Ḥuraymilāʾ (sometimes spelt Ḥuraymilā) was where Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1115–1206/1703–92) launched the Wahhābī movement in the mid-1150s/early 1740s. An otherwise unremarkable middle-sized settlement in the al-Maḥmal area of Najd in central Arabia, Ḥuraymilāʾ became, for a few crucial years in the mid-twelfth/eighteenth century, an important centre of religious and political opposition to the early Wahhābīs.

The town lies about seventy kilometres northwest of Riyadh on Jabal Ṭuwayq, surrounded by wadis. Springs make this a fertile area for crop…