Ibadism: Origins and Early Development in Oman

443 Pages·2010·2.714 MB·English

by  John C. Wilkinson

Title Pages
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Ibâḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman
John C. Wilkinson
Print publication date: 2010
Print ISBN-13: 9780199588268
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588268.001.0001
Title Pages
Ibâḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman Oxford Oriental Monographs
Ibâḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman
This series of monographs from the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, makes
available the results of recent research by scholars connected with the Faculty. Its range of
subject matter includes language, literature, thought, history, and art; its geographical scope
extends from the Mediterranean and Caucasus to East Asia. The emphasis is more on specialist
studies than on works of a general nature.
Editorial Board
John Baines Professor of Egyptology
Bjarke Frellesvig Professor of Japanese Linguistics
Christopher Minkowski Boden Professor of Sanskrit
Charles Ramble University Lecturer in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies
Robert Thomson formerly Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian Studies
Geert Jan van Gelder, Laudian Professor of Arabic
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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Contents
Title Pages
Dedication
Maps and Table
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Conventions
Geographical Note
A Preliminary Note on Omani and Ibâḍi Sources
1 The Pre‐Islamic Heritage: Yaman and Nizâr
2 The Pre‐Islamic Heritage: Mazûn and the Arabization of Arabia
3 The Conversion to Islam
4 The Omani Tribes in Basra
5 The Origins of Ibâḍism
6 The Early Ibâḍis
7 The Propagation of Ibâḍism from Basra
8 The Establishment of the Imamate in Oman
9 Law and Order
10 The Ibâḍi Ethos
11 Civil War and Aftermath
12 Consequences
13 The 6/12th Century
14 Madhhabization
End Matter
References
General Index
Index of Arabic Terminology
Dedication
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Ibâḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman
John C. Wilkinson
Print publication date: 2010
Print ISBN-13: 9780199588268
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588268.001.0001
Dedication
(p.v) In memory of a great Omani scholar, ῾Abdullâh b. Ḥumayd al‐Sâlimi (1868–1914) ‘Words
and Deeds’ (p.vi)
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Maps and Table
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Ibâḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman
John C. Wilkinson
Print publication date: 2010
Print ISBN-13: 9780199588268
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588268.001.0001
(p.viii) Maps and Table
Genealogical Table: The Azd (after ῾Awtabi) xxi
Map 1. The Old Regional Names of Oman xxii
Map 2. Central Oman xxiii
Map 3. Northern Oman. (Reproduced from John C. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of
Oman (Cambridge, 1987), by kind permission of Cambridge University Press.) xxiv
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Introduction
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Ibâḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman
John C. Wilkinson
Print publication date: 2010
Print ISBN-13: 9780199588268
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588268.001.0001
(p.ix) Introduction
Origins
Ibâḍism represents a branch of the third great division in Islam resulting from the civil war a
quarter of a century after the death of the Prophet, that of the Khawârij, or as they themselves
prefer to be called, the Muḥakkima. It survives in some isolated communities in North Africa
(the Maghrib), but manifested itself periodically in Oman as a full Imamate down to the second
half of the twentieth century. As the Omanis say, the true ῾ilm (learning) is like a bird, the egg
was laid in Madina, hatched in Basra, and flew to Oman.
Yet curiously, the standard account of Ibâḍi origins emerged neither in Basra nor Oman, but in
late Maghribi sources, and it is this account that has imposed itself in both regions and in
Western accounts of Ibâḍi beginnings.
