ABSTRACT
Until recently, Khārijite doctrine was known only from non-Khārijite literature and a few Ibāḍī works, mostly difficult of access. The systematic publication of the literary heritage of the Ibāḍīs by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Oman has drastically changed the situation as far as the Ibāḍīs are concerned, but no such dramatic turn of fortune is to be expected for the extinct sects, whose literature must count as irretrievably lost except in so far as it survives in other people’s works. Other people did not tend to quote them much, however, as opposed to briefly summarize their views. The only work by a non-Ibāḍī Khārijite currently known to be extant is a long creed composed between 215/830 and 218/833 by a follower of the Sīstānī sect which the heresiographers knew as the Ḥamziyya; we owe its preservation to the Ibāḍīs. ( 1 ) Maybe other pieces will turn up in the Ibāḍī literature, but meanwhile it may be reported that one is to be found nearer at hand: al-Shahrastānī‘s Iqdām contains a statement derived from a work by, or about, the Najdiyya. ( 2 )
