CHAPTER III: The Development of the Earthly, Man-Made Religions of the Muhammadans during the Abbasid Era (132 – 658 A.H./ 750 – 1258 A.D.)

An overview of the Abbasid Era: The division of the Abbasid Era:

 Because of the long duration of the Abbasid Era (about five centuries), historians divide it into two eras: the First Abbasid Era (132 – 232 A.H./ 750 – 847 A.D.) and the Second Abbasid Era (232 – 685 A.H./ 847 – 1258 A.D.). 

Comparing between  the Umayyad caliphate and the Abbasid caliphate:

 The Mongols and the Tartars destroyed the Abbasid caliphate five centuries after its emergence, but the Abbasid caliphate continued nominally in the Mameluke Era in Egypt when first the sultan Beibars hosted the remnants of the Abbasid dynasty in Cairo in order to provide Sunnite-Sufi religious authority and legitimacy to the Mameluke state, which in its turn made to collapse by the Ottoman caliph/sultan Selim I who invaded Egypt in 921 A.H./ 1517 A.D. and he carried the last Abbasid honorary 'caliph' from Cairo to Istanbul, in Turkey. The Ottoman caliphate lasted among the Muhammadans until its abolishment in 1924 A.D.    

The Abbasid caliphs:

 Their number is 37 caliphs, 9 caliphs of the First Abbasid Era of strength and power as powerful caliphs dominated almost all matters and issues of rule, at varying degrees, and the rest emerged during the Second Abbasid Era of weakness, as they were weak caliphs who were controlled by their Turkish military leaders and other tribal military powers coming from the East like the Buyids and the Seljuks. In some cases, caliphs tried to impose their role and control by enlisting the help of local powers, as done by the caliph Al-Mo'tadid (279 – 289 A.H./ 892 – 902 A.D.) and his successors until the Mongols and the Tartars invaded Iraq and destroyed the Abbasid caliphate.   

The major Abbasid caliphs:

  Al-Saffah was the very first Abbasid caliph who ruled for four years (750 – 754 A.D.); this title in Arabic means (the murderer), and this caliphs' real name was Abdullah Ibn M. Ibn Ali Ibn Abdullah Ibn Abbas Ibn Abdul-Mutalib. This great grandfather, Abbas Ibn Abdul-Mutalib, was the paternal uncle of Prophet Muhammad. When Al-Saffah died, he left the mission of firmly establishing and stabilizing the Abbasid caliphate to his elder brother and successor, Abou Jaffer Al-Mansour who ruled for more than twenty years (754 – 775 A.D.). The caliph Al-Mansour built the capital city, Baghdad, and he confiscated all power and authority after he assassinated the Persian leader who led the rebellion against the Umayyads and helped the Abbasids in their endeavors to establish their caliphate, Abou Moslem Al-Khorasany. Al-Mansour chased and massacred the rebels who revolted against the burgeoning Abbasid caliphate among the Persians and the Alawites, and he put peaceful opposition figures to death. Al-Mehdi, the son and successor of Al-Mansour ruled for ten years (775 – 785 A.D.), and he continued chasing peaceful opposition figures, deemed as heretics and apostates, to put them to death under the sham 'religious legitimacy' and  pretext of the so-called penalty of apostasy, thus confirming the theocratic nature of the Sunnite Abbasid caliphate. The theocratic features included the fact that Al-Mansur called his son Al-Mehdi, a religious title which refers to the Sufi, Shiite, and Sunnite myth of (the waited guided imam) who would spread justice on Earth. This provided a fake 'religious legitimacy' for the caliph Al-Mehdi to chase and murder his political foes after accusing them of being 'infidels' and 'apostates'. Al-Mehdi was known for chasing 'infidels' and 'apostates' to put them to death in the name of sharia laws. This is NOT Islamic sharia laws, but those of the earthly religion that came to be known later on as Sunnite religion of the Abbasid caliphate. Al-Hadi succeeded his father, Al-Mehdi, but he was poisoned to death one year later by his mother, Queen Al-Khayzuran, who ruled behind curtains and her son desired to curtail her powers and stop her interference. Queen Al-Khayzuran appointed her second son, Harun Al-Rasheed, as caliph. During his reign (786 – 809 A.D.), Al-Rasheed made the Abbasid caliphate reach its zenith and power. The two sons of Al-Rasheed, Al-Amin and Al-Maamoun, fought one another as the elder brother, Al-Amin, who ruled for four years, desired to remove his younger brother, Al-Maamoun, from being the crown-prince. Al-Maamoun defeated and killed his brother in 813 A.D., and he ruled for twenty years, and his reign is known for being open to philosophies of the East and the West; he built the House of Wisdom to contain books of philosophy translated into Arabic. The caliph Al-Motassim (833 – 842 A.D.) succeeded Al-Maamoun, and he was not as cultured or lover of philosophy like him, but he began the first step of the catastrophe for which later Abbasid caliphs paid a heavy price; namely, buying so many Turkish male adolescents who were trained in warfare to be enslaved soldiers and to depend on their military troops to manage affairs of the caliphate and rule. The Turkish military leaders controlled weak caliphs like Al-Wathiq (842 – 847 A.D.) and Al-Motawakil (847 – 861 A.D.), and the reign of the latter marks the commencement of the Second Abbasid Era (847 – 1258 A.D.) of weak caliphs as the Abbasid political regime lost its power, but it retained its 'spiritual' authority as a symbol standing for the Sunnite religion. This element of theocracy is the main difference between the Umayyad caliphate and the Abbasid caliphate.                  

