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‘Even an Ethiopian slave’: the transformation of a Sunnī tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Patricia Crone
Patricia Crone
Affiliation:
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge
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Extract

It is well known that the Khārijites rejected genealogical qualifications for the caliphal office. As they saw it, the most meritorious Muslim should be elected whatever his ethnic origins might be; personal merit overruled considerations of descent. Modern Islamicists regularly imply that they also held personal merit to overrule considerations of status libertatis: the Khārijites allegedly held the most meritorious Muslim to be eligible for the caliphal office ‘even if he were a black/Ethiopian slave’. But this has long been known to rest on a mistake. The mistake goes back to Goldziher who based himself on a Prophetic tradition exhorting the believers to obey the amīr ‘even if he be an Ethiopian slave (‘abd ḥabashī); but as Goitein and Lewis have pointed out, the tradition in question has nothing to do with Khārijite views on the caliphate. So why does the claim persist? The answer is that al-Shahrastānī also credits the Khārijites with the tenet that the imām may be a black slave (‘abd awḥar), or at any rate a slave (Cureton's text has ‘abd aw ḥurr).

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 59 - 67
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1994

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References

1 Wa-law kāna Yabdan ḥabashiyyan (Amīn, A., Fajr al-Islām, 6th printing, Cairo, 1950Google Scholar [preface dated 1933], 258); ‘“even if he were a black slave”…‘ (G. Levi Delia Vida in El (1st and 2nd ed.). s.v. ‘Khāridjites’); ‘“even a black slave”…’ (Gryaznevich, P. A., ‘On the meaning of the term al-Riḍā’, XXVth International Congress of Orientalists, Moscow, 1960, 7Google Scholar; I owe my knowledge of this article to D. S. Richards and A. Elՙad); ‘even a black slave’ (Nagel, T., Staat und Glaubensgemeinschaft im Islam, i, Zürich, 1981, 138)Google Scholar; ‘even a slave’ (Skladanek, B., ‘The Khārijites in Iran, I’, Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 44, 1985, 71, 72)Google Scholar; ‘“even if he be a black slave”…’ (Endress, G., An introduction to Islam, tr. Hillenbrand, C., Edinburgh, 1988, 38)Google Scholar; ‘“even an Abyssinian slave”…’ (Dabashi, H., Authority in Islam, New Brunswick, N.J., 1989, 157Google Scholar, on Kharijite views on human equality rather than the Imāmate); ‘even a black slave’ (Madelung, W., Religious trends in early Islamic Iran, Albany, N.Y., 1988, 54)Google Scholar; ‘“were he a black Ethiop”…’ (Brett, M., review in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1988, 399)Google Scholar.

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5 Note the frequency with which the phrase ‘even a black slave’ is put in quotation marks (above, n. 1).

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7 I do not know of many Khārijite discussions of qualifications of the Imāmate, nor, more importantly, did ‘A. Kh. Ennami, who only refers to one Ibādī source in his chapter on this question, that is the quasi-Sunnī ḥadīth collection of Ḥabīb, al-Rabīՙ b. (cf. his ‘Studies in Ibadism’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1971, i, 236ff.; below, nn. 25–7)Google Scholar. The Kanz aladīb wa-sulāfat al-labīb of the eighteenth-century Sālim b. Saՙīd al-Ṣā՚ighī does discuss it, but it merely states that the imām must be male, adult, in full possession of his faculties and so on, without reference to ethnic origin or status libertatis (MS, Cambridge University Library, Add. 2896, fols. 81y–82r; translated in Wilkinson, J. C., ‘The Ibādī Imāma’, BSOAS, xxxix, 3, 1976, 538)Google Scholar. In the discussion reported in al-Ṭabarī, , Ta՚rTkh al-rusul wa՚l-mulūk, ed. Goeje, M. J. de and others (Leiden, 1879–1901), ser. II, 986Google Scholar, sub anno 77, the Khārijites merely claim that all Arabs, as opposed to Quraysh alone, are eligible.

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10 al-Dārimī, , al-Sunan (Medina, 1966), 43fGoogle Scholar.; Māja, Ibn, Sunan, I, 16Google Scholar (no. 43).

