An analysis of a variety of early Islamic texts to understand the creation and identity of early martyres and ascetics.
Cover -- Shurāt Legends, Ibāḍī Identities -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Series Editor's Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on Transliteration, Dates, and Qur'ānic Citations -- Introduction -- 1. Late Antique and Early Islamic Contexts -- 2. Shurāt Battles, …
An analysis of a variety of early Islamic texts to understand the creation and identity of early martyres and ascetics
In Shurāt Legends, Ibādī Identities, Adam Gaiser explores the origins and early development of Islamic notions of martyrdom and of martyrdom literature. He examines the catalogs or lists of martyrs (martyrologies) of the early shurāt (Khārijites) in the context of late antiquity…
An analysis of a variety of early Islamic texts to understand the creation and identity of early martyres and ascetics.
Abū Bilāl Mirdās b. Udayya (d. 61/680–1) was an early Basran Khārijī (shurāt) hero and martyr. He was from the Rabīʿa b. Ḥanẓala branch of the Tamīm tribe, and Udayya was said to be his mother’s name. According to the sources, his father’s name was Ḥudayr (al-Balādhurī, 5:188). …
Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl (or al-Ruḥayl) al-Qurayshī al-Makhzūmī al-ʿAbdī was a Basran Ibāḍī jurist, theologian, and historian who became a leader of the Basran Ibāḍī community after the death of Wāʾil b. Ayyūb, in about 190/806. His dates are uncertain: Crone and Zimmermann…
Khārijīs (also Khārijites; Ar. khawārij , sing. khārijī , “those who went out”) is the epithet given to groups of Muslim sectarians who held pious action to be the main criterion for accepting a person as a true Muslim, and who rejected the exclusive claims to the caliphate of t…
The nature of the Islamic sources for the early Muslim groups that were retroactively labelled Khārijites (khawārij) makes obtaining an accurate portrait of Khārijite notions of leadership difficult. On the one hand, Islamic sources use earlier Khārijite works as the basis of th…
The Ibāḍiyya are a distinctive Muslim denomination, being neither Sunnī nor Shīʿī, who emerged in Basra in the first half of the second/eighth century. They are the only surviving offshoot of the shurāt , a group which other Muslims later classed as Khārijī. Successful missionar…
Abū Jābir Muḥammad Ibn Jaʿfar al-Izkawī (d. 281/894) was an Omani Ibāḍī jurist from Izkī, a town in northeastern Oman. He is credited with Kitāb al-jāmiʿ , the first major compendium of Omani Ibāḍī fiqh (law). He was a student of the great Ibāḍī jurist and scholar Abū ʿAbdallāh …
Sālim Ibn Dhakwān (fl. late first/seventh century or second/eighth century?) was the purported author of an early Ibāḍī sīra (epistle) known as the Sīrat Sālim b. Dhakwān . Ibaḍīsm is a distinctive sect, neither Sunnī nor Shīʿī, which originated in the decades after the Prophet …
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad Ibn Baraka al-Bahlawī (d. late fourth/tenth century) was an Omani Ibāḍī jurist from Bahlā, in the interior of Oman. He adhered to the intellectual school of Omani Ibāḍism known as the Rustāq party, having studied under the second-generation Rus…
Bakriyya is an unclear appellation that may refer to one of two different groups, both of which supported Abū Bakr’s claim to the caliphate. A third usage of the term is a conflation of these two groups, generically casting the Bakriyya as promoters of Abū Bakr’s right to succes…
Like other Muslims, Ibāḍīs have long employed ḥadīth (in the general sense of what was related about the Prophet and his community) in seeking to understand how Islam should be understood and practised (Wilkinson, Ibāḍism , 126). Up to the sixth/twelfth century, however, Ibāḍīs …
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir b. Miyāl (or Mayyāl) b. Yūsuf al-Lawātī (d. 528/1133–4) was a North African Ibāḍī historian, biographer, poet, and specialist in traditions (aḥādīth). He was born in the Barqa province (i.e., ancient Cyrenaica, present day eastern cost…