From at least the 17th century onward, a sizeable Maghribi Ibadi community lived, studied, and worked in the city of Cairo, centered around a trade agency, school, and library known as the ‘Buffalo Agency’ (Wikālat al-Jāmūs). Over nearly four centuries, this agency served as a hub for Ibadi intellectual activity and manuscript production. Despite its place of prominence in the history of early-modern Ibadi communities, manuscripts are some of the only surviving evidence of its existence. Using manuscript notes from and catalog data on manuscripts either held at the agency’s library or copied there, this article suggests that Ibadis were far from the small, isolated minority community in northern Africa they are often imagined to have been. Instead, the story of the Buffalo Agency points to the ways in which Ibadis very much belonged to the intellectual and commercial worlds of Sunni-dominated Cairo from the 17th–20th centuries.

至少从17世纪开始，一个庞大的Maghribi Ibadi社区在开罗市生活，学习和工作，其中心是一家贸易公司，学校和图书馆，被称为“布法罗代理人”（Wikālatal-Jāmūs））。在近四个世纪的时间里，该机构是伊巴迪（Ibadi）知识活动和手稿生产的枢纽。尽管手稿在早期现代伊巴迪社区的历史中占有举足轻重的地位，但手稿是其存在的唯一幸存证据。通过使用来自该机构图书馆的手稿或手稿的目录数据或复制后的手稿目录数据，本文表明伊巴迪斯人与人们通常想象的北非偏僻的少数族裔社区相去甚远。取而代之的是，布法罗代理公司的故事指出了伊巴迪斯在17至20世纪从属于逊尼派统治的开罗的知识和商业世界的方式。