The idea that Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida led a movement of reform called Salafiyya (or Salafism) is one of the basic postulates on which the study of modern Islamic thought is built. It is true that Salafism has become a label whereby many scholars in the West, and some in the Middle East, refer to the broad program of Islamic modernism that took shape in the late nineteenth century. Yet this definition is the source of much confusion, for Salafism has also become a puristic label that stands for a rigorist religious orientation and methodology associated with Wahhabism and the religious establishment of Saudi Arabia. How can there be such a gap? This paper will attempt to relieve some of the confusion that beclouds the term Salafism by looking, on the one hand, at the history of its meaning up to the early twentieth century and, on the other hand, at the process through which it gradually became a truly widespread label and slogan. Hence, the argument will be twofold. First, the paper will contend that the substantive “Salafism”, which refers to a broad program of modernist reform, is in fact a creation of the twentieth century. While some Salafi labels existed as early as the Middle Ages, their meaning was rather narrow and theological in nature. Second, the paper will argue that the famous Salafiyya Press and Bookstore of Cairo played an important role in the emergence of “Salafism” as a label, gave it unprecedented visibility, and accounted for much of its diffusion. Through its publications and editing choices, the Bookstore also contributed to setting the parameters of what constituted Salafism. In other words, it influenced the perceived meaning of this label and evidently led some observers to believe that Salafism referred to a broad movement of renaissance (nahda), reform (islah), and Islamic modernism in general. This is indeed how French scholars understood the term as early as the 1920s. Sources for this paper include medieval biographical dictionaries and Hanbali theological treatises, but the bulk of the research is based on various materials written, printed or distributed by the managers the Salafiyya Press and Bookstore from the 1910s to the 1920s. Western reviews of this material will also be used.