The Khārijites are perhaps the most notorious rebels of early Islamic history. The Islamic tradition portrays them as a heretical movement of militant zealots, a notion largely reiterated by modern scholarship on this phenomenon, which is both surprisingly scarce and largely concerned with historical Khārijism ‘as it really was’. In contrast, this book provides the first comprehensive literary analysis of the early years of Khārijite history (c657-705 CE) as depicted in 9th- and 10th-century CE Islamic historiography. It purposefully moves away from positivist reconstructions and instead exam ... More

The Khārijites are perhaps the most notorious rebels of early Islamic history. The Islamic tradition portrays them as a heretical movement of militant zealots, a notion largely reiterated by modern scholarship on this phenomenon, which is both surprisingly scarce and largely concerned with historical Khārijism ‘as it really was’. In contrast, this book provides the first comprehensive literary analysis of the early years of Khārijite history (c657-705 CE) as depicted in 9th- and 10th-century CE Islamic historiography. It purposefully moves away from positivist reconstructions and instead examines the narrative role and function of Khārijism in early Islamic historical writing. Two main arguments are advanced: first, that there is little narrative substance to the Khārijites as they are described in the selected sources; and second, that Islamic historiography does not approach Khārijism as an end in itself, but as a tool with which to discuss other issues. By exploring the manifold purposes of telling stories about these so-called heretics and rebels, the book thus provides a fresh perspective on early Khārijism and contributes to the study of how historical memory was created in the early Islamic period. Above all, the analysis highlights the need for a serious reassessment of the historical phenomenon of Khārijism as it is currently understood in scholarship.