Shurāt Legends, Ibāḍī Identities. Martyrdom, Asceticism, and the Making of an Early Islamic Community

238 Pages·2016·2.65 MB·English

by  Adam Gaiser

Shurāt Legends, Ibāḍī Identities
Studies in Comparative Religion
Frederick M. Denny, Series Editor
Shurāt Legends
Ibāḍī Identities
Martyrdom, Asceticism, and the
Making of an Early Islamic Community
Adam R. Gaiser
Th e University of South Carolina Press
© 2016 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-676-6 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-677-3 (ebook)
For Robin and Gordon Gaiser
What do we care if our souls go out [of our bodies]?
What good to you were bodies and limbs anyway?
We look forward to the Gardens [of paradise],
When our skulls lie in the dust like rotten melons.
Abū Bilāl Mirdās b. Udayya,
from I. ‘Abbās, Shi‘r al-Khawārij, 1977
Contents
++++++ ∙⅏∙ ++++++
Series Editor’s Preface ּ∙ ix
Acknowledgments ּ∙ xi
Notes on Transliteration, Dates, and Qur’ānic Citations ּ∙ xiii
∙⅏∙
Introduction ּ∙ 1
1. Late Antique and Early Islamic Contexts ּ∙ 15
2. Shurāt Battles, Shurāt Bodies ּ∙ 45
3. Shurāt Boundaries ּ∙ 87
4. Ibāḍī Appropriations ּ∙ 114
5. Ibāḍī Boundaries ּ∙ 152
Conclusion ּ∙ 169
∙⅏∙
Notes ּ∙ 177
Bibliography ּ∙ 207
Index ּ∙ 217

Series Editor’s Preface
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This significant book addresses in a detailed and deeply researched man-
ner a subject that is not often found in books about the earliest period of
the new Muslim community within thirty years of the death of the Prophet
Muhammad and its development from that time. Our author refers to the pe-
riod in which Islam came into being as “the late antique Middle East” (p. 1).
That term is for the attention of modern readers and refers to “greater Syria
(that is, the Levant), the Nile, the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and Per-
sia between the second and eighth centuries c.e.” In his introduction the
author continues by acknowledging the importance of the diverse ethnic,
political, cultural and religious communities in those regions in that period.
An important focus of the book is the development of the earliest Is-
lamic communities and ways in which they both agreed and disagreed with
each other. Adam R. Gaiser addresses his main topic, the Ibadi Muslim com-
munity, through studying it in relationship to and in comparison with other
early Muslim communities. The author has discovered significant early
sources that provide indispensable information about the histories, prac-
tices, and convictions of the Ibadis and the roles of martyrdom and asceti-
cism in their personal lives and communities.
This series has been publishing important books, including a fair num-
ber on Islam, for many years now. I think that this one will provide valuable
information, analysis, and interpretation of the earliest Islamic history for
contemporary scholarship and teaching across such disciplines as Islamic
studies, comparative religion, and Middle Eastern history.
Frederick Mathewson Denny