They are one of the best known of a few extremist Shi‘i sects who adopted the belief that the angel Gabriel was mistaken when passing on the prophecy to Muhammad instead of Ali.
[1] The name of the Ghurabiyya sect comes from the Arabic غراب ghurāb, meaning "Ravens".
However, when Muhammad's religious career began he was 40 years old, and Ali was a 9 year old boy[3] While passing through Syria at the turn of the 13th century, the Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr noted that the Ghurabiyya Shi‘a were among the Shi‘a sects represented in Syria at that time.
called “al-Maqama al Kilwiyya” discovered in Oman, gives details of a mission to reconvert Kilwa (an island in Tanzania) to Ibadism, as it had recently been affected by the Ghurabiyya doctrine from southern Iraq.
Another reference to the influence of the Ghurabiyya Shi‘a comes from the Syrian biographer and geographer Yaqut, who, writing before 1224 C.E., reported that the Sultan of Pemba (another island in Tanzania) was an Arab who had recently emigrated from Kufa, suggesting that the doctrines of the Ghurabiyya, strongly present in Kufa, had also spread to Pemba.