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Ballaghanā ʿan an-Nabī: early Basran and Omani Ibāḍī understandings of sunna and siyar, āthār and nasab

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2020

Adam Gaiser
Adam Gaiser*
Affiliation:
Florida State University
*
agaiser@fsu.edu
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Abstract

This paper explores the usages of four concepts – sunna, sīra, āthār, and nasab – mainly in early Ibāḍī epistles, but also in other types of Ibāḍī literature, to examine how early Ibāḍīs understood the legacy of the Prophet Muḥammad, and their relation to that legacy. It argues that before the sixth/twelfth century a notion of communal pedigree occupied pride of place in early Ibāḍī conceptualizations of legality and legitimacy. Thus, Ibāḍī sunna was “communal sunna”. The accumulated weight of Ibāḍī tradition – what is known as āthār in Ibāḍī literature – operated authoritatively as a counterpart to sunna; and the Ibāḍī siyar tradition did not focus on the Prophet exclusively, but rather described the scholarly community as an imagined whole. Moreover, Ibāḍīs explicitly articulated their communal pedigree in “teacher lines” (called nasab al-dīn or nasab al-islām) in Omani literature, and through the structure of their ṭabaqāt/siyar works in North Africa. Appreciating the importance of this communal pedigree, and the nexus of concepts through which it was articulated, helps us to understand the relative lack of emphasis placed on collecting and documenting ḥadīth (Ibāḍīs employ ḥadīth, but they did not use isnāds, nor did they appear to have a ḥadīth collection until the sixth/twelfth century), as well as the general absence of Prophetic biography among them (which also does not appear until the sixth/twelfth century).

Keywords

KharijitesIbāḍīsProphetSīraSiyarĀthārNasabSunnaOman
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , October 2020 , pp. 437 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2020

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References

1 One exception is the sīra (epistle) of Shabīb b. ʿAṭiyya, which contains a number of well-known and widely disseminated ḥadīth. See Al-Salimi, Abdulrahman and Madelung, Wilferd, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 149–222Google Scholar.

2 For references to other Ibāḍī ḥadīth collections, see Ennāmi, ʿAmr K., Studies in Ibāḍism (al-Ibāḍīyah) (Muscat: Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, n.d.), 115–6Google Scholar.

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14 Wilkinson, “Ibāḍī ḥadīth”, 231.

15 “A people is destroyed when they argue with themselves [by their deeds], they [know that they] depict their own destruction, but do not desist” (mā halakat umma ḥattā tuḥijj unfusahā yaṣifūna halakat unfusahum wa lā yanzaʽūn). See al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 72; “Whoso commits a misdeed or accommodates a sinner, upon him is the curse of God (man aḥdatha ḥadathan aw āwā muḥdithan fa-ʿalayhī laʽnat Allāh). See al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 74.

16 “Woe to us if we don't fear God, and woe to us if we make people afraid to command us to Godly piety (wayl lanā in lam nataq Allāh wa wayl lanā idhā khāfnā al-nās an ya'mirūnnā bi-taqwā Allāh). See al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 78.

17 al-Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 36 (no. 42),

18 al-Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 291 (no. 753).

19 Ennāmī, Studies in Ibāḍism, 81 ff.

20 See Ennāmī, Studies in Ibāḍism, 57 ff.

21 See also Francesca, “The concept of sunna in the Ibāḍī school”, 100–03.

22 Ennāmi, Studies in Ibāḍism, 116.

23 Ennāmi, Studies in Ibāḍism, 87.

24 Wilkinson, “Ibāḍī ḥadīth”, 245. On the authenticity of Ibn Ḥabīb's isnāds see also: Van Ess, “Untersuchungen zu einigen ibāḍitischen Handschriften”, 36–8; Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 2: 134; Mohamed Talbi, Etudes d'Histoire Ifriqiyenne et de Civilisation Musulmane Medievale, 36 ff.; Francesca, Ersilia, “La fabriccasione degli isnād nella scuola Ibāḍita: Il Musnad Ar-Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb”, in Vermeulen, U. and Van Reeth, J.M.F. (eds), Law, Christianity and Modernity in Islamic Society (Leuven: Uitgeveru Peeters, 1998), 39–59Google Scholar.

25 Al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 119–46.

26 Al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 65, 71, 75, 77.

27 Al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 65–6, 70.

28 Al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 70.

29 Dutton, “ʿAmal v ḥadīth in Islamic law”, 16.

30 See also Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, 62 (quoting Ibn Qāsim using āthār and sunna of the Companions interchangeably).

31 Crone, Patricia and Zimmerman, Fritz (ed. and tr.), The Epistle of Sālim Ibn Dhakwān (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 48Google Scholar.

32 Al-Salimi and Madelung, Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century, 153.

33 Ibn Sallām, Kitāb Ibn Sallām al-Ibāḍī: al-Islām wa Tārīkhihi min Wijhat Naẓar Ibāḍī, ed. R.F. Schwartz and Sālim b. Yaʿqūb (Beirut: Dār Iqraʿ, 1985) 92–3.

