Page 209 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

The Omani Manuscript Collection at Muscat 199
the author of this Sirah. From the names of his contemporaries given in
MS 1409, it is clear that these events occurred towards the end of the
6th/12th century. The Sirah itself confirms that Muhammad b. Sa‘Td
al-Qalhatfs kunyah was A. ‘Abdullah, and not A. Sa‘Id.
W. 53 Salih b. Waddah al-Manhl (for his Jawabat see Smith V.142)

II. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE IBAPI COMMUNITY
From the point of view of the constitution of the IbadI community
there are really four facets treated in these sources; its laws, its
membership, the authority of its leader, and its relationships with
outsiders. Since the first is basically the sharTah it naturally forms
by far and away the greatest part of these fiqh works. Whilst the
main feature of this content is its ‘orthodoxy’, its ‘novelty’ lies, on
the one hand, in the rigid application of the basic principles of
Islam to the conduct of government, and, on the other, the
interpretation of this law with respect to the mundane problems of
life in Oman. The three other facets are rather more IbadI and
require a little more explanation.

A. Wilayah wa-Bara’ah
The past and present membership of the community is determined
by whether an individual is accorded wilayah, association, or
bara’a/i, dissociation, by those with the *ilm to judge such matters
(arbab al-frall wa-7-‘aqd). The Bayan al-shar‘ (W.49a), the
Mu§annaf (W.49c) and the Mu‘tabar (W.39) all start their section
on this subject with a quotation from A. ‘Abdullah Muhammad b.
Rub b. ‘Arab! (W.32) that one or other status is a faritfah. The
evolution of this doctrine of association and dissociation goes right
back to the beginnings of Ibadism, and Ennami in his thesis1 sees
its Islamic origins as deriving from concepts of tribal organization,
a view which parallels the present writer’s own discussion on this
subject in the context of the authority (wilayah) of the Imam.2 Be
that as it may, from the time when Ibadism began to develop as a
da‘wah under the guidance of A. ‘Ubaydah Muslim b. A. Karimah
and Pumam b. Sa’ib, during the first half of the second century
A.H.,3 the question of whom they accepted as a member of their
community and whom they rejected was actively debated. There is
much in these sources, not only in the sections on wilayah and
bara’a/i, but also in the extant writings of the last Basran ‘Imam’
Mahbub b. al-Rahll (W.40a) and of his son A. ‘Abdullah Muham­
mad (W.40b), relevant to the early evolution of this doctrine.
The rules of wilayah and bara’a/i took on a new dimension with
the Rustaq-Nizwa party split (cf. section Vb below). Hitherto