Copies of the Ibadi prosopographies from the twentieth century according to title Muslim hostility towards Paul is no modern innovation. 8th century Ibāḍī theologian ʿAbd Allāh al-Fazārī writes: “Every nation after its prophet has a Sāmirī to misguide it and a Paul to deceive it like the Sāmirī of the Jews and the Paul of…

The religious movement of the Ibāḍiyya originated and was at first centred in Baṣra where its widely recognized spiritual leader Abū ʿUbayda Muslim b. Abī Karīma resided and taught in the first half of the 2nd/8th century. The great majority of the Ibāḍiyya in the Maghrib at the time looked to him for religious guidance.…

Article Introduction By the tenth century, Central Asia was home to a diverse mix of Shiʿi sects, Sunni groups (mainly Hanafite and Shafiʿite), and various other ethnic and religious communities. During this period, sharp struggles erupted from the conflicting views of rationalists and religious groups, against the backdrop of political conflicts between local dynasties. Amidst…

Article Ismailis theorized the sharī‘a as an ethical, legal, and ritual regime that the Prophet Muhammad and prior Prophets constructed and composed through divine inspiration in response to the circumstances of their own time as opposed to something that God directly ordained and dictated eternally. In other words, the Lawgiver is the Prophet. This sharī‘a…

Article Interestingly, the earliest textual evidence stating that Muslims deny the historical event of the crucifixion is not actually Muslim at all – it comes from the writings of the Christian Church Father, John of Damascus. Qur’anic commentators came to deny the crucifixion of Jesus, this view is not actually rooted in the Qur’anic verses…

Article The Ismailis are one of the largest Muslim minority populations of Central Asia, and they make up the second largest Shiʿi Muslim community globally. First emerging in the second half of the 8th century, the Ismaili missionary movement spread into many areas of the Islamic world in the 10th century, under the leadership of…

Article Quranic Apocalypse The Quranic corpus insists heavily on the impending end of the world. Many verses and sūras are more or less directly dedicated to it. This is particularly the case for a great number of the final sūras, the shorter ones, known to be the oldest ones, whose archaic language and literary style…

A Broad Assessment **It may be possible to argue that the Imamıs did, in fact, emerge in the mid- or even late 2nd/8th century **and then purged problematic traditions, creating the impression that they had differentiated from the larger Kufan population in a much earlier period. This process, however, would either (1) require a broad…

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