Ibadism East of Mesopotamia (Early Islamic Iran, Central Asia and India)

“During the last three decades, a number of valuable Ibāḍī and Omani texts, which had previously been unavailable, have come to light. The discovery of these texts has changed our views on classical Islamic history as well as on Omani history. They provide us with a picture of the intellectual world of Oman and Ibāḍism that differs from our previous views, which were based almost entirely on hostile sources. From this perspective, the present work is an attempt to study the literature of these Omani siyar. So far, few and limited studies have shown an interest in this field, despite the fact that this literature is a reflection of the socio-political history of Oman as well as the style of Omani and Eastern Ibāḍī writers.

     This work has been written with two types of readers in mind: readers with a general interest in Islamic and Arabic classical literature, and specialists in Oman and Ibāḍism. It covers Omani relations with Central Asia in the 10^th and 11^th centuries and involves textual analysis and historical contextualization. The present study can be seen as a direct result of my research in the Sālimī Library and is essentially motivated by my discovery of three siyar manuscripts that had not been edited or published. These are:

1      - the sīrah of Imam Rāshid b. Saʿīd al-Yaḥmadī to the people of Manṣūrah,

2      - the sīrah to the people of Khwārazm, and

3      - the sīrah to the people of Khurāsān.

    These three siyar were written in the 4^th/10^th and 5^th/11^th centuries, and they provided new intellectual theories for the spread of Ibāḍī thought in Asia. This was the period in which the Omanis were able to restore their imamate after Oman had been under the hegemony of the ʿAbbasids, Carmathians and Buyids.” By Abdulrahman Al-Salimi

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