Ibadism, a minority at the core of Islam This volume (online edition: http://remmm.revues.org/7711) is based on a deliberately transperiodic approach and includes ten articles in French and English. It is the first collective publication dedicated to this Islamic school. I wrote the introduction (23 pages) and, in collaboration with the archaeologist S. Gilotte (CNRS, CIHAM-UMR 5648), the study on " Sedrata, the making of a lieu de mémoire " (23 pages). Our paper describes how the archaeological site of Sedrata, the " Pompei of the sands ", was discovered and interpreted since the 19th century and became a reference for the Saharan utopias of the colonial era. Born in the wake of the great first century fitna, the Ibāḍī sectarian movement belongs to the so-called " khārijī " branch, the most ignored part of Islam. Directly borrowed from Medieval heresiology, this expression stigmatizes a whole range of politico-religious movements that opposed the party of ʻAlī as well as the self-proclaimed "orthodox" Sunnī powers. As a result of its links with this dissentive galaxy, Medieval Ibāḍism was inclined to celebrate the blood of its martyrs fallen in the fight against " tyrants " as well as the advent of its imamates, most often ephemeral but iconized as counter-models of the Oriental governments. Ibāḍism is presently reduced to a small minority in the Dār al-Islām, surviving only in Oman (the only country where it is dominant), East-African coast (Zanzibar), and the Maghrib, from Libya to Algeria. The remaining inheritants of this "third way" are nowadays trying to be considered one of the madhāhib (schools of law) of " orthodox " Islam, but they are faced with different types of social pressure, dramatically exemplified two years ago by the clashes occurred in Berrian (Wādī Mzāb). The historical trajectory of this forgotten Islam is traced in this book, from its confused origins to contemporary issues. Dealing with the stakes of Ibāḍī historiographical memory, we have also focused on its main symbolic places, between Eastern and Western Islam, from Baṣra to Tāhart and from Wādī Mzāb to Oman. This scattered geography is reflecting : 1) the primitive dissemination of the preaching cells stemmed to the Baṣrian matrix, 2) the later migration fluxes, 3) the internal erosion provoked by the propagation of rival Shiʻī and Sunnī ideologies. The geography of Ibāḍī settlements is composed not only by stable territories but also by diaspora communities dispersed by successive waves of migrations, from Middle Ages onward. Space dispersion however contributed to the formation of large-scale intellectual and commercial networks. If we consider Africa, it is generally admitted that the resettlement of Ibāḍī minorities in North-Saharan bridgeheads like Ouargla and the Mzāb gave them a significant role in the development of Trans-Saharan trade. Regarding the Ibāḍī communities of Oman they established relations with the neighbouring regions of the Persian Gulf, and their traders traveled through the Indian Ocean and played a key role in the exploration of East African coasts. The polynuclear structure of Ibadism also fostered constant interactions between Maghrib and Mashriq. The past few decades have reactivated these relations thanks to renewed migration fluxes and the reinforced stream of exchange with the Sultanate of Oman, also strongly implicated in the conservation and valorization of the Ibāḍī cultural heritage. In the case of Maghribī Ibāḍism, relations with Europe begun with the establishment of the French Protectorate over Wādī Mzāb in 1853, followed by the annexation in 1882. During the Colonial period Maghribī Ibāḍism was constituted as an anthropological field of study. It was observed by many different types of scholars, who saw it as a paradigm of "Berberian" or "indigenous Islam" separated from the "Oriental" or "Arabic" model. However, at the end of the 19th century, Wādī Mzāb witnessed the emergence of a critical stream of renewal called the Iṣlāḥ (its most famous representant being Ibrāhīm Aṭfayyesh), in relation with the anti-colonialist pan-Arabism that spred from Cairo to Tunis. As to the Omanese Ibāḍism, it was in contact with Europe as soon as the 16th century with the arrival of the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, but scholars generally perceived it as an entity separated from its Maghribī equivalent. Thus the global crisscrossing apprehension of Ibāḍī litterature and cultures is quite a recent phenomenon, except for Ibāḍī scholars themselves. For this first global assessment, the volume was based in a transperiodic and transdiciplinary approach. We have given priority to the depiction of the most significant Ibāḍī historical stages until nowadays. We have also tried to focus on its " places of memory " (Oman, Zanzibar, Jabal Nefūsa, Djerba, Ouargla, Wādī Mzāb), perceived not only as settlement areas but also as a part of the present-day Ibāḍī symbolic capital. We have also given special attention to the stakes of this historical memory, as reflected both by Occidental and Arabic academic productions. In fact, historiographical dimension can help us to extract our object both from the narrowness of communitarian perspectives and from the national rhetorics that too often exclude Ibāḍism from the Arabic "nation". We shall then pay attention to the different regional identities that form part of the Ibāḍī archipelago and to the way they were shaped by the constant tension between the Oriental formative model and the local references, and between the memory of origins and the present-day contingencies.
