A literary history of Persia

280 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHYto his view, 1 the two last arose at the Umayyad capital,Damascus, partly under Christian influences, during the firsthalf of the eighth century of our era (A.D. 718-747), while thetwo first, as we have already seen, were already in existencein the latter part of the seventh century.The Murjiya (socalled from the root arja'a y"he postponed,"because they postpone or defer judgment against sinful Muslimsthe Day of Resurrection, 2 and refuse to asserttillThe Murjiya. that ...any true believer,no matter what sins hemay have committed, is certainly damned) were essentiallythat body of Muslims who, unlike the Shi'ites and Khdrijites,acquiesced in the Umayyad rule. In doctrine they otherwiseagreed in the main with the orthodox party, though, as vonKremer thinks, they greatly softened and mitigatedits moreterrible features, holding" that no believing Muslim wouldremain eternallyin hell," 3 and, in general, settingfaith aboveworks. Their views were so evidently adapted to the environmentof the Umayyad Court, with which no sincere Shi'ite orKharijite could have established any modus vivendi y thoughChristians and other non-Muslims stood in high favour there,and held important offices,4 that it is hard to regard themotherwise than as time-servers of the Vicar of Bray type.With the fall of that ungodly dynasty their raison d'etre ended,and they ceased to exist as an independent party, though fromtheir ranks arose the celebrated Abu Hanifa, the founder otone of the four orthodox schools of the Sunnis which endureto the present day.S" It is much to be regretted," says von Kremer, 6 " that we haveso little accurate information about this sect, but they shared thefate of that whole epoch. The Arabic historical sources of the1Culturgesch. Streifziige, pp. 1-9.aSee Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, Bk. i, p. 1033.3 Gesch. d. Herrsch. Idcen, p. 25.4 Slrcifzitge p. 2. The Court-poet al-Akhtal was a Christian.5 Ibid., p. 6, and cf. Herrsch. Idccn, p.26.6 Ibid., p. 3.