This paper follows the activities and intellectual productivity of the Mzabi diaspora in Tunisia and in Egypt after World War One and the role that diaspora played in the formulation of a version of Algerian nationalism shaped by ideas of pan-Islamism, Maghribi unity, and pan-Arabism. It shifts attention from the Algerian diaspora in France to that in the cities of the Arab world and from the Algerian nationalism formulated by Algerians in France to that formulated by those in the Arab world. It argues that the diasporic element of Ibadis necessitated assimilation in transnational networks that produced hybrid versions of nationalism, accommodating territorial nationalism with pan-Maghribism, and pan-Arabism. Equally significant is the impact of these rising nationalist ideologies on the ways Ibadi Mzabis were negotiating their sectarian identity. Nationalism, be it territorial, pan-Arab or pan-Maghribi, entailed a discourse of cross-sectarian Muslim unity. This paper analyzes Ibadi articulations of a new identity that fit into the nationalist mould and required new definitions of an Ibadi history that needed to speak to issues of unity and to the notions of an eternal nation to which Ibadis belonged. This paper, on the one hand, looks at the conditions that made the integration of Ibadis into those networks possible, such as the emergence of a press culture and the colonial policy of exile, and on the other hand, it sheds light on the impacts of such integration on how Ibadi history in Algeria and the larger Maghribi region came to be imagined by the Ibadi Mzabi community. The major sources of this study are the Ibadi press and Ibadi publications in Arabic newspapers as well as memoirs of major Ibadi activists and news editors.