[529] Satan, or Iblis was cursed for refusing to worship Adam at God’s command. This will be further developed in a note, vol. III. chapter VII.
[530] A city in Turkistan.
[531] Mâterídí was the surname of Abu Mansúr Muhammed al Hanefí. He was a doctor of the Hanefian sect, to whom the praise and title of Imám al hada, “the Imám, the director,” was given. He died, and was buried in the year of the Hejirah 333 (A. D. 944-5) in the town of Samarkand, a native of which he was; Mâterídí is a quarter of this town whence he had his surname. This doctor was a Motkalin, that is, a great metaphysician and scholastic theologian; he composed, among many other works, a book entitled: Bian vahem al Mâtazalah, against the Mâtazale.—(Herbelot sub voce Matridi).
[532] Muhammed Ghazáli, his full name is Abú Hamed Muhammed Ebn Muhammed, surnamed Hajjet ul islam Zain eddin al Tusí, born at Tus, n Khorasan, in the year of the Hejira 450 (A. D. 1058-9), the son of a merchant of cotton thread, ghazal, whence his surname ghazáli; he died in 504 or 505 (A. D. 1110-11). In the latter half of his life, which extended very little beyond the half of a century, he composed more than one hundred works, several of which are thick volumes in folio, such as the most celebrated amongst them entitled Jhyá al âlum eddín, “the revival of the sciences, concerning faith;” upon which the judgment was passed, that, were the Islam destroyed with all its works except this, from this alone it could be restored in all its perfection. This great dogmatic, ethic, and philosophic work was nevertheless, during the author’s life, condemned as heretical and consigned to the flames, by the Academy of Cordova, in Spain, the western Baghdad, or seat of Muhammedan learning. This composition of Ghazáli has been abridged by Abul Faśel Ahmed ben Mussa al Arbeli, under the title Ruh al Ihyá, “the spirit of the book entitled Ihyá.” See Pocock Spec. Hist. Arab., p. 371; Herbelot sub voce Ghazálí; Hammer’s Gemäldesaal grosser moslimischer Herrsher, IIIter Band, S. 182, 1837. By the last mentioned author was published a Biography of Ghazáli, as introduction to the text and translation of a treatise of Ghazali, under the title: “O Kind! die berühmteste ethishe Abhandlung of Ghazáli,” Vienne, 1838.
[534] The sects may be distinguished by the names of their founders, and called Hanefites, Asharian, Keramían, Shafeites, etc.; or by the nature of their doctrine, and named Sefatian, “attributists;” Matazalah, “separatists;” Mashabian, or Tasbiah, “assimilators,” etc.; or by their relation to some established doctrine or community, and then entitled Rafs, “heretics;” Navaseb, “enemies;” finally, these sorts of distinctions may be mixed. No doubt, these various classifications burden the memory with a great number of names which may create confusion. I am sparing in introducing others than those which are in the text of the Dabistan. According to those distinctions, their number may be diversely stated. We have already seen the principal sects reckoned to be four; here above are reckoned six; the author of Sharh-ol Mowakef (Pocock, p. 209) enumerates eight principal sects.
[535] From تعطيل tâtíl, “neglecting, causing to be unemployed, rendering useless, vacation.” Rigorously they are perhaps not to be declared atheists, as above: for their creed consists rather in denying the attributes of God, and in presenting him as inaccessible to human intelligence and strange to the government of the world, than in denying positively his existence.—(See Chrestomathie Arabe, tome II. p. 96, by Silvestre de Sacy.)
[536] The scholastics among the Muhammedans employ in their discussions principally two words: القضا, al ka[:z]á, and القدر, al kadr, necessarily annexed to each other, but still distinct by a nice sense particular to each: al ka[:z]á signifies God’s universal and eternal judgment or decree, by which the particular things are created and disposed so as they are to remain to all the ages of eternity; al kadr means God’s will in bringing forth, at a determined time and by a determined cause, things in their proper measure and fixed proportion with regard to their essence as well as to their condition.—(Pocock, first edit., pp. 207-209.)
[537] There are three principal opinions about the decrees of God, and the power of man with regard to his actions, among the Muhammedans.
The first is that of the Motazalahs, according to which man is the agent in good and evil, in faith, and infidelity, in obedience and rebellion; all his actions are his; for it could not be said to man, “Act,” if he had not the faculty of acting. Evil and iniquity can by no means be attributed to God; an infidel is composed of a man and of infidelity: God created the first, but not the latter.