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This article is aimed at analyzing the medieval and modern source material dealing with the history of Djerba under the Rustamid Imāmate in an attempt to clarify the nature of both the historical and historiographical relationship between them. It will begin by discussing the available primary and secondary source material, including the historiographical challenges they present. An analysis of the textual and archeological evidence connecting the Rustamids and Djerba will follow. Next, it will attempt to synthesize the scattered bits of evidence available in the historical record in an effort to present a clearer picture of Djerba in the Rustamid period. On the basis of this textual and archeological evidence, it will be argued that Djerba was home to an ibādī community independent of the government in Tahert for the majority ‒if not all‒ of that Imāmate’s existence ‒distinguishing the island from the surrounding areas of the Djerid (in southern Tunisia), parts of Aghlabid Ifrīqiya and the Jebel Nafūsa. Furthermore, it will be shown that evidence suggests this independence was not only a political, but also a religious one.<br><br>Este ensayo analiza las fuentes de origen medieval y moderno sobre la historia de Ŷarba en el Imāmato rustamí en un intento de aclarar la naturaleza de la relación histórica e historiográfica entre ellos. Se empieza por discutir las fuentes primarias y secundarias disponibles, incluyendo los retos historiográficos que plantean y se presenta a continuación un análisis de las evidencias textuales y arqueológicas que conectan a los rustamíes con Ŷarba. Se intenta después sintetizar las piezas dispersas de la evidencia disponible en el registro histórico con el fin de presentar una imagen más clara de Ŷarba durante el período rustamí. Con base en esta evidencia textual y arqueológica, se argumentará que Ŷarba era hogar de una comunidad ibādí independiente del gobierno en Tāhert durante la mayor parte (si no en su totalidad) de la existencia del Imāmato, distinguiendo así la isla de los alrededores del Ŷarid (en el sur de Túnez), partes de la Ifrīqiya Aglabí y el Ŷabal Nafūsa. Se muestra por último que la evidencia sugiere que esta independencia no era solamente política, sino religiosa.

This article offers descriptions of a handful of manuscripts by Ibāḍī Muslim authors held in the Bibliothèque nationale de Tunisie (BnT). In addition to the manuscript descriptions, it discusses some of the implications of these and other Ibāḍī manuscripts for the study of the medieval and early modern Ibāḍī traditions in Northern Africa. More specifically, it highlights the previously overlooked potential of manuscript evidence to illuminate our understanding of the formation and long-term maintenance of the Ibāḍī tradition in the Maghrib from the medieval period up to the 20th century.

This article follows the history of migration from the mountain villages of the Jebel Nafusa in Ottoman Trablus al-Gharb (in today’s northwestern Libya) to the southern Tunisian island of Djerba in the early 20th century. It situates this local history of migration within the broader framework of Maghribi migration both before and during the colonial era in Libya (1911–43), while tracing the histories of two categories of migrants, in particular, manual laborers and Qur’an teachers (m’addib-s). The article makes three claims: (1) Nafusi migration was as much the result of local historical circumstances as it was a response to colonialism; (2) the historical experience of migration of Nafusis differed according to social class; and (3) local circumstances shaped the dynamics of migrant integration in the Maghrib. In doing so, I demonstrate how Nafusi migration to Djerba both conforms to and diverges from the larger history of late Ottoman and colonial-era migration in Tunisia. By shifting the focus away from the colonial moment, I make the case for foregrounding longer-term regional connections and migrations that linked different spaces across the Maghrib and also attend to local histories and what they offer in the way of caveats and exceptions.

This article argues that medieval Arabic texts that were published in colonial northern Africa constitute as much a part of the history of colonialism and its legacy as that of the medieval centuries in which they were written. Using the publication history of a medieval Ibadi text and its French translations, I demonstrate how texts like it were edited, translated, and published not only for academic purposes, but also as contributions to the production of ‘useful’ colonial knowledge in Algeria. I begin with the first translation, published in 1878 alongside other ethnographic and historical studies funded by the colonial state. I then turn to the second translation, serially published between 1960–2 as its editors abandoned the country at the violent end of the colonial period. Finally, I address the Arabic editions published after independence, which recast it within a nationalist framework. Overall, I argue for the importance of addressing the colonial pasts of medieval texts in northern Africa.