The main differences between the Umayyad caliphate and the Abbasid caliphate:

1- Both of the Umayyads and Abbasids belong to one forefather, Abd-Manaf, but their dynasties differ a great deal because of the earlier missions assigned to both households before the advent of Islam (the Quran). The Umayyads specialized in political life, trade, and waging war as they led the winter and summer journeys trade caravans, whereas the Abbasids served the Kaaba, pilgrimage, and pilgrims and thus traded with religious notions in the name of the Kaaba and pilgrimage to make money. This is why Abbas Ibn Abdul-Mutalib hated Islam and Muhammad and allied himself to Abou Sufyan the Umayyad leader (and father of Mu'aweiya) who waged wars against the Yathreb city-state. Yet, for the sake of preserving their financial interests, both Abou Sufyan and Abbas 'converted' to Islam shortly before the death of Muhammad. Hence, the Umayyad caliphate was nearer to a secular tyrannical state in our modern age, whereas the Abbasid caliphate evolved gradually into a full-fledged theocracy within its long duration and other circumstances of location, times, various sociocultural factors, and power centers, apart from other external factors. These factors crystalized the diversified Abbasid society that assimilated different races and witnessed the struggles among the earthly religions of the Muhammadans that are united, despite their political and religious differences, in contradicting the Quran. As for locational, geographical factors, Iraq, after it was the center of resisting and rebelling against the Umayyads, became the center of the Abbasid rule, as the newly built city of Baghdad replaced Damascus, one of the most ancient cities in the world. The influence of the Levantine and the Byzantine culture was replaced by the influence of the Persian culture, as the Abbasids focused on the influences of the East instead of those of North Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, the three main overlapping, complicated features of difference between the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphates are the area of the empire, power centers that controlled rule, and the stance of each caliphate regarding manipulation of religion.          

2- The Umayyad caliphate lasted or a short duration (about 90 years) and focused on expansionist conquests westward and eastward and on crushing rebellions and revolts. The Abbasid caliphate inherited such vast Arab empire but could not retain its borders despite the long duration of the Abbasid state (five centuries). Until the last Umayyad caliph, the Umayyads controlled fully all matters and affairs of this vast Arab empire; no governors ever attempted to rule separately away from the Umayyad caliphate or within being subordinate to it, unlike the case with the weak Abbasid caliphs, and things were totally different in the case of the Abbasids, as per the following points.

A) The Abbasids committed massacres to annihilate the Umayyad dynasty members, but the only survivor was a young prince called Abdul-Rahman, a grandson of the caliph Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik, fled to Andalusia and established a flourishing Umayyad state there in 138 A.H., and he died in 170 A.H.; he was called Abdul-Rahman Al-Dakhil and his title was Saqr Qorayish (i.e., the vulture of Qorayish), as the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansour his foe named him after he could not defeat him and he thanked the Lord that there is a sea (i.e., the Mediterranean Sea) between them. The Umayyad state in the Iberian Peninsula (i.e., Andalusia) (756 – 1031 A.D.) was a great civilization than influenced Europe. After the collapse of the Umayyad rule in Andalusia, separate emirates and city-states emerged that fought one another until the fall of Granada and the end of the Nasrid dynasty, and the Spanish and Portuguese committed massacres against Arabs and Jews.     

B) In the margin of the struggle between the Abbasids and the Alawites, the Idrisids were the first ones to establish their independent kingdom in Morocco (788 – 985 A.D.), and Marrakech was their capital. The Abbasid caliphs failed to defeat the Idrisids, and they had to allow independent rule for the Aghlabids (800 – 909 A.D.) in Tunisia within subordination to the Abbasids. The Shiites of the Ismaili sect (i.e., Ismailism) toppled the Aghlabids and established their Fatimid Shiite caliphate in Tunisia in 909 A.D. and conquered North Africa and Egypt, and this ushered a new phase for the region. The Fatimids built the city of Cairo as a new capital for them in Egypt as they lost interest in their North African origin. This led to the emergence of a new theocratic state of the Al-Moravid dynasty in Morocco and parts of Andalusia (1056 – 1147 A.D.), and it was engaged into many struggled until it was toppled and succeeded by theAl-Mohad caliphate (1130 – 1269 A.D.) in North Africa and parts of Andalusia.       

