What is it about?
In response to the crisis of the major disappearance (ghayba) of the Twelfth Imam in 329/940, which could have seriously put at risk the survival of Imāmī Shī‘ism, a number of Imāmī Ḥadīth scholars started to compile collections of Ḥadīth on the subject. Among the works in question is the Kitāb al-ghayba of Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nuʿmānī, an Imāmī traditionist of the mid-fourth/tenth century. This work became so famous in the Imāmī tradition that we know him today as “the author of the Kitāb al-ghayba.” Yet we know frustratingly little about him. This article seeks to review and expand our knowledge of his biography, but with a brief account of the Kitāb al-ghayba.
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Why is it important?
This article shows that the fourth/ninth-century Imami communities in southern Iraq were not limited to the well-known cities of Baghdad and Kufa. We thus find other communities, but in small numbers, that should seriously be considered for a more comprehensive understanding of the Shi'is in Iraq. In addition, this study helps to find the connection between the Shi'ite Hadith scholars who lived in the different regions of the Islamic empire during the 3rd and 4th Islamic centuries.
Perspectives
I hope this article helps researchers go through their questions concerning the early Muslim traditionists by paying more attention to the socio-religious milieu of those places they came from, and to the lesser-known Hadith circles that were held in the different Islamic cities towards the 3rd and 4th centuries AH.
Azadeh Rezaei
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Biography of Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nuʿmānī, Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, November 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/2212943x-bja10005.
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