[60] Ueberweg, p. 403; Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, ii, 281. [↑]
[61] For an orthodox account of the beginnings of freethinking (called zendēkism) see Weil, ii, 214. Cp. p. 261; also Tabari’s Chronicle, pt. v, ch. xcvii; and Renan, Averroès, p. 103. Already, among the Ommayade Khalifs, Yezid III held the Motazilite tenet of freewill. Weil, p. 260. [↑]
[62] Nicholson, pp. 372, 375. The name zendēk (otherwise spelt zindiq) seems to have originally meant a Manichæan. Browne, Literary History of Persia, ii (1906), 295; Nicholson, p. 375 and ref. Macdonald, p. 134, thinks it literally meant “initiate.” [↑]
[63] Steiner, p. 8. An association called “Brethren of Purity” or “Sincere Brethren” seem to have carried Motazilism far, though they aimed at reconciling philosophy with orthodoxy. They were in effect the encyclopedists of Arab science. Ueberweg, i, 411; Nicholson, p. 370 sq. See Dr. F. Dieterici, Die Naturanschauung und Naturphilosophie der Araber im 10ten Jahrhundert, aus den schriften der lautern Brüder, 1861, Vorrede, p. viii, and Flügel, as there cited. Flügel dates the writings of the Brethren about 970; but the association presumably existed earlier. Cp. Renan, Averroès, p. 104; and S. Lane-Poole’s Studies in a Mosque, 1893, ch. vi, as to their performance. Prof. Macdonald is disposed to regard them as “part of the great Fatimid propaganda which honeycombed the ground everywhere under the Sunnite Abassids,” but admits that the Fatimid movement is “the great mystery of Muslim history” (pp. 165–70). [↑]
[64] Sale, pp. 82–83, note. [↑]
[65] He made five pilgrimages to Mecca, and died on the last, thus attaining to sainthood. [↑]
[66] Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, ii, 81; Dugat, pp. 59–61; A. Müller, Der Islam, i. 470; Macdonald, p. 134. In Mansour’s reign was born Al Allaf, “Sheikh of the Motazilites.” [↑]
[67] Dugat, p. 62. The Hâyetians, who had Unitarian Christian leanings, also held by metempsychosis. Sale, p. 163. [↑]
[68] Nicholson, p. 371 and refs. [↑]
[69] Dugat, p. 71. He persecuted Zendēks in general. Nicholson, pp. 373–74. [↑]