A medieval Ibadi tawḥīd in Berber: a preliminary survey

The Kitāb al-Barbariyyah, a Berber text containing a commentary on the Mudawwanah of Abū Ghānim Bishr b. Ghānim al-Khurāsānī, starts with a book which does not properly belong to the commentary but constitutes an independent text, namely a tawḥīd, i.e. a short catechism containing an exposition of the main points of the Ibāḍi doctrine. Some other texts of this kind are already known and have been studied, in particular by Sachau (1899), Motylinski (1905) and Rubinacci (1964), but all of them are known in the Arabic version, even when they were formerly written in Berber. The text from the Kitāb al-Barbariyyah is the only one still preserved in Berber and the only one produced in a Nukkārite milieu. This paper gives a first description of it, attempting to outline its structure and content, and exposing the main questions it addresses, with a consideration of the other known texts that deal with the Ibāḍi creed.