“Berbers,” “Khārijites” and “Knowledge Bearers”: How the Ibāḍīs Shaped a Regional Counter-Memory in North Africa

Abstract The uprisings that separated a broad part of North Africa from the Eastern rule, around the middle of the eighth century, represented a great challenge for the incipient Abbasid empire. What went wrong? In their attempt to explain the situation, most sources highlighted the opposition between the conquerors and the native “Berbers,” whom they described as uncivilized and unsubmitted people paying allegiance to the rebellious stream of the “Khārijites.” Yet, in the areas where Ibāḍism had spread, a counter-memory soon came to light. The Ibāḍīs invented their own storytelling by praising the West as a new religious cradle and the Berbers as a new chosen people whose conversion to Islam became a deliberate choice. This paper compares the mainstream account on early North Africa with the Ibāḍī version and tries to see how the two narratives interplayed.