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204 Arabian Studies IV
effect that ‘if you hire a shepherd for a month and then sell the
animals you are still liable for the month’s wages’: or again to have
described the regulation of the Qasawat falaj and then to stumble
on the qatfr’s judgements which determined it.6 In fact the
regulation of detail in these early fiqh works is quite extraordinary
and provides evidence that many rulings determining the
organization of traditional life were defined during the First
Imamate. Particularly valuable for this subject are the Manthurat
al-Ashyakh, which contains much on land organization and
financial methods, the Jami‘ of A. ’1-UawarT, and volume XXI of
the Mu$annaf> the full title of which indicates the scope of the
work: fi’l-‘ummal wa-’l-amwal wa-fi zira'ah wa-fi ijarat al-sufun
wa-ijarat al-afimal wa-fi (amal al-nassaj wa-ghayr dhalik.
Another aspect of socio-economic organization of the Imamate
that the writer hopes to deal with more thoroughly at a later stage
concerns the fiscal r6gime controlling the entrepot of $uhar which
really begins to prosper during the middle of the third century
A.H. The earliest recorded rulings concerning the taxation of
merchants operating from $uhar were decided during the Imamate
of Ghassan b. ‘Abdullah who took up residence there from
201-206 A.H. in order to organize the marine and suppress the
piratical ‘bawarij of Hind’ operating from bases in the Musandam
Peninsula. But the main mass of detailed legislation emanated from
A. ‘Abdullah b. Muhammad b. Mahbub (W.40b) who was qadf in
$uhar from 249-260/863-873.

V. ‘DOGMA’DISPUTES
A. Doctrinal Disputes
Religious disputes with political overtones early affected the Iba<JI
movement and Oman was not exempt from them, even though, by
contrast with the Maghrib, open schisms were avoided. For
example Qadariyyah and Murji’ah schools were established in
$uhSr and began to make converts in northern Oman during ‘Abd
al-Malik b. IJumayd’s Imamate (207-226/823-841), whilst the
problem of whether the Qur’an was created or not nearly raised a
serious breach in Oman between the two leading ‘alims of the time,
Hashim b. Ghilan and A. ‘Abdullah Muhammad b. Mahbub.
Material relevant to these particular doctrinal disputes may be
found in the J2Uni‘ A. ’1-IJasan and may be compared with the
material, largely North African, used by Ennami (op.cit.) for his
discussion of Ibatjl dogma.
Politically the most significant split found its doctrinal origins in