4. Ahmed Ibn Hanbal founded the fourth sect, the Hanbalites. He was born in 164 of the Hegira, and was a most intimate friend of Shafei. His knowledge of the traditions (of wliich he could repeat no less than a million) was no less famed than was his piety. He taught that the Koran was not created, but everlastingly subsisted in the essence of God— a doctrine for which he was severely punished by caliph Al-Motasena. On the
day of his death, the Mohammedans would have us be- lieve, no less than 20,000 unbelievers (Jews, Christians, and Magians) embraced the Mohammedan faith. Once very numerous, the Hanbalites are now but very rarely met with outside of Arabia.
5. In recent times a new orthodox Mohammedan sect has sprung up, called Wahabis or Wahabites, after their founder, Mohammed Abd-el-Wahab (q. v.). They are intent upon restoring the primitive and vig- orous Mohammedanism which the}' claim does not now exist under the Turks and Persians, whom they call idolatrous. The Wahabis are a sort of Puritanic icono- clasts, and their power is fast spreading. But their re- cent history is so mystified that we defer them for con- sideration under the heading Wahabites.
II. Much more numerous than the orthodox divisions are the lieterodox ones. Immediately after Mohammed's death, and during the early conquests, the contest was chiefly confined to the question of the Imamat. But no sooner were the first days of warfare over than thinking minds began to direct themselves to a closer examina- tion of the faith itself, for which and through which the world was to be conquered, and to the book which preached it, the Koran. The earliest germs of a relig- ious dissension are found in the revolt of the Khare- gites against Ali, in the thirty-seventh year of the Hegira (see Ockley, flist. of the Saracens, ii, 50) ; and several doctors shortly aftenvards broached heterodox opinions about predestination and the good and evil to be ascribed to God. These new doctrines were boldh', and in a very advanced form, openly preached by Wasil Ibn Ata, who, for uttering a moderate opinion in the matter of the '• sinner," had been expelled from the rig- orous school of Basrah. He then formed a school of his own — that of the Separatists or Motazilites, who, to- gether with a number of other " heretical" groups, are variously counted as one, four, or seven sects. '
1. The first of these heretical groups, the Motazilites — also called Moattalites, i. e. those who divest God of his attributes ; and Kadarija, i. e. " those who hold that man has a free will, and deny the strict doctrine of pre- destination"— is traced back even to Mabad, who, in the time of Mohammed himself, already began to question predestination, by pointing out how kings carry on un- just wars, kill men, and steal their goods, and all the while pretend to be merely executing God's decrees. Tlie real founder of the sect, as such, however, is, as we have already indicated, Wasil Ibn Ata. He denied God's "qualities" — such as knowledge, power, will, life — as leading to, if not directly implying, polytheism. As to predestination itself, this he only allowed to exist with regard to the outward good or evil that befalls man, such as illness or recovery, death or life, but man's actions he held to be entirely in his own hands. God, he said, had given commandments to mankihd, and it was not to be supposed that he had, at the same time, preordained that some should disobey these command- ments, and that, further, they should be punished for it. jNIan alone was the agent in his good or evil actions, in his belief or unbelief, obedience or disobedience, and he is rewarded according to his deeds. («) These doctrines were further developed by his disciple, Abul-Hudail, who did not deny so absolutely God's "qualities," but modified their meaning in the manner of the Greek philosophers, viz. that every quality was also God's es- sence. The attributes are thus not without, but within him, and, so far from being a multiplicity, they merely designate the various ways of the manifestations of the Godhead. God's will he declared to be a peculiar kind of knowledge, through which God did what he foresaw to be salutary in the end. Man's freedom of action is only possible in this world. In the next all will be ac- cording to necessary l&ws immutably preordained. The righteous will enjoy everlasting bliss ; and for the wick- ed everlasting punishment will be decreed. Another very dangerous doctrine of his system was the assump- tion that before the Koran had been revealed man had
MOHAMMEDAN SECTS
426
M0HA]S1]MEDAN SECTS
already come to the conclusion of right and wrong. By his inner intellect, he held, everybody must and does know— even without the aid of the divinely given com- mandments— whether tlie thing he is doing be right or wrong, just or unjust, true or false, lie is further sup- posed to have held that, unless a man be killed by vio- lent means, his life would neither be prolonged nor shortened by '•supernatural" agencies. His belief in the traditions was also by no means an absolute one. There was no special security, he said, in a long, un- broken chain of ^vitnesses, considering that one fallible man among tliem could corrupt the whole truth. (6) Many were tlie branches of these Motazilites. There were, apart from the disciples of Abul-Hudail, the Job- haians, who adopted Abu Ali al-Wahhab's (Al-Jobbai's) opinion, to the effect that the knowledge ascribed to God was not an "attribute;" nor was his knowledge "necessary;" nor did sin prove anything as to the be- lief or unbelief of him who committed it, who would anyhow be subjected to eternal punishment if he died in it, etc. (c) Besides these, there were the disci|)les of Abu Ilashem — the Hmhemik'S — who held that an intidcl was not the creation of God, who could not produce evil. ((/) Another branch were the disci|)les of Ahmed Ibn Hayet, who held that Christ was the eternal Word in- carnate, and assumed a real body; that there were two gods, or creators, one eternal, viz. the Most High God, and the other not eternal, viz. Christ — not unlike the Socinian and Arian theories on this subject; that there is a successive transmigration of the soul from one body into another, and that the last body will enjoy the re- ward or suffer the punisliments due to each soul; and that God will be seen at the resurrection with the eyes of the understanding, not of the body, (p) Four more divisions of this sect are mentioned, viz. the JuheMians, whose master's notion about the Koran was that it was "a body that might grow into a man, and sometimes into a beast, or to have, as others put it, two faces — one human, the other that of an animal, according to the different interpretations." He further taught them that the damned would become tire, and thus be at- tracted by hell; also, that the mere belief in God and the Prophet constituted a " faithful." {f) Of rather different tendencies was Al-Mozdar, the founder of the branch of the Mozdariuns. He not only held tlic Ko- ran to be uncreated and eternal, but, so far from deny- ing God the power of doing evil, he declared it to be possible for God to be a liar and unjust, (y) Another branch was formed by the Pasharians, who, while they carried man's free agency rather to excess, yet held that God might doom even an infant to eternal punishment — all the while granting that he would be unjust in so doing. (A) The last of these Motazilite sectarians we shall mention are the Thamamians, who held, after their master, Thamama, that sinners would undergo eternal damnation and punishment; that free actions have no producing author; and that, at the resurrection, all infi- dels, atheists, .lews. Christians, Magians, and heretics should be returned to dust.