11 Māja, Ibn, Sunan, II, 955 (no. 2860)Google Scholar; al-Bukhārī, , Kitāb al-Jāmi՚ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Krehl, L. and Juynboll, T. W. (Leiden, 1862–1908), iv, 385Google Scholar.

12 ‘Hammām, Abd al-Razzāq b., al-Muṣannaf, ed. al-A՚ẓamī, H.-R. (Beirut, 1970–72), xi, 334Google Scholar (no. 20697); Ahmed, ‘Critical edition’, 8; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, xii, 225; Māja, Ibn, Sunan, II, 955Google Scholar (no. 2862); al-՚Asqalānī, Ibn Ḥajar, Talkhīs al-khabīr fī takhrīj aḥādīth al-Rāfi՚ī al-kabīr, ed. ‘al-Murānī, A.-A. Hāshim al-Yamānī (Medina, 1964), iv, 43Google Scholar (no. 1731); al-Hindī, al-Muttaqī, Kanz al-՚ummāl fī sunan al-aqwāl waՙl-af՚āl (2nd ed., Hyderabad, 1945–75), v, 472Google Scholar (no. 2610; cf. also pp. 468, 481 (nos. 2594, 2605, 2607). Cf. also Ibn Sa՚d, Ṭabaqāt, iv, 226f.; Ṭabarī, Taՙrīkh, ser. I, 2861f; Rabbihi, Ibn ՚Abd, al-՚Iqd al-farīd, ed. Amīn, A., al-Zayn, A. and al-Abyārī, I. (Cairo, 1940–65), iv, 306Google Scholar.

13 The Ethiopian slave encountered by Abū Dharr was amīr of al-Rabadha and/or administrator of the ṣadaqa and prayer leader (cf. Ahmed, Ṭabarī, Ibn Sa՚d and Ibn Māja above, n. 12).

14 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, xv, 79 (no. 19168); cf. xi, 93f. (no. 10606).

15 Ṭabarī, Taՙrīkh, ser. n, 177.

16 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, xv, 10 (no. 18964).

17 cf. the reference to ՚Abd al-Razzāq in n. 12.

18 Ahmed, ‘Critical edition’, p. 9; Baṭṭa, Ibn,Kitāb al-Sharḥ waՙl-ibāna ‘aiā uṣūl al-sunna waՙl-diyāna, ed. and tr. Laoust, H. under the title La profession de foi d'lbn Baṭṭa (Damascus, 1958), 35f. = 61Google Scholar.

19 Baṭṭa, Ibn, Profession de foi, 61Google Scholar, cf. 68= 127, cf. 129; cited in Lewis, B., The political language of Islam (Chicago and London, 1988), 99fGoogle Scholar.

20 Ahmed, ‘Critical edition’, 13.

21 ‘Love the family of your Prophet, but do not be a Rāfiḍī; act in accordance with the Qur'ān, but do not be a Ḥarūrī; know that your good deeds come from God whereas the evil ones come from you, but do not be a Qadarī; and hear and obey the imām wa-in kāna ‘abdan ḥabashiyyan’ (Ahmed, ‘Critical edition’, 2; attributed to al-Sha՚bī).

22 Qutayba, Ibn, Taՙwīl mukhtalif al-ḥiadīth, ed. al-Najjār, M. Zuhrī (Cairo, 1966), 3fGoogle Scholar. Ibn Qutayba here lists the contradictory traditions adopted by the Khārijite and the qāՙid, the Murjiՙite and al-mukhālif lahu, the Qadarī and the mufawwiḍ, the Rāfiḍa and mukhālifūhum. The qāՙid is thus an opponent of the Khārijites, not one of their quietist members, as is also abundantly clear from the jamā՚ī traditions with which Ibn Qutayba associates him.

23 Kathīr, Ibn, Tafsīr al-qurՙān al-'aẓīm (Beirut, [1966]), ii, 324Google Scholar.

24 ‘Ābidīn, Ibn, Ḥāshiya, i, 573Google Scholar.

25 Ḥabīb, al-Rabī՚ b. (attrib.), al-Jāmi՚ al-ṣaḥīḥ (third printing, Jerusalem, 1381), part ill, 18 (no. 819)Google Scholar. On the date and nature of this work, see Wilkinson, J. C., ‘Ibāḍī Ḥadīth: an essay on normalization’, Der Islam, 62, 1985Google Scholar.