34 Wilkinson, Ibāḍism, 419; Gaiser, Adam, “Teacher lines in al-Qalhātī's al-Kashf wa'l-Bayān: the accumulation of a medieval Ibāḍī identity”, The Muslim World 105/2, 2015, 157–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See also the Sīrat Munīr b. Niyyar al-Jaʽlānī in Kāshif, Sayyida Ismāʽīl (ed.), al-Siyar wa al-jawabāt li-ʿulamā’ wa ā’immat ʿUmān (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa'l-Thaqāfa, 1989), 1: 234–5; al-Qalhātī, al-Kashf wa'l-bayān, 2: 471–7; Salama b. Muslim b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿAwtabī, Kitāb al-ḍiyā’ (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa'l-Thaqāfa, 1990), 3: 149–50.

36 Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʽ (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa'l-Thaqāfa, 1984), 3: 270–71.

37 See Adam Gaiser, Shurāt Legends, Ibāḍī Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism, and the Making of an Early Islamic Community (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2016), 126–8.

38 Ennāmī, Studies in Ibāḍism, 26.

39 See Crone and Zimmerman, The Epistle of Sālim Ibn Dhakwān, 57–99.

40 See Kāshif, Sayyida Ismāʿīl, al-Siyar wa'l-jawabāt li-ʿulamā’ wa ā’immat ʿUman (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa'l-Thaqāfa, 1986), 2: 314–5.

41 Ibn Sallām, Kitāb Ibn Sallām, 79 ff., 89 ff., 91 ff. The North African Ibāḍī concept of silsilat al-dīn requires more research to determine when it came into use, and to what extent it overlaps with the Omani Ibāḍī notion of nasab al-dīn. My thanks to my anonymous reviewer for pointing out this term, and apologies for not being able to pursue it further.

42 On the North African Ibāḍī siyar tradition, see Love, Paul M., Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 The five principal North African Ibāḍī siyar are: Abū Zakariyya Yaḥyā b. Abī Bakr al-Warjlānī's Kitāb siyar al-ā’imma wa akhbārihim (Algiers: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1979), which was written after 504/1111; Abū al-Rabīʿ Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Salām b. Ḥassān al-Wisyānī's (d. sixth/twelfth century) Siyar al-Wisyānī (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa'l-Thaqāfa, 2009), on which see Love, Ibadi Muslims of North Africa, 55; Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Saʿīd al-Darjīnī's (d. c. 670/1272) Kitāb ṭabaqāt al-mashāyikh bi'l-Maghrib (Algiers: Alger-Constantine, n.d.); Abū al-Faḍl/al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Barrādī's (d. 2nd half of eighth/fourteenth century) al-Jawāhir al-muntaqāt fī itmām mā akhalla bihi kitāb al-ṭabaqāt (Cairo: Lithograph, 1885); and Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Saʿīd al-Shammākhī's (d. 928/1522) Kitāb al-siyar (Beirut: Dār al-Madār al-Islāmī, 2009).

44 Love, Ibadi Muslims of North Africa, 3.

45 Abū Zakariyya, Kitāb siyar al-ā’imma wa akhbārihim, 82–4.

46 Wim Raven, “Sīra”, in P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (eds), Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Consulted online 07 May 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_1089.

47 al-Shammākhī, Kitāb al-siyar, 1: 109–23.

48 al-Barrādī, al-Jawāhir al-muntaqāt, 13–37.

49 On the Ibāḍī notion of sīra as epistle, see Cook, Early Muslim Dogma, 6 ff.; Crone and Zimmerman, The Epistle of Sālim Ibn Dhakwān, 15–19; on the Omani Ibāḍī siyar specifically, see Abdulrahman al-Salimi, “Identifying the Omani/Ibāḍī Siyar”, in Journal of Semitic Studies 55/1, 2010, 115–62; “Themes of the Omani/Ibāḍī Siyar”, in Journal of Semitic Studies 54/2, 2009, 475–514.

50 al-Qalhātī, al-Kashf wa'l-bayān, 2: 113–89. On the Ibāḍī notion of sīra as epistle, see Cook, Michael, Early Muslim Dogma: A Source-critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 6ffGoogle Scholar; Crone, Patricia and Zimmerman, Fritz (trs. and eds.), The Epistle of Sālim Ibn Dhakwān (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 15–19Google Scholar.

51 Wilkinson, “Ibāḍī ḥadīth”, 413 ff.

52 Wansbrough, John, The Sectarian Milieu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 77–8Google Scholar; Hinds, Martin, “Maghāzī and Sīra in early Islamic scholarship”, in Hinds, Martin, Bacharach, Jere, Conrad, Lawrence, and Crone, Patricia (eds), Studies in Early Islamic History (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1996), 195Google Scholar.

53 Bravmann, M.M., The Spiritual Background of Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 169Google Scholar.

54 See also Rahman, “Concepts Sunna, Ijtihād and Ijmāʿ”, 18–20.

55 Ibāḍīs may indeed be preserving earlier conventions in the details of their practice, such as the holding of one's hands at one's sides during prayer (i.e. sadl al-yadayn), but that is not to imply that the larger conceptual apparatus that buoys Ibāḍī approaches to sunna and siyar is itself preserved from the earliest periods. See also Dutton, “ʿAmal v ḥadīth in Islamic law”, 38.

56 Stodolsky, A New Historical Model and Periodization, 45.