Download PDF | Hannah-Lena Hagemann - The Kharijites in Early Islamic Historical Tradition_ Heroes and Villains-Edinburgh University Press (2021).
330 Pages
Introduction
he Kharijites (in Arabic al-Khawarij) are regarded in the Islamic tradition as the first schismatics to appear within the Muslim community. Their origin is commonly located in the first civil war (fitna; 35-40 H/656-61 ce), specifically in the Battle of Siffin (37 /657 ce), following which they repudiated both parties to the conflict and subsequently engaged in countless revolts against the caliph ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, the Umayyads and then later the “Abbasids. Early Islamic literature abounds with reports of the uncompromising piety and unparalleled violence of the Khawarij, a volatile combination that seems to have led to the obliteration of most Kharijite groups before the end of the ninth century. Their particular brand of militantly pious opposition was encompassed in the watchword /a hukma illa li-llah (judgement is God’s alone’) and left a lasting impression on early Islamic history as it was remembered over time. It is not a surprise that the Khawarij continue to both fascinate and horrify modern-day Muslims and historians alike: the label ‘(neo-)Kharijite’ has become a common appellation for (and thus a useful tool against) groups such as Daesh, Boko Haram, al-Qa'ida or the Muslim Brotherhood as well as inconvenient political opponents.!
The study of Kharijite history and thought is, however, fraught with fundamental difficulties. For instance, scholars have long recognised that Muslim heresiographers, who provide the bulk of information on the tenets of the Khawarij, had a more schematic than historical interest in the factions they described, Kharijite or otherwise. The arbitrary creation of ‘heretical’ groups and the equally indiscriminate attribution of doctrines to one party or another constitute only the most basic problems associated with the study of Islamic heresiography.* Early Islamic historiography, on the other hand, offers much contradictory information concerning the sequence and exact dates of events or the identities of the participants. Moreover, these sources are so riddled with literary topoi and rhetorical devices that since the ‘sceptic turn’ in the 1970s and 1980s, the reliability of the early Islamic tradition as a whole has been called into question.’
These challenges are not peculiar to the study of Kharijism, of course. But the problem is particularly pronounced because little research has been carried out on the Khawarij to date. The scholarship that does exist is sometimes sharply divided over how best to understand their origins and motivations‘ — some historians follow the classical Islamic sources, while others reject the traditional story of Kharijism largely or wholly in favour of offering their own interpretations of the background and intentions of the early Kharijites.° Unlike studies of many other episodes in the history of early Islam, however, scholarship on Kharijism has so far not systematically approached the sources as texts that are subject to the rhetorical embellishment and narrative strategies so important to understanding the formation of early Islamic historical memory: for the most part, research on Kharijism remains dedicated to (re) constructing history.
Over the past few decades, some research has been undertaken on the place and representation of Kharijites in Islamic heresiography and adab.° Less attention has been paid to how the early historical tradition approaches Kharijism. This goes particularly for those works that, unlike al-Tabari’s Tavikh or al-Baladhuri’s Ansab al-Ashraf; are not part of the standard Islamicist canon. Considered more ‘sober’ than heresiography, poetry or adab, historiographical works are usually mined for hard facts of Kharijite history and (less so) doctrine.
In contradistinction to this tendency, the present study will offer an analysis of the portrayal of Kharijite origins that asks about the narrative role and function of Kharijism in early Islamic historical writing. The focus is thus on ‘literary’ rather than ‘historical’ Kharijism. The analysis is based on a representative selection of historiographical sources from the early period of Islam, that is, works that were compiled during the second to fourth centuries H/eighth to tenth centuries cE. In taking this approach, the book pursues two goals: first and foremost, it seeks to fill a gap in the study of Kharijism and argue for the need to approach the subject from different perspectives that will take fuller account of this phenomenon in its contemporary settings. Narrative analysis, it is hoped, will serve here as a precursor to a new historical analysis. Second, such an investigation will further our understanding of early Islamic historiography and tell us something about the concerns and interpretative frameworks of individual historians as well.’
