ʿAbdallāh ibn Ibād

ʿAbdallāh ibn Ibād al-Murrī at-Tamīmī ( Arabic عبد الله بن إباض المري التميمي, DMG Abd-Allah ibn Ibadh al-Murri at-Tamimi ) is the namesake ( eponym ) of the Islamic faith of Ibadites .

Ibn Ibād's identity is obscure. According to the two authors asch-Schahrastānī (1076–1153) and Zakariya Qazwini (around 1203–1283), he organized an uprising against the Umayyad caliph Marwan II in the middle of the 8th century . However, the reports of the two authors were long rejected as anachronistic , since there are other reports from the earlier Arab historiographers Abū Michnaf and al-Balādhurī , according to which Ibn Ibād belongs to the late 7th century. According to these reports, he was one of the Kharijite activists from Basra who, under the leadership of Nāfiʿ ibn al-Azraq, moved to Mecca in 683 to defend Abdallah ibn az-Zubair against attacks by the Umayyads. When the Umayyad siege collapsed after the death of the caliph Yazid I, the Kharijites fell out with ʿAbdallāh and withdrew to Basra. There they were imprisoned by the Umayyad governor ʿUbaid Allah ibn Ziyād, but were soon released again. Some of them, under the leadership of Nāfid ibn al-Azraq, went to Ahwaz for a large-scale uprising. The Kharijites remaining in Basra, including ʿAbd Allaah ibn Ibād, urged Nāfiʿ to join his hijra ; since the inhabitants of the town blasphemers are un, one must be sure to renounce them. ʿAbd Allaah ibn Ibād is said to have rejected this claim with the argument that the inhabitants of Basra are not kuffār ("unbelievers") in the sense of a muschrik, from whom one must part, but only kuffār in the sense of kuffār niʿma ("ungrateful "). Therefore it is still allowed to live among them.

The Ibadite literature does not provide any biographical information about Ibn Ibād, but does contain two letters that he is said to have addressed to the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan . The authenticity of these letters was questioned early on. Michael Cook put forward the thesis in the early 1980s that the first letter actually came from the Ibadite scholar Jabir ibn Zaid (d. 712) and was addressed by him to the Muhallabid leader ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Muhallab . The second letter, which contains anti-Shiite polemics, is, in his opinion, a forgery that was written shortly before the middle of the 8th century.

Based on a report that Wilferd Madelung discovered a few years ago in a work by the well-known writer Abū ʿUbaid Allāh al-Marzubānī (died 994), today we tend to classify Ibn Ibād as later. According to this report, after an argument with the Shiite poet as-Sayyid al-Himyārī, Ibn Ibād was incarcerated by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansūr around 760 and died a little later in prison. Madelung suspects that it was only after this incident that the group to which Ibn Ibād belonged became known under the name Ibādīya. The actual leader at that time was not Ibn Ibād, but Abū ʿUbaida Muslim ibn Abī Karīma at-Tamīmī.

Because of this new chronological order of Ibn Ibād, the letters ascribed to him are also being reassessed today. With regard to the first letter, John Wilkinson put forward the thesis in 2010 that it was originally addressed to ʿAbd al-Malik, the son of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz , who died in 719 . Madelung agreed with this view and considers it likely that they come from Ibn Ibād himself. Regarding the second letter, he suspects that it also comes from Ibn Ibād, but was in fact addressed to al-Sayyid al-Himyarī.

literature

• Michael Cook : Early Muslim Dogma. A source-critical study . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1981, pp. 51-67.
• Wilferd Madelung: ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Ibāḍ and the origins of the Ibāḍiyya. In: Barbara Michalek-Pikulska, Andrzej Pikulski (Ed.): Authority, Privacy and Public Order in Islam. Proceedings of the 22nd Congress of L'Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants . Leuven 2006, pp. 51-57.
• Wilferd Madelung: 'Abd Allâh Ibn Ibâḍ's' Second Letter to 'Abd al-Malik'. In: Community, State, History and Change: Festschrift for Prof. Ridwan al-Sayyid on his 60th birthday. Al-Shabaka al-ʿArabiya li-l-Abḥâth wa al-Nashr, Beirut 2011, pp. 7-17.
• Wilferd Madelung: The authenticity of the letter of 'Abd Allâh b. Ibâḍ to 'Abd al-Malik. In: Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée. Volume 132, December 2012, URL: http://remmm.revues.org/7753

supporting documents

1. ↑ See Madelung 2006, 51.
2. ↑ See Cook 57-67.
3. ↑ See Cook 53-57.
4. ↑ See Madelung 2006, 52f.
5. ↑ See Madelung 2006, 56.