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ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Thamīnī al-Yasjanī (b. c.1130/1718, d. 1223/1808), known as Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn, was a celebrated Ibāḍī scholar from the Mzāb, a group of oases in present-day northeastern Algeria. His genealogy goes back, like that of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf Aṭfayyish (d. 1332/1914), to ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣ al-Hintātī (d. 571/1175–6), forebear of the Ḥafṣids, who ruled Tunisia from the seventh/thirteenth to the tenth/sixteenth century; by another account he was descended from the caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–44). His forebears migrated from the town of Yajrān in al-Sāqiya al-Ḥamrāʿ (Río de Oro) to the Mzāb. Al-Thamīnī spent his early years in Banū Yasjan before moving to Ouargla (Warglā), southeast of the Mzāb, to manage his father's business interests. At the age of forty, he returned to the Mzāb, where he studied under Shaykh Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā b. Ṣāliḥ al-Afḍalī (1126–1202/ 1714–1788), from the island of D…

Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā b. al-Khayr b. Abī l-Khayr al-Jannāwunī (first half of the sixth/twelfth century) was a celebrated scholar of Ibāḍī jurisprudence and theology, who lived in the region of Jabal Nafūsa, in modern-day Libya. He was a Berber, and his nisba derives from Ijnāwun (modern Djennaouen, near Jādū), which in the Rustamid period (161–296/778–909) had been the centre of Ibāḍī influence in Jabal Nafūsa. He was descended from a local scholarly Ibāḍī family, his best known predecessor being his grandfather Abū l-Khayr Tūzīn al-Jan…

Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. Jamīʿ b. Wāsīn al-Yahrāsnī (second half of the seventh/thirteenth-beginning of the eighth/fourteenth century) was an Ibāḍī theologian and scholar. A native of the Yahrāsnī Berber tribe, Abū Ḥafṣ was born in the village of Wālagh at the northern end of the island of Djerba (Jarba). According to Ibn Taʿārīt (d. 1289/1872) he was taught by Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Darjīnī (d. c.670/1271), the author of the …