From at least the 17th century onward, a sizeable Maghribi Ibadi community lived, studied, and worked in the city of Cairo, centered around a trade agency, school, and library known as the ‘Buffalo Agency’ (<em>Wikālat al-Jāmūs</em>). Over nearly four centuries, this agency served as a hub for Ibadi intellectual activity and manuscript production. Despite its place of prominence in the history of early-modern Ibadi communities, manuscripts are some of the only surviving evidence of its existence. Using manuscript notes from and catalog data on manuscripts either held at the agency’s library or copied there, this article suggests that Ibadis were far from the small, isolated minority community in northern Africa they are often imagined to have been. Instead, the story of the Buffalo Agency points to the ways in which Ibadis very much belonged to the intellectual and commercial worlds of Sunni-dominated Cairo from the 17th–20th centuries.

, ABSTRACT:, This article follows the career of Saʿīd al-Shammākhī (d.1883), who served in Cairo, Egypt as the wakil of the Bey of Tunis from 1871–1881. I suggest that Shammakhi's life and career as wakil offers novel valence and voice to an increasingly polyvalent, polyphonic, and polychronic history of late Ottoman North Africa; namely, that of an Ibadi Muslim commercial and diplomatic agent, whose career linked two late-Ottoman Arab provinces at a decisive period in their history. The article situates Shammakhi in recent scholarship on late-Ottoman North Africa, with an emphasis on work that has sought to decenter European imperialism and colonialism as the defining factors in the chronology and history of the region. It also outlines his biography leading up to his appointment as wakil before then contextualizing Shammakhi's role as wakil by explaining the nature of that office. Shammakhi's time as wakil—and even the years following his death—expressed multiple belongings, imagined alternative futures past, and embodied a life and afterlife disrupted, but not defined, by the encounter between European imperialism and Ottoman lands in Africa.

This interesting and concise book finds its origin in Paul Love’s doctoral thesis defended in 2016 at the University of Michigan. It presents an innovative study of medieval Ibadi North-African Siyar. In the Maghrib, Siyar are books containing anecdotal and biographical information about individuals, playing the role of chronicle-style history; they function as prosopographies, collective biographies in which stories about individual members come together to form the biography of the community, constructing a North-African Ibadi tradition (p. xx). Love’s book tells the story of the compilation, adaptation and circulation of that prosopographical corpus through five scholars’ works. The pioneer is Abû Zakariyyâ’ al-Wârjalânî who provided Ibadi scholars of the second part of the eleventh century with a cohesive narrative of their history, when the community was suffering an ongoing numerical decline; he chose to write in the Arabic language at a time when use of the Berber language was also in decline. The author then studies the works of al-Wisyânî, al-Darjînî and al-Barrâdî. The last Ibadi scholar is al-Shammâkhî (d. 1522), who compiled all of the biographies of his predecessors into one collection and brought that medieval tradition of Ibadi prosopography to a close.

Paul Love, actuellement Assistant Professor à l’Université d’Al Akhawayn (Ifrane, Maroc), est un spécialiste de l’histoire de l’ibāḍisme médiéval au Maghreb. Dans cet ouvrage, il livre le fruit de ses recherches de doctorat. L’ibāḍisme ne cesse d’attirer de nouveaux chercheurs et les récentes publications sur l’histoire de ces groupes religieux disséminés dans les marges de l’Empire islamique témoignent de la richesse du corpus de sources à explorer. Les sources ibāḍites maghrébines, que l’on...

This article focuses on letters in private Ibadi libraries and their importance for understanding the primary means of communication among Ibadi communities in the premodern Maghrib. Using the example of a letter from the 7th/13th-century Ibadi Shaykh Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ṣidghiyānī from the island of Djerba (Tunisia) to the Ibadis of Warjalān (Algeria), it seeks to highlight the importance of the archive of unedited Ibadi manuscript letters. This corpus of correspondences has not received the care and maintenance it merits because these letters do not belong to a recognized volume or book and are today located in private libraries unavailable to the public. The article also uses the example of al-Ṣidghiyānī’s letter to emphasize the importance of the manuscript letters and their role in maintaining intellectual ties among the Ibadi cities of the Maghrib. This brief article consists of two parts. The first part offers a general presentation of the archive where the letter is today held: the El Barounia Library in Djerba, Tunisia. The second part presents the manuscript and its author in their historical context.</p></section>