Page 217 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

The Omani Manuscript Collection at Muscat 207

’1-Mu’thir (grandson of W.36), both of whom had originally
dissociated from Musa and Rashid until they saw the consequen­
ces of maintaining such an extreme position.
There then follows accounts of the excellence of the Nizwa
party’s two ‘neutral’ Imams, Sa‘Id b. ‘Abdullah (W.40d) and
Rashid b. Walld. But after Rashid was killed the country fell into
chaos; ‘no one was safe in Oman from its borderlands in Jurafar
(Julfar) to Raghwan, whether living on the barren mountains or in
the territory of the Huddan, or Rustaq’, and the people of learning
and precedence died out.
On this sombre note part one of the book finishes; it will be
noted, that A. SaTd carefully omits all references to the views of his
own contemporaries propagating the extreme Rustaq dogma (i.e.
Ibn Barakah and A. ’l-ftasan al-BisyawI).
The argument of the second part basically runs as follows. If we
look at this old dispute there is certainly no doubt that Musa’s
party had the support of some of the most worthy ‘u/a/na’ of his
time. Since we cannot know anything new about the facts and
since the views of worthy men conflict over this issue the only
rightful position is to abstain. Instead of keeping the old wounds
open we should try and heal them by striving to restore the true
unified Imamate of which here are the details ... (next 40 or so
tabs).
Unfortunately A. Sa‘Id’s call to reason was not heeded, with the
consequence that another half-millennium was to lapse before a
unified Ibadi state was re-created in Oman.

Notes
1. Ennami, A. K., ‘Studies in Ibadism’ Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge. 1971.
2. Wilkinson, J. C., ‘The Ibadi Imama’, B.S.O.A.S., London, 1976,
XXXIX.
3. For a somewhat different approach to the early development of the
Ibadi movement in Basra from that taken by such writers as Ennami
(op.cit), Lewicki, T. in E.1.2 art. al-lbafjiyya and al-tfarithl. Salim b.
Hamad, al-'Uqud al-fi<j(jiyyah fi Usui al-lbUdiyyah (D;lr al-Yaq?ah press,
Beirut, 1974?), see the writer’s paper ‘The early development of the Ibadi
movement in Basra’ in The formative period of Islamic history (600- 750)
ed. Juynboll, G. H. A., (in preparation).
4. That is within the Dar al-Isl&m\ the main campaigns against the I Mr
al-Uarb were directed at Hind.
5. J. of Oman Studies I (1976). ,
6. Water and Tribal Settlement in South-East Arabia, Oxford, W77.