sect of early Islam which arose out of the conflict between ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb (r. 656-61) and Moʿāwiya b. Abi Sufyān (r. 661-80).

A version of this article is available in print

Volume XVI, Fascicle 4, pp. 434-435

KHARIJITES IN PERSIA, adherents of a sect of early Islam that arose out of the conflict between ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb (q.v.; r. 35-40/656-61) and Moʿāwiya b. Abi Sofyān (r. 41-60/661-80), the fourth and the fifth caliph respectively, when their opposing armies met at Ṣeffin in 37/657. An intransigent element in ʿAli’s forces withdrew its allegiance (Ar. ḵaraja, ‘to leave’) when he agreed to arbitration with the leader of the Omayyad family. They formed the theological and political movement of the Kharijites (Ar. ḵawārej, ‘dissenters’), contending that in such situations, judgment (taḥkim) belonged to God alone.

Driven out of their original stronghold among the Arab tribesmen of lower Iraq, the most uncompromising groups of the Kharijites withdrew into southwestern Persia under the leadership of Nāfeʿ b. al-Azraq (d. 65/685). His followers came to form the most fanatical of the sub-sects of the movement, the Azāreqa. From bases in Ahvāz, they threatened Basra but also pushed further eastwards into Fārs and Kerman (qq.v.) and were active as far as Isfahan and Ray (Balāḏori, p. 118). The Zobayrid governor of Basra, ʿAbd-Allāh b. Ḥāreṯ Hāšemi, sent an army against Nāfeʿ, and he was killed at Dulāb in Ahvāz in 65/685 (Yāqut, II, p. 485). Nāfeʿ’s successor as leader (in their parlance, “caliph”) was Qaṭari b. Fojāʾa, who held out in Fārs and the mountainous regions of Kerman against Omayyad forces for a considerable period. He issued his own coins with Arabic and Pahlavi legends (Walker, pp. 112-13), using his self-assumed title of amir al-moʾmenin at places such as Ardašir-Ḵorra, Bišāpur (qq.v.), and Dārābgerd (see DĀRĀB). An army led by Mohallab b. Abi Ṣofra (d. 82 or 83/702-3) pursued Qaṭari into Ṭabarestān and killed him there in 77 or 78/696-98, while the remnants of his followers were annihilated at Qumes (Ṭabari, II, pp. 1003-7, 1018-21, tr. XXII, pp. 149-54, 162-65; Sadighi, pp. 21-22; Spuler, pp. 167-69).

In the latter part of Omayyad rule, the epicenter of Kharijite activity was in Upper Mesopotamia, i.e., northern Iraq and the Jazira, though Kharijite partisans persisted in the mountainous regions of southern Persia. At the time of the ʿAbbasid Revolution in 129-31/747-48, a policy of pure opportunism gave support to the insurgent ʿAbbasids (see ʿABBASID CALIPHATE) against the Omayyad forces retreating westwards. From Kerman, the Kharijites were particularly successful in establishing a presence in Sistān, more in the rural areas than in Zarang, the capital of the caliphal governors, although this does not necessarily imply a special appeal to local unrest or the existence of any other social factors. Kharijite groups formed at this time essentially an ethnically Arab, spiritually aristocratic movement. They are mentioned as active in Sistān among Arab settlers from the tribes of Bakr b. Wāʾel during the latter part of the governorship of Naṣr b. Sayyār (d. 131/748) in Khorasan (Sadighi, pp. 39-40; Bosworth, 1968a, p. 75). After his leader Żaḥḥāk b. Qays Šaybāni had died in battle, the Kharijite chief Šaybān b. ʿAbd-al-ʿAziz Yaškori fled from Iraq and the Jazira to Sistān, and tried to raise support in Zarang before he, in turn, was killed (Tāriḵ-e Sistān, p. 133, tr. pp. 105-6; Bosworth, 1968a, p. 76).