For the purpose of this study, “Kharijite origins’ refers to the period from the Battle of Siffin until the death of the second Marwanid caliph ‘Abd alMalik (d. 86 4/705 ce). This time span is divided into three parts: the rule of ‘Ali from Siffin until his assassination (by a Kharijite) in 40 H/661 ce; the subsequent reign of Mu‘awiya b. Abi Sufyan (r. 41-60 H/661-80 ce); and, finally, the era of the second civil war (60-73 H/680-92 ck) and the reign of ‘Abd al-Malik (c. 73-86 u/c. 692-705 ce).*
By ‘narrative analysis’, I do not mean a narratological or poetic study of these sources — while of course a valuable and indeed a necessary endeavour, my interest here is in content over form.’ Elements of narratological analysis such as emplotment, placement strategies or narrative conventions will feature throughout this study, but recourse to literary or narrative theory is not my concern. Instead, I will focus on identifying (some of) the themes and concerns emerging from our sources’ depictions of Kharijism when we read these accounts not as ‘hard facts’ but as contributions to a discourse on the correct interpretation and remembrance of the early Islamic past, and thus as lines of argument. I am fully aware that this kind of excavation work is highly subjective, shaped by my own intellectual formation and so informed by distinct underlying assumptions about the meanings, purposes and processes of history-writing. This is always the case in reading, writing and interpreting history, however, even if it often goes unacknowledged in the construction of grand historical master narratives. We will return to this issue in Chapter One.
My approach to early Islamic historiography is based on an understanding of historical writing as the casting of past events in a manner that highlights their relevance for contemporary affairs, and thus as having a decidedly discursive function. Najam Haider has recently argued for the influence of a particular form of late antique history-writing on early Islamic historiography that is concerned with “narrative logic, credibility devices, and emotive persuasion”.'° These elements indeed characterise the early historical tradition rather well and we will come across them at various points in the present book. Chapter One will look in more detail at the challenges of Islamic historiography, the question of historiography as literature and the importance of studying Kharijism from a literary perspective. For now, the premise of this book as the point of departure for what follows is that these [early Muslim] historians employed literary devices and stylistic elaborations that both made a story more edifying and conveyed some type of moral lesson. At the same time, they wove stories into interpretive frameworks that inscribed meaning onto an event or biography. This suggests that the literary characteristics of the material . . . were only one component of a larger historical project mainly centered on interpretation.'!
Over the course of this study, I will argue two main points: first, that there is little narrative substance’* to the Khawarij as they are presented in the sources and that their identity is both static and largely collective. This effect s created by a range of techniques that will be examined over the subsequent chapters, among them the ‘silencing’ of Kharijite actors by denying them an equal (or sometimes any) share in discourse, almost always granting their opponents the last word and having them express themselves in the same terms over and over again with little sense of development or individuality. Kharijism thus often appears as a collection of stock phrases without any real connection to specific historical circumstances.
This leads us to the second point: early Islamic historiography approaches Kharijism not necessarily as an end in itself, but as a narrative tool with which to illustrate and discuss other issues. The accounts may have a historical core, but they have been shaped and reshaped to reflect contemporary concerns. ‘This is acommon and expected function of history-writing, part and parcel of the “larger historical project mainly centered on interpretation”.'? Combined, these two points emphasise the pitfalls inherent in even a critically positivist approach to Kharijite (and much early Islamic) history: what ‘the’ Kharijites’ ‘real’ intentions were and what they hoped to achieve ‘in actuality’ is very difficult to extract from a standardised and thus dehistoricised portrayal. This is not to say that we should abandon history as a positivist discipline altogether, of course, but research of that kind needs to recognise and acknowledge these challenges before attempting to unearth what historical Kharijism was really all about.
The remainder of the Introduction will establish the basic framework for the analysis to follow. It will review the scholarly literature on early Kharijism as a point of departure for the approach adopted here and then outline the basic premises underlying the book’s take on pre-modern Islamic historiography. It will conclude with a brief summary of the book’s structure and main findings. The remaining two sections of Part I will briefly comment on the source selection as well as the tricky questions of genre and authorship, and then provide an historical overview of the events referenced in the narratives we will come to discuss.
