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7 - The End of a Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2018

Paul M. Love, Jr
Affiliation:
Al Akhawayn University, Morocco
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Summary

Chapter 7 shows how the fifth and final work, the Kitab al-siyar, brought the medieval tradition of Ibadi prosopography to a close. I argue that this late fifteenth-century work by Abu al-ʿAbbas al- Shammakhi marks the end of the tradition by compiling all of the biographies of its predecessors into one collection. I demonstrate that al-Shammakhi could do that because he lived in the fifteenth-century Maghrib, where manuscripts and libraries were far more abundant than ever before. In addition, since Ibadis had declined in number significantly and now studied alongside their Sunni contemporaries, the Kitab al-siyar offers its biographies of the Ibadi community as much to non-Ibadis as to Ibadis. As such, I show that the end of the tradition of prosopography in the Middle Period also marked a recognition within the Ibadi community of their minority status as one of many religious traditions in the region. The network maps of the Kitab al-siyar demonstrate how al-Shammakhi crafted his arrangement of the biographies. When read closely, these biographies appear to lack any specific order. Using network analysis to map the text, I reveal that al-Shammakhi divided the written network of relationships into temporal divisions, corresponding to the major divisions of Ibadi history in the Maghrib.
Type
Chapter
Information
Ibadi Muslims of North Africa
Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition
, pp. 120 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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