26 Rabī՚, Jāmi՚, part m, 8f. (no. 780).

27 Rabī՚, Jāmi՚, part in, 18 (no. 818). Ennami responds by denying that the tradition grants Quraysh a special right to the Imāmate (Studies in Ibadism, i, 237).

28 Salem, E. A., Political theory and institutions of the Khawarij (Baltimore, 1956), 56Google Scholar.

29 The Zaydīs in question are identified as al-Ḥasan b. al-Ṣālih b. Ḥayy and others of the ‘weak’ or Batrī variety; compare Madelung, W., Der Imam al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm und die 0Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen (Berlin, 1965), 49–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar (where this view is not however mentioned).

30 Al-Mas՚ūdī seemingly excepts the Najdiyya, but the exception refers to their views on the necessity of the Imāmate (which they denied), not the genealogical qualifications for rulership.

31 al-Mas՚ūdī, , Murūj al-dhahab, ed. Pellat, C. (Beirut, 1966–79), IV, §§2257f., cf. §2225Google Scholar (ed. Barbier de Meynard, vi, 24f.; cf. v, 474). Compare Ess, J. van (ed.), Frühe mu՚tazililische Häresiographie (Beirut, 1971), §108 (p. 63)Google Scholar, where it is Ghaylānīs who invoke the tradition on Sālim, mawlā of Abū Ḥudhayfa, in support of the view that the imām may be of any ethnic origin.

32 Khaldūn, Ibn, al-Muqaddima (Kitāb al-՚Ibar, i), (Bulaq, 1284), 162Google Scholar; tr. F. Rosenthal (London, 1958), i, 397 (where the tradition is automatically identified as a statement of Khārijite doctrine).

33 Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, 162 = 398.

34 al-Bāqillānī, , al-Tamhīd, ed. al-Khuḍayrī, M. M. and ‘Rīda, A.-H. Abū (Cairo, 1947), 181f. 35Google Scholar

35 ‘al-Jabbār, Abd, al-Mugḥnī, xx, ed. ‘Maḥmūd, A.-H. and Dunyā, S. (Cairo, 1966), 228Google Scholar, 234ff.

36 al-Baghdādī, , Uṣūl al-dīn (Cairo, 1928), 275, 277Google Scholar.

37 al-Māwardī, , al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya, ed. Enger, M. (Bonn, 1853), 5fGoogle Scholar.

38 Ḥazm, Ibn, al-Muḥallā, ix (Cairo, 1351), 359fGoogle Scholar; idem, al-Fiṣa lfīՙl-milal waՙl-ahwāՙ waՙl-niḥal (Cairo, 1317–21), iv, 89.

39 al-Farrā, Abū Ya՚lā Ibn’, al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya, ed. al-Fiqī, M. H. (second printing, Cairo, 1966, 20Google Scholar.

40 al-Juwaynī, , al-Irshād, ed. and tr. Luciani, J.-D. (Paris, 1938), 240 = 358Google Scholar.

41 Bernand, M. (ed.), Le Muġnī d'al-Mutawallī (Cairo, 1966), 62Google Scholar (I owe my knowledge of this work to M. A. Cook).

42 al-Bazdawī, , Uṣūl al-dīn, ed. Linss, H. P. (Cairo, 1963), 187fGoogle Scholar.

43 al-Ghazālī, , Kitāb al-lqtiṣād fīl-i'tiqād (second printing, Cairo, 1327), 97Google Scholar; idem, Faḍā'iḥ, 180.

44 al-Nasafī, in al-Taftazānī, Sharḥ, 161 = Elder, Commentary, 147Google Scholar.

45 al-Shahrastānī, , Kitāb Nihāyat al-iqdām fī ‘Urn al-kalām, ed. and tr. Guillaume, A. (Oxford and London, 1934), 496 = 157Google Scholar (I owe this reference to Y. Ibish).

46 al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn, Ghāyat al-marām fī ‘Urn al-kalām, ed. al-Laṭīf, Ḥ Maḥmūd ‘Abd (Cairo, 1971), 383fGoogle Scholar.

