Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century: (133 Islamic History and Civilization)

In Ibāḍī Texts from the 2nd/8th Century Abdulrahman Al-Salimi and Wilferd Madelung present an edition of fourteen Ibāḍī religious texts and explain their contents and extraordinary source value for the early history of Islam. The Ibāḍīs constitutes the moderate wing of the Kharijite opposition movement to the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid caliphates. The texts edited are mostly polemical letters to opponents or exhortatory to followers by ‘Abd Allah b. Ibad , Abu l-‘Ubayda Muslim b. Abi Karima and other Ibadi leaders in Basra, Oman and Hadramawt. An epistle detailing the offences of the caliph ‘Uthman is by the early Kufan historiographer al-Haytham b. ‘Adi. By their early date and independence of the mainstream historical tradition these txts offer the modern historian of Islam an invaluable complement to the well-known literary sources.

Table of Contents:
1- The Introduction. 2- The Texts a. Letter of ‘Abd Allāh b. Ibāḍ to ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwān. b. Ibāḍ’s second letter to ‘Abd al-Malik. c. Epistle of Abū Mawdūd Ḥājib. d. Letter of Muslim Abū ‘Ubayda and Ḥājib to the people of the Maghrib when they disagreed concerning the matter of ‘Abd al-Jabbār and al-Ḥārith such that they killed each other. e. Epistle of Abū ‘Ubayda and Abū Mawdūd. f. Epistle of Abū ‘Ubayda and Abī Mawdūd to al-Faḍl b. Kathīr. g. A letter of Abū ‘Ubayda. h. Epistle of Abū ‘Ubayda about the alms tax. i. Epistle of Shabīb b. ‘Aṭiyya al-‘Umānī. j. Letter of Shabīb b. ‘Aṭiyya to ‘Abd al-Salām against the Doubters and the Murji’a. k. Epistle of Khalaf b. Ziyād al-Baḥrānī. l. Epistle of the Jurist Sheikh Wā’il b. Ayyūb. m. Book in which there is a reply to the people of uncertainty. n. Epitome of a book in which there is the description of the offences of ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān.

About the Author :
Wilferd Madelung, D. Phil. 1957, University of Hamburg, is emeritus Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford University. He has written extensively on early Islamic history, religious movements and schools of thought, and is the author of The Succession to Muhammad (Cambridge, 1997), and co-editor of An Ismaili Heresiography (Leiden: Brill, 1998), Rational Theology in Interfaith Communication (Leiden: Brill, 2006), Baṣran Muʿtazilite Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Early Ibāḍī Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2014), Al-Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād Promoter of Rational Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2016) and the Encyclopaedia Islamica (Leiden: Brill). Abdulrahman al-Salimi (Ph.D. Durham 2001) is the editor in chief of the Omani journal al-Tafahom. He has published on Omani studies and early Islamic theology and is the author of Ibadism in East Mesopotamia. Early Islamic Iran, Central Asia and India (Beirut: German Oriental Institute, 2016) and co-editor of Early Ibāḍī Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2014) and Early Islamic Law in Basra in the 2nd/8th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

Review :
"Researchers and students of Islamic intellectual history will be grateful for having more material to make sense of the classical period of Islamic theological traditions." Sajjad Rizvi in: The Muslim World Book Review, 40:3, 2020 "The scientific edition of these fourteen early Ibāḍī texts, all from the 2nd/8th century, together in one book, constitutes a welcome addition to the growing body of newly edited and published old Ibāḍī texts." Martin Custers, in: Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXVI N° 1-2 (2019)