Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (; ; 1703 – 22 June 1792) was a Sunni Muslim preacher and scholar from Nejd in central Arabia who claimed to "purify" Islam by returning it to what, he believed, were the original principles of that religion as the salaf, that is first three generations of Muslims, understood it. He rejected certain common Muslim practices which he regarded as amounting to either religious innovation (bid‘ah) or polytheism (shirk).