Early Ibadi Theology: Six Kalam Texts

Early Ibad?i Theology presents the critical edition of six Arabic theological texts recently discovered in two manuscripts in Mzab in Algeria dating from the middle of the 8th century. The texts were sent by their author, the prominent Kufan Ibad?i kalam theologian 'Abd Allah b. Yazid al-Fazari to North Africa where he had a large following in the Ibad?i community later known as the Nukkar. They constitute the earliest extant body of Muslim kalam theology and are vital for the study of the initial development of rational theology in Islam. The sophisticated treatment of the divine attributes in these texts indicates that this subject developed considerably earlier in Islamic theology than previously accepted in modern scholarship.