Imāmate in Khārijism and Ibāḍism - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
General Material Designation
[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
Gaiser, Adam R.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Leiden
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Brill
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
(1,881 words)
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
The nature of the Islamic sources for the early Muslim groups that were retroactively labelled Khārijites (khawārij) makes obtaining an accurate portrait of Khārijite notions of leadership difficult. On the one hand, Islamic sources use earlier Khārijite works as the basis of their narratives, but later (proto-Sunnī and proto-Shīʿa) Muslim author-editors remained hostile to the Khārijite groups they wrote about. On the other hand, both Khārijite authors and the medieval Muslim author-editors who preserved their writings were not interested in "history" in the modern sense; rather,