The Battle of ?iffin (36/657) is the flash point in the emergence of sects within Islam. The presentation of the ?iffin story in Arabic historical writing therefore changed over time as the sectarian split among Sunnis, Shi’is and Kharijis became increasingly defined. This paper will demonstrate how and why Na?r ibn Muz?him’s Waq?at ?iffin emerged as the “vulgate” text in the manner suggested by Borrut in his recent book Entre Memoire et Pouvoir, despite the existence of at least one surviving contemporaneous alternative. It will also trace the development of the presentation of the ?iffin story in Arabic histories across developing Sunni and Shi’i identity crystallization, as well as literary and stylistic developments in the field of Arabic historical writing. Categorizing the primary sources presents an initial difficulty, but the most useful distinction in tracing the evolving presentation of the ?iffin story must be both chronological and stylistic; therefore, although these categories are necessarily approximate, the works will be divided roughly according to the schema articulated by Robinson in his book Islamic Historiography. The works to be examined include (but are not limited to) akhb?r? authors such as al-D?nawar? and al-?abar?; mu?arrikh? authors such as al-Mas??d? and Ibn al-Ath?r; the biographical dictionaries of Ibn ‘Asakir and Ibn al-?Ad?m; and finally, Ibn Kath?r’s Kit?b al-Bid?ya wa-l-Nih?ya, the fervently Sunni perspective of which demands that it be in its own category. One byproduct of this article will be to provide a documentation of the evolution of Arabic historical writing styles, using the ?iffin story as a lens. The article will demonstrate that, in accordance with Borrut’s explication of the Arabic vulgate text, the limits of what events could be presented as a part of the ?iffin story were set at the time of the composition of Waq?at ?iffin, but no limits were placed on the room for personal interpretation by the historians. By tracing the changes in the story from the vulgate text through the akhb?r? historians (who employed the vulgate to solidify the ?iffin story’s events and general flow), the mu?arrikh? historians (whose more verbose style allowed for the expansion of the story’s details), the composers of the biographical dictionaries (who used the story as a site for explicit argumentation) and finally, Ibn Kath?r, whose fervent Sunnism engendered a distaste for the ?Alids that encouraged him to use the story to defend the most vilified Syrian action at ?iffin.

Historians have observed that the only slave-women of the early Abbasid era whose names are known to us were either the concubines of caliphs or singing girls. One may make the modest addition of the mothers of some of the Imams recognized by Imami Shi'ites to this list. Several of these women became the subject of a rich hagiographical tradition in Imami Shi'ite sources of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. In particular, when the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-‘Askari, died in 260/874 without any publicly known offspring, both his mother and one of his concubines became embroiled in a controversy that would ultimately come to define the Imami community for centuries to come. The grave import of this controversy for the community’s self-definition ensured that it would be preserved – albeit in widely differing versions – in the community’s historical memory. The gravity of this event and the divisions that it created within the community gave rise to a number of separate strands within Imami Shi’ite literature. On the one hand, competing accounts of the events following Hasan’s death arose which were shaped by discernable polemical strategies. I will examine these competing accounts in an effort to highlight the kernel of probable historical truth on which they all agree, while showing how they have been embellished for various polemical and sectarian ends. On the other hand, the challenge posed by these events to the community’s self-definition eventually gave rise to the most imaginative of hagiographical accounts regarding the birth of the twelfth Imam and the origins of his concubine mother. Although she began as a slave-girl whose name was uncertain, she was eventually remembered as the daughter of a Byzantine king miraculously delivered to the Imam Hasan al-‘Askari, her divinely ordained “husband.” Although these accounts are obvious fabrications, I will examine them in an effort to highlight what they reveal regarding the community’s assumptions about the role of the women and slaves of Hasan al-‘Askari’s household, as well as certain aspects of the slave trade of the era. In sum, my paper will examine the hagiography that grew up around a crisis of unprecedented magnitude in the Imami Shi’ite community in order to shed light on the community’s assumptions about the slave-women of the era and the polemical strategies that it employed to respond to that crisis.

In the story of the Penitents (ar. Tawwabun) we are told about a group of men from Kufa in the 7:th century, who deeply regret that they did not support Husayn b. ‘Ali, the grandson of the Prophet, when he was assaulted and killed at Karbala in 680 CE. In their remorse, they first discuss the option of committing collective suicide. As this is prohibited in the Qur’an, however, they decide to seek revenge by going against the Umayyad army. This will certainly lead to their death, and they accept this as martyrdom for true Islam which will cleanse them from their sin. As the story most likely is written down as early as the middle of the 8:th century, and probably has earlier roots, it is remarkable that very little attention has been paid to it in academic research. In spite of its old age, it incorporates many elements that later came to be basic in Shi‘ite Islam. At the same time, however, other components in later Shi‘ite theology and ritualthat began to develop around the mid-8:th century, such as the Shi‘ite imamology, are lacking in the story. Thus, it is an important link to the understanding of the development of early Shi‘ism. In this paper I will introduce a research project concerning the story of the Penitents that is financed from the Swedish Research Council. In the project, the story will be studied from three perspectives. First, the history of tradition will be focused, and three different versions of the story, i.e. the versions by Ibn A‘tham al-Kufi, al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari, will be compared and the relations between them will be analyzed. Second, special attention will be paid to the theological ideas expressed in the text in relation to those that developed later in Shi‘ism. Third, the rituals performed in the story will be studied in connection with rituals in the surrounding culture as well as in later Shi´ism.