Ibadi Muslims, a minority religious community, historically inhabited pockets throughout North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the East African coast. Yet less is known about the community of Ibadi Muslims that relocated to Egypt. Focusing on the history of an Ibadi-run trade depot, school and library that operated in Cairo for over three hundred years, this book shows how the Ibadi Muslims operated in and adapted to the legal, religious, commercial, and political realms of the Ottoman Empire from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. Using a unique range of sources, including manuscript notes, family histories and archival correspondence, Paul M. Love, Jr. presents an original history of this Muslim majority told from the bottom up. Whilst illuminating the events that shaped the history of Egypt during these centuries, he also brings to life the lived reality of a Muslim minority community in the Ottoman world.

The Ibadi Muslims, a little-known minority community, have lived in North Africa for over a thousand years. Combining an analysis of Arabic manuscripts with digital tools used in network analysis, Paul M. Love, Jr takes readers on a journey across the Maghrib and beyond as he traces the paths of a group of manuscripts and the Ibadi scholars who used them. Ibadi scholars of the Middle Period (eleventh-sixteenth century) wrote a series of collective biographies (prosopographies), which together constructed a cumulative tradition that connected Ibadi Muslims from across time and space, bringing them together into a 'written network'. From the Mzab valley in Algeria to the island of Jerba in Tunisia, from the Jebel Nafusa in Libya to the bustling metropolis of early-modern Cairo, this book shows how people and books worked in tandem to construct and maintain an Ibadi Muslim tradition in the Maghrib.

The Ibadi Muslims, a little-known minority community, have lived in North Africa for over a thousand years. Combining an analysis of Arabic manuscripts with digital tools used in network analysis, Paul M. Love, Jr takes readers on a journey across the Maghrib and beyond as he traces the paths of a group of manuscripts and the Ibadi scholars who used them. Ibadi scholars of the Middle Period (eleventh-sixteenth century) wrote a series of collective biographies (prosopographies), which together constructed a cumulative tradition that connected Ibadi Muslims from across time and space, bringing them together into a 'written network'. From the Mzab valley in Algeria to the island of Jerba in Tunisia, from the Jebel Nafusa in Libya to the bustling metropolis of early-modern Cairo, this book shows how people and books worked in tandem to construct and maintain an Ibadi Muslim tradition in the Maghrib.