The Study of Kharijism
Let us turn to scholarly interpretations of how Kharijism came to be. Over the past 130 years or so, a broad range of theories regarding Kharijite origins and intentions have been advanced. Despite this interest in the rise and development of Kharijism, Western scholarship has remained limited. Published monographs are in the single digits; two of these are over a century old,'4 another two are dedicated to the modern perception of Kharijism and its perceived relation to militant Islamist movements.'* The remaining works are several decades old as well; some of them tend to be descriptive rather than analytical and are based rather uncritically on the Islamic tradition.'® There are also a handful of MA and PhD dissertations that deal with Kharijism, mostly with Kharijite poetry and oratory or the treatment of Kharijism in Islamic heresiography. With one exception, these remain unpublished.'” The articles and book chapters that have been published on the Kharijites mostly follow the same tendency of addressing either Kharijite poetry'® or heresiographical concerns,'? with only a few focusing on other matters such as Kharijite coinage.”
The study of Ibadism, a moderate offshoot of Kharijism, is a whole other matter. Due to the considerable success in Oman and North Africa of the group itself as well as the survival of archives of Ibadi literature, there is now an increasing interest in the past and present of Ibadi communities.” Engagement with hitherto unstudied works of Ibadi scholarship promises fresh insights into — or at least different perspectives on — the history and development of Islam and thus constitutes an enticing incentive for Islamicists to explore Ibadism.” Increasing access to Ibadi source material also offers some more unconventional takes on early Kharijism. Ibadi communities throughout history have had a complex and often problematic relationship with the Khawarij, and modern Ibadi intellectuals in particular tend to deny more than a passing acquaintance with the Kharijites of early Islamic history.*? Some Islamicists — chief among them Adam Gaiser — have nevertheless studied not just the Ibadi depiction of and attitude to Kharijism, but have also illuminated the ways in which (mostly pre-modern) Ibadi scholarship utilised and adapted narratives of Kharijite rebels and martyrs in the course of their own processes of identity formation.” Such analyses tell us much about Ibadism, but rather little about historical Kharijism.
The quality and quantity of Ibadi material are unfortunately not matched in the material available for the study of Kharijite history. The only allegedly Kharijite sources that have come down to us consist of poems and speeches attributed to them in the works of Muslim scholars unsympathetic to their cause. This explains both the preoccupation with Kharijite poetry and oratory and the perseverance of positivist approaches to Kharijism. The problem is two-fold: because poetry is the only genuinely Kharijite material we (appear to) have, scholars tend to focus on it disproportionately; and as we want to make statements about the historical Khawarij, the material needs to be considered authentic in the first place. Among other issues, this sometimes results in methodological inconsistency. In an article on Kharijite poetry, for example, Donner laments the late, fragmentary and biased source base for early Islamic history, but argues in the next paragraph that Kharijite poetry “may have been subjected at least to a different kind of editing than those accounts transmitted within the “orthodox” or “Sunni” community” because of “the fact that the poetry of the early Kharijites was (initially, at least) circulated and preserved especially among the Kharijites themselves”.”” How he knows this for a “fact” remains unclear, particularly because Kharijite poetry is preserved in much the same sources as the “orthodox” or “Sunni” accounts he contrasts it with.”
This approach is not unusual. Islamicists and Muslim scholars happily revisit the same narratives of Kharijism and employ the same, often contradictory, methods and approaches in the quest for Kharijism ‘as it really was’. Interestingly, they often arrive at radically different interpretations. One reason for this disparity of opinion is that there is no consensus on precisely why the Kharijites protested against the arbitration and what was meant by ‘judgement is God’s alone’.”” Many studies of Kharijism tend to follow the (later) Islamic tradition, which views Kharijism as an expression of religious zealotry turned into rebellion and heresy. Van Ess, for example, has argued that the Kharijites considered themselves the only true Muslims ... [Their] schism resulted from the claim to exclusive sanctity. Hence, the Kharijites abhorred intermarriage with non-Kharijite Muslims. They also battled their coreligionists everywhere they could. They believed they were dealing not with Muslims of lesser quality but quite simply with unbelievers . . . As a result, not only were they convinced that all other Muslims would go to hell, but they even felt justified in conducting a jihad against them.’8
Along the same lines, Watt declared one particular Kharijite faction “a body of rebels and terrorists”,*? and Foss suggested that “[b]y this time [68999], terrorism had made the Kharijites deeply unpopular with mainstream Islam”.*° Morony summarised them as follows:
“They were militant, fundamentalist, self-righteous, homicidal, and suicidal; they were likely to raise the zabkim (Ar.) in a crowded masjid and be instantly torn to pieces by the panicked crowd.*!
