"'Tis time, O ye Sellers, for one who hath sold himself To God, that he should arise and saddle amain. Fools! in the land of miscreants will ye abide, To be hunted down, every man of you, and to be slain? O would that I were among you, armèd in mail, On the back of my stout-ribbed galloping war-horse again! And would that I were among you, fighting your foes, That me, first of all, they might give death's beaker to drain! It grieves me sore that ye are startled and chased Like beasts, while I cannot draw on the wretches profane My sword, nor see them scattered by noble knights Who never yield an inch of the ground they gain, But where the struggle is hottest, with keen blades hew Their strenuous way and deem 'twere base to refrain. Ay, it grieves me sore that ye are oppressed and wronged, While I must drag in anguish a captive's chain."

Qaṭarí b. al-Fujá’a, the intrepid Khárijite leader who routed army after army sent against him by Ḥajjáj, sang almost as Qaṭarí b. al-Fujá’a. well as he fought. The verses rendered below are included in the Ḥamása395 and cited by Ibn Khallikán, who declares that they would make a brave man of the greatest coward in the world. "I know of nothing on the subject to be compared with them; they could only have proceeded from a spirit that scorned disgrace and from a truly Arabian sentiment of valour."396

"I say to my soul dismayed—'Courage! Thou canst not achieve,With praying, an hour of lifeBeyond the appointed term.Then courage on death's dark field,Courage! Impossible 'tisTo live for ever and aye.Life is no hero's robeOf honour: the dastard vileAlso doffs it at last.'"

The murder of ‘Uthmán broke the Moslem community, which had hitherto been undivided, into two shí‘as, or parties—one The Shí‘ites. for ‘Alí and the other for Mu‘áwiya. When the latter became Caliph he was no longer a party leader, but head of the State, and his shí‘aceased to exist. Henceforth 'the Shí‘a' par excellencewas the party of ‘Alí, which regarded the House of the Prophet as the legitimate heirs to the succession. Not content, however, with upholding ‘Alí, as the worthiest of the Prophet's Companions and the duly elected Caliph, against his rival, Mu‘áwiya, the bolder spirits took up an idea, which emerged about The theory of Divine Right. this time, that the Caliphate belonged to ‘Alí and his descendants by Divine right. Such is the distinctive doctrine of the Shí‘ites to the present day. It is generally thought to have originated in Persia, where the Sásánian kings used to assume the title of 'god' (Pahlaví bagh) and were looked upon as successive incarnations of the Divine majesty.

"Although the Shí‘ites," says Dozy, "often found themselves under the direction of Arab leaders, who utilised them in order Dozy's account of its origin. to gain some personal end, they were nevertheless a Persian sect at bottom; and it is precisely here that the difference most clearly showed itself between the Arab race, which loves liberty, and the Persian race, accustomed to slavish submission. For the Persians, the principle of electing the Prophet's successor was something unheard of and incomprehensible. The only principle which they recognised was that of inheritance, and since Muḥammad left no sons, they thought that his son-in-law ‘Alí should have succeeded him, and that the sovereignty was hereditary in his family. Consequently, all the Caliphs except ‘Alí— i.e., Abú Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthmán, as well as the Umayyads—were in their eyes usurpers to whom no obedience was due. The hatred which they felt for the Government and for Arab rule confirmed them in this opinion; at the same time they cast covetous looks on the wealth of their masters. Habituated, moreover, to see in their kings the descendants of the inferior divinities, they transferred this idolatrous veneration to ‘Alí and his posterity. Absolute obedience to the Imám of ‘Alí's House was in their eyes the most important duty; if that were fulfilled all the rest might be interpreted allegorically and violated without scruple. For them the Imám was everything; he was God made man. A servile submission accompanied by immorality was the basis of their system."397

