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persecution, which make it probable that it was more nominal than otherwise. Al-Qadir
was bitterly orthodox; he had written a treatise on theology and compelled his unhappy
courtiers to listen to a public reading of it every week. But he enjoyed, outside of his
palace, next to no power. He was in the control of the Shi'ite Buwayhids, who, as we have
seen, ruled Baghdad and the Khalifate from 320 to 447. These dubious persecutions are said
to have fallen in 408 and 420. Again, a Muslim pilgrim from Spain visited Baghdad about
390 and has left us a record of the state of religious things there. He found in session
what may perhaps best be described as a Parliament of Religions. It seems to have been a
free debate between Muslims of all sects, orthodox and heretical, Parsees and atheists,
Jews and Christiansunbelievers of every kind. Each party had a spokesman, and at the
beginning of the proceedings the rule was rehearsed that no one might appeal to the sacred
books of his creed but might only adduce arguments founded upon reason. The pious Spanish
Muslim went to two meetings but did not peril his soul by any further visits. In his
narrative we recognize the horror with which the orthodox of Spain viewed such proceedingsSpain,
Muslim and Christian, has always favored the straitest sect; but when such a thing was
permitted in Baghdad, religious liberty there at least must have been tolerably broad.
Possibly it was sittings of the Ikhwan as-safa upon which this scandalized Spaniard
stumbled. He himself speaks of them as meetings of mutakallims.
But if the mixture of Sunnite and Shi'ite authority
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in Baghdad gave all the miscellaneous heretics a chance for life, it was different in
the growing dominions of Mahmud of Ghazna. That iconoclastic monarch had embraced the
anthropomorphic faith of the Karramites, the most literal-minded of all the Muslim sects.
In consequence, all forms of Mu'tazilism and all kinds of mutakallims were an abomination
to him, and it was a very real persecution which they met at his hands. That al-Qadir, his
spiritual suzerain, urged him on is very probable; it is also possible that respect for
the growing power of Mahmud may have protected al-Qadir to some extent from the Buwayhids.
In 420 Mahmud took from them Ispahan and held there a grand inquisition on Shi'ites and
heretics of all kinds.
To proceed with the Mu'tazilites; when we come to al-Ghazzali and his times we shall
find that they have ceased to be a crying danger to the faith. Though their views might,
that doctor held, be erroneous in some respects, they were not to be considered as
damnable. Again, in 538, there died az-Zamakhshari, the great grammarian, who is often
called the last of the Mu'tazilites. He was not that by any means, but his heresies were
either mild or were regarded mildly. A single point will show this, His commentary on the
Qur'an, the Kashshaf, was revised and expurgated in the orthodox interest by al-Baydawi
(d. 688) and in that form is now the most popular and respected of all expositions. The Kashshaf
itself, in its original, unmodified form, has been printed several times at Cairo. Again,
Ibn Rushd, the Aristotelian, who died in 595, when he is
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