The Epistle of Salim ibn Dhakwan

     The putative author of our source is a shadowy figure of the second/eighth century. The Sistanis remembered a local boy by the name of Salim b. Dhakwan who had been captured by the Arabs at Bust in 30/650 f and later risen to prominence among them. The Ibadis knew a co-religionist of the same name from the letters of Jabir b. Zayd, the first leader of the Basran Ibadis (d. between 93/711 and 104/722): one of Jabir’s letters is addressed to him. But Jabir apart, the first Ibadi to mention Salim b. Dhakwan seems to be al-Bisyani, a fourth/tenth-century Omani, who lists him among the scholars of the past in one of his epistles. Of Salim’s epistle, with or without his name, there appears to be no trace in the Ibadi literature down to the fifth/eleventh century.

     If the Ibadi Salim b. Dhakwan is identical with the captive from Sistan, he not only corresponded with Jabir, but also belonged to his generation. The modern Ibadi author al-Salimi does in fact place him in the generation of the Successors along with Jabir. But the sixteenth-century al-Shammakhi lists him in the generation of al- Rabi’ b. Habib (d.c.170/786), with the comment that actually he belongs to the generation of Abu Ubayda (d. between 136/754 and 158/775). This is just compatible with the claim that he corresponded with Jabir, but it would rule out his identification with the Sistani captive and place his floruit in the late Umayyad or early Abbasid periods, which is also where al-Bisyani implicitly seems to place him. Later Ibadi authors list him in close proximity to scholars such as al-Kudami and al-Awtabi, implying, possibly unintentionally, that he flourished in the fourth/tenth or fifth/eleventh century; and the modern author al-Sama’ili explicitly places him in the same tabaqa as the fifth/eleventh-century al-Awtabi. This is presumably a mistake. But where in the second/eighth century we should place him cannot be determined.

     If our Salim was captured in Sistan, he will have passed into the ownership of a Basran and probably continued to live within the Basran sphere of influence (Khurasan, Sistan, Kirman, Fars, Basra, Oman) even after he had been manumitted. Two Ibadi authors unreliably identify him as an Omani. The fact that he communicated with Jabir by letter certainly suggests that he was active outside Basra, but his whereabouts are as uncertain as his dates.

  This is all we can say about him. A certain Salim al-Hilali is reputed to have participated in an lbadi delegation to Umar II, and modern Ibadi scholars identify this man with Salim b. Dhakwan. But al-Shammakhi lists Salim al-Hilali and Salim b. Dhakwan as separate persons in his Siyar, and the former is probably to be identified as Salim b. Hutay’a al-Hilali, the author of a book which is cited by al-Barradi and which had something in common with the epistle of Salim b. Dhakwan without being identical with it. Al-Salimi also identifies al-Mu’tamir b. Umara, an Ibadi active in Oman in the second half of the eighth century, as a grandson of Salim; Atfayyish concurs, while al-Sama’ili makes him a son of Salim. But al-Mu’tamir’s supposed descent from Salim was unknown to al-Shammakhi.

     Jabir’s letter to Salim b. Dhakwan does not appear to mention the epistle with which the latter is credited; al-Bisyani’s list of scholars certainly does not refer to it. In fact, it is not mentioned or cited anywhere in the early literature. This is odd because early Ibadi sources often touch on Salim’s subject (the correct classification of opponents), and they always espouse views identical with his. His absence is particularly striking in an epistle by Abu Sufyan Mahbub b. al-Rahil (d. c.210/825), who not only deals with Salim’s subject and shares his views, but who also tells the reader where he can read more about it: in the sira of Hilal b. Atiyya, the kutub of Jabir b. Zayd and Khalaf b. Ziyad, and the Muslim siyar and ahkam in general. Abu Sufyan would surely have mentioned Salim’s epistle by name if he had known it. An anonymous Radd ala ahl al-shakk preserved in the Hinds Xerox contains a refutation of the ‘first Murji’ites’ (al-murji’a ’l-ula) which is reminiscent of Salim’s, but it neither quotes nor mentions him, and its date is unknown.

     The first author to cite Salim’s epistle seems to be Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Kindi (d. c.508/1114 f), who introduces a section with the heading min sirat Salim b. Dhakwan fi amr Uthman b. Affan and fills it with a summary of Salim’s account of Uthman’s innovations. It is also for his account of Uthman that Salim is mentioned by Abu Bakr Ahmad b. Abdallah al-Kindi (d. c.557/1162), a younger relative of the preceding, who informs us that the so-called Nizwa party would adduce passages on Uthman from Hilal b. Atiyya’s epistle, claiming that much the same message was implied by ‘the epistle of Salim and the epistle of Abdallah b. Ibad’. Presumably, other citations can be found in the voluminous later literature before al-Salimi cites the epistle again, without mentioning Salim as its author; but it does not seem to have acquired prominence in the Ibadi tradition. When later Omani authors list Salim b. Dhakwan among the scholars of the past, they never call him sahib al-sira, as they do Hilal b. Atiyya and other authors off famous epistles, but merely include his name without comment, as al-Bisyani had done. The epistle does not appear to have passed to North Africa either. It is not listed in al-Barradi’s list of Ibadi books, which has a substantial rubric on eastern items; and though al-Shammakhi has an entry on Salim, he does not mention the epistle, only Salim’s correspondence with Jabir.

     One would infer from this that the Ibadis knew Salim b. Dhakwan independently of the epistle he is supposed to have written, which only came to their knowledge at a fairly late stage. Its seemingly sudden emergence in the eleventh- and twelfth-century literature suggests that it was composed outside Oman, where it arrived too late to have much of an impact, and also too late to pass to North Africa.

      One would also infer that it does not matter much whether one accepts the ascription of the epistle to Salim b. Dhakwan or not. We do not know where he lived, and above all, we do not know precisely when he lived. He belonged to the generation of Jabir or that of Abu Ubayda (or even that of al-Rabi); but the problem posed by the epistle is precisely whether we should place it in the generation of Jabir or in that of Abu Ubayda (or even al-Rabi). If we go by the Tarikh-i Sistan, Salim was born before 30/650–1 and thus likely to have written before 100/718; but if we go by al-Shammakhi, he could have written as late as the 150s/770s, or later still. The dates proposed so far for Sirat Salim in the modern literature are 72/691 (Cook), c.82/701 (Madelung), c.100/718 (van Ess), c.130/747 (Cook’s second and preferred date), and the early Abbasid period (Calder). As things stand, all are compatible with the ascription. Who wrote the epistle, where, and when, are thus questions which have to be answered on the basis of the epistle itself. For the sake of convenience we shall continue to refer to its author as Salim, but this is without prejudice to the question of who he actually was.

To read the Epistle, please click on the image