Between Aleppo and Ṣaʿda: The Zaydī reception of the Imāmī scholar Ibn al-Biṭrīq al-Ḥillī

Departing from a collective manuscript copied partly in the hand of the renowned Yemenī scholar ʿAbd Allāh b. Zayd al-ʿAnsī (d. 667/1268) and partly in the hand of his nephew, Muḥammad b. Aʿsad, that contains three works concerned with Qurʾānic passages taken to support ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and the ahl al-bayt and pro-ʿAlid traditions culled from of Sunnī ḥadīth collections, the reception of the Kitāb al-ʿUmda of the Twelver Shīʿī author Ibn al-Biṭrīq al-Ḥillī (d. 600/1203–1204 or 601/1204–1205)—one of three works contained in the codex—among the Zaydīs of Yemen is analyzed in detail. It is shown that this work, together with Ibn al-Maghāzilī’s (d. 483/1090) Manāqib ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, were the principal available sources for the Zaydīs of Yemen up until the time of the Imām al-Manṣūr bi-llāh (d. 614/1217) for the Sunnī canonical ḥadīth collections.