Others have taken a different, sometimes more nuanced, approach to the question of Kharijite origins. Donner, in his Narratives of Islamic Origins, for instance, acknowledges the tendentious nature of the Islamic tradition, which has done much to establish the heretical nature of Kharijism:
The tendency to view the Khawarij as a “sect” and to emphasize doctrinal issues that eventually led them to be considered “unorthodox” has sometimes obscured the fact that their motivation — which was to establish communities of truly pure Believers — appears to be an exact continuation of the original mission of Muhammad.”
This statement acknowledges the difficulties in basing our understanding of early Kharijism on Islamic heresiography. At the same time, however, it is also a good example of the desire to discover ‘what really happened’ to cause the Khawarij to break so violently with their coreligionists. The following overview illustrates the range of theories of Kharijite origins scholars have advanced, which will serve to position my own approach to the question more clearly.*?
We can discern broadly three strands in scholarly approaches to the early Khawarij. One focuses on a tribal, sometimes nomadic framework for the emergence of Kharijism that is considered irreconcilable with the demands of a centralising polity.** The second regards excessive piety, based perhaps on expectations of the imminent end of the world, as the motivating factor behind Kharijite protest and rebellions.*? Despite their differences, both of these interpretative frameworks sometimes include arguments to the effect that Kharijism was ultimately an expression of anarchism.** The third strand emphasises pragmatic, ‘rational’ interests such as economic or political status. The various interpretations of Kharijism often combine elements from different frameworks,” though a primary strand can usually be determined. The following survey exemplifies the range of opinions; virtually all other studies that engage with the question of how Kharijism came to be can be located somewhere along this spectrum. The overview will proceed chronologically rather than thematically in order to trace the development of scholarly theories on the subject, which in their overall transition from largely faithful retellings of the sources to sceptical and occasionally radical reinterpretations we can also read as a reflection on the development of the field of early Islamic Studies more generally.*®
‘The first academic study of Kharijism was the doctoral thesis of Rudolf Ernst Briinnow, a scholar of Semitic philology, which was published in 1884 under the title Die Charidschiten unter den ersten Omayyaden. He argued that the parties who emerged from the first fitna — the “orthodox faction”, the Shi'a and the Khawarij — were at that point political factions. Religious developments only occurred at a later stage. The Kharijites, according to Briinnow, were former Bedouins who were “by nature” opposed to the rule of townspeople.* They were veterans of the conquest of Iran who had settled in Basra and Kufa, but nevertheless clung to their Bedouin roots. While the qurra’ — reciters of the Qur'an or perhaps more generally those ‘knowledegable in religion’ — were an important faction among the first Kharijites, Briinnow argued that the most significant group comprised the veterans, who elected one of their own as caliph after ‘Ali had lost their respect at Siffin. As they had shown no particular loyalty to ‘Ali even before his opponents’ call or arbitration, they had no qualms about leaving him. For all that, Briinnow also argued that the Kharijite protest at Siffin was based on religious reasons: judgement should not be left to mere mortals but was God’s domain only.” Briinnow did not comment further on this apparent two-fold nature of these earliest Khawarij, or on how to reconcile the distinction between political and religious motivations made elsewhere in his study. His final assessment of Kharijite origins thus remains uncertain.
In 1901, Julius Wellhausen published Die religiés-politischen Oppositionsparteien im alten Islam, in which he arrived at a slightly different conclusion regarding the nature of Kharijism. According to him, the Kharijites originated in the gurra’, whom he understood to be reciters of the Qur’an and hence particularly pious scholars. Wellhausen concluded that their protest at Siffin was exclusively based on religious reservations. Like Briinnow, he detected a political dimension to their actions, but this dimension was dominated by religious objections, which eventually led to a break with the community:
In diesem Widerspruch zwischen Din und Gamaa, zwischen der Pflicht, Gott und das Recht iiber Alles zu stellen, und der Pflicht, bei der Gemeinschaft zu bleiben und dem Imam zu gehorchen, treten die Chavarig entschlossen auf die Seite des Din.*!
