[580] معصوم means “defended, preserved (by God); innocent, an infant;” it is the particular name given by the Imamíahs to the twelfth Imám, Muhammed, the Askerite, who, as was related in the foregoing [note 1], p. 383, was in his infancy concealed in a grot, from which he never came forth again, and is still expected. It is an ideal Imám, believed by more than one sect, and the name of Mâśum was applied to more than one individual, as will be seen hereafter.
[581] The author uses here and elsewhere the word khabr, which answers to our gospel.
[582] Hassan al Baśri was the son of an affranchised man, called Mulla Zaid ben Tabeth, and of a slave woman, belonging to Omm Salmath, one of Muhammed the prophet’s wives. Hassan acquired the reputation of the first scholastic theologian among the Muselmans. He is surnamed al Baśri, because his father was a slave in Maissan, a borough of the dependencies of Baśra, or Bassora, and because he kept his school in that town, where different sectaries often came to dispute with him. Wassel Eben Ata, his disciple, deviating from his opinions, became the chief of the Mâtazalahs (see [note 1], p. 325). Hassan al Baśri had seen the khalif Osman, and Eben Abbas; on that account he quotes in his works what he had learned from them. He died in the year of the Hejira 110, A. D. 728, and left a work entitled Hadis sherif, containing a collection of the traditions which he knew relatively to each of the fifty-four feridhat, or “obligatory precepts,” of the Muselman law.
[583] The sixth Imám, of whom hereafter more will be said.
[584] Karkh is the name of a part of the town of Baghdad upon the western side of the Tigris, where the khalif Mansúr built the town and his palace; this is the ancient Baghdad; the actual town of Baghdad, upon the eastern side of the river, has been built later. Karkh is chiefly inhabited by Shiâhs, who had frequent quarrels with the Sonnites, dwelling in the other part of the town. One of the most serious tumults between the two parties took place under the khalif Mostasem. Karkh is the actual suburb of Baghdad, in which the tombs of Zobeidah, wife of Harun Rashid, and of the pious Súfí Marúf Karkhí, above mentioned, are to be seen. The latter died in the year of the Hejira 200, A. D. 815.—(See Voyage en Arabie, par Niebuhr, t. II. pp. 245-246, and Chrestomathie arabe de Silvestre de Sacy, t. I. pp. 66-70).
[585] The eighth Imám, son of Mussa.
[586] The Arabs divide in general the history of philosophy into two great periods: the first comprises the ancient philosophers, who are subdivided into those anterior, and those posterior, to Aristotle; the second period is that of the Muselman philosophers, who form two classes, those before, and those after, Ebn Sina.
[587] This appears partly to contradict the view which a recent judicious author, Doctor Schmolders (see his Essai sur les Écoles philosophiques des Arabes, pp. 105. 106. 133. 139, Paris, 1842), takes of this sect. According to him, the Motkalemins professed the creation from nothing; they disputed about the reality or non-reality of general notions; they endeavoured to adapt philosophy to the dogmas of the Koran; in short, they were the philosophic theologians of the orthodox sects, or dogmatic philosophers.
[589] مجتهيد mujtahid, is a doctor who exerts all the faculties of his mind to find the truth in contested and undecided matters; he is supposed to possess the science of the Koran, and the traditions with their different meanings, readings, and interpretations, and to be besides skilled in the disquisition in which truth is sought by analogy and comparison. (Silvestre de Sacy, Chrestomathie arabe, pp. 169. 170. 171). This term is also used “of one who strives and contends, even to battle, in the cause of God;” and expresses further the highest dignity in the Muhammedan faith, equivalent to Bishop, or Archbishop with us.—(See the Life of Shaikh Muhammed Alí Hazin, translated by F. C. Belfour, M. A. Oxon., F.R.A.S., LL.D., p. 36.)