Abu Zakariya' al-Wardilani

Abu Zakariya' Yahya b. Abi Bakr al-Wardilani was a historian of the Ibadis of the Maghrib, a native of Wardilan (Ouargla). He wrote the Sira wa-akhbar al-a'imma, the oldest history of the Maghribi Ibadis written by a member of the sect.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), signed A. de Motylinski and T. Lewicki, notes that the Ibadi chroniclers al-Dardjini (7th/13th century) and al-Shammakhi (d. 928/1522) based their own works on his chronicle but give little about him, and no dates. Al-Dardjini says that he was a native of Wardilan and studied in the Wadi Righ under the Ibadi shaykh Abu 'l-Rabi' Sulayman b. Ikhlaf al-Mazati (d. 471/1078-9). So the chronicle must have been written at the end of the 5th/11th or the beginning of the 6th/12th century. An Ibadi tradition of Wardilan holds that he died and was buried there, or in the neighbouring oasis of Sadrata. ¹

The chronicle, in two parts, is unpublished; its manuscripts are mostly modern. It is the oldest document of Maghribi Ibadi history written from inside the sect. It covers the introduction and development of Ibadi doctrine in the Maghrib, the history of the Rustamids and their fall, the Ibadi struggle against the Fatimids, and the lives of the leading shaykhs up to the author's time. E. Masqueray translated the most important part in 1878, from a poor manuscript, and A. de Motylinski gave a table of contents. Al-Barradi's catalogue, of the 8th/14th century, also credits him with letters and decisions on dogma. An edition and new translation by Dalet and R. Le Tourneau were in preparation. ¹