‘These two studies remained the only detailed scholarly engagements with the Kharijites until, 70 years after the publication of Wellhausen’s Oppositionsparteien, M. A. Shaban published his ‘new interpretation’ of Islamic History in 1971.” His portrayal of the Khawarij is radically different. Throughout his work, Shaban calls for the rational, logical interests of the Arab Muslims to be taken into account. He identifies the predecessors of the Kharijites as those tribesmen who had been loyal to the Islamic polity during the ridda wars that ensued after Muhammad’s death and thus occupied a privileged socio-economic position under ‘Umar I as governors of the fertile sawad lands of the former Sasanian Empire. With the accession of ‘Uthman they lost this position and, in their anger, joined the groups of malcontents that eventually murdered the caliph. These (proto-)Khawarij first supported ‘Ali because they hoped he would reinstate their former privileges, but in the wake of his agreement to the arbitration these hopes were disappointed and they separated from him.* The motives behind the Kharijite protest before, at and after Siffin are hence presented as purely socio-economic.
In his assessment of Kharijism, Shaban raised two issues that had not been seriously considered before: first, that the Khawarij may not have come into being in the context of the battle and arbitration agreement of Siffin; and second, that the factors which motivated Kharijite protest were not at all religious in nature.
Similar ideas were expressed in an article that was published in the same year but independently from Shaban. Martin Hinds’ “Kufan Political Alignments and Their Background in the Mid-Seventh Century ap” (1971) contends that the predecessors of the Kharijites were early converts to Islam who lost their privileged position during the caliphate of “‘Uthman. Unlike Shaban, however, Hinds argued that this privileged position was based on sharaf ‘honour, dignity, eminence’), which in the Islamic system was earned through early conversion (sabiqa; ‘priority, preference’) and participation in the ridda and futih expeditions rather than membership in a prominent tribe. This last aspect was particularly important to the Kharijites-to-be, who mainly belonged to tribal splinter groups and whose social standing hence depended on sabiga.® They opposed ‘Uthman’s reforms and later the arbitration at Siffin not because of religious zealotry, but because they associated the undivided authority of the Qur’an with the rule of ‘Umar, under whom they had been favoured and whose example they expected ‘Ali to follow. In other words, political and economic grievances were expressed in religious language without necessitating a purely religious motive for discontent.
W. Montgomery Watt offered yet another explanation of Kharijism in his 1973 work The Formative Period of Islamic Thought. Like Briinnow, he opined that the Khawarij had originated in a nomadic milieu and attempted to recreate the tribal structures of ancient Arabian Bedouin society on an Islamic basis: Kharijite groups were small in number, outsiders were regarded as enemies and basic equality prevailed among the group members. Watt interpreted the fact that Kharijite revolts continued after ‘Ali's death as confirmation that the Khawarij were in fact opposed to the whole system of rule and government established by the Islamic proto-state, which to him supported his thesis of nomadic origins. Unlike the pre-Islamic Arabian Bedouin, he argued, Kharijite communities were based on Islamic precepts — only the most pious man was eligible for leadership — and in Watt’s opinion, their insistence that the caliphate should rest on the same precepts was an important Kharijite contribution to Islamic doctrine.“
Yet another, somewhat different approach to the question of Kharijite origins was advanced in Gerald Hawting’s 1978 article on “The Significance of the Slogan “La hukma illa li-llah” and the References to the “Hudid” in the Traditions about the Fitna and the Murder of ‘Uthman”. Hawting suggested that a better understanding of terms and slogans such as /a hukma could be achieved through drawing parallels between the events of the first civil war among the Muslims and similar conflicts in Jewish communities.
As he pointed out, certain contemporary Jewish groups had accused others of allowing human beings to partake in God’s divine legislation through the use of Oral Law (i.e. human interpretation of divine provisions and the use of legislative sources other than Scripture), which for them equalled idolatry. Hawting thus concluded that the first fitna was essentially a clash over the authority of Scripture (here, the Qur’an) in relation to Oral Law (here, the appointment of arbiters and their use of sunna). The Kharijite a hukma slogan, he suggested, may have been influenced by these parallel inner-Jewish conflicts, concluding that “there are grounds, then, for thinking that the la hukma slogan is a summary of the scripturalist position and a protest against the Oral Law rather than a reaction to the arbitration agreement made at Siffin”.“” Hawting’s article was published a year after Crone and Cook’s Hagarism, one of the first and to this day most radical engagements with Islamic history through the lens of non-Muslim and especially Jewish sources. The authors were among the earliest and most prominent representatives of the so-called sceptical approach to early Islam that flourished from the 1970s to the early 1990s in particular.** Hawting’s take on the Khawarij can be read within this context, as can much of his later work.”
