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 1: A–B (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1960), pp.273-276.
[9] Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (Chicago, I.L: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp.193-194.
[10] Henri Laoust, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’, in Bernard Lewis, Victor L. Ménage, Charles Pellat & Joseph Schacht (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 3: H–Iram (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1971), pp.951-955.
[11] For Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, see: Henri Laoust, ‘Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’, in Bernard Lewis, Victor L. Ménage, Charles Pellat & Joseph Schacht (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 3: H–Iram (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1971), pp.677-679. For Wahhābī Islām, see: Esther Peskes & Werner Ende, ‘Wahhābiyya’, in Peri J. Bearman, Thierry Bianquis, Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri J. van Donzel & Wolfhart P. Heinrichs (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 11: V–Z (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 2002), pp.39-46. For the history and development of the Wahhābī-Suʿūdī phenomenon, see: Charles Allen, God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad (London, U.K: Abacus, 2007). For the modern propagation of Wahhābī propaganda throughout the Muslim world, see: Khālid M. Abū al-Faḍl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York, N.Y: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), pp.69-74 & pp.86-88. For Ibn Taymiyyah’s nuanced views on Ṣūfī Islām, see: Albert Ḥ. Ḥurānī, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley, C.A: The University of California Press, 1981), p.94. For the rise of the modern Salafī Movement, see: ʿAlī A. ʿAlawī, The Crisis of Islamic Civilization (New Haven, C.T: Yale University Press, 2009), pp.116-118.
[12] Géza Fehérvári, ‘Ḥarrān’, in Bernard Lewis, Victor L. Ménage, Charles Pellat & Joseph Schacht (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 3: H–Iram (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1971), p.228: “Ḥarrān was also a Ḥanbalī stronghold. The Ṣābiʾūn did not enjoy religious freedom for very long; their persecution started in the early 11th century, and the last Ṣābiʾ temple was destroyed at that time.”
[13] Ernst Honigmann, ‘Karbalāʾ’, in Emeri J. van Donzel, Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat & Clifford E. Bosworth (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 4: Iran–Kha (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1978), p.638.
[14] Jacob Goldberg, ‘The Shiʿi Minority in Saudi Arabia’, in Juan R. I. Cole & Nikki R. Keddie (eds.), Shiʿism and Social Protest (New Haven, C.T: Yale University Press, 1986), pp.231-232.
[15] Mark Weston, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present (Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008), p.101. Note: The English transliteration of Arabic words in this quotation has been altered by this author to conform to the current standard of Arabic-English transliterations in modern Academia.
[16] William M. Watt, ‘Makkah: 1. The pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Periods’, in Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri J. van Donzel, Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat & Wolfhart P. Heinrichs (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 6: Mahk–Mid (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1991), pp.144-147. Also see: Arent J. Wensinck & Clifford E. Bosworth, ‘Makka: 2. From the ʿAbbāsid to the Modern Period’, in Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri J. van Donzel, Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat & Wolfhart P. Heinrichs (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 6: Mahk–Mid (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 1991), pp.147-152.
[17] Ira M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p.488.
[18] Wayne H. Bowen, The History of Saudi Arabia (Westport C.T: Greenwood Press, 2008), p.73. Also see: Rodney Collomb, The Rise and Fall of the Arab Empire: And the Founding of Western Pre-Eminence (Stroud, U.K: Spellmount, 2006), p.158: “In 1803 the Wahhābiyyūn captured Makkah and Madīnah in the Ḥijāz, laying the foundations of the first Suʿūdī state by destroying the many Shīʿī and Ṣūfī shrines dedicated to Islāmic saints, including a shrine over the tomb of Fāṭimah the Prophet’s daughter.” Note: The English transliteration of Arabic words in this quotation has been altered by this author to conform to the current standard of Arabic-English transliterations in modern Academia.
[19] Larry P. Goodson, ‘Ṭālibān’, in Peri J. Bearman, Thierry Bianquis, Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri J. van Donzel & Wolfhart P. Heinrichs (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 12: Supplement (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N. V., 2004), pp.786-787.
[20] Keith A. Leitich, ‘Taliban, Destruction of Bamiyan and Pre-Islamic Artifacts’, in Spencer C. Tucker (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars: The United States in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq Conflicts (Santa Barbara, C.A: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2010), p.1216.
[21] Cited in: ʿAbd aṣ-Ṣabāḥ ad-Dīn, History of Afghanistan (New Delhi, India: Global Vision Publishing House, 2008), p.29.
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Topic: Klingschor's new article: Islam, Wahhabism, Polytheism & Vandalism