Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/218

 consists in accepting these and adapting things to their situation; ultimately all things will cease to exist as they are re-absorbed in God, the only reality. Men are divided into three classes: the first contains the men of the world, whose life centres in self and who are indifferent towards religion; a second class contains the men of the reason, who discern God intellectually by his external attributes and manifestations; and as a third class are the men of the spirit, who perceive God intuitively.

Although Sufism has now taken a recognised place in the life of Islam, it was not allowed to pass without occasional challenge. The leading opponent was the Hanbalite reformer, Ibn Taymiya (d. 728), who represented the reactionary but popular theology. He rejected formal adherence to any school, dismissed all importance attached to Ijma or "consensus" save that based on the agreement of the Prophet's Companions; he denounced the scholastic theology of al-Ash'ari and al-Ghazali, and defined the Divine attributes on the lines laid down by Ibn Hazm. At that time the Sufi an-Nasr al-Manbiji was prominent in Cairo, and to him Ibn Taymiya wrote a letter denouncing the Sufi doctrine of ittihad as heresy. From this arose a quarrel between the two rival forces of Islam, traditional orthodoxy and mysticism, in the course of which Ibn Taymiya suffered persecution and imprisonment. Towards the end of his life, in 726, he issued a fatwa or declaration of opinion against the lawfulness of