47 Taftazānī, , Sharḥ, 161=Elder, Commentary, 147Google Scholar.

48 Qalqashandī, Khitāfa, 37f.

49 Baghdādī, Uṣūl, 275; Nasafī, above, n. 44; Ghazālī, Faḍā'iḥ, 180f.

50 ‘Abd al-Jabbaār, Mughrnī, xx, 228, 235ff.

51 Qalqashandī, Khilāfa, 38, who does not mention al-Mutawallī by name, only his Tatimma; cf. Brockelmann, C., Geschichle der arabischen Litteratur (2nd ed., Leiden, 1943–1949), I, 484Google Scholar (s.v. ‘ al-Fūrānī’). According to the Tatimma, one might appoint a Jurhumī.

52 Qalqashandī, loc. cit.: al-Baghawī permitted the appointment of an ‘ajamī in his Tahdhīb (cf. Brockelmann, , Geschichte, i, 449)Google Scholar.

53 Qalqashandī, loc. cit., cf. Brockelmann, Geschichte, Supplementband I, 678. Al-Rāfiī would search for Arab candidates in increasingly wider distance from Quraysh. No work is specified.

54 Bazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn, 188f.

55 ‘Abd al-Jabbār, Mughnī, xx, 235.

56 ‘Abd al-Jabbār, Mughrnī, xx, 235f.; Āmidī, Ghāya, 384; Shahrastānī, Nihāya, 491 = 155; cf. above, n. 31.

57 ‘Abd al-Jabbār, Mughrnī, xx, 234.

58 al-Maqbilī, Ṣāliḥ b. Mahdī, al-Manār fīZl-mukhtār min jawāhir al-baḥr al-zakhkhār (Ṣan‘ā’ and Beirut, 1988), n, 464Google Scholar (cf. al-'Amrī, H. b. ‘A., The Yemen in the 18th and 19th centuries, London, 1985, 124)Google Scholar. Compare above, nn. 29, 31.

59 AbūZahra, Muḥammad, Ta'rīkh al-madhāhib al-islāmiyya, I (Cairo, 1976), 168Google Scholar. There is, he says, no doubt that a Qurashī imām would be preferable, but the traditions do not say that he must be a Qurashī, so the Imāmate of a non-Qurashī would also be valid; and this is confirmed by the Ethiopian slave tradition.

60 Abd al-Jabbār, Mughnī, xx, 235.

61 al-Sarakhsī, , Sharḥ kitāb al-siyar al-kabīr (Cairo, 157–60)Google Scholar, 168. This is not in al-Shaybānīs text.

62 cf. Ess, J. van, ‘Ḍirār b. ‘Amr und die “Cahmiya”: Biographie einer vergessenen Schule’, Der Islam, 44, 1968, 3Google Scholar; idem, Häresiographie, §93 (pp. 55f.). Ḍirār and Ḥafṣ ‘s position is also reported in the Kitāb al-Kashf wa'l-bayān of the seventeenth-century Ibādī author al-Qalhātī, who does not like the idea that one should give priority to a Nabaṭī over and above considerations of dīn and sīra (MS, British Library, Or. 2606, fols. 155v–156r). It is rejected in Bāqillānī, Tamhīd, 182; Māwardī, Aḥkām, 5; Baghdādī, Uṣūl, 275; Qalqashandī, Khilāfa, 38; and also in Ibn ‘ Ābidīn, Ḥāshiya, I, 570.

63 al-Hawsamī, Abū Ja'far Muḥammad b. Ya'qūb, Sharḥ al-ibāna, MS Ambrosiana (Milan), D. 225Google Scholar, fol. 253a; cf. Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, I (Leiden, 1967), 567, 571Google Scholar. Al-Aṣamm is a mistake for Ḥafṣ occasioned by the fact that he too had deviant views on the imāmate (he denied that it was necessary).

64 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal, iv, 89.

65 Zayn al-‘Abidīn Ibrāhīm b. Nujaym al-Miṣrī, Kitāb al-Ashbāh wa'l-naẓā’ir, with the commentary of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Ḥanafī al-Ḥamawī entitled Ghamz ‘uyūn al-baṣā'ir (Constantinople, 1290), al-Ḥamawīs commentary at II, 267. Among those who adduced the tradition in this vein was Ibn Taymiyya, or so at least according to Laoust, H., Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taḳī-d-Dīn Aḥmad b. Taimīya (Cairo, 1939), 294Google Scholar; but the reference is wrong.

