Bida’iyya:

(edited)

1. Fatan could be an interpolation but, there’s a case for the view that the Fatana were included in the original epistle. Ifsomeone inserted the section devoted to them, he must likewise have inserted the paragraph devoted to them in the stance (IV, 135). Ifso, we would be dealing with something approaching rewriting rather than accidental or casual addition.
2. TERMINOLOGY
3. Terminology hints before 800CE
4. Reasoning: As regards terminology, Slim differs from the ninth-century and later authors in that he never uses the term muwa- idʉn for the Muslims at large, only ahl al-qibla, never refers to internal sinners as ahl al-kabir or bught, only as mudithʉn, and never speaks of non-Ib Muslims as mukhlifʉn, only as qawmun; nor does he bandy the term munfiq about with the frequency of later sources: the term denotes a legal status in his work, and clearly had for some time, inasmuch as he takes it for granted; but he does not actually use it as a label. Further, he refers to illegitimate sexual use of captured women as istink, a rare word which does not seem to be attested anywhere else in the Ib tradition, and he always uses the term khamasa where later Ibs have ghanama for treating the opponents’ property as booty. In short, his account does have some distinctive features.
5. NO REFERENCE TO EVENTS AFTER c.72/692
6. In Cook’s opinion the epistle suggests two different dates; that is, 692-693 CE on the assumption that it is authentic, and the late Umayyad period on the assumption that it is not.
7. Cook’s early dating is based off of this:
8. THE NAJDIYYA AND AZARIQA ‘TODAY‘
9. Deleted User — 12/17/2023 9:05 PMSlim’s references to the Najdiyya and Azriqa ‘today’ are more interesting, but we are not convinced that they are genuine chronological clues. There are six relevant passages. In the first three, Slim says that, ifthe practice ofthe first Khrijites was right, then the Azriqa are wrong to disown or brand as infidels the moderate Khrijites ‘who practise it today’ (III, 66, 67) or ‘who affiliate on the basis ofit today’ (III, 72). Taken literally, all six passages do indeed imply that the extremists were a live presence when Slim wrote. But Slim could well be taking the Azriqa and Najadt to dissociate from the moderate Khrijites ‘today’ for the simple reason that this is what they did when they emerged: he could be speaking in the heresiographical present. For this reason the six passages do not persuade us that the epistle was written, or that its author pretended to write, while the Azraqite and Najdite revolts were still in progress.
10. THE REVOLTS ARE OVER
11. In fact, several features of the epistle suggest that it was written some time after the revolts had been suppressed. First, Slim’s treatment of the extremists is too close to that ofthe heresiographers in terms ofdelineation ofthe subject matter, doctrines reported, and wording chosen to have been written by a contemporary. His heresiarchs are dead: their total number is known, their order has been sorted out, their doctrines have been systematized, the formulation has been standardized, and the arguments against them are well rehearsed. It is hard to imagine that this was a first response. Secondly, he argues against the Azraqite rejection of taqiyya by pointing out, among other things, that their behaviour contradicts their doctrine: idh kharajʉ knʉ aktam m knʉ qa li-dnihim, ‘they were more given to hiding their faith than ever when they rebelled’ (III, 74). The Azraqite revolt is a past phenomenon here. Thirdly, Slim’s explicit statement that the Najdiyya have changed their mind on the rji and implicit suggestion that they have adopted double rules would indicate that the Najdiyya have been forced into quiescence too.15 Fourthly, it hardly seems likely that an author who wrote between 72/691 fand 73/692 fshould have been in a position to write a systematic refutation of Murjiism, given that this doctrine is said first to have been propounded by a man who died in c.100/720 and that its adherents first appear in the historical record in connection with the revolt ofIbn al-Ashath in c.82/701.16 It could ofcourse still be argued that Slim based his Khrijite section on sources going back to the time ofthe revolts, but apart from the ambivalent references to the extremists ‘today’, there is nothing in the epistle to suggest that he did.
