Nur al-Din al-Salimi

Nor al-Dīn al-Sālimī (Arabic: نور الدين السالمي‎; full name Nor al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥumayd b. Sullūm al-Sālimī, c. 1286-1332 AH/1869-1914 CE) was an Omani scholar noted for his expertise in Ibāḍī Islam.

Biography

Al-Sālimī was born near Rustaq, in al-Ḥawqayn, and was at first educated mainly by his father, followed by tuition by various Omani scholars, gaining particular expertise in Ibāḍī Islam. Around the age of twelve he became blind.[1][2]

Al-Sālimī's life was characterised by his work to re-establish the Imamate of Oman, which had been replaced under British imperial influence by the Albusaidi Sultans of Muscat. Al-Sālimī's teachers included men who had secured the election of Oman's only Imām of the nineteenth century, ʿAzzān ibn Qays (reigned 1868-71). His early life near Rustaq positioned him at the centre of Ibāḍī resistance to the Sultanate. As the focus of this activism shifted to the province of Sharqiyya, al-Sālimī moved to that region, between around 1886 and 1890. There he studied with Sheikh Sāliḥ ibn ʿAli al-Ḥārithī (1834-96), and, with the support of al-Ḥārithī, settled and began to teach in the village of al-Qābil.[1][2]

However, Sāliḥ's son, ʿĪsā ibn Ṣāliḥ (1874-1946), who succeeded his father in a leadership position among the Hināwī tribe of the Sharqiyya, seems not to have liked al-Sālimī and did not support al-Sālimī's efforts to resurrect the Omani Imamate. Al-Sālimī turned to Ḥimyar ibn Nāṣir al-Nabhānī (1874-1920), a leader of the Ghāfirī Banū Riyām in the Jabal al-Akhdar, asking him to support a former pupil of al-Sālimī's, Sālim ibn Rāshid (1884-1920), to become imam. Despite al-Sālimī's efforts, however, he did not see the re-establishment of the imamate in his lifetime.[1]

Al-Sālimī died when his donkey stumbled as he travelled to visit one of his former teachers, Mājid ibn Khamīs al-ʿAbrī (c. 1837-1927). The two had fallen into a dispute because al-Sālimī had tried to appropriate charitable endowments intended for visiting graves and reading the Qurʾān for the dead to fund the campaign to re-establish the imamate. He was buried at Tanūf.[1]

Works

Al-Sālimī is thought to have begun writing around the age of seventeen, swiftly gaining fame as a scholar of religion and history.[2]:xxxix Al-Sālimī composed at least twenty-two works, including Talḳīn al-ṣibyān, a book of instruction for children in Ibāḍī religion.[1]

History of Oman

Although in his own community, al-Sālimī was most important as a religious thinker, he is best known in the West as a historian of Oman,[1] and especially for his history of Oman, Tuḥfat al-Aʿyān bi-sīrat ahl ʿUmān, completed around 1913, shortly before his death. The work only appeared in print in 1928, edited by Abū Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm Aṭfayyish, son of al-Sālimī's collaborator Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf Aṭfayyish (1236-1332/1820-1914), a noted Mzābi scholar and activist.[1][3]

The Tuḥfat al-Aʿyān is noted for bringing together the manuscript sources composed up to al-Sālimī's time, for providing thorough citations and accurate quotations, and for being comprehensive in presenting available information about Oman; at the same time, the work is in the style of traditional Omani history-writing rather than modern history-writing. The work was influential on later scholars.[2]:xl On the other hand, the history has been seen as promoting al-Sālimī's ibādī politics.[1]

Biography

Al-Sālimī's son Muḥammad continued his father's Tuḥfat al-Aʿyān down to the death of Imām Muḥammad bin ʿAbd Allāh al-Khalīlī in 1954 in a work entitled Nahḍat al-aʿyān bi-ḥurriyyat ʿUmān (published in Cairo), and in this including a long biography of al-Sālimī.[1]

References
  1. J. C. Wilkinson, 'al-Sālimī', in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, ed. by P. Bearman and others (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2005), ISBN 9789004161214 doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6551.
  2. Isam Ali Ahmad al-Rawas, 'Early Islamic Oman (ca - 622/280-893): A Political History' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1990).
  3. Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh bin Ḥumayd al-Sālimī, Tuḥfat al-Aʿyān bi-sīrat ahl ʿUmān, 2 vols (Cairo: Matba‘at al-sufliyya, 1347/1928).
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