- Provenance as Iraq
- Cook suggests that the epistle is a Kufan product, with reference to its interest in Murjiism; its affinities with KI and the ifa would suggest the same. Madelung seems to accept Cook’s suggestion, as does van Ess in one ofhis volumes, both on the basis ofthe anti-Murjiite polemics published by Cook. But this creates problems with the dating now that the Khrijite parts ofthe epistle have to be considered too:
- Provenance of Mosul Mosul was a Kufan province which had a substantial population of Azds f rom Oman as well as an Ib community, though most of the local Khrijites must have been ufrs. It was an area ofendemic Khrijites revolt, always small-scale, and women often participated. It was just the kind ofarea in which Slim’s statements on jihd would fit, and all the features that point to Kufa could be taken to suggest the Kufan sphere ofinfluence, while the Azd presence would account for the author’s predilection for the m/man sha ’llh expression.
- Provenance of Iran
- Another possibility is that Salim’s epistle was composed in eastern Iran, as suggested by van Ess. Khursn was a Basran colony which regularly received troops from Kufa too. It was a province which lent itself very well to small-scale warfare against rulers who could not be ousted, but who could still be harassed; and in Khursn under caliphal rule it would have been natural to think ofimams as leaders ofexpeditions pure and simple rather than potential heads ofstate. We also know that some Iranian Khrijites continued to let their women participate in khurʉj into the tenth century. Eastern Iran was the home of the Sstn Khrijites, whose extremist dissociation from the Ibs had repercussions even in Oman; and the Sstns actually knew about a Slim b. Dhakwn who is likely to be identical with the person to whom our epistle is ascribed. The m/man/aythu sha ’llh expression will have been at home here; and it is in the mouth ofa Khurasn general ofthe Abbsid revolution that the rare verb istankaa is attested in the same sense that it has in Slim.105 It was also in eastern Iran that a heresiographer wrote ofthe Bidaiyya, in the sense ofMurjiite quietists, who may have figured in Slim’s polemics.
- Provenance of Oman
- Finally, Slim’s epistle could be a product ofOman. The Ibs of Oman engaged in polemics against the Murjia from the mid-eighth century onwards,114 readily used the expression m/man/aythu sha ’llh, and never stopped waging holy war: like the Iranians they had the right terrain, and in addition they were tribesmen. They hardly suffered from a dearth ofextremists to argue against, be they Sstns such as those who brought Ibn Fʉrak’s creed to Oman or local Najadt or ‘ufrs’ (whatever that may mean in an Arabian context).115 The Ib tradition says that Slim was an Omani, and Slim’s attention to bedouin grievances (II, 47; III, 71) and the adaqa of Ba rayn (II, 41) could perhaps be taken to suggest eastern Arabian origins, So where in Omani history might we place the epistle?
- Madelung’s date of c.700 remains too early. Ibadism hardly existed as a separate branch of Kharijism at that time, still less had it reached Oman.
- Whether the epistle was composed in Oman or Iran, however, all the evidence suggests that it was written in the period 750–800.