It essentially runs as follows. The Ibâḍis, who take their name from ῾Abdullah Ibn Ibâḍ, had their
roots in the Muḥakkima secession from the Caliph ῾Ali as a result of the arbitration agreement
following the battle of Ṣiffîn. Their unity was sundered in the crisis of the second fitna (civil war
that started in 64/684), when it split into three main groups, with the extremist Azâriqa and the
moderate Ibâḍis at opposite poles, and the Ṣufris somewhere in between. Under the leadership
of a series of Imams in Basra operating in secrecy (kitmân), the first of whom was Jâbir b. Zayd,
the movement activated under the leadership of his successor Abû ῾Ubayda Muslim b. Abi
Karîma and temporarily set up an Imamate under ῾Abdullâh b. Yaḥyâ al‐Kindi (Ṭâlib al-Ḥaqq) in
south‐west Arabia, followed by a short‐livied one in Omai n (al‐Juliandâ b. Mas῾ûd) at the end of
Umayyad times. Finally, as the result of Basran missionary activities, full Imamates were
established during the time of the third Basran Imam, al‐Rabî῾ b. Ḥabîb, first in North Africa
under the Rustamids of Tahert, and then a couple of decades later in Oman. Once established,
the Basran school wound up and Abû ῾Abdullâh Muḥammad, son of the fifth and last secret
Imam, Abû Sufyân Maḥbûb b. al‐Ruḥayl, settled in Oman. Likewise, the ῾ilm passed and was
developed from Iibn ῾Abbâs and seventy who had died at Badr, through this line of early Ibâḍis,
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Introduction
including a ḥadîth collection essentially transmitted from Jâbir by Abû ῾Ubayda to his pupil al‐
Rabî῾.
Using quasi‐contemporary material recorded in the Mashriq itself, the present study
deconstructs this model and attempts to replace it with a (p.x) new interpretation, while also
explaining how the Maghribi view of Ibâḍi origins developed, and why it finally became accepted
in Oman also. These early sources allow us to piece together some idea of how Ibâḍi theology
(kalâm) and jurisprudence (fiqh) evolved and was influenced by, or reacted to, Qadari, Mu῾tazili,
Murji'i, and extremist Khâriji dogma, and how its own fiqh developed from the early ra'y
(opinion), as exhibited by Jâbir and al‐Rabî῾s futyâ, conforming increasingly to Shâfi῾i‐Ash῾ari
norms during the course of the 5/11th and 6/12th centuries in Oman, but with the great exception
of Sunni isnâd scholarship. Sunna and ḥadîth were absorbed into the âthâr of the community,
partly as a result of being exposed to the regional influences of the dominant Sunni schools
(Mâliki in the Maghrib, Shâfi῾i in southern Arabia), a process accelerated by foreign occupation
after the First Imamate in Oman collapsed in civil war at the end of the 3/9th century and the
surviving community was split by an ever more virulent debate between the so‐called Rustâq
and Nizwâ parties over its causes. Those âthâr had essentially been the outcome of debate by
the leading ‘ulamâ’ in each generation, both with respect to dogma, its moral code (amr bi῾l‐
ma῾rûf), and those they recognized or rejected as the leading figures of the true Muslim
community. This was enshrined in the obligation (farḍ) of walâya, the spiritual and physical
cement of the community binding it to God, and barâ'a, its opposite, so that the âthâr, the print
of each generation, devolved on its successors.
Who these worthies were was well known, but their incorporation into a formal line of teachers
of the true knowledge (ḥamalat al-῾ilm) was essentially the work of the Omani al-῾Awtabi in the
second half of the 5/11th century. Unlike Oman, where the Imamate and practice of Ibâḍism
never went into abeyance, a different approach was required in Niorth Africa for ensuring
survival of their scattered communities after the collapse of the Tahert Imamate and the hope of
re‐establishing an Ibâḍi state abandoned. It is now that the idea of the contrast between an
Imam in kitmân and ẓuhûr really developed and the past rationalized accordingly. And to show
that they were the oldest of all the schools there appeared, under the wand of the cosmopolitan
Abû Ya῾qûb Yûsuf al‐Warjlâni (d. 570/1174), the appropriately named Tartîb (Arrangement) of
ḥadîth transmitted by Abû ῾Ubayda's pupil al‐Rabî῾ (d. c. 170!), the Ibâḍis' al‐Jâmi῾ al-Ṣaḥîḥ.
However, none of this may be looked at in abstract, and the evolution of Ibâḍism both into a
madhhab and its activation to create Imamates in southern Arabia and the Maghrib can only be
understood in a wider historical perspective, and in particular a study of the tribal dimension
which continued to dominate the history of Ibâḍism in Oman down to the twentieth century. So
the standard model, of the Azâriqa and Ibâḍis being at opposite poles with the Ṣufris somewhere
in the middle, as (p.xi) developed by the heresiographers simply does not stand up to analysis.
