ẒUHŪR: THE EXPANSION OF IBAḌISM

The same general conditions which allowed the ʿAbbasids to establish their power in the core of the Islamic world were also exploited by the Ibādīs (the chief sect of the Kharijites) to establish states in parts of its periphery. During the last decade of Umayyad rule their movement in Basra had been transformed into a full-scale daʿwah under the guidance of Abū ʿUbaydah Muslim b. abī Karīmah, propagating its ideology among two major disaffected groups, the Berbers of North Africa and the Yamanī tribes in southern Arabia (notably the Azd). Basran political and social networks were also exploited, particularly those of the merchants of the old Sasanid Arḍ al-Hind, so that cells of Ibadism came into being in parts of Khurāsān, Kirmān, Sijistān and al-BaḤrayn. Lesser colonies also existed in other parts of Iraq and even in Egypt: but Syria seems to have been barren ground.

Political activation of the movement in the Maghrib appears to have been precipitated by the rival propaganda of the Ṣufrīs (another Kharijite sect) in about 126/743–4, but the first full realization (ẓuhūr) of an Ibāḍī state resulted from a joint ʿUmānī-Ḥaḍramī-Yamanī expedition which established ʿAbdullāh b. YaḤyā al-Kindī (Ṭālib al-Ḥaqq) in Yemen and took the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina in the ḥajj of 129/747. ʿAbdullāh was killed shortly afterwards. Following the suppression of this uprising, a rump imamate survived for a while in the Ḥaḍramawt and a weak (ḍaʿīf) imam, al-Julandā b. Masʿūd, was brought to power in ʿUmān: both areas however, were early on brought under ʿAbbasid control.