The Community Divided: A Textual Analysis of the Murders of Idris B. 'Abd Allah (D. 175/791)‪.‬

In 175/791, Idris (I) b. 'Abd Allah b. al-Hasan b. al-Hasan b. 'Ali b. Abi Talib, the eponymous founder of the Idrisid dynasty in North Africa, was killed by an unknown assailant. Disagreement regarding the details of the murder emerged in the form of two fundamentally different narratives. In the first, Idris I was poisoned by tainted tooth powder administered by an 'Abbasid client (al-Shammakh), who was rewarded with a political appointment in Egypt. In the second, he was poisoned (in a number of possible ways) by a traitorous Zaydi theologian, who was injured in his subsequent flight to safety. The first of these narratives occurs in the earliest extant historical works and persists into the Mamluk period in the non-Zaydi (and largely Sunni) historiographical tradition. The second originates almost exclusively in Zaydi historical works from the fourth/tenth century, but exerts a clear influence on a number of important late sources. This study examines both these versions with an eye towards better understanding (a) the polemical motivations that helped shape each narrative and (b) the techniques utilized by late premodern Muslim historians to reconcile contradictory source material. A. HISTORICAL CONTEXT