A literary history of Persia

HERESY IN FASHION- 307says: "Philosophy was dead, and he revived it amongst us; thetraces of medicine were effaced, and he restored them to light."Strange and heterogeneous were the elements which madeup the intellectual atmosphere of Baghdad during the firstcentury of 'Abbasid rule. The pious Muslims of Mecca andunbelieversMadlna who came thither were scandalised to findinvested with the highest offices at Court, and learned men ofevery religion holding friendly debate as to high questions ofontology and philosophy, in which, by common consent, allappeal to revealed Scripture was forbidden. Yet was there onereligious community which seemed wholly excluded from thegeneral toleration of that latitudinarian Court to : wit, theManichaeans, or Zindiqs as they were generally called. Persecutionsof the Zindiqs are mentioned by Tabarf as occurringin the reign of al-Mahd{ (A.D. 780, 782) and al-Had{ (A.D.786-7). In the reign of Haninu'r-Rashfd a special Inquisitor(Sahibu 'z-Zanddiqa] was appointed to detect and punishManichaeans, 1 amongst whom not only Persians and otherforeigners, but even pure Arabs, like the poets Sdlih b. *Abdu' 1-Quddiis and Mud 4 b. Ayds, were numbered. In the reign ofal-Ma'mun, whose truly Persian passion for religious speculationearned him the title of dmlru l-Kafirln, " Commanderof the Unfaithful,"2 the lot of the Zindiqs was less hard ;nay, according to von Kremer3 it was fashionable to poseas a heretic, and we find a poet remonstrating in thefollowing lines with one of these sheepdressed in wolf'sclothing :"Ibn Ziydd, father oj Ja'farfThou professest outwardly another creed than that which tltouhidesi in thy heart.Outwardly, according to thy words, thou art a Zindiq,But inwardly thou art a respectable Musl'm.Thou art no Zindiq, but thou desirest to be regarded as in thefashion .'"1Von Kramer's Streifzfige, pp. 210 et scqq.Al-Ya'qiibi, ed. Houtsma, p. 546.3 op. cit., pp. 41-42.