C) The era of independent rulers in Egypt within subordination to the Abbasids (i.e., by paying annual large sum of money) began by Ahmad Ibn Tulun the founder of the Tulunid state (866 – 905 A.D.) who annexed Syria to his rule, and so did the state of the Ikhshidids (935 – 969 A.D.) that ended after the Fatimids conquered Egypt peacefully in 969 A.D. Saladin toppled the Fatimids and established the Ayyubid state in 1171 A.D. in Egypt and the Levant (and Hejaz and parts of Yemen and Iraq) within nominal subordination to the Abbasids, but the Ayyubid state ended in 1250 A.D. when the reign of the Mameluke sultans began. The Mameluke Era ended when the Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517 A.D. Ten years after the rise of the Mameluke sultanate in Egypt, the Mongols and the Tartars ended the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1258 A.D. and massacred most dwellers of Iraq and the Levant, but the Mamelukes managed to defeat them in the Ain Jalut battle. The Mameluke sultans hosted the remaining members of the Abbasid dynasty in Cairo to add a sort of legitimacy to their rule in Egypt, the Levant, and Hejaz, until the Ottoman caliphate was established.    

D) In the East, things were more complicated, as many revolts and rebellions took place by the Persians, quelled and crushed at first by caliphs of the First Abbasid Era, but many military leaders ruled independently within their established kingdoms. Many soldiers, slaves, and merchants came to Baghdad (the major and most important capital city at the time in the Ancient World) from Asia and Europe: Turks,Daylamites, Caucasians, and other tribes, and many military leaders and their soldiers controlled sultans and caliphs within the Second Abbasid Era. Among the independent kingdoms subordinate to the Abbasids were the Tahirid dynasty (820 – 872 A.D.) in Khorasan and the Samanid dynasty (874 – 999 A.D.), but the dynasties that ruled independently from the Abbasids and never linked themselves to Baghdad were the Ghurid dynasty (962 -1136 A.D.) and the Ghaznavid dynasty (1148 – 1215 A.D.).    

3- The Umayyad dynasty (because of its short duration) never witnessed any such separations within its provinces by ambitious governors who sought to rule independently, because it depended solely on Arabs within its military forces; the Umayyads were biased for the Arab race and against other non-Arab races. In contrast, the Abbasids depended on non-Arabs within its military forces, and this factor increased the weakness of the Abbasids and encouraged separatists to rule some provinces independently. We briefly trace this as follows: the Abbasid caliphate was established mainly by the rebellious Persian troops helped by Qahtanite tribes who hated the Umayyads who manipulated them. The strong, powerful Abbasid caliphs were keen on striking a balance between Arab and Persian soldiers and maintain the competition among them for the benefit of the caliphate. At the time, during the First Abbasid Era, caliphs managed everything themselves while viziers were only the executive authority. Even when the caliph Harun Al-Rasheed deputized the Barmaky family of viziers to manage rule on his behalf and saw their authority and power rising above his own, he massacred and incarcerated them and ruled alone as before. The weakness of the Abbasids began as Al-Rasheed, typically like his predecessors, made his successor his son Al-Amin, whose mother was Queen Zubayda the Hashemite of the Abbasid dynasty, and the successor of his son was another son, Al-Maamoun, whose mother was a Persian slave. Al-Amin was a very weak caliph whose homosexual debauchery and promiscuous lifestyle of luxury and excessive wine-drinking made Arab military leaders control him and they found the chance to attempt to get rid of the Persian authority forever. Al-Amin was convinced by them to remove his brother, Al-Maamoun, from his post as a crown-prince and successor to the throne, and the latter had to resort to Persian military leaders to protect his rights. A civil war ensued between the two brothers, or rather between the Arab troops and the Persian ones. The latter won, and Al-Maamoun was enthroned after Al-Amin was assassinated. The authority and power of Arab military leaders were lost, while those of Persian military leaders grew; some of them ruled far-away provinces in the East independently like the Tahirid dynasty (820 – 872 A.D.) in Khorasan. The caliph Al-Motassim tried to balance the existence of powerful Persians by buying Turkish slaves and training them in warfare to form additional military troops. Those Turks were savage, uncouth, and primitive and made the people of Baghdad suffer, yet, the number of Turks increased, until the caliph Al-Motawakil (847 – 861 A.D.) removed all Arabs and Persians from the military troops to make them consist exclusively of Turkish leaders and soldiers. This allowed the Turks to control the caliph, the caliphate affairs and rule, and many provinces; they even assassinated, dethroned, and appointed caliphs as they saw fit for their purposes. Some Turkish governors ruled provinces independently like the Tulunids and the Ikhshidids in Egypt. When the Turkish leaders grew weaker as they struggled against one another, the Persian Shiite tribes of the Daylamites, led by the Buyyids, controlled the Abbasid caliphs for more than a century (334 – 447 A.D.), and then, the Sunnite Turkish Seljuks controlled most of the Eastern regions of the Abbasid caliphate along with Iraq, Asia Minor, and the Levant. The Seljuk empire (1038 – 1157 A.D.) included the dynasties of Tughril Beg, Malik Shah I, and Alp Sungur. Typically,  the Turkish Seljuks grew weak and they competed in buying slaves to train them in warfare; distinguished, outstanding slaves were promoted to be military leaders, orAtabegs, and many of those leaders ruled major cities in Iraq and the Levant, while carrying the honorary Turkish title of Atabeg (i.e., noble leader who wasa governor of a nation or province who was subordinate to a monarch). Those Atabegs, with the passage of time, seized the chance of the weakness of their Seljuk masters to rule independently and form their own dynasties in major cities; e.g., Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, and Sinjar. Some Arabian tribes seized the chance of the weakness of the Abbasids to raid and loot caravans of pilgrims and to establish their own states; e.g., the Zanj movement and the Qarmatians. Eventually, the Hamadanids managed to establish their own state in Mosul and Aleppo, and they fought against the Byzantines who seized the chance of the weakness of the Abbasids to try to restore the Levantine region. The crusaders seized the chance of the weakness of the local Atabegs and the Seljuks and established their kingdoms in the Levant (especially Jerusalem) and Asia Minor. Despite the various separatist movements, the Abbasid caliphate remained still officially and formally and its caliph had spiritual authority and religious legitimacy, until the Mongols and the tartars invaded Iraq and destroyed Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate and dynasty, whose surviving members lived in the Mameluke capital in Egypt: Cairo.                                       

