Les innovations de Naffāṯ b. Naṣr ou le troisième schisme chez les ibadites

Abstract

Besides the secession of the Nukkāriyya and the Ḥalafiyya, the Rustamid imam Aflaḥ (c. 823-871) had to face Naffāṯ b. Naṣr’s dissidence. After he was refused the function of Qanṭrāra’s governor, Naffāṯ publicly slandered Aflaḥ whom he mostly blamed for his expensive tastes and his lack of combativeness towards the Aġlabids. The anti-Rustamid propaganda of Naffāṯ quickly attracted a lot of Ibāḍīs to the Jarīd as well as to the Jabal Nafūsa. That enthusiasm just shows how, already during Aflaḥ’s reign, the Rustamid authority was a subject of controversy among the Ibāḍīs. Although it never caused an armed revolt, that schism really worried the Rustamid leaders. This article gathers all the facts concerning Naffāṯ in the Ibāḍī sources and tries to reconstruct his life and to draw up the list of the new opinions he proposed. The Naffāṯiyya movement is very interesting, on account of both its longevity and its geographical expansion, as well as for the great number of documents dealing with it. Those documents that appear throughout the centuries in the Ibāḍī sources allow to understand better the personality of Naffāṯ b. Naṣr, who was an intellectual rather than the leader of an organized movement.