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The aim of this article is to take into consideration the historical and social climate in which the chronicle studied by Lewicki 1934a was composed, and to edit Arab-Berber fragments copied by Motylinski from an Ibāḍī MS when he was in Mīzāb, to serve as a comparison (o.c., 5). On pp. 8-13 a list of Ibāḍī historical works is given (the relation with old Berber is not clear). Pp.13-14 on Ibāḍī works in Berber that might have existed. Pp. 14-16 on the chronicle already studied by Lewicki 1934a. Pp. 16-28: passages from this chronicle, assembled by Motylinski to serve as a working dossier for his article “Le nom berbère de Dieu chez les Abadhites”, with translations. Little, or no, new information is added to Lewicki 1934a and 1936 (qq.v.).

A preliminary study of a MS in the possession of the heirs of ʿAlī Jaʿfar al-Wahṭ al-Saqqāf al-ʿAlawī al-Ḥaḍramī in Mekka: 99 large pages, two annexes to pp. 52 and 97, two typewritten commentaries with explanatory remarks by ʿAlī Jaʿfar al-Wahṭ al-Saqqāf, who also wrote an introduction to the MS. According to Ṣughayrūn, this must be the original MS. Another copy is in the possession of the Mazrūʿī family in Mombasa (see Ritchie 1995), and photographs of the mother-copy are in the Kenyan National Archives and in the Central Library of al-Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz University (former Jāmiʿat Umm al-Qurà) in Mekka. The MS most probably was written during World War II; its author died in 1947 (or 1949). On pp. 192-193 the contents of the MS. Pp. 193-195 on al-Mazrūʿī and his work.

A lecture, published at the website of the Omani Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs: www.mara.gov.om/library/book/tanthimat.html (July 2003), (18 pp.).*

After the table of contents of vol. 1, thirteen pages with panegyrics by: ʿAbdl. b. ʿAlī al-Khalīlī, Mūsà b. Sālim al-Ruwāḥī, Ḥabrās b. Shubayṭ, Hilāl b. Sālim al-Siyābī, Abū Surūr [Ḥumayyid b.ʿAbdl. b. Ḥumayyid b. Surūr al-ʿUmānī], Aḥm. b. ʿAbdl. al-Ḥārithī, Hāshim b. ʿĪsà al-Ṭā’ī, Aḥm. b. Ḥamad al-Khalīlī, Muftī of Oman. Then five pages from the MS of the author, with a portrait of him. The Qaṣīda with the title of the book is on pp. 396-413 of vol. 1. The work was completed 4 Rab. II 1403/1983. The author lists Omani poets from the earliest times to the 21st century, with emphasis on the period from the 13th/19th century onwards. He gives examples of their poetry, says a few words on every poet, and on occasion makes short excursions on certain events, areas, tribes and sub-sections of tribes. In volume 2 for example, there is an excursion on the conquest of Oman by Mālik b. Fahm b. Ghānim b. Dūs al-Azdī al-Dūsī and his death at the hand of his son Sulayma when he was 120 years old (pp. 173-178). In this same volume, on pp. 191-197, he lists the Nabāhina kings until 1024/1615, and, speaking of the Nabāhina, he comes to speak of Ḥimyar b. Nāṣir b. Sayf b. Sul. b. Ḥimyar al-Nabhānī (1291-Jum. II 1338/1874-5 - 1920), whose father died 19 Dhū ‘l-Qaʿda 1293/1876, and on the discord between Sul. b Ḥimyar [al-Riyāmī] (d. 1998, a few years after his return to Oman from exile. See Mershen 2001) and Imam Ghālib b. ʿAlī al-Hinā’ī, (Imam 1954), who had to flee to Dammam in Saudi Arabia a few years later, together with his brother Ṭālib (who died in Cairo in 1401/1980-1) when Sultan Saʿīd b. Taymūr conquered the interior of Oman. On pp. 201-216 the author gives a list of the Imams of the Āl Yaḥmad and the Banū Kharūṣ (who are from the Āl Yaḥmad), who started governing Oman after the Julanda. On pp. 221-226, a list of the Yaʿāriba Imams, then of the rulers of the Āl Bū Saʿīd (pp. 226-242), with on pp. 242-243 a few words on Barghash b. Saʿīd al-Būsaʿīdī, Sultan of Zanzibar from 1870 to 1888. Khuṣaybī arranged the poets he lists in Ṭabaqas. The first Ṭabaqa are poets with Dīwāns, either printed or in manuscript, Majmūʿas or Muqaṭṭaʿāt. The second Ṭabaqa is of poets with Majmūʿas of poetry or Muqaṭṭaʿāt, but with almost no Dīwāns. The third Ṭabaqa are poets who composed panegyrics for Imams, kings and Emirs, with Dīwāns, printed or not, Majmūʿāt or Muqaṭṭaʿāt. The fourth Ṭabaqa is composed of the most famous poets, whose poems have been noted down and printed. Then, in the fifth Ṭabaqa, the author lists brilliant poets and scholars who wrote Urjūzas on al-Adyān wa’l-Aḥkām, Siyar, etc. In the sixth Ṭabaqa we see scholars and judges in the 14th/20th century, who wrote poems on all sorts of subjects, but who wrote no Urjūzas on al-Adyān wa’l-Aḥkām. Finally, in the seventh Ṭabaqa, Khuṣaybī lists poets who live in the 15th/21st century and wrote mainly questions and answers in rhyme on Fiqh, literature, etc. As for his sources, Khuṣaybī mentions them seldomly. Apart from the information he gathered himself, he quotes from Sālimī: Tuḥfat al-Aʿyān, Sālimī: Nahḍat al-Aʿyān, Ibn Ruzayq: al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn, Ibr. b. Saʿīd al-ʿIbrī’: Tabṣirat al-Muʿtabarīn, Anonymous: Kashf al-Ghumma. Although many of the poets listed (especially those living into the 21st century) produced poetry of a pure artistic nature, I copied the poets Khuṣaybī lists in this bibliography, because many of them were in their poetry inspired by local historical events, composed poems in praise of Imams and Sultans, and other persons or tribes or places. Zubayr 1991 clearly must have used Khuṣaybī’s work, and he is also quoted in Fārisī, Nāṣir b. Manṣūr 1994.

