Ibadi Muslims of North Africa
Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition

The Ibadi Muslims, a little-known minority community, have lived in North Africa for over a thousand years. Combining an analysis of Arabic manuscripts with digital tools used in network analysis, Paul M. Love, Jr takes readers on a journey across the Maghrib and beyond as he traces the paths of a group of manuscripts and the Ibadi scholars who used them. Ibadi scholars of the Middle Period (eleventh–sixteenth century) wrote a series of collective biographies (prosopographies), which together constructed a cumulative tradition that connected Ibadi Muslims from across time and space, bringing them together into a 'written network'. From the Mzab valley in Algeria to the island of Jerba in Tunisia, from the Jebel Nafusa in Libya to the bustling metropolis of early-modern Cairo, this book shows how people and books worked in tandem to construct and maintain an Ibadi Muslim tradition in the Maghrib.

Reviews & endorsements

'Using network analysis coupled to a scholarly examination of extant manuscripts, Love's study opens new perspectives on the developing traditions of prosopography among the dispersed Ibadi communities of the Maghrib. It would make a stimulating model for examining the reasons behind a generally dissimilar development in Oman.' John C. Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford

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Product details

• Date Published: June 2020
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9781108459013
• length: 231 pages

• dimensions: 230 x 153 x 10 mm
• weight: 0.32kg
• contains: 27 b/w illus. 1 map
• availability: Available