12. POLEMICS AGAINST DEAD OPPONENTS
13. How long after the suppression of their revolts was he writing? Cook finds a terminus ante quem in the sheer fact that he wrote against Azriqa and Najadt on the grounds that these sects do not seem to have survived the suppression oftheir revolts, and that even ifthey did, Slim’s interest in their relations with their qawm while in a state ofarmed insurrection would not make sense ifthey survived only as mangled remnants. What sort ofthings on the ground may have triggered Slim’s polemics against the Azriqa and Najadt, then? We can think ofthree possibilities. First, he could have written against them in order to persuade outsiders that the Ibs were not extremists: this was A fayyish’s motivation. But we only mention this possibility in order to discard it, for Slim does not convey the impression ofwriting in an apologetic vein. Secondly, he could have been in competition with live descendants ofthe Azriqa or Najadt and responded by attacking their ancestral creeds. Thirdly, he could have been confronted with new extremists within or outside his own ranks and tried to nail them once and for all by refuting the creeds from which, as a bookish man, he would have seen them as having sprung. On the whole, the second scenario strikes us as more plausible. In short, it was not only North African Ibs who had reason to write refutations of the archetypal extremists long after the original sects had disappeared.
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15. UTHMAN
16. Slim’s account of Uthmn draws on the same pool offixed phrases and motifs that lies behind the akhbr accounts preserved in Sunn sources, and he does not have any new angles such as one would expect from an author writing in the mid-Umayyad period. One would thus assume him to have been a contemporary ofthe akhbrs, ofwhom the earliest on the subject of Uthmn are Ibn Is q (d. 157/767) and Abʉ Mikhnaf(d. 157/774), while al-Wqid (d. 203/823) is one ofthe latest. Some such dating is also suggested by Slim’s affinity with the ifa, a work based partly on Ibn Is q and partly on sources also used by Slim.
17. KHAWARIJ
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19. • Another clue is provided by Slim’s use ofthe term khawrij. As mentioned already, this is a self-designation, probably coined with reference to Q. 4:100 (wa-man yakhruju min baytihi muhjiran il ’llh, ‘he who goes out from his house emigrating to God’). Khrijite poets ofthe early and mid-Umayyad period use it with pride (I. Abbs (ed.), Shir al-khawrij, (Beirut, 1963), nos. 23: 6; 95: 1; 108: 2). Even an author as late as al-Ashar knows that it was one of the labels that Khrijites found acceptable (Ashar, 127.14. The fact that the philologist Abʉ Ubayda usually refers to the Khrijites as khawrij thus cannot be taken to disprove the claim that he was a Khrijite himself (pace W. Madelung).
    • IB1 calls himselfa Khrij without reservation. He has to contend with the annoying charge that Khrijites are extremists: ‘you wrote to me raising the matter ofthe Khawrij, asserting that they go to extremes in their religion’. But he reacts by declaring them innocent ofthe charge, not by disowning the name: ‘this is the truth ofthe Khawrij’, he states after outlining their history, and he proceeds to testify that he affiliates to them, ‘except that we dissociate from Ibn al-Azraq and his followers’ (Kshif, Siyar, ii. 341 f; Barrd, Jawhir, 164 f = Rubinacci, ‘Califfo’, 117 f; cf. Cook, Dogma, 58 f, who clears up the confusion generated by Rubinacci).
20. Salim speaks ofhis ancestors as khawrij al-muslimn (II, 65), al-khawrij al-ʉl (III, 78), and man kna qablahum min al-khawrij (III, 66), reserving the term khawrij on its own for the extremists (IV, 121, 133), so his usage is similar to that ofthe ninth-century authors and quite different from that ofIB1 and Shabb b. A iyya. IfSlim wrote in Oman (or some other province), he must have been later than Shabb. Ifhe wrote in Iraq, he could perhaps have been a contemporary ofShabb, or possibly even an earlier author. But he can hardly have written before c.720 wherever he wrote.
21. HIJRA
22. Salim would appear to have written in Abbsid times. Salim argues against the extremist concept of hijra with reference to the f act that the hijra has come to an end, paraphrasing (and possibly even citing) a Prophetic tradition to this effect (III, 77). In so doing he adopts a line ofargument that had gained currency in the early Abbsid period.
23. MILITANCY
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