Chapter 1 introduces readers unfamiliar with the Ibadi Muslims in the Maghrib to the traditional version of the history of Ibadi communities in the early medieval period. It begins by relating the story of the semi-legendary arrival of the community in Northern Africa in the eighth century. This includes a discussion of how this story became useful to later writers of the ninth and tenth centuries. The primary purpose of the chapter is to set the historical stage for the development of the Ibadi prosopographical tradition in the Middle Period (eleventh--sixteenth centuries). In particular, I describe the historical moment of the mid-eleventh century in the Maghrib and how the tradition emerged out of the political and religious landscape of the period.