The Kharijites had hated the Omayyads as their opponents and pursuers, but now came to hate the ʿAbbasids hardly less. Kharijite groups continued to be important in the religious and political situation of Kerman, Sistān, and the eastern fringes of Khorasan such as Bādḡis (q.v.) and Qohestān, remote as these were from the center of caliphal authority in Baghdad. Whereas earlier Kharijites had essentially constituted an Arab movement, the stage was now set for a great Kharijite outbreak in the east, which emerged in 179/795-96, extended over thirty years, and was headed by Ḥamza b. Āḏarak (q.v.), an Iranian who came from the region of Roḵḵaj in what is now southeastern Afghanistan, while his partisans apparently stemmed from the branch of the Kharijites known as the ʿAjāreda and eventually formed their own subgroup of the Ḥamziya. In 181/797-98, Ḥamza’s adherents proclaimed him amir al-moʾmenin. He combated Kharijite rivals in Kerman and Sistān, and his attacks on the towns of Khorasan became so serious that the caliph Hārun-al-Rašid (q.v.) in 808 resolved to march against him in person. But Hārun died in Khorasan in the following year, and the disorder in Iraq and the civil warfare amongst his heirs ensured that Ḥamza was long left undisturbed. According to the Tāriḵ-e Sistān (pp. 174-76, tr. pp. 138-40), which is, however, distinctly favorable to Ḥamza and his cause, one of Maʾmun’s governors, Layṯ b. Fażl, reached something like a modus vivendi with Ḥamza and his partisans in Sistān. Only in 212/828 did Ḥamza at last die (Tāriḵ-e Sistān, pp. 179-80, tr. p. 143; Sadighi, pp. 54-57; Spuler, pp. 169-70; Bosworth, 1968a, pp. 91-104).

This was by no means the end of Kharijite groups on these eastern fringes of the Islamic lands. In Sistān, Kharijites continued to elect war leaders and to cause trouble. In 238 or 239/852-54, they rose under their leader ʿAmmār b. Yāser, and it was not until 251/865 that the Saffarid Yaʿqub b. Layṯ (q.v.) was able to kill him (Tāriḵ-e Sistān, p. 207, tr. pp. 164-65; Bosworth, 1968, pp. 115-16; idem, 1994, pp. 78-79). Other Kharijite groups remained strong in the regions of Herat and Bādḡis. In 259/873, Yaʿqub solved the problem by incorporating them into his own army as a special contingent (Tāriḵ-e Sistān, pp. 217-18, tr. pp. 172-73; Bosworth, 1968b, pp. 543-44). Its name jayš al-šorāt (lit. “army of those who sell”) reflected that the Kharijites saw themselves as those who, echoing the Qurʾān, sell (Ar. šarā) their souls to God in return for the promise of Paradise.

After this time, militant Kharijite groups seem to have declined, though pockets of peaceful adherents appear to have survived. The geographer Moqaddasi, writing in 375/985, mentioned that the Karuḵ in Bādḡis were still predominantly made up of Kharijites (p. 323). His unknown contemporary (Ḥodūd, tr., p. 91) described the inhabitants of Gardiz (q.v.) in eastern Afghanistan as Kharijites, and its line of local amirs was possibly also Kharijite (Bosworth, 1968a, p. 104). Yāqut (d. 626/1229) was merely repeating the earlier Eṣṭaḵri (q.v.; d. after 340/952) when he stated that the Kharijites of Sistān were a distinct group and distinguishable from the mass of orthodox Muslims by their piety, their special dress (unfortunately not specified), and their commercial probity (III, p. 190). These Kharijites were clearly no longer violently activist but instead quietist (cf. Ar. qāʿed, pl. qaʿada seated, which can take on the meaning “to abstain from direct confrontation with opponents”), and after the 10th century they disappear from further mention in the sources (Bosworth, 1994, pp. 79-80).

C. Edmund Bosworth