The Abbasid clergymen: how the caliph Abou Jaffer Al-Mansour established the Abbasid caliphate clergymen:

Introduction:

1- This spiritual authority and religious legitimacy were among of the main features of the Abbasid caliphate and never known during the short duration of the Umayyad caliphate. The Umayyad caliphs were Arabs and biased for the Arab race, and they did not resort to religious manipulation in the way the Abbasids did with acumen and astuteness. This tradition of the Abbasids (of manipulating) began with their forefather Abbas and his son Abdullah who invented many hadiths as if to 'interpret' the Quran. the progeny of Abdullah Ibn Abbas inherited such tradition and 'knowledge' and used it to serve their political ambition and to confirm their sovereignty as caliphs; e.g., they made themselves as 'guardians' of religion and manipulated he name of Islam to combine religious and political authority within theocratic rule based on the Sunnite religion that evolved and crystalized for five centuries under their protection.      

2- Of course, this occurred gradually; the most powerful of Abbasid caliphs had not the religious authority enjoyed by weak caliphs later on, despite the fact that weak caliphs led a promiscuous lifestyle and drank wine and were manipulated by non-Arab military leaders. This means that the Abbasid caliphate had a certain 'sanctity' more than any caliphs themselves. 

Comparing between the Abbasid caliphs Al-Saffah and Al-Mansour:

1- The first Abbasid caliph carried this title denoting terrorism: Al-Saffah in Arabic means (the murderer), because he brutally massacred so many people and was a blood-thirsty ruler like the Umayyad caliphs who preceded him. In the book of history titled (Nihayat Al-Arrab) (part 22, p. 58) by the historian Shehab Eddine Al-Nuweiry, we read within the events of 132 A.H. (when the Abbasid caliph was established) the story of how the caliph Al-Saffah appointed his brother, Yahya, as the governor of Mosul, whose dwellers were rebellious and refused to obey their former governor and caused him to flee the city. This former governor of Mosul wrote to Al-Saffah about this rebellion, and the caliph sent his brother Yahya there with troops of 12 thousand men. Once he reached the palace of the governor in Mosul, and he found no resistance from its inhabitants, he unceremoniously put twelve men of the dwellers of the city to death for no reason. This caused residents of Mosul to  get prepared for fighting and they carried arms. Yahya declared that anyone entering into the grand mosque would be safe; but once groups of men entered into the mosque, the troops of Yahya massacred all of them, and then, they massacred about 20 thousand men on that day in the city streets, and massacred women and children for three days, who kept weeping loudly and disturbed his sleep, after commanding the 4000 black  soldiers (i.e., Zanj) to rape them! A few days after such heinous crimes, a woman attempted to kill Yahya when he was riding his horse, but his soldiers arrested her and she rebuked him as a Hashemite Abbasid for allowing black slaves to rape free Muslim women. Yahya sent her to her home in peace after pardoning her for attempting to murder him; he gathered all black soldiers as if to reward them with spoils, but he made the other soldiers massacre all of them! Yahya was admired very much by his brother Al-Saffah because he reneged on his promises and massacred the innocent ones in the grand mosque, then women and children, then the Zanj soldiers by ruse and deceit. This means that Al-Saffah imitated the Umayyads in their massacres and brutal, savage force as well as violation of agreements and bias against non-Arabs and for Arabs as a race.                  

2- The successor of Al-Saffah, the caliph Al-Mansour, imitated the heinous deeds of his predecessor, but he provided a sham religious pretexts by fatwas tailored specially for him and catered for his taste issued by fiqh scholars paid by him. Abou Hanifa at the time was the most famous fiqh scholars; he joined the revolt against the Umayyads and was persecuted by them; the Abbasids appreciated him at first  for his jihad for their sake and drew him nearer to them in their retinue, but he refused to take money or gifts from them for his fatwas. When the people of Mosul revolted again and Al-Mansour quelled their revolt, he made an agreement with them that if they ever rebel again, he would massacre them all to finish them off. When they rebelled yet again in 148 A.H., Al-Mansour asked his scholars to issue a fatwa regarding the rebels, and they told him to either pardon them or to massacre them, but Abou Hanifa refused to flatter and deceive him, and he told him that such agreement is null and void as the defeated people of Mosul signed it reluctantly while being threatened to be put to death (History of Ibn Al-Atheer part 5, p. 217, and "Manaqib Abou Hanifa" (N.B.: Manaqib in Arabic means hagiography or miracles and praises of saints) by Ibn Al-Barazy, part 2, p. 17). Abou Hanifa who frequently opposed views of Al-Mansour and refused to follow his whims was incarcerated and tortured until he was put to death in his prison-cell by poison. This violent fate of Abou Hanifa made his two favorite disciples Abou Al-Hassan Al-Shaybany and Abou Youssef serve the Abbasid caliphs so faithfully, as Al-Mansour made the system of forcing all scholars and clergymen to be under the service and control of the Abbasid caliphate.                

