Ibadi Texts for the 2nd/8th Century

Ibadi Texts for the 2nd/8th Century

Islamic Thought and Sources

Ibadi Texts for the 2nd/8th Century

Author(s): Abdulrahman al-Salimi & Wilferd Madelung

Reviewed by: Sajjad Rizvi

 

Review

In 2014, the same editorial duo published six texts of the early Kufan Ibadi scholar Abu Muhammad [Abd Allah al-Fazari following the discovery of two codices in a private library in Algeria – and signalling, as we knew earlier from the work of the late Khalid al-Nami in his Cambridge PhD, the significance of the Algerian Ibadi community’s manuscripts for understanding the early history of Ibadi theology. This earlier work was entitled Early Ibadi Theology and in many ways this present work could easily be called the same or perhaps Early Ibadi Theology Volume II. Just as the previous work had an all too brief introduction referring to Madelung’s earlier Streitschrift des Zaiditenimams Ahmad al-Nasir wider die ibaditische Prädestinationslehre (Wiesbaden, 1985) and Josef van Ess’s magisterial Theologie und Gesselschaft im 2. Und 3. Jahrhundert der Hidschra (Berlin, 1991) for accounts of al-Fazari and early Ibadi theology, this volume similarly says nothing about the texts and their provenance and contents. We have a brief paragraph on the importance of early Ibadi theological texts for Islamic intellectual history and a reference to the use of modern manuscripts in Oman and nothing about the context at all. This is followed by introductions to the 14 epistles and codicological information about the manuscripts used for the editions. The codices used are six siyar collections (many previously, including the late Patricia Crone, discussed the particularity of the Ibadi tradition in using the term sirah to refer to a theological treatise, especially in her and Fritz Zimmermann’s edition and translation of the Sirat Salim b. Dhakwan from the same period) from Oman in the 17th and 18th century on the cusp of the Bu Sa[idi empire and indeed they come mainly from the royal collection and from those allied to them.


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