ISLAMIC HISTORY IS OFTEN DELINEATED and defined in terms of Islam’s two main sects, Sunnism and Shiīʿism. It is framed by a narrative constructed around their distinct political and religious dynasties, jurisprudential schools, divergent approaches and scholarly figures, as well as an immensely rich intellectual heritage that shaped that narrative and delineated its parameters under the auspices of the two sects.

            In all histories, there remain untold stories involving unknown events and nameless actors that have been overshadowed by the grand narratives of mainstream communities. Islamic history is no exception, with the Ibāḍī sect and its followers usually left far outside of its perimeter or, at best, on its margins.

            Ibāḍism remains the least researched, studied and analyzed of Muslim sects. Indeed, the scholarly literature on Ibāḍīs and Ibāḍism stands out solely because it is so meagre and scanty. While studies on the origins and development of Khārijism are more common, such works tend to devote little attention to Ibadism and to the nuanced stories of its beginnings and association with—yet distinction from— Khārijism, as well as its historical development.

            Notwithstanding the objections of many contemporary Ibāḍīs to the notion, Ibāḍism was born out of the Khārijī movement that arose after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad. Ibāḍism carved out its own unique identity through its rejection of the positions of extreme Khārijī groups and its commitment to the Qurʾānic precept, “Lā ḥukma illā lillāh (Judgement belongs to God alone),” which was the slogan and underlying principle that set the early Khārijī opposition movement in motion.

            In AD 658, the army of Caliph ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (r. 656-61) met the forces of the Syrian governor, Muʿāwiya ibn Abū Sufyān (r. 661-80), in the Battle of Ṣiffīn, near the Euphrates River. Muʿāwiya had contested ʿAlī’s legitimacy as the caliph of Muslims because of the latter’s inability and, according to some, unwillingness to bring the murderers of his predecessor, ʿUthmān, to justice. Fearing defeat, Muʿāwiya’s supporters proposed arbitration between the two rivals. The arbitrators chosen from each camp would decide on the legitimate ruler of the Muslim community. ʿAlī’s acceptance of the principle of arbitration created dissent among many of his followers who regarded it as a concession and, even worse, as a betrayal of his God-given right to lead the Muslims. According to them, human arbitration defied the position of the Qurʾān as the ultimate arbitrator, hence, their reference to the verse, “Lā ḥukma illā lillāh,” and the use of the term muḥakkima to describe those who opposed the arbitration.

The choice fell upon Mu’awiya, thus creating more bitterness among ʿAlī’s former allies. Dissent led to rebellion against both ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, and further political turbulence and disenchantment ensued.

Different groups emerged from the broader Khārijī movement, some of which, like the Azāriqa, developed extreme ideologies to justify the execution of those Muslims with whom they disagreed, as well as the appropriation of their property.

            The dissidents who came to be known as the Ibādīs were opposed to this extremism, including the killing of fellow Muslims, and remained loyal to the early principles of Khārijism, namely, to follow the commands of the Qurʾān and to support the moral integrity of the ruler and his rule. Their identity crystallized around these precepts. Ibāḍīs were first referred to as ahl al-ḥaqq, jamāʿat al-muslimīn and ahl al-qiʿda, the latter describing their refusal to join the violence against Muslims. Despite popular misconceptions, the founder of Ibāḍism was not, therefore, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ibāḍ, one of the group’s most outspoken theologians, who played only a secondary role in its establishment, although he did ultimately lend his name to it. This change in nomenclature came about because of Ibn Ibāḍ’s public advocacy of Ibāḍī beliefs at a time when Ibāḍīs were operating underground for fear of persecution and his open debates with extreme Khārijīs and hostile Muslims. The group’s decision to adopt the name ‘Ibāḍī’ resulted from the desire to be associated with an authoritative figure best known for his criticism of both extreme Khārijism and unjust rule.

            The ‘quietist’ stance of Ibāḍīs did not spare the sect’s members from the wrath of Umayyad caliphs and their governors. Their relationship with the Umayyads varied considerably, however, for the Umayyad stance softened or hardened depending on the identity of the ruler or local governor and whether he was tolerant or repressive toward Ibāḍī communities, which adopted, in turn, the tactic of negotiating with the Umayyads, rather than rebelling against them or otherwise behaving in a hostile manner. This situation changed after 737, when harsh Umayyad policies pushed the Ibāḍīs into open revolt and into attempts to establish a just Imamate spanning from North Africa to Khurasān. They succeeded in founding a cluster of temporary Ibāḍī Imamates, a prominent example being the Rustamid dynasty in North Africa. It collapsed in 909, causing North African Ibāḍīs to disperse further south and to establish permanent communities in the Mzāb in Algeria (which developed an alternative system to the Imamate called the ʿazzāba), in the Nafūsa Mountains in Libya and on the island of Djerba in Tunisia. The most lasting Ibāḍī Imamate was established in Oman where it endured until 1957, barring a few interruptions. With the expansion of Omani rule in East Africa in the nineteenth century, Ibāḍī communities flourished there as well and made lasting contributions to the economic, political and intellectual life of East Africa.