The Ṣufris, in fact, represented the new moderate activists (as against the extreimist Azâriqa‐
Najdiyya), and their revolts against the Umayyads preceded the activation of the Ibâḍi da῾wa
because they operated essentially among the ‘Nizâri’ tribes in Iraq. The first Muḥakkima/Khâriji
secessions took place around Kûfa and essentially involved local Tamîmi and Bakri elements,
and likewise the rest of the true line of revolts the Ibâḍis recognize down to Abû Bilâl in 61/680.
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Introduction
All the main Khâriji leaders (including the mysterious Ibn Ibâḍ) who went to interview Ibn
Zubayr and subsequently split the movement were Tamîmis. Thereafter the Ibâḍis recognize no
authentic khurûj until their own, sixty‐seven years later. Their movement had its roots not in
Kûfa, but Basra, and they only found fertile ground to exploit after the two great ‘Yamani’
revolts of Ibn al‐Ash῾ath al‐Kindi and Yazîd b. al‐Muhallab al‐Azdi had been crushed (the spelling
Yaman represents the tribal label, Yemen the region). There were no essential dogma
differences between the Ibâḍis and Ṣufris, merely the tribal milieus in which they operated, both
in the Masihriq and the Maghrib, where the Berber population similarly found an ideology to
reject Caliphate oppression.
Since it is a key notion of this book that Ibâḍism provided the ideology for the major Yaman
tribes in Iraq to set up Imamates in their homelands in southern Arabia and also export it to
North Africa, it is essential once again to try and reassess what Yaman represented in the early
Islamic period, and in particular the relationship between Azd and Kinda, both in the Iraqi and
Arabian domains. It is the writer's contention that there was indeed a divide between the
northern and southern Arab tribes, and that Yamani identity had deep roots in the pre‐Islamic
history of South Arabia. This theme is pursued in the first part of the book, using new epigraphic
evidence concerning the Sabaeo‐Himyarite state and its associated Arab tribes, coupled to the
detailed accounts of Arab migrations given in the Omani sources, as well as the Arabo‐Islamic
tradition.
Khâriji movements not only divided along tribal lines, but in the Mashriq only really found roots
in the ex‐Sasanid lands. Their social attitudes and ethos were essentially opposed to Hijazi
hegemony and rooted in the idea of equality before God's ḥukm as revealed in the Qur'ân: so
they consistently remitted the taxes on the peasants and ῾ulûj classes who had merely
exchanged one set of masters for another. That is part of the reasons why in Oman the
tribesmen eventually became villagers and the villagers tribesmen, a remarkable assimilation
that does not characterize either Greater Bahrayn or southern Arabia, despite the fact that they
too came under Khâriji or other radical socio‐religious movements in the early Islamic period.
But it was a slow process and the (p.xii) conversion of the peasant majûs and the privatization
of the land is also a subject that is treated in this study.
So it was in this social and tribal milieu that a particular stream of Muḥakkima ideology that
became labelled as Ibâḍi found fertile ground to activate their movement. It was the outcome of
a common approach to such issues as the rights and wrongs of the fitnas and the existing regime
that began to gel in the majlises of those I term ‘proto‐Ibâḍis’. It did not develop from any
formalized structure in Basra led by an Imiam in kitmân, but as an ideology amongst those who
wanted to re‐establish the true Islamic state, and whose activists started to exploit discontent in
particular tribal, racial, and geographical milieus in the margins of the Islamic empire. Their
means of doing so is also one of the themes examined; through the Hajj, through tribal and
merchant networks, through missionary activities, and eventually, once the Rustamid Imamate
was established in the 160s, increasingly with written works. Who these early figures active in
Basra were is absolutely central to understanding the origins and nature of the movement.
Above all, the roles of Jâbir b. Zayd and Abû ῾Ubayda need careful re‐examination (the Omanis
ignore Abû ῾Ubayda and see al‐Rabî῾ as the key figure), while a number of others, like Ḍumâm
b. al‐Sâ'ib, Ḥâjib al-Ṭâ'iy, Shabîb b. ῾Aṭiyya, and also Sâlim b. Dhakwân emerge as people of far
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