This paper investigates cultural interactions between the Soninke of Ghana (or Wagadu kingdom) and the Maghribī Ibāḍiyya in the western Sudan, from about a century before, to approximately a century after the Almoravid confederation in the western Sahara. From the late 8th and early 9th centuries, the Ibāḍiyya, together with other Berberophone populations, moved south into the upper Senegal and Niger river regions, primarily engaging in commercial and missionary activities. They usually stayed in towns or Muslim quarters near urban settlements such as Tahert, Wargla, and Gao, where they came into contact with Soninke traders. The degree to which Soninke-speakers may have been influenced by the Ibāḍī religion is not clear, but available evidence suggests that some pre-Almoravid conversions occurred. However, after the 11th century, the Almoravids effectively removed most traces of the Ibāḍī doctrine (Catalogue African Studies Centre, Leiden).

Pp. 248-250: Khārijism, a revolutionary doctrine. Pp. 250-252: The Ṣufrite kingdoms. Pp. 252-254: The Ibāḍite kingdoms. Then follow: The decline of Khārijism and the founding of the Idrīsid kingdom; The first attempt at independence in Ifrīqiyā; External relations; Society and culture (Density and variety of population; The social strata; Religious and racial osmosis; Language, arts and sciences; Religious thought).

While acknowledging that sub-Saharan Africa was the site of early food production, this paper evaluates the evidence that the production of some North-African Mediterranean and Asian food crops was introduced into West Africa by the little known Ibāḍiyya -the oldest of all Islamic sects- from Maghribian communities, possibly between the 8th and 16th centuries. In answering the question “how” or “by what process” Maghrib foods were diffused across the Sahara, the paper argues for the existence of Ibāḍī diasporas before the 10th century when Trans-Saharan commercial networks first began to be organized, thereby fueling important changes in the desert’s political economy (Catalogue African Studies Centre, Leiden).

Personal impressions of the author, who as a medical doctor spent 27 months in Chake, the capital of Pemba, of a small Ibāḍī community he became befriended with. One of his informants was the old sheikh Said Mohammed Mbaruk.

The historiography of the Sanusiyya, if one can apply such a term to the literary crop of roughly a century dealing with this North African tarīqa (pl. turuq, Sufi brotherhood), falls into three distinct categories. The earliest writings appeared in the 1880s, thirty years after the tariqa had taken root in Cyrenaica (then the Ottoman province of Benghazi). The works of French authors such as Charmes, Rinn, Duveyrier, Le Chatelier, and co-authors Depont and Coppolani were all marked by the concerns of the French colonial and protectorate authorities in Algeria and Tunisia. According to Duveyrier, a Saharan explorer of repute and the crudest exponent of this group's views, not only were the Sanusis a band of fanatics given to murdering innocent missionaries and explorers, but they were also in the vanguard of the turuq inspired by the Pan-Islamic rhetoric of the Ottoman sultan and aligned against French colonialism in Muslim North Africa. Only this combination of factors could account for the pervasive and determined resistance to French policies in the region. Along with the Sanusiyya, Duveyrier singled out for attack a North African sheikh and confidant of the Ottoman sultan, Muhammad Zafir al-Madani. Charmes, Rinn, Le Chatelier, and Depont and Coppolani, while less vitriolic in their tone, certainly had the same general approach. The analysis of this “Algerian school” was dismissed at the turn of the century by two eminent Orientalists, Christiaan Snouck Hugronje and Carl Heinrich Becker. A generation later, European fears of the turuq diminished in the wake of World War I, as new ideologies and forces came to dominate a transformed Pan-Islamism. This notwithstanding, some of the suppositions of the early French authors were adopted by later scholars and have since been quoted and requoted.