The second opinion is that of the rigid Jabariahs, followers of Jahmi Ebn Sefwan, whose sect flourished about the middle of the eighth century. According to them there is no action but in God; man acts, without power his own, without will or choice, exactly as a tree produces fruits, as water runs, as a stone moves. Reward and punishment are likewise proceeding from necessity, as well as the imposition of orders comes from necessity.
The third opinion is that of the moderate Jabariahs, and also that of the Asharian, who maintain that God creates the actions of man, good as well as bad, but that man acquires them: that is to say, God creates the power by, under, and with, which man acts, but man wills the action, and prepares himself to it, which is called كسب kasb, “acquisition;” an action therefore, with respect to creation, belongs to God, but with respect to production, by which it is manifested, that is, by “acquisition,” it depends upon man, and falls under his power. Abul Hasan of Isfahan says, that what makes an impression upon a fact, are the power of God and the power of man jointly. When man applies his mind to obedience, God creates in him the action of obedience, and when he applies his mind to transgression, God creates in him the action of transgression; and in that respect it is man who brings into existence or produces his action, although in reality he be not the producer.—(See on this abstruse subject, Pocock, pp. 243-251, with quotations from several authors.)
[538] The Kadariahs or Kadarian belong to the Motazalah (Abul Faraj, p. 20). The Kadarian have been compared to the Magians, inasmuch as they acknowledge two principles, light and darkness, or good and evil; the first of which they ascribe to God, the other to man and to the devil; nevertheless, every thing belongs to God, as created by his will; that is, with respect to creation; but the actions belong to the actors.—(Pocock, pp. 234, 235, etc.)
[539] We have already seen, p. [323], that Muhammed has predicted the division of his followers into seventy-three sects (and not seventy-two, as above). Why seventy-three? It was (see Pocock) to make Muhammedism have one sect more than Christianism, which had seventy-two, counting one more than Judaism, which, to have seventy-one, had added one to the seventy sects of Magism.
[540] See p. 349, notes [1] and [2].
[541] See the names of the founders of the four principal sects, notes, pp. [324-5], [328-9].
[542] The meaning of this passage appears to me to be that Alí wished the Muselmans to apply to agriculture, which the Arabs generally despise or neglect.
[543] According to the most probable account of historians, it never was Alí who pretended to be a God, but Abdallah, son of Wahab, son of Saba, a Jew converted to Islamism, who was the first instigator of the seditious movements to which Omar fell a victim, promulgated the doctrine, that a particle of divinity resided in Alí, the true Imám, that he is not dead, but only for a time withdrawn from the eyes of men; that he would reappear one day upon the earth, and fill it with justice, in the same manner as it is now filled with iniquities. This doctrine served as a foundation to the different sects which admitted the transmission of the Imamate to the descendants of Alí, by right of succession, and spread in the east and west of Asia, in Africa, and in Spain.
[544] Nimrod and Pharáun maintain, in the Koran and in the traditions of the Muhammedans, the same character as in the Bible of the Hebrews, for tyranny against men and presumption towards God; the first was the enemy of Abraham, the other of Moses: both were punished by God.
[545] Ebn Maljam, “the son of Maljam,” was Abd-ur-rahman, who assassinated Alí.