Competing Visions of Community in Mediaeval Zaydi Yemen

The Mutarrifiyya was a popular religious movement in the northern highlands of Yemen in the years around 1000-1220 CE, perhaps best known for its opposition to two powerful Zaydi imams around the years 1150 and moo and the lively intellectual battle that these tensions engendered in the fields of theology and cosmology This article takes a new and critical look at the formative years of the Mutarrifiyya, questioning the assumption that it started with a theological dispute and rather arguing that there was already a form of "proto-Mutarrifiyya" around the year woo, existing as a loosely organised network of intellectuals engaging in common rituals, study circles, practices of hospitality and the collection and redistribution of zakat.