A focus on religious factors is also observable in Fred Donner’s 1997 article on “Piety and Eschatology in Early Kharijite Poetry”. His analysis turns on poetry attributed to Kharijite rebels before the year 65 H/685 cE. Based on his understanding of these poems, he concluded that the rebels were extremely pious believers who expressed their religious devotion “in an activist, indeed militant, way” and in this followed the Qur’anic understanding of godliness.” This led him to suggest “that the early Kharijites may represent the real “true Believers” of the early community, that is, the truest guardians of the values enshrined in the Qur’an”.*' According to Donner, Kharijite piety was rooted in the imminent expectation of the eschaton. This Naherwartung caused their reckless and violent behaviour: they courted death in this world in order to escape God’s wrath in the next. While Donner acknowledged that Kharijite poetry did not actually mention the End Times specifically, he posited that the Khawarij may have considered contemporary events such as the ridda wars and the early conquests as evidence that the end of days was already upon them. Consequently, “it was urgently important for them to make whatever sacrifices were required in the furtherance of the goal of spreading the hegemony of the righteous community of Believers”.”* Political, economic or social concerns were thus of no consequence to the Kharijites, whose sights were firmly set on the Hereafter.**
Chase Robinson came to yet another conclusion about the nature of Kharijism in his Empire and Elites afier the Muslim Conquest, which was published in 2000. Referring to Hobsbawm’s concepts of social banditry and rebellion, Robinson identified the Kharijites of the Jazira (Northern Mesopotamia) as tribesmen opposed to the rule of the Islamic state and Kharijism as “the Islamic form of that politicised and revolutionary edge of social action towards which banditry, given the appropriate conditions, can move”.” In this, his argument resembled that of Watt and Briinnow, although Robinson discussed tribesmen in general, who do not necessarily have to be Bedouins. Unlike them, however, he maintained that Kharijism probably did not originate in the events of the first civil war: a monolithic group of Muslims from whom the Khawarij then separated is unlikely to have existed at this early stage; for the same reason, he considers the date around which the Kharijites are said to have divided into distinct subgroups (c. 684) to be too early. He claimed that the Kharijite rebels in the Jazira had a political programme (which he does not describe; nor does he outline his understanding of ‘programme’ in this context)” and thus could only be explained in the more politicised Marwanid period: for the Jazira at least, Robinson contended that no Kharijites should be expected prior to the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik, as there were no state structures in the region to rebel against.”
Finally, Donner’s ideas about the significance of eschatology for early Kharijism were explicitly taken up and adapted by Paul Heck in his “Eschatological Scripturalism and the End of Community: The Case of Early Kharijism” (2005). He combined these ideas with Hawting’s arguments about Oral Law vs. Scripture, but Heck’s overall assessment of early Kharijism remains somewhat unclear and contradictory. His main argument is that “Kharijite eschatology, twinned to their own shame at being in the world and on its margins . . . offered a framework wherein such shame could be transformed into both hatred and despair of this world as foreign to the reign of God”,”* but this not explained further in any detail (for example, why were they ashamed in the first place?). He also seems to offer several different explanations for who the early Kharijites were: “a band of marauders”;” proponents of the principle that “the community was bound together by scripture, the Qur'an being its effective and exclusive leader (émam)”;® and “a coalescence of tribal elements and an intensely qur’ano-centric piety attributable in large part to the qurra”.®' It was apparently “proto-Kharijite tendencies” that led to the murder of ‘Uthman, who had been accused of “having introduced innovations into the divinely sanctioned system of distributing the proceeds of conquest”. Essentially, Heck’s article presents an amalgamation of previous interpretations of and different interpretative frameworks for Kharijite origins, but the mixture does not work all that well and leaves the reader wondering about his precise understanding of early Kharijism.
Research Approach and Sources
The many different interpretations of early Kharijite history reveal the lack of a simple (or single) satisfactory answer — the origins of the Khawarij are certainly not “clear in the main”.®? Despite the diversity concerning approach, use of sources and ultimate conclusions, however, the above explanations have three things in common: they all work reasonably well within their own frame of reference, i.e. taken on their own they all sound plausible to a greater or lesser extent; they are all based on some form of source or tradition criticism which is then applied to a particular selection from the immense corpus of available source material; and they are all of a positivist bent in that they attempt to unearth the ‘true’ story of how Kharijism emerged.”
