The Epistle of Salim b. Dhakwan - Prof Valerie J. Hoffman
According to the memory of Sīstānī locals, Sālim was allegedly captured by Arabs from the Sīstān region of Persia as a boy in 30/650. Ibādīs also knew a co-religionist of the same name from a letter addressed to him (Sālim) by the alleged first Ibādī Imam, Jābir b. Zayd (d. between 93/711 and 104/722).
Putting Jābir aside, the 9th century Omani, al-Bisyānī, who rediscovered the epistle of Sālim b. Dhakwān in the 4th/9th century from a group of early Siyar he collected, was the first Ibādī to make reference to him—as being a scholar of past generations; with Muhammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī (d. 1114) being the first Ibādī to cite him concerning his view on ‘Uthmān in the Bayān al-Shar’. But apparently there is no trace of Sālim b. Dhakwān in Ibādī literature before the 5th/10th century.
The manuscript of the epistle was introduced to Western scholars by the work of a Libyan Ibādī, and Cambridge graduate, named Amr K. Ennami in 1971. But the collection of manuscripts it was found in are dated from the mid-nineteenth century and were written in Oman.
According to Patricia Crone, the epistle has been stably transmitted from earlier copies starting from the Eighth century onward. Interestingly enough, in the epistle, Sālim refers only to the Qu’rān as supporting evidence for the positions he holds—a common feature in early Ibādī siyar.
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