3- The caliph Al-Mansour was the real founder of the Abbasid caliphate and in his speech/sermon as a new caliph, he said to people that he was the embodiment of God's sovereignty on Earth who was guided by Him wisely to rule them and to do whatever he liked (History of Al-Tabari, part 9, p. 297). This means that he was the first one to declare theocracy or what was in Europe known as the divine right of kings within the Middle-Ages. Within such theocracy, rulers did not derive their authority from people/subjects but directly from God, and they cannot be questioned by people on Earth, but only by God on the Last Day. Hence, Al-Mansour turned the Abbasid caliphate into a Sunnite theocracy and later on, the Shiite Fatimid caliphate imitated him and deified the Fatimid rulers in Egypt while controlling fully all of its scholars and clergymen.

4- The Umayyad caliphs never assumed theocratic or worldly titles; they were just political and military rulers. In contrast, the Abbasids assumed theocratic or religious titles to link themselves to God, the only exception was the first Abbasid caliph, Al-Saffah, who massacred the Umayyad dynasty member among many other people who reeled against him. The second Abbasid caliph, Al-Mansour (the victorious), gave himself this title to denote his being victorious all the time as he crushed his foes and enemies. The third Abbasid caliph, Al-Mehdi, was titled as such to denote his being 'guided' by God, as per Shiite and Sunnite myth of an imam called Al-Mehdi to emerge one day! The other caliphs took religious titles and their first names were also not used at all: Al-Hadi (the guiding one), Al-Rasheed (the guided one with true reasoning), Al-Amin (the trustworthy), and Al-Maamoun (the one who provides security and peace). Weak caliphs linked themselves to God by adding His Name (Allah) to their names (this is utter blasphemy in our view): Al-Motassim Billah (the one seeking God's aid), Al-Wathiq Billah (the one who trusts God), Al-Motawakil Billah (the one who relies on God), Al-Mostaeen Billah (the one seek God's aid), Al-Mohtadi Billah (the one guided by God), Al-Mo'tadid Billah (the one relying on God), etc. This habit is repeated within the rest of Abbasid caliphs even within those who resided in the Mameluke Cairo after the invasion of Baghdad by the Mongols and the Tartars. This has been the theocratic environment in which the earthly, man-made Sunnite Shiite, and Sufi religions of the Muhammadans flourished and crystalized with the passage of time.         

 Al-Mansour and the bases of the Abbasid clergymen:

Fabrication of hadiths:

1- We tackle later on in this book the various tools/means that helped establish the earthly, man-made Sunnite Shiite, and Sufi religions of the Muhammadans, including the Satanist tool of fabricating hadiths. We briefly show here how Al-Mansour played a role in fabrication of hadiths to reinforce his theocratic rule; he and his clergymen and scholars invented hadiths ascribed to Abdullah Ibn Abbas, the forefather of Abbasids, who was turned by them, decades after his death, into a brilliant, famous scholar of fiqh and hadith-narrator!

2- Within the last decade of the Umayyad rule, Al-Mansour was a known hadith-narrator who had other narrators working under him to spread hadiths, and one of them died in 262 A.H. and was lauded by Ibn Al-Jawzy as one of the 'companions' of Al-Mansour who propagated hadiths (Al-Muntazim by Ibn Al-Jawzy, part 12, deaths of the year 262 A.H.)

3- Thus, before becoming a caliph, Al-Mansour had his group of men paid by him to fabricate and orally spread hadiths, and Al-Aamash was one of the prominent ones among them, and they served the Abbasid caliphs after the death of Al-Mansour by inventing pro-Abbasid hadiths, as per Ibn Al-Jawzy, who mentions a hadith by Al-Aamash who said that that Prophet Muhammad said that caliphs will include Al-Saffah, Al-Mansour, and Al-Mehdi! 

Fabrication of visions/dreams:

1- Al-Mansour invented the notion of the fabrication of visions/dreams as sources of hadiths and divine commands to man! This consolidated both the religious and political authority of the Abbasids and the evolving and crystallization of the earthly religions of the Muhammadans whose hadiths make the miserable Arabs and Muhammadans of today lose this world and the next.  

2- Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions that Al-Mansour made his oral narrators and clergymen spread a vision/dream he allegedly had that the soul of Muhammad and the souls of a host of companions (including Abdullah Ibn Abbas and three of the pre-Umayyad caliphs) appeared to him beside the Kaaba to predict that Al-Mansour and his progeny will reign of 'Muslims' until the end of days! This is very silly, and Al-Mansour in such a lie did not mention his paternal uncle's son (Abdullah Ibn Ali) who revolted against him as he sought the throne, but Al-Mansour defeated and put him to death after making a peace treaty with him!