The first of these characteristics can only be achieved by sidelining evidence that does not accord with one’s frame of reference to avoid contradictions. If, for instance, the Kharijites were focused primarily on the Hereafter and had no interest in territorial gains,°° how do we explain the coins minted by the historical figure Qatari b. al-Fuja’a, who is associated in the sources with the most violent and most puritanical of Kharijite factions? The coins make a clear claim to worldly rule not just in declaring an intention to stay in and govern a region, but also in calling him amir al-mu'minin, which is the caliphal title. The Persian legends are clearly directed at the local population in telling the elites, at least, about the change in power.”
This last point is paradigmatic. Much scholarship on early Islamic history still remains largely faithful to the sources, in part certainly because dismissing what they have to say would have some rather irksome consequences for the writing of said history.®* This is particularly true for comprehensive surveys and textbooks of Islamic history.” But dismissal is not the only alternative; in fact, it is no real alternative at all.” Moreover, acknowledging the literary nature of (Islamic) historiography does not diminish its usefulness as a source. It has been argued that historical events do not have intrinsic meanings in the way literary texts do, that it is the historian (modern or pre-modern) who endows them with a particular meaning by casting them in one literary mould or another.” This approach turns history-writing into “essentially a literary, that is to say fiction-making, operation”, true, but this “in no way detracts from the status of historical narratives as providing a kind of knowledge”.”
On the contrary: “If we view history as a literary composition, as a textual construction rather than a reconstruction, we are not limiting history but emancipating it”. In order to achieve this, we have to dispense with the notion that historiography can provide scientific knowledge in the same way as that attained by the study of the natural sciences,” which is based on a modern understanding of History as an objective discipline belonging to the realm of science rather than the arts.”” But “there is no such thing as pure fiction and no such thing as history so rigorous that it abjures the techniques of fiction”.’”° Many Islamicists remain sceptical regarding this despite much criticism of the Islamic Tradition: “Virtually to a man and woman, we [historians of Islam] are all unreconstructed positivists, determined to reconstruct texts or the reality we take them to reflect.””” Ultimately, then, both the faithful and the critical approach “share a common ground in their attempt to differentiate between fact and fiction”.”*
In addressing issues of textual representation, the present book departs from the works discussed in the preceding literature review: it has no aspirations as to the provision of yet another interpretation of what Kharijism was, or where and why it began. Of interest here is not the plausibility of one particular interpretation or the differentiation between ‘factual’ and “fictional’ accounts of Kharijism. As this study focuses on the narrative role and functions of the Khawarij in the early Islamic historical tradition, it will set aside positivist concerns.
This approach allows us to circumvent the problems posed by the pursuit of factual history and to look at the historiographical tradition more fully rather than only focusing on those individual author-compilers that appear to provide a more plausible picture of Kharijite history. This way we will arrive at a more profound and more fully developed grasp of what Kharijism came to signify, how the Khawarij were remembered and how (if at all) this memory was contested in the sources. This improved understanding of how the Kharijite legacy was construed will in turn serve as the foundation for a more sophisticated approach to historical Kharijism that pays as close attention to how something is being said as it does to what is being said. And finally, the juxtaposition of divergent accounts of Kharijism in the sources also sheds light on the debates regarding the history of the Muslim community more generally and on the process in which the past was negotiated and reformulated.
‘The book is divided into four parts. Part I introduces the subject and sets up the parameters of the study to follow. Part II (Chapters 1-3) is concerned with early Islamic historiography more generally, makes the case for a literary approach to Kharijite history and elucidates the core themes emerging from the portrayal of Kharijism in the selected sources. Part III (Chapters 4—6) analyses the narratives of Kharijite origins pertaining to specific periods and teases out motifs and concerns particular to the individual eras. Part IV then returns to the sources and asks what the analysis can tell us about the early historical tradition, particularly about issues like the distinction between proto-Sunni and proto-Shi ‘i works.
Chapter One gives an introductory overview of the challenges inherent in both the ‘genre’ and the research field of early Islamic historiography. It addresses methods of and approaches to historical writing prominent in other disciplines that may prove useful for improving Islamicist approaches to our source material. The main part of the chapter reviews some of the literature that has highlighted the rhetorical features of the early Islamic (historical) tradition and then argues for the application of similar methods to Kharijite history.
