Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/169

 the Khalifs as mere usurpers. At this period the Shi'ites were the patrons of philosophy, and the orthodox Sunnis generally took a reactionary attitude.

Besides the Ithna 'ashariya, the comparatively orthodox Shi'ites, there was another branch of extremer type known as the Sab'iya or "seveners." The sixth Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq had nominated his son Isma'il as his successor, but as Isma'il was one day found drunk, Ja'far disinherited him and appointed his second son Musa al-Qazam (d. 183). But some did not admit that the Imamate, whose divine right passed by hereditary descent, could be transferred at will, but remained loyal to Isma'il, and these preferred, when Isma'il died in Ja'far's lifetime, to transfer their allegiance to his son Muhammed, reckoning him as the seventh Imam. These "seveners" continued to exist as an obscure sect until, it would appear, somewhere about the year 220, when 'Abdullah, the son of a Persian oculist named Maymun, either was made their head or led a secession from them, and organised his followers with a kind of freemasonry in seven (afterwards nine) grades of initiation and a very admirably organised system of propaganda on the lines already laid down by the Hashimites (cf. supra). In the earlier grades the doctrine of batn or allegorical interpretation of the Qur'an was laid down as essential to a right understanding of its meaning, for the literal sense is often obscure, and sometimes refers to things incomprehensible, a doctrine commonly