Now, the Shí‘ite theory of Divine Right certainly harmonised with Persian ideas, but was it also of Persian The Saba’ites. origin? On the contrary, it seems first to have arisen among an obscure Arabian sect, the Saba’ites, whose founder, ‘Abdulláh b. Sabá (properly, Saba’), was a native of Ṣan‘á in Yemen, and is said to have been a Jew.398 In ‘Uthmán's time he turned Moslem and became, apparently, a travelling missionary. "He went from place to place," says the historian, "seeking to lead the Moslems into error."399 We hear of him in the Ḥijáz, then in Baṣra and Kúfa, then in Syria. Finally he settled in Egypt, where he preached the doctrine of palingenesis ( raj‘a). "It is strange indeed," he exclaimed, "that any one should believe in the Doctrine of Ibn Sabá. return of Jesus (as Messias), and deny the return of Muḥammad, which God has announced (Kor. xxviii, 85).400 Furthermore, there are a thousand Prophets, every one of whom has an executor ( waṣí), and the executor of Muḥammad is ‘Alí.401 Muḥammad is the last of the Prophets, and ‘Alí is the last of the executors." Ibn Sabá, therefore, regarded Abú Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthmán as usurpers. He set on foot a widespread conspiracy in favour of ‘Alí, and carried on a secret correspondence with the disaffected in various provinces of the Empire.402 According to Shahrastání, he was banished by ‘Alí for saying, "Thou art thou" ( anta anta), i.e., "Thou art God."403 This refers to the doctrine taught by Ibn Sabá and the extreme Shí‘ites ( Ghulát) who derive from him, that the Divine Spirit which dwells in every prophet and passes successively from one to another was transfused, at Muḥammad's death, into ‘Alí, and from ‘Alí into his descendants who succeeded him in the Imámate. The Saba’ites also held that the Imám might suffer a temporary occultation ( ghayba), but that one day he would return and fill the earth with justice. They believed the millennium to be near at hand, so that the number of Imáms was at first limited to four. Thus the poet Kuthayyir (õ 723 a.d.) says:—

"Four complete are the Imámsof Quraysh, the lords of Right:‘Alí and his three good sons,each of them a shining light.One was faithful and devout;Karbalá hid one from sight;One, until with waving flagshis horsemen he shall lead to fight,Dwells on Mount Raḍwá, concealed:honey he drinks and water bright."404

The Messianic idea is not peculiar to the Shí‘ites, but was brought into Islam at an early period by Jewish and Christian converts, and soon established itself as a part of Muḥammadan belief. Traditions ascribed to the Prophet began to circulate, declaring that the approach of the Last Judgment would be heralded by a time of tumult and confusion, by the return of Jesus, who would slay the Antichrist ( al-Dajjál), The Mahdí or Messiah. and finally by the coming of the Mahdí, i.e., 'the God-guided one,' who would fill the earth with justice even as it was then filled with violence and iniquity. This expectation of a Deliverer descended from the Prophet runs through the whole history of the Shí‘a. As we have seen, their supreme religious chiefs were the Imáms of ‘Alí's House, each of whom transmitted his authority to his successor. In the course of time disputes arose as to the succession. One sect acknowledged only seven legitimate Imáms, while another carried the number to twelve. The last Imám of the 'Seveners' ( al-Sab‘iyya), who are commonly called Ismá‘ílís, was Muḥammad b. Ismá‘íl, and of the 'Twelvers' ( al-Ithná-‘ashariyya) Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan.405 Both those personages vanished mysteriously about 770 and 870 a.d., and their respective followers, refusing to believe that they were dead, asserted that their Imám had withdrawn himself for a season from mortal sight, but that he would surely return at last as the promised Mahdí. It would take a long while to enumerate all the pretenders and fanatics who have claimed this title.406 Two of them founded the Fáṭimid and Almohade dynasties, which we shall mention elsewhere, but they generally died on the gibbet or the battle-field. The ideal which they, so to speak, incarnated did not perish with them. Mahdiism, the faith in a divinely appointed revolution which will sweep away the powers of evil and usher in a Golden Age of justice and truth such as the world has never known, is a present and inspiring fact which deserves to be well weighed by those who doubt the possibility of an Islamic Reformation.