A Chain Reaching Back Through Basra

Ibadism traces its roots to a quietist current within the wider Kharijite movement that took shape in Basra in the seventh century CE, distancing itself from the more militant Kharijite factions while keeping their emphasis on the moral qualification of a leader over descent from the Prophet's family. Jabir ibn Zayd, based in Basra, is regarded as the school's founding scholar, and his teaching passed to his student Abu Ubayda Muslim ibn Abi Karima, who in turn taught al-Rabi' ibn Habib al-Farahidi, the figure credited with transmitting and organizing the hadith that make up the collection bearing his name.

Structured by legal and doctrinal topic in a manner recognizable from other early hadith collections of the period, it gathers rulings and reports understood to preserve Jabir ibn Zayd's teaching as it passed down this short chain of named transmitters, giving Ibadi Islam a hadith foundation independent of, and largely non-overlapping with, the Sunni six-book canon and the Shia collections that developed in parallel. Jabir ibn Zayd himself is said to have studied under several companions of the Prophet directly, a claim that, if accepted, would place the ultimate roots of the collection's authority within a single generation of Muhammad's own lifetime, comparable in kind to the earliest layers of Sunni and Shia hadith transmission alike.