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The third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, was killed by mutineers in 656 AD, and a struggle for succession ensued between Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and Muawiya, governor of Damascus. (The core of Ali's followers later became Shiites.)
In 658, Ali's forces met Muawiya's at the Battle of Siffin; at first, the battle went against Muawiya, but then he hit upon the idea of having his army hoist Qur'ans on their lances, proclaiming that he wanted to have the decision of who should be Caliph arbitrated using it.
Most of Ali's army was favorable to the idea, and he agreed to have the question decided by two arbiters. Some in his army, however, regarded this as a betrayal; a large group of them (traditionally 12,000, mainly from the Banu Tamim tribe) repudiated his cause, leaving to fight both sides. They became known as Kharijites (in Arabic Khawārij, singular Khārijī, meaning 'those that seceded'). In their opinion, the right of arbitration was God's alone, and the choice of caliph should not be questioned by mere mortals. Thus they opposed both Muawiya, for his rebellion, and Ali, for submitting to the arbitration. This belief they based on the following verse of the Qur'an:
Abdullah ibn Abbas managed to persuade a large number of them to return to Ali. Ali defeated the remaining military rebellion in the battle of Naharwan in 658, but the Kharijites survived and, in 661, assassinated Ali. They had supposedly organized simultaneous attempts against Muawiya and `Amrû (one of the arbitrators at Siffin), in their view the other main sources of strife within the Muslim community, but the credibility of this story is uncertain.
The Kharijites' relations with other Muslims were generally hostile, though this tendency waned with time. The most extreme were the Azraqis, founded in Persia in 685 by Nâfi` Ben Al-Azraq. These pronounced Takfir on all other Muslims, considering them to be mushrik ('unbelievers' or 'idolators') who could be killed with impunity. Their distinctive and terrifying practices included:
They regarded the territory occupied by other Muslims as part of Dar al-Kufr, the territory of unbelief where it was licit to attack both people and goods-but also a territory from which one must exile oneself, as Muhammad had exiled himself from Mecca to escape the unbelievers there.
Less brutal was the Sufri sect, founded by Ziyâd Ben Al-Asfar in an environment hostile to Kharijism. These condemned political murder, admitted the practice of Taqiyya (dissimulation of one's faith in order to escape danger), and rejected the massacre of the unbelievers' children. They considered Sura 12 to be not truly part of the Qur'an.
A third sect, the Ibadis, developed further than the others. Founded by `Abd Allah Ben Ibâd, they maintained attitudes of political intransigence and moral rigorism. They were, however, more flexible in their dealings with other Muslims; for example, they would not attack without first extending an invitation to join.
The branch founded by Chabib Ben Yazîd Al-Harûrî held that it was permissible to entrust the imamate to a woman if she was able to carry out the required duties. The founder's wife, Ghazala Al-Harûrîya, commanded troops; in this she followed the example of Juwayrîya, the daughter of Abu Sufyan, at the Battle of Yarmuk. In one battle, she put the famous Ummayad general Al-Hajjâj Ben Yûsuf to flight.
Three of the main Kharijite sects were named by color: the "white" Ibadis, the "blue" Azraqis, and the "yellow" Sufris. However, this is probably a coincidence, as they are said to be named after their respective founders.
The Azraqis revolted against the caliphate in 685, after separating from the Ibadis at Basra and departing for Fars. They were suppressed by Abd al-Malik's armies, under the command of the emir al-Hajjaj; their leader was killed, and by 699 they had vanished. Another revolt occurred in 695; Sunni traditions underline the massacre of Muslims at a mosque in Kufa as an example of Kharijite fury and brutality. Agitations such as these fatally weakened the Ummayad caliphate and paved the way for its overthrow by the Abbasids.
From the beginning of the Arab conquest of the Maghreb, the Kharijites sent representatives to join the local Berber population. The Berbers, used to a communal system of government and opposed to Arab domination, found in Kharijism an ideological framework for rebellion. In the last years of the Umayyad dynasty, the western part of the Islamic empire escaped from the central authority; Spain came under the rule of the Umayyad emirs of Cordoba, while several independent states were founded in the Maghreb.
A Sufri community from southern Tunisia captured Kairouan in 755, at the price of fearful massacres. The Ibadis of Djebel Nafusa, outraged by the excesses of their rival sect, took the city and wiped out its Sufri population. They proclaimed an imamate c. 757, founding a state which would cover parts of Tripolitania and Ifriqiya before it was conquered by Abbasid armies in 761. Among the leaders of this state was Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rustam, a Persian convert who would later found the Rustamid dynasty at Tahert.
Around the same time, a Sufri kingdom was founded in Tlemcen (western Algeria). Berber Sufris from the tribe of Meknasa established the Midrarid state at Sijilmassa on the eastern slope of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Abû Qurra, a Sufri of the Ifren tribe of Tlemcen, reconquered Ifriqiya from the Arabs in 771.
The region stabilized in 778, when ibn Rustam made a peace treaty with the Abbasid governor of Kairouan, and remained so until the arrival of the Fatimids in 909.
In modern times, Islamist writers have sometimes branded terrorist groups which emphasize the practice of Takfir as neo-Kharijites; notable examples of groups described as such include the Groupe Islamique Armée of Algeria and the Takfir wal-Hijra group of Egypt.