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A copy of the Kitāb al-īḍāḥ and accompanying gloss, from the Gouja family library in Djerba, Tunisia. In my recent book, the Ottoman Ibadis of Cairo, I used the library of the Ibadi trade agency, s…

Online event with Professor Paul Love (Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane) in English under the direction of Dr Feras Krimsti (Gotha Research Library) and Professor Konrad Hirschler (University of Hamburg)

From the 17th-20th centuries, Ibadi Muslims from the Maghrib traveled to Ottoman Cairo to seek financial, spiritual, or intellectual gain. At the center of their community lay a trade agency, school, residence, and library known as the “Buffalo Agency” (Wikālat al-jāmūs), located just around the corner from the famous Ibn Tulun Mosque. Using the Agency’s manuscript library as its material and geographic anchor, this project sketches the lives of Ibadi merchants, students, and scholars to show how Maghribi Ibadis participated in the legal, intellectual, and commercial worlds of Ottoman Cairo.

Sur le contexte de la mission de Jean Despois au Djebel Nefousa.

Paul M. Love, Jr. explores the history of the minority Ibadi Muslim community in Cairo from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Using a unique range of sources, Love both illuminates the events of Egyptian history and highlights the role of the Ibadis in shaping political, religious, and commercial life in Ottoman-era Cairo.

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.

You're invited to join us for an in-person talk on the history of the Ibadi Muslims— a minority community in the Maghreb, many of whom emigrated from Djerba, Tunisia, to Cairo, Egypt from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Pr. Paul Love, Associate Professor of North Africa, Middle Eastern, and Islamic History at Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco, and the author of The Ottoman Ibadis of Cairo (Cambridge University Press, 2023), will take us on a journey into the lives of the Ibadi Muslims during the Ottoman centuries. 🔍 Key Topics: How did the migration from Djerba to Cairo shape the identity and experiences of Ibadi Muslims in their new cultural landscape? How did this minority community navigate the complex landscapes of Cairo, adapting to cultural, religious, and social nuances within the Ottoman Empire? What economic and cultural contributions did they make, and how did these contributions leave a lasting imprint on the rich tapestry of the city?

Last summer, in a series of email exchanges, colleagues Dr. Aurélien Montel (Maître de Conférence, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès) , Mr. Soufien Mestaoui (Director, Ibadica), and Dr. Micha…

Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid, Fihrist al-makhṭūṭāt nashra bi-‘l-makhṭūṭāt allatī aqtanathā al-dār min sanat 1936-1955. 3 Vol.s (Cairo, 1961-1963). This is a brief follow up to the previous post about I…

The cover of al-Wujūd al-Ibāḍī fī Miṣr (Maktabat Khazāʾin al-Āthār, 2018). I borrow the image here from a remarkably detailed summary of the book available in Arabic here. I recently had the pleasu…

Saʿīd b. ʿAlī b. Taʿārit (d.1289/1872) occupies an important place in the history and historiography of Ibadi communities in the Maghrib as the author of The Epistle on the History of Jerba (Risāla…

(Tawfīq Pāsha) “Do you have wine in your country?” (Sultan Barghash) “Yes, we have wine made of date palms. The dissolute (al-fasaqa) drink it—in secret. When it gets the be…

Using the example of a recent inventory carried out in 2015 of the private library of the late Ibadi scholar and historian Salim b. Ya’qub (d.1991) in Tunisia, this presentation argues the late 19th and early 20th centuries represent a formative period for many major Ibadi manuscript collections in Tunisia. The Bin Ya’qub library, similar to manuscript collections through the Maghrib, the Sahara, and West Africa, reflects the archive-building travels and efforts of a Muslim scholar during the early 20th century and typifies a broader trend in Northern Africa toward the accumulation of large manuscript collections that today represent the main repositories of primary source material used by historians to write the history of Islam in the region. By offering a brief history of the creation of the Bin Yaq’ub library and the accumulation of its contents, the presentation suggests that thinking of the history of these and other Ibadi manuscript collections in terms of a network of scholars and books, constantly in motion, can help reshape the way historians use the texts of Ibadi archives. In addition, this paper considers the impact of the history of this and other Ibadi libraries in Tunisia on current research on pre-modern and early modern Ibadi history. In short, it considers the ways in which the story of the creation of this 20th century collection influences the ways in which we understand the history of pre-modern Ibadism.

Unable to travel lately, I have been searching for Ibadi lithographs listed in research libraries online. .. I did not anticipate [finding] the former owner of these volumes…

Manuscripts produced and used by Ibadi Muslim communities have been on the move in the Maghrib and beyond for over a millennium. Yet most Ibadi texts, including most extant copies of pre-modern texts, were copied from the 18th century onward. This means that any study of these manuscripts must address their early modern and modern histories, including their encounter with colonialism, their role in shaping post-independence nationalist historiographies, and contemporary efforts at manuscript documentation in the region. In this presentation, I follow the history of manuscript migration connected to Ibadi communities in the Jebel Nafusa through four intersecting themes. The first relates to the objects themselves, pausing to consider the history of their production, based on a survey of manuscript catalogs and data from recent digitization and documentation projects in the region. This dimension has migration at its core, since many “Nafusi” manuscripts were produced outside the Jebel Nafusa in other centers of Ibadi learning in Northern Africa. Continuing to follow the manuscripts as they moved through space allows us to trace the trajectories of their copyists and owners. Using exemplary private libraries today located in Djerba, Tunisia, I present a migrant manuscript trajectories that connect the Jebel Nafusa, Cairo, the Mzab Valley in Algeria, and the island of Djerba. I then turn my attention to an important but often neglected aspect of Maghribi manuscript histories; namely, their colonial legacies. Finally, I highlight the work done by local Ibadi organizations in the past two decades to document and to preserve individually and collectively owned manuscript collections.