66 Baghdādī, Uṣūl, 275; Taftazānī, Sharḥ, 161 = Elder, Commentary, 147; al-‘īnNashwān al-Ḥimyarī, al-Ḥūr Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī, al-Ḥūr, ed. Muṣṭafā, K. (Cairo, 1948), 152Google Scholar.

67 Bazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn, 187, where the Mu'tazilies invoke Q. 49: 12 in a Khārijite vein, while the Khārijites argue that the imām must be a non-Qurashī because this makes him easier to depose.

68 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal, IV, 89.

69 ‘al-Sanandajī, Abd al-Qādir b. Muḥammad, Taqrīb al-marām fī sharḥ tahdhīb al-kalām (Būlāq, 1318–19), n, 323Google Scholar; cf. Brockelmann, Geschichte, Supplementband n, 304; Khayr al-Dīn al-Zirikī, al-A'lām (second printing, n.p., 1954), iv, 169. In his Sharḥ, Taftazānī merely says that the Khārijites and some Mu'tazilites disagree.

70 There are even versions of this tradition in which the Ethiopian slave is replaced by a black one (‘abd aswad, cf. al-Muttaqī al-Hindī, Kanz, v, 468, 481, nos. 2594, 2605, 2607). But Cureton's reading ‘abdan aw ḥurran is surely right: for one thing, it gives a nice parallel to nabaṭiyyan aw qurashiyyan; and for another, the dictionaries do not seem to know the adjective awḥar.

71 cf. above, n. 1. He lists Goldziher's Vorlesungen in his bibliography, but it seems unlikely that owed his understanding of the Ethiopian slave tradition to it.

72 Ostrorog, L. (tr.), El-Ahkam es-soulthaniya … d'abou ‘l-Hassan … el-Mawerdi (Paris, 1900), p. lO4nGoogle Scholar.

73 cf. above, n. 28 (Salem refers to al-Sanandajī as al-Sindijī).

74 He is explicitly identified as a slave min raqīq al-ṣadaqa in Tabarīs version of the Abū Dharr traditions (above, n. 12).

75 Thus in al-Mas‘ūdī, as seen already; al-Sarakhsī similarly uses him to prove that any competent man is fit for military office, be he an Arab or a mawlā, not be he an Arab or a slave; Ibn Khaldūn's scholars likewise invoke him to make a point about ethnicity.

76 Skladanek, ‘The Khārijites in Iran, I’, 72.

77 Compare the language of abuse: ‘you are only an Ethiopian slave, your title to honour in Basra is your bath and your garden’, as Shurayḥ b. Hāni’ told ‘Ubaydallāh b. Abī Bakra, a free Thaqafī of black, and thus necessarily servile, ancestry (A'tham, Ibn, Kitāb al-Futūḥ, Hyderabad, 1968–75, vii, 13Google Scholar; cf. Bosworth, C. E., ‘ՙUbaidallāh b. Abī Bakra and the “Army of Destruction” in Zābulistān (79/698)’, Der Islam, 50, 1973, pp. 270fGoogle Scholar.).

78 Pseudo-Nāshi’ in van Ess, Häresiographie, §117 (p. 68). On the probable author, see Madelung, W., ‘Frühe mu'tazilitische Häresiographie: das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ga'far al- Ḥarb?’, Der Islam, 57, 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Madelung cannot be accused of misunderstanding (cf. his Religious trends, 54, where the black slave and pseudo-Nāshi՚'s passage are adduced together; idem, ‘imāma’ in El (2nd ed.), where the Khārijites hold any qualified Muslim, even one of slave origin, to be eligible). But Salem and Skladanek clearly understood the slave as a slave, and so did Brünnow, R. E., Die Charidschiten unter den ersten Omayyaden (Leiden, 1884), 9nGoogle Scholar., as well as Lambton, A. K. S., State and government in medieval Islam (Oxford, 1981), 23.Google Scholar

I should like to thank Fritz Zimmermann for reading an earlier draft of this article.