            The uncertainty surrounding the events that led to the emergence and development of both Khārijism and Ibāḍism has created controversy over the exact relationship between the two. Historically, this same uncertainty has played into the hands of Sunnī and Shīʿī heresiographers, whose discussions of Khārijism and Ibāḍism under the rubric of sectarianism have distorted much of their history and have created popular antipathy toward Ibāḍīs, the only surviving sect with Khārijī roots.

            However, this does not explain what can only be described as academic apathy toward the study of Ibāḍism. Although much less numerous than Sunnīs and Shīʿīs, Ibāḍīs have contributed immensely to all aspects of Islamic history. They were the early carriers of Islam into Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, the builders of vigorous economic networks spanning from West and North Africa to Muslim Spain and the Mediterranean, the founders of several Islamic dynasties and leading figures in modern intellectual and political movements. Their scholars and intellectuals have left us a rich legacy that is part and parcel of Islamic history and as integral to overall Islamic civilization as the contributions of other Muslims.

            As a consequence, the impulse to unearth the treasures of the Ibāḍī heritage should not be driven by scholarly curiosity alone, but also by the need to provide a balanced account of Islam’s overall history.

Scholars who fail to take the Ibāḍī heritage into account cannot claim to offer a comprehensive analysis of Islamic history or an adequate scrutiny of its dynamics. While it is true that Muslim communities belong to different sects, Islamic history possesses an integrative quality defined by that same variety and difference. Islamic sects have developed in relation to each other and each sect has its own historical legacy that is part of the totality of the history of Islam—its institutions, dynasties and systems of belief.

            As an important piece of the mosaic that makes up Islamic history, Ibāḍism requires more attention from modern researchers. Indeed, the entire Khārijī legacy, with its nuanced ideologies and divergent groups, needs to be revisited—not least because it is still constantly invoked. The term ‘Khārijī’ has never left the political and intellectual realm of Islamic history. Too often, it has been used as a derogatory label to undermine conflicting political viewpoints and new intellectual trends. The Khārijī movement originated in opposition to perceived political tyranny and injustice, and its legacy has, therefore, shaped much of the religious rhetoric concerning the modern governance of Muslim societies, especially in the Middle East. The violence associated with various Khārijī groups continues to invite comparisons with the political violence advocated by some contemporary forces in the Islamic world. From Sayyid Quṭb to Abū Muṣʿab al-Zarqāwī, real or perceived Khārijism (or neo-Khārijism) has arrived with full force on the religious and political scene. While these modern associations confuse, rather than illuminate, the different meanings that can be ascribed to the term ‘Khārijism’ and do not do justice to the movement’s complex history, they nonetheless remind us of the integral role which Khārijism continues to have in shaping religious discourses and political representations.

            This special issue of BRIIFS is intended to redress some of this confusion and recover some aspects of Khārijī and Ibāḍī history. It is far from being comprehensive in its coverage, but diverse enough to indicate the different trajectories that the study of either Khārijism or Ibāḍism can take. The articles do not revolve around a common theme or topic, but rather navigate through several places and spaces, each telling a different story to fill a lacuna in Islamic history. Some of the contributors chart entirely new paths; others revisit old ones, examining new material and offering new textual interpretations. While two of the articles in this issue deal with Khārijism in particular and only touch upon Ibāḍism, they nevertheless confirm the degree to which both are intertwined. The other four articles discuss questions specifically pertinent to Ibāḍī communities and, of course, Islamic history more generally. Half of the articles deal with the modern history of Ibāḍism and Khārijism, while the other half examine their early history.

            Annie Higgins offers a linguistic interpretation of the term ‘shurāt’, which is fundamental to Khārijī thought and widely employed in all types of Khārijī poetry. Understanding the term to mean ‘exchangers’ (of life) rather than ‘sellers’, Higgins elaborates upon the four different types of exchange that she finds in the poetry and the various social relations that they mirror within Shurāt communities. She argues that, whether quietist or activist, whether preferring retreat or to take up arms, all of these communities distanced themselves from the governing (Umayyad) authority and made their opposition the focus of their identity. In her view, the meaning of shurāt is determined by the nature of each community’s opposition. In all cases, the Shurāt retained a form of agency that was carried from the battlefield and maintained after death.

