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Both Sufism and Ibadism focus on the spiritual equality of all Muslims, and they also arose in Basra, Iraq, sometime between 650 and 680. Strikingly, from the mid-seventh century onward, Basra was also a primary disembarkation point for Indian Ocean slaves. Eighth- and ninth-century Sufi literature, especially in Basra, tended to equate the lowest social status (enslaved eastern African common laborers) with the highest spirituality. Reading the rise of Sufism in its historical context, I argue that extreme Sufi devotional behaviors, namely excessive weeping, fearfulness, fasting, and sleeplessness, were pious reenactments of, respectively, enslaved people’s grief, terror in hostile environments, undernourishment, and forced labor day and night. This paper draws on early hadith, Ibadi legal opinions, poetry, literary prose, agricultural manuals, and chronicles in support of this allegorical reading. The argument also challenges the presumed benignity of Middle Eastern slavery and explores the consequences of disciplinary silences around non-elite agricultural enslavement.

Abstract Did the Portuguese always dominate the Asian powers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Colonial historians used to be confident that the West consistently dominated the East, with that domination culminating in the conquest of Asia. This paper argues that the Europeans faced significant resistance from the eastern powers, with the three-way relationship of Portugal, Kanara, and Oman examined as a case in point. The countries’ dealings with each other date to the region’s Age of Partnership, when no single power could dominate the other. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese obtained the upper hand over the East, particularly Kanara and Oman. But in the seventeenth century, the Portuguese lost their upper hand and the Asian powers staged a resurgence. The Omanis, indeed, imitated the Portuguese by establishing factories in India. This article draws on sources such as Filmotheca Ultramarina Portuguesa, Assentos Conselho do Estado, Cartas, Patentes e Alvaras, and Documentos Remittodos India.

This paper investigates the anthropological research on Omani society, represented by a package of studies conducted by two American anthropologists: Dawn Chatty and Mandana Lambert. Working on these studies allows us to trace certain characteristics of the American anthropological research focused on the Global South, and on the Middle East in particular. These studies followed an anthropological approach that is usually devoted to culture and practical issues in areas like health, administration, and economic development. They date back to the 1990s and reflect the moment in which they were written and the interests of the two researchers in the phenomena that caught their attention. Therefore, the topics pursued were prevalent in a society undergoing transformation or on the path to development following the ascent of Sultan Qaboos bin Said to the throne in 1970.

Among the dynasties ruling in the Islamic West, the Idrisids, the Aghlabids, the Fatimids, the Zirids and the Andalusi Taifa kings wrote poetry, but not the Ibāḍī rulers from North Africa. In the Ibāḍī and Ṣufrī polities that were established in Berber-speaking contexts court poetry in Arabic seems to have been absent, while religious piety and learning were extolled. In other contexts, the ability to write poetry signalled a ruler’s distinction, acumen and knowledge. Such ability seems to have been taken for granted in the case of the Cordoban Umayyad emirs and later among the Taifa kings, except for those who were Ṣaqāliba (slaves of European origin). The Arab Taifa king of Seville al-Muʿtamid (r. 461–484/1068–1091) was a highly talented poet whose verses are still appreciated and studied today. The existence of Andalusi rulers who wrote poetry was one of the elements that certain Andalusi authors emphasized in order to prove the cultural superiority of ‘Arab’ al-Andalus over North African ‘Berberdom’, although some members of both the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties are mentioned as having written poetry in Arabic. Rulers in the Islamic West also wrote prose works dealing with the art of government, the loss of power, adab, geometry, bookbinding and astronomy, a variety of topics that is to be understood in each specific context as explained in the second section of this chapter. Finally, the case of authors who became rulers is analyzed: the poet Ibn ʿAmmār, the ʿAzafids of Ceuta, the mystics Ibn Qasī (d. 546/1151) and Ibn Aḥlā al-Anṣārī (d. 645/1247), and the Mahdī Ibn Tūmart (d. 524/1130).

This article examines falaj system in relation to the tribal fabric of its beneficiary community. Falaj is a gently sloping underground tunnel or open channel that transfers groundwater or seasonal runoffs to the cultivated lands. Falaj acts as a core around which six socio-economic spheres form in a certain spatial order: shari’a public space, residential area, orchards, farmlands, pastures, and eventually falaj socio-economic hinterland. These spheres are the products of a systematic interaction between falaj, tribal communities and their economy. This article looks into the role of water in social cohesion within local communities and cooperation between tribal territories, which is conducive to the Omani variation of tribalism based on blood, soil and water. This type of tribalism is called hydro-tribalism whose socio-economic integrity is systematically contingent on accepting others in the group and cooperating with other groups. Some scholars mistakenly use the metaphor of “salad fabric” to describe Oman’s tribal composition, where different tribes live in harmony within the same territory but never melt into a homogeneous unity. However, this article likens hydro-tribalism to “solar system” where different groups remain in the orbits of their own tribal identities around a central falaj system, in the form of a complex socio-economic organization. This article concludes that falaj system is crucial in Oman’s sustainable development not only for the water that it can still supply to the country’s oases, but also for its social function that has always served to cement an organic relationship between different pieces of Oman’s social mosaic.

مثّلت القيروان أول عاصمة حاضنة وراعية للمذاهب الاسلامية القادمة من المشرق الاسلامي منذ مطلع القرن2ه/8م، فتزاحم العلماء والطلبة على أبواب جوامعها لطلب العلم من مضانه، وعرفت انتشارا للمذهبين الإباضي والصفري في وقت مبكر، هذا الأخير الذي لم يدم طويلا فيها بسبب غلوه وخروجه عن تعاليم الاسلام، واتخذ من سجلماسة بالمغرب الأقصى نقطة ارتكازه، في حين أن للإباضية بصمة بارزة في المدينة، رغم النزعة الخارجية التي اتهموا بها إلا أنهم فرضوا أفكارهم واعتقاداتهم على عامة الناس ردحا من الزمن، قبل تأسيس الدولة الرستمية. والمقال يأتي وفق منهج تاريخي ووصفي واستقرائي للبحث في دخول وانتشار المذهب الإباضي بالمغرب الأدنى وبالقيروان وأحوازها بخاصة منذ ق2ه/8م، من خلال ذكر أهم مشايخهم وعلمائهم المستقرين بها او المنتقلين إليها مؤقتا لتلقي العلم، والذين أسهموا بشكل فعّال في الحياة الدينية والثقافية وكان لهم دورهم العلمي تمثل في حضورهم لحلق العلم وتصدّرهم لها في بعض الفترات، رغم قلة المعلومات عنهم في المصادر والمراجع.

Houcine KHLIFI (University of Sousse, Tunisia) Introduction This study questions the relations between fiqh and history through the lense of Kitāb al-Luqaṭ by al-Šammāḫī. According to al-Warǧilānī, the imam Abū l-Ḫaṭṭāb established the first Ibāḍī emirate near Tripoli (in Ṣayyād) in 140/757. Later, in the...