Clergymen of Al-Mansour reached the mainstream culture of the masses:

1- We mean to refer here to the fact that the halo portrayed by clergymen about Al-Mansour after his death by spreading rumors about him as a saint with true visions. Such nonsense helped to establish further the political role of the Abbasid clergymen to serve the caliphs of theocratic Abbasid rule.

2- Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions examples of this idea of Al-Mansour as a saint as part of the dominant culture of his era in the 6^th century A.H., 400 years after the death of Al-Mansour; he writes that Al-Mansour had a magical mirror to know the future and consult devils and angels, who told him he will defeat the rebels led by the Alawite M. Ibn Al-Hanafiyya. This is silly because this defeat was predicted by all based on the number of troops and the amount of power, allies, and money that Al-Mansour had, and he did not need this mythical justification. Yet, official clergymen serving the Abbasids insisted on creating this halo of Al-Mansour as a God-chosen saintly figure, even after his death, and the influence of such myths lasted for centuries.

3- Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions in his book "Al-Muntazim" (part 7, p. 136) this story within an imaginary series of narrators as if this would be convincing to his readers; he mentioned that the mother of Al-Mansour had a dream when she was pregnant before giving birth to him; she saw a huge lion getting out of her womb, and other lions kneeled before him in submission!

4- The Persian Mages, charlatans, and worshippers of stars had their share in spreading visions, predictions, narratives, etc. about Al-Mansour related to prediction of his being a caliph, his feats and exploits, his reigning over Persia, etc.  

The influence of the Abbasid clergymen on the revival of the religion of ascetics:

Introduction:

1- Al-Mansour's stature within the Abbasid caliphate is like the one of Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan within the Umayyad caliphate; both men were narrators of hadiths and specialized in the so-called fiqh, and both used brutal force, savagery, and massacres to confirm the bases of their respective caliphates. Both reneged on their promises and agreements and acted treacherously with their nearest kin and with others. For instance, Abdul-Malik put to death his successor and paternal uncle's son, Amr Ibn Saeed, so that he would make his own son as his successor to the throne. Al-Mansour threatened his paternal uncle's son, Eissa Ibn Moussa, to put him to death if he would not cede his right as a successor to the throne to the son of Al-Mansour, Al-Mehdi. All the Umayyad caliphs after Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan were from his progeny with the exception of the last one, Marwan Ibn Mohamed Ibn Marwan (nicknamed the jack-ass). All the Abbasid caliphs after Al-Mansour were from his progeny. The main difference between the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates is that the latter was theocratic and had its own official clergymen serving it within the earthly Sunnite religion to justify and legitimize all crimes and grave injustices. Abdul-Malik in his first sermon as caliph warned people that if anyone would tell him to fear God in piety, he would put him to death immediately. This means that Abdul-Malik resorted to brutal force and disregarded the Quran and never used it to justify his sins/crimes. In contrast, Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions (Al-Muntazim, part 7, p. 341) that Al-Mansour was delivering a sermon, and a common man told him to fear God in piety, and Al-Mansour talked to him calmly while asserting that he as caliph observed piety in the fear of the Lord, then he resumed his sermon very calmly as if he were reading it from a paper.       

2- We quote the following from Al-Muntazim (part 7, p. 339) by Ibn Al-Jawzy. Within the last decade of the Umayyad rule, injustices increased and the main victims were the Hashemites, including a scholar of fiqh named Abdullah Ibn M. Ibn Ali Ibn Abdullah Ibn Abbas the Hashemite who led a secret movement that raised the motto (contentment is fulfilled by a ruler of the household of prophet Muhammad) and spread the hadiths about the myth of the waited imam Al-Mehdi who will restore justice and put an end to the Umayyads and their injustices. This secret movement managed to gather supporters (who assumed that the secret leader was among the progeny of Ali and Fatima) and to destroy the Umayyad dynasty. The cultural elite members, including Abou Hanifa, supported this movement as they dreamt of justice. This dream turned into a hellish nightmare that shocked everyone to the core. Abdullah Ibn M. Ibn Ali Ibn Abdullah Ibn Abbas the Hashemite became Al-Mansour, the second Abbasid caliph. Al-Saffah, the very first Abbasid caliph, committed many massacres to annihilate rebels, opposition figures, and the Umayyad household members. Al-Mansour continued the bloodshed (as he murdered hundreds of thousands of people) while resorting to quasi-religious Sunnite justifications to deceive people; his deception continued as he named his son as Al-Mehdi as if his son were the fulfillment of hadiths predicating such a myth. A fiqh scholar from Africa who was a companion to Al-Mansour as a young man, was received in the palace in Baghdad, and this old friend reproached Al-Mansour for gathering corrupt, hypocritical, flattering clergymen around him. Thus, those gullible ones who believed in the myth of Al-Mehdi were shocked thoroughly as they witness the brutal force and injustices of the first and second Abbasid caliphs and that the revolt they supported was never pertaining to anyone among the Alawites. Some scholars of fiqh were shocked the more as Al-Mansour and his clique invented hundreds of hadiths to justify injustices and oppression and that he assassinated Abou Hanifa inside his prison cell because Abou Hanifa refused to flatter and gratify him like the rest of hypocritical clergymen and scholars. This state of affairs during the Abbasid Era revived the old earthly religion of asceticism; we tackle this in detail below.

