Khārijīs (also Khārijites; Ar. khawārij, sing. khārijī, “those who went out”) is the epithet given to groups of Muslim sectarians who held pious action to be the main criterion for accepting a person as a true Muslim, and who rejected the exclusive claims to the caliphate of the Quraysh, the tribe of the prophet Muḥammad, as well as the claims of the ʿAlids. Among Khārijīs, the term khawārij itself enjoyed only limited use among some militants (ʿAbbās, 105–6, 125; Gaiser, Shurat legends, 3), as the majority of early adherents preferred the term shurāt (sing. shārī), “exchangers,” likely …

Abū Rāshid Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq al-Ḥanafī al-Ḥanẓalī (d. 65/685) was an early Khārijī rebel and the eponym and founder of the Azāriqa (Azraqīs). He may have been the son of a Greek blacksmith freed at al-Ṭāʾif by the Prophet (al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, 67). Nothing is known of his early life. After the end of the first fitna (civil war, c.40/661), he associated himself with the Khārijīs, for which he was reportedly jailed in Basra (al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, 7:143). Initially, he was said to have been an admirer of the early Basran Khārijī (shurāt) hero and martyr Abū Bilāl Mirdās…

Basra (al-Baṣra), on the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, is Iraq’s major port city. The mediaeval city was built on the site of a Persian settlement called, in Middle Persian, Vahishtabadh Ardashīr. In the eleventh/eighteenth century, a new city was built near the site of the ancient al-ʿUbulla. ʿUtba b. Ghazwān, a Companion of the Prophet, reportedly founded Basra as a military camp, on orders from the caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–44), allowing Muslim troops to control the route from the Persian Gulf and launch campaigns to the east. Basran t…

Abū Bilāl Mirdās b. Udayya (d. 61/680–1) was an early Basran Khārijī (shurāt) hero and martyr. He was from the Rabīʿa b. Ḥanẓala branch of the Tamīm tribe, and Udayya was said to be his mother’s name. According to the sources, his father’s name was Ḥudayr (al-Balādhurī, 5:188). Nothing of his early life is known, and the stories of his later exploits are so heavily steeped in legend that it is perhaps more appropriate to approach them as hagiography (Gaiser, Tracing the ascetic life, 67–8). He and his broth…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī (b. c. 130/748, d. after 179/795) was a Kufan Ibāḍī kalām theologian of the Ibāḍī subsect of the Khārijīs. He was born in Kufa, probably not later than 130/748, into a family of the Arab tribe of Fazāra. His training as an Ibāḍī scholar most likely took place in Basra under Abū ʿUbayda Muslim b. Abī Karīma (d. before 158/775), whom he recognised as the spiritual leader of the early Ibāḍiyya, after Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī (d. c. 93/712). In Kufa al-Fazārī owned a silk trad…

ʿAntara, probably meaning “valiant,” was the name of several pre-Islamic poets, the only important one of whom was ʿAntara b. Shaddād, a sixth-century figure and author of one of the poems of the Muʿallaqāt. It is even more difficult than usual to elicit any facts about him, as by quite early in the Islamic period he had become a hero of legend and was to become the protagonist of the Sīrat ʿAntar, the great Arabic epic romance of chivalry. By the time of the composition of the Aghānī (mid-fourth/tenth century), it was recognised that most of the material available about him was f…

Sālim Ibn Dhakwān (fl. late first/seventh century or second/eighth century?) was the purported author of an early Ibāḍī sīra (epistle) known as the Sīrat Sālim b. Dhakwān. Ibaḍīsm is a distinctive sect, neither Sunnī nor Shīʿī, which originated in the decades after the Prophet Muḥammad’s death in 10/632; Ibāḍism is the majority religion in Oman, and Ibāḍī communities are also found in parts of North Africa and East Africa. Very little is known for certain about Ibn Dhakwān: a Sīstānī boy named Sālim Ibn Dhakwān was said …

Sufyān b. Abrad al-Kalbī al-Aṣamm was an Umayyad general who played a significant role in the Marwānid restoration during and after the second fitna (c. 62–73/680–92). His sobriquet al-Aṣamm means “the deaf ” or perhaps rather “the undeterrable.” He was of the Kalbī tribe, and his loyalty to the Umayyad cause was indisputable. Al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays al-Fihrī (d. 64–684), a fervent supporter of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr (d. 73/692) in Damascus, had Sufyān briefly imprisoned in 64/683–4, because of his pro-Umayyad stance. Sufyā…

Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl (or al-Ruḥayl) al-Qurayshī al-Makhzūmī al-ʿAbdī was a Basran Ibāḍī jurist, theologian, and historian who became a leader of the Basran Ibāḍī community after the death of Wāʾil b. Ayyūb, in about 190/806. His dates are uncertain: Crone and Zimmermann (310–1) propose his birth before 140/757 and his death in about 210/825; equally uncertain are his tribal identifications as a Qurayshī (al-Saʿdī, 8:303) or an ʿAbdī (i.e., a member of the ʿAbd al-Qays) (al-Darjīnī, 2:278), both of which Wilkinson doubts (Ibāḍism, 164). When his mother re-married, he be…

Ḥujr b. ʿAdī b. Jabala b. ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kindī was a Companion of the Prophet, a military leader in the early Muslim conquests, and a close supporter of the caliph ʿAlī (r. 35–40/656–61). He was executed in 52/672 by the caliph Muʿāwiya (r. 41–60/661–80). He belonged to the tribal nobility of the Banū ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa b. Muʿāwiya al-Akramūn of Kinda. With his brother Hāniʾ, he visited the Prophet in Medina—probably in the delegation of Kinda led by al-Ashʿath b. Qays in 10/631—and accept…

