Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibadi Imamate Traditions.

• Author: Madelung, Wilferd
• Position: Book review

Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibadi Imamate Traditions. By ADAM R. GAISER. AAR Academy Series. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2010. Pp. xiv + 203. $74.

The Ibitcliyya are the only remnant of the second broad opposition movement to the historical caliphate or imamate besides the Shia. In early Islam this movement was primarily known as the Kharijites after their original secession (khuraf) from the army of the caliph 'Ali in Kufa. whose imamate had become illegitimate on account of his arbitration agreement with Mutiya. Modern lbaclis object to their designation as Khitrijites, holding that this name properly applied only to those radicals of the movement who advocated secession from the Muslim community, not only from its illegitimate government. They do not deny their original secession and accept the alternative designation of the Khdrijites as Mubakkima, supporters of the rule of God.

From the late Umayyad age on, the Ibacliyya were intermittently able to establish their own, territorially limited, imamates in a few regions of the Islamic world. Eventually two separate lbAcii communities survived in Oman and in the Maghrib, where they were ideologically divided into factions most of which later disintegrated. By the fifth/eleventh century both communities had developed elaborate legal theories about various types of imamate appropriate for different historical circumstances in which the community might exist. These theories differed to some extent in the two communities on the basis of the different history of their actual imamates, but reflect the same basic thought and motivation.

The present book offers a thorough analysis of the lbacii theories of the imamate based upon the legal and historical literature of the two communities, much of which has only recently become available in published form. Gaiser discusses successively the four types of legitimate imams recognized in the Omani tradition, imam al-kithar (manifestation), imam al-kitman (concealment), imam shad (the imam who seeks martyrdom in fighting for the cause of God), and imam al-difac (defense), sometimes also called imam cid if ("the weak imam"). He searches for the first roots of these ideal types of leadership in pre-Islamic Arab tribal society and traces their development in Islam in the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the revelation of the Qur'an, in the age of the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and 'Umar, who are recognized...