Firstly: the return of asceticism and ascetics:

1- There is nothing called asceticism in the Quran/Islam. The Quran calls us to enjoy permissible items in life without excesses and without prohibiting anything made permissible by the Lord God. Muhammad's lifetime and era never witnessed asceticism or monasticism, unlike the Levantine and Iraqi Christian monks who renounced the world as a passive, silent reaction against the Persian and Byzantine injustices.   

2- The cultural elite among non-Arabs within the countries conquered by Arabs hoped to see the new rulers uphold justice within their new religion, but they felt frustrated as Arabs turned out to be more unjust than the Persians and Byzantines. Frustration increased as those Arabs engaged into a civil war that led to more turmoil and the emergence of Al-Khawarij who killed innocent, peaceful people indiscriminately (like terrorists of the terrorism of today's modern world). People felt shocked that the Umayyad tyranny followed the footsteps of the Persians and Byzantines and deal with people as 'subjects' or 'objects' owned by savage, brutal caliphs who massacred any rebels including the Yathreb dwellers and Hussein Ibn Ali and his household, and they even destroyed the Kaaba and they brutally quelled the armed rebellions of the Berbers, the Copts, and the Persians.    

3- Revolts of the Alawites were quelled and crushed, beginning with Hussein in Karbala massacre in 61 A.H., his grandson Ali Zayn Al-Abedeen in 122 A.H., and the latter's son in 125 A.H. Fiqh scholars emerged in their armed revolts – especially the Persians – while carrying the banner of upholding justice, but the Umayyads (and their vizier and governor Al-Hajaj Ibn Youssef) quelled and crushed these armed revolts in 84 A.H. in Deir Al-Jamajim (literally, the house of skulls, as pyramids of skulls of dead men of the rebels filled the battlefield). Another revolt in Khorasan, Persia, raised the banner of fighting vice and injustice and enjoining righteousness, but it was crushed and quelled by the Umayyads in 128 A.H. Hence, the cultural elite members of non-Arabs revived asceticism and monastic lifestyle like their forefathers during the Byzantine and Persian occupations.   

Secondly: the Abbasids and the lost hopes caused the revival of the religion of ascetics:

1- A false hope filled souls of people by the hadiths of the Al-Mehdi myth whose reign of justice will spread all over the world as injustices would vanish; such hadiths were used to make people support the secret Abbasid movement that raised the motto (contentment is fulfilled by a ruler of the household of prophet Muhammad), assuming that Al-Mehdi's age was drawing nearer as he would be among the a progeny of Ali and Fatima. This secret movement was joined by so many people who never saw its Abbasid leader as they joined the Persian troops of Abou Moslem Al-Khorasany to destroy the unjust Umayyad caliphate; hence, the Abbasid caliphate was established in 132 A.H.   

2- Most people in 132 A.H. were thoroughly shocked and surprised as the first Abbasid caliph managed to deceive them to get their support allegedly for an imam/leader who was one of the progeny of Ali and Fatima. The greater shock still was that the Abbasids were more violent and brutal than the Umayyads; the Abbasids massacres those who helped them to reach the throne so as not to share power with anyone; e.g., Abou Moslem Al-Khorasany was put to death, his followers chased and massacred, and all rebels in all Arab and Persian tribes were quelled and crushed. The Abbasids persecuted and tortured Alawites who were suspects as would-be rebels; all rimes of Abbasids were 'justified' and 'legitimized' by corrupt fatwas of official clergymen and fiqh scholars loyal to the Abbasid dynasty; people were shocked to the core as their revered imam and scholar Abou Hanifa was incarcerated, tortured, and poisoned by the caliph Al-Mansour.      

3- Hence, the frustration and shock of the cultural elite members were because of a more unjust rule of the Abbasids who issued corrupt fatwas and invented false hadiths to justify their crimes and grave injustices; this made some people renounce the world out of despair and vented their frustrated hopes in narratives of their own imagination and went to extremes within ascetic lifestyles.    