Chapter Two discusses the core themes and topoi in the depiction of Kharijism that recur over the entire time period under study, i.e. from Siffin until “Abd al-Malik’s death. These themes include the motifs of Kharijite piety, longing for jihdd and the resulting excessive violence that was considered one of their trademarks. The continuous presence of these particular themes indicates their importance not only for the characterisation of Kharijism but also for the development of Islamic doctrine, which largely came to condemn the kind of militant piety exhibited by the Khawarij as they were remembered by the early Islamic tradition.
Chapter Three argues for the conspicuous absence of a palpable Kharijite identity in the selected sources, focusing primarily on two case studies: the use of Kharijite language by non-Kharijite Muslims, many of them directly opposed to the rebels; and the replication of events and narrative content associated with the Khawarij. The analysis will show that literary Kharijism is defined by a series of constantly reiterated stock phrases that are often not unique to the Khawarij, either. The replication of certain events, such as the appointment of Kharijite leaders, according to particular narrative conventions further illustrates the distinctly rhetorical character of such accounts.
Chapter Four engages with the specific themes discernible in the portrayal of Kharijism during the caliphate of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib. It maintains that the relevant accounts are primarily concerned with providing an apologia for ‘Ali by providing various justifications for his agreement to the arbitration requested by Mu ‘awiya at Siffin as well as for his subsequent slaughter of Kharijite opponents at Nahrawan a year later. The overwhelming interest that the sources show in this affair indicates its centrality for the formation of a consensus on the events of early Islamic history in the classical and postclassical tradition, particularly concerning the status of ‘Ali and with regard to the development of ‘Alid/Shi‘i positions over time. Connected to this is the second main theme, the relationship between ‘Ali and Ibn ‘Abbas. In his capacity as an eminent Companion, a scholar of Arabic and the Qur’an and of course as an important ancestor of the “Abbasids, Ibn “Abbas occupies a prominent position in the narratives of early Islam. The analysis shows that while the selected sources stress the close and cordial relationship between ‘Ali and Ibn ‘Abbas, on the whole they confirm ‘Ali’s superiority.
Chapter Five looks at the narratives of Kharijism during the caliphate of Mu ‘awiya. It departs from the structure of the previous chapters by focusing not on overarching themes directly, but instead on two specific works and their treatment of Kharijite history in this period. This is because there is a marked decrease in the amount of Kharijite material transmitted by the sources for this period: al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari alone preserve enough narrative material — sermons, speeches, poems, letters, and the like — to allow for a meaningful analysis. This analysis reveals that while they transmit much of the same material, their interpretations are rather different. They both engage with the topic of Kharijite piety, but where al-Tabari uses it to discredit militant forms of devotion, al-Baladhuri employs it as a foil for Umayyad injustice and immorality. This is a thread that weaves through their depictions of early Kharijite history more generally.
Chapter Six examines the material on the Kharijites pertaining to the second civil war and the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik. It returns to the structure established in Chapter Four by proceeding thematically. Five main concerns are identified, four of which permeate the majority of our sources: (1) the reputation of al-Muhallab and his family as formidable warriors and saviours of the umma from the menace of the most violent Kharijite faction, the Azariqa; (2) the volatility of Kharijism as antithesis for the importance of communal togetherness; (3) criticism of the Umayyads and their agents, especially the Iraqi governor al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf; and (4) Ibn al-Zubayr’s interactions with the Kharijites. A fifth theme is peculiar to al-Tabari, who seems to utilise accounts of Kharijite military prowess to fashion a military manual of sorts for the prudent field commander.
Chapter Seven returns to the early historical tradition. It asks what the portrayal of Kharijism in the selected sources can tell us about its formation, whether we can actually speak of an historiographical ‘tradition’ on Kharijism. The chapter also discusses potential differences between so-called ‘protoSunn? and ‘proto-Shi'? works on the basis of their outlines of Kharijite history, concluding that it makes little sense to distinguish between them during the early period. A particular spotlight is put on Ibn A‘tham and his Kitab al-Futih, whose work is quite distinct from the other examined sources.
The Conclusion will briefly revisit the book’s main premises and findings. It will close with some remarks on potential future avenues of research intended to encourage renewed interest in and engagement with the Kharijites and thereby to narrow at least some of the gaps in the study of Kharijite history and thought.
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