The Ibāḍiyya are a distinctive Muslim denomination, being neither Sunnī nor Shīʿī, who emerged in Basra in the first half of the second/eighth century. They are the only surviving offshoot of the shurāt, a group which other Muslims later classed as Khārijī. Successful missionary activity allowed the Ibāḍiyya to spread to the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and the East African coast in places such as Zanzibar. Today, Ibāḍī communities maintain a particularly strong presence in Oman but also continue to exist in North Africa. Ibāḍism can be distinguished from other Muslim commu…

Abū l-Walīd Maʿn b. Zāʾida al-Shaybānī (d. 152/769) was a leader of the Shaybān tribe in Iraq who was noted for his military prowess. He first appears in the sources at the end of the Umayyad period (41–132/661–70) as a companion to Yazīd b. ʿUmar b. Hubayra (d. 132/750), the last Umayyad governor of Iraq. He fought against Khārijī rebels in Fars in 129/746, then joined Ibn Hubayra in defending Wāsiṭ against the ʿAbbāsids (132–923/750–1517) in 132/749. Some reports credit him with killing the ʿAbbās…

ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb al-Rāsibī was a prominent leader among those pietists who broke with ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib during the First Civil War over ʿAlī’s agreement to arbitrate at the battle of Ṣiffīn (37/657). This group, known as the muḥakkima for its slogan “There is no judgement but God’s judgement” (lā ḥukm illā li-llāh), is widely understood to be the earliest manifestation of the Khārijī movement, and Ibn Wahb is identified in later Ibāḍī tradition as the first Khārijī Imām. (More precisely, he appears in the classical Ibāḍī typology as a provisional Imām of Defense, imām al-difāʿ, charged wi…

Kitmān , meaning “secrecy” or “concealment,” is one of the four stages of religion (masālik al-dīn) in which the Ibāḍī community might find itself living. Unlike the stages of manifestation (ẓuhūr), defence (difāʿā), or sacrificing to accomplish God’s aims (shirāʾ), it is the stage that requires Ibāḍīs to hide many of the practices of Ibāḍism in order to preserve it from enemies who might threaten or suppress it. Under such circumstances, kitmān becomes an obligation with important ramifications for how the Ibāḍī community conducts its affairs. Notably, the imāmate…

Dāwūd al-Ṭāʾī (d. c.165/781–2) was an ascetic from Kufa, in southern Iraq. As with many early Islamic religious figures, sources on his life and thought are late and contradictory in detail but nonetheless allow a general appraisal of his personality. Dāwūd al-Ṭāʾī was part of the Kufan Murjiʾa circle, which is associated with the name of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767), the eponymous founder of the Ḥanafī school of law (the Murjiʾa was an early theological school opposed to the Kharijīs on questions related to sin and definitions of what is …

Al-Bawāzīj was a town situated in the lower Little Zāb basin on the northern border of Kirkūk province, also known as Bawāzīj al-Mulk (to distinguish it from al-Bawāzīj in Anbar province). The town appears under the Aramaic name of Bēt Wāzīq in several Christian hagiographies and chronicles as an important mission centre in the pre-Islamic period and an episcopal see from the second half of the seventh century. Some scholars have argued that Bēt Wāzīq should be identified with Khōnī Shāpūr, foun…

Azāriqa, a sect representing the extremist wing of the Khārijī movement from the middle to the latter part of the first century of Islam, is named for one of its early leaders, Nāfiʿ Ibn al-Azraq (d. 65/685). 1. History Along with other early Khārijī figures, Ibn al-Azraq is said to have supported and then broken with ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr (c. 2–73/624–92) in the Ḥijāz, returning to Basra with the hope of exploiting the unsettled political situation in the period immediately following the death of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya in 64/683. Accuse…

Al-Manṣūr bi-llāh (or al-Manṣūr bi-Naṣr Allāh), Abū Ṭāhir Ismāʿīl, was the third Fāṭimid Imām-caliph (r. 334–41/946–53) after his father, al-Qāʾim. Born in the Tunisian administrative capital Raqqāda, most likely in 301/913-14, he was the only Fāṭimid caliph whose whole life was spent in North Africa. The official account of his designation as his father’s successor has the covenant (ʿahd) dated to Monday, 7 Ramaḍān 334/12 April 946, shortly before the latter’s death on 13 Shawwāl/18 May of the same year. In this period, the young prince, now clearly a…

Abū Salama Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān al-Khallāl (d. 132/750) was a financier and director of the ʿAbbāsid daʿwa (propaganda mission) in Kufa and later the first Muslim official known to have held the title of wazīr (vizier). The name of Abū Salama appears in the original list (dīwān) of ʿAbbāsid partisans ( Akhbār al-dawla, 191). Like Bukayr b. Māhān (d. 127/744–5), his father-in-law and mentor in the daʿwa, Abū Salama was a wealthy mawlā (client) of the Musliyya tribe (or of the Sabīʿ of Hamdān, according to other sources). He acquired his nisba from his residence in the Khallālīn quarter of …

The names al-Butr and al-Barānis are used in certain mediaeval Arabic sources to refer to Berber groups in the Maghrib and al-Andalus. Neither name occurs in pre-Islamic sources about North Africa; they appear first in Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam’s (d. 257/871) work. In his account of the conquest of the Maghrib, ʿAbd al-Ḥakam mentions Butr and al-Barānis to introduce different groups of North African people, without providing the reader any means of distinguishing them, but he does not assert that the enti…