Colonial sources disputed when the label Wahhabi entered British usage

Evidence

The origins of the term Wahhabi was a point of dispute between Sayyid Ahmad Khan and W.W. Hunter. Hunter claimed that the term was not in use in the late 1840s, one of several points that Sayyid Ahmad Khan disputed in his reply to Hunter’s book. Hunter, W.W. (1871). The Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen, Trübner, London, p. 22, n. 3. Khan, Review on Dr. Hunter, pp. 10–12. The use of the term Wahhabi, however, was not unknown to the British in the 1830s. Immediately after the death of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi, a scholarly article described his followers as an ‘Indian imitation’ of the Arabian Wahhabis. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 39

Categorization

• DEFINE: The very label ‘Wahhabi’ was contested between Sayyid Ahmad Khan and W.W. Hunter, showing the term was itself an object of colonial-era argument rather than a stable descriptor.
• XREF: Mirrors modern debates about who gets to define ‘Salafi,’ ‘jihadist,’ or ‘terrorist’ — the label as a policing instrument, not a neutral taxonomy.