            Brahim Cherifi revisits a distinctive Ibāḍī institution, the ʿazzāba of North Africa and, more particularly, of the Mzāb valley in Algeria. This institution developed in the aftermath of the collapse of the Rustamid dynasty and reflects the gradual abandonment by North African Ibāḍīs of the idea of the ‘state’ as the embodiment of divine-guided rule. Instead, just governance became the responsibility of the entire community and the Ibāḍī ‘city’ a microcosm of the ideal Imamate. Cherifi contests the notion that the rules of the ʿazzāba were determined by religious texts. Instead, he argues that the ʿazzāba system reflected accommodation to Berber law and was very much shaped by the Biblical tradition present in North Africa before the advent of Islam. The laws governing the ʿazzāba system divided the governance of the Ibāḍī cities of the Mzāb between two independent spheres, one religious and one non-religious in nature. Cherifi traces a steady and continuous pattern of separation until the twentieth century, when the Ibāḍī reformist movement sought to abolish it and to subject the ʿazzāba to an overarching religious system.

            Leonard Chiarelli makes the case for an Ibāḍī presence in Sicily between the ninth and thirteenth centuries and argues for a central Ibāḍī role in the political, social and economic life of Muslim Sicily. He interprets historical documents and linguistic evidence as pointing to substantial Ibāḍī migration to the island from North Africa following the collapse of Rustamid rule to the Fāṭimids in 909. Ibāḍī communities in Sicily were part of an Ibāḍī trade network that flourished between sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Mediterranean. Their commercial ties and economic success brought prosperity to the island, but also drew the Ibāḍīs back into conflict with the Fāṭimids. In Chiarelli’s view, the history of Sicily is incomplete without further research on its Muslim period and the significant contributions of Ibāḍīs.

            Valerie Hoffman introduces us to various aspects of the religious and intellectual landscape of late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. Under Bū Saʿīdī rule, the island was a cosmopolitan centre that had attracted a broad variety of people with different religious and other affiliations. The religious texts analyzed by Hoffman serve as a window into that rich environment and into some of its elements. They reveal tensions between Sunnīs and Ibāḍīs, with Sunnism seen as posing a threat to the Ibāḍī community when some of its members changed their affiliation from Ibāḍism to Sunnism. However, as Hoffman shows, Sunnī-Ibāḍī polemics remained a marginal phenomenon in the tolerant society fostered by the Ibāḍī sultans in Zanzibar. The fact that such polemics existed attests to the genuine openness that characterized Zanzibar’s intellectual life under Bū Saʿīdī rule.

            My own article analyzes Ibāḍī Salafism, a modern intellectual and political movement that sought religious reform and Muslim unity. Like Sunnī Salafīs, Ibāḍī Salafis saw the differences between Islamic sects as an impediment to religious reform, which was needed to answer the challenge posed by modernism and to achieve unity in the face of an encroaching Europe. Examining the writings of two Ibāḍī salafīs who were members of the Ibāḍī diaspora in Egypt, I argue that the neo-Ibāḍism which developed in the nineteenth century as part of the Ibāḍī renaissance grew into a more flexible and accommodating ideology in the following century. One defining element that marked this development in neo-Ibāḍī thought was the way in which these two Ibāḍī writers related the history of their sect to Khārijism. Each found in Salafism an ideology capable of reform, but each engaged with it in a different way.

            Historically, Khārijism may have been primarily associated with violence and revolt, but its legacy, as Husam Timani argues, has been revived and restored in modern Arab intellectual history. This process has involved, quite naturally, Ibāḍīs seeking reconciliation with other sects, but it has also engaged non-Ibāḍī scholars, whose analyses of the Khārijī literary heritage—and, in particular, its poetry—have aimed at disclosing Khārijism’s intrinsically positive characteristics, such as its emphasis on moral values, social justice and equality. These scholars argue that such Khārijīs typify the glory of the Arab/Islamic heritage. However, some modern Arab intellectuals have selectively interpreted these same characteristics to support their claims that various modern ideologies, such as nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, egalitarianism and feminism, have legitimate roots in the early days of Islam and are not alien to Arab/Islamic culture. Here, Khārijīs are not only seen as full participants in the creation of Islam’s history and heritage, but also as ideal Muslims in whose footsteps other Muslims should follow.

            Whether the subject is Khārijī literary expressions or Ibāḍī political institutions, the Ibāḍī presence in Sicily or in Zanzibar, or the relationship between Ibāḍī and Sunnī Salafists or modern Arab intellectuals and the Khārijī legacy, all of these papers highlight the lasting impact of Khārijism on Islamic history and the various and continuous contributions of Ibāḍīs to that history.