ibn al Mu'tamir and an ascetic of high rank, called the Monk of the Mu'tazilites, went still further than an-Nazzam. He flatly damned as unbelievers all who held the eternity of the Qur'an; they had taken unto themselves two Gods. Further, he asserted that men were quite capable of producing a work even finer than the Qur'an in point of style. But the force of this opinion is somewhat diminished by the liberality with which he denounced his opponents in general as unbelievers. Stories are told of him very much like those in circulation with us about those who hold that few will be saved, and it is worth noticing that upon this point of salvability the Mu'tazilites were even narrower than the orthodox.

CHAPTER II

Al-Ma'mun and the triumph of the Mu'tazilites; the Mihna and Ahmad ibn Hanbal; al-Farabi; the Fatimids and the Ikhwan as-Safa; the early mystics, ascetic and pantheistic; al-Hallaj.

SUCH for long was the situation between the Mu'tazilites and their orthodox opponents. From time to time the Mu'tazilites received more or less protection and state favor; at other times, they had to seek safety in hiding. Popular favor they seem never to have enjoyed. As the Umayyads grew weak, they became more stiff in their orthodoxy; but with the Abbasids, and especially with al-Mansur, thought was again free. As has been shown above, encouragement of science and research was part of the plan of that great man, and he easily saw that the intellectual hope of the future was with these theological and philosophical questioners. So their work went slowly on, with a break under Harun ar-Rashid a magnificent but highly orthodox monarch, who understood no trifling with things of the faith. It is an interesting but useless question whether Islam could ever have been broadened and developed to the point of enduring in its midst free speculation and research. As the case stands in history, it has known periods of intellectual life, but only under the protection of isolated princes here and there. It has had Augustan ages; it has never had