Thirdly: the boycott of Abbasids as the main ritual of ascetics:

1- To convert to the ascetic religion, one began with boycotting the Abbasid caliphate and its posts; the caliphate need those pious cultural elite members to appoint them as judges, but ascetics among them adamantly refused and prohibited assuming any posts to serve the unjust Abbasids. This anti-Abbasid propaganda by the ascetics led non-ascetics like Abou Hanifa to refuse to be appointed as the supreme judge of Baghdad, and this led to his persecution, incarceration, and death by poison by Al-Mansour. Ascetics refused to be appointed as judges and they feared the persecution of the Abbasids, and as per Ibn Al-Jawzy the historian, the leader of ascetics, Sufyan Al-Thawry, fled to Mecca so as not avoid the possible persecution of the Abbasids; he was very much afraid when he heard that the Abbasid caliph was coming to Mecca to perform pilgrimage, and his fears were not allayed even when he heard that the caliph died in his way before reaching Mecca. An Abbasid governor of Egypt commanded the ascetic Abou Zaraa (who died in 153 A.H.) to accept being appointed as a judge or be put to death, and this ascetic asked for permission to meet with his relatives and promised to come to the governor the very next day. Indeed, he went to the governor while wearing his shroud and declaring his being ready to die like the magicians killed by Moses' Pharaoh; the governor was touched and set Abou Zaraa free. Another ascetic, Othman Ibn Talha, lived in Yathreb and was forced by the Abbasid governor to be appointed as judge under the threat of being flogged to death when the caliph Al-Mehdi visited Yathreb in 160 A.H., this ascetic man begged him to allow him to leave his post, and he refused to take his salary for the months during which he worked as a judge.                  

2- Those ascetics who were forced to accept to be appointed as judges and did not resist were despised, ridiculed, and shunned by other ascetics; this occurred to the judge Shureik Al-Nakhay who was ridiculed in the street, as he went out of the house of the Barmaky vizier, by Abou Hashem the ascetic who accused Shureik Al-Nakhay of missing the route to the Lord because he accepted work as judge within the Abbasid rule.   

Fourthly: ascetics established their religion based on fabricated tales:

1- Ascetics who boycotted the Abbasid rule and realm of the overt world were ushered to enter into an imaginary realm of endless fabricated narratives that glorify themselves (stories like Buddha who renounced wealth for wisdom and asceticism), and such stories were repeated about many ascetics; for instance, Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions the ascetic man Ibrahim Ibn Adham (who died in 160 A.H.) who left his father the rich sultan (and his servants, possessions, etc.) within a fishing trip as he responded to a mysterious call, and he deserted all that to live in the wilderness as a ascetic man who renounced the world and spoke nothing but pearls of wisdom. This story is a lie because this man never had any ancestry among the Qorayish sultans/caliphs at all. This ascetic man became a 'sultan' in the imaginary realm of asceticism.   

2- The same story is repeated with slight variations about other ascetic men; for instance, Hameed Ibn Jabir (who died in 151 A.H.) allegedly received a call while walking alone in the desert to renounce his wealth and trade (donating all of it to the poor) and to forsake the company of people because their adoration of the material possessions, and he lived alone in a cave inside a mountain till he died. 

3- Another story is about Shaqeeq Al-Balkhy (died in 153 A.H.) who renounced the world and donated his wealth to the poor, thus feeding 300 villages, and he wandered through the deserts and villages. The ascetics, when mocked by Abbasids and their men, used to announce that they renounced the transient glory of this mundane world to seek eternal glory that lasts in this world and the next and exceeds worldly glory of any men.    

4- Such mythical stories were the tools to vent frustrations and crushed hopes of the oppressed ones; the orators and oral narrators fed such myths to the gullible masses who believed them to relieve their sense of feeling frustrated, deprived, and oppressed. The Abbasid circle of affluent ones kept amassing and hoarding money, and the ascetic men despised money and authored within their imaginary kingdom/realm stories of miracles that were very much appreciated and admired by the gullible masses. For instance, the ascetic man Ibrahim Ibn Adham told this story about himself: a slave was sent to him from his rich brothers with a horse and a bag of ten thousand dirhams to feed his hungry followers, but Ibrahim Ibn Adham set the slave free and bestowed on him this large sum and the horse! We tend to think that this is a myth; he should have fed his hungry followers, of course! Such stories reflect the mentality of deprivation of ascetics.      

Fifthly: the beginning of inventing stories by ascetics about miracles:

1- Some ascetic men who refuse to accept money told miraculous stories about themselves: in the biography of Abou Zaraa, we read that he was rebuked by one of his followers because Abou Zaraa lived in abject poverty but refused to pray for God to grant him money, but Abou Zaraa implored the Almighty to turn a pebble on the ground into a piece of gold, and this miraculously occurred, but Abou Zaraa gave this piece of gold to his follower to spend on himself, as Abou Zaraa vowed never to use or own money because he despised it.      

2- The same myth is found with a slight variation in the biography of the ascetic man Abdul-Aziz Al-Raseeby (who died in 150 A.H.) who implored God to give them gold to help with it his poor friend who had many children, and the sky miraculously rained gold pieces for a minute, and Al-Raseeby never took any of them, leaving the gold pieces to his friend and other people to collect.     

3- Ascetics spread the notion that their real realm/kingdom is the Hereafter, in contrast to the transient realm of the physical world left by them for the Abbasids to enjoy. This, of course, relieved the inferiority complex inside those ascetic men, asserted by myths about miracles they allegedly worked. For instance, there is a story about the ascetic man named Al-Ajely, spread by his followers, that when he died in 165 A.H., as they were burying him, they found inside his tomb many basil stems of sweet scent, and the poor people who took some of it found that the basil never withered, but when a rich prince took some of the basil stems, they withered at once. Of course, this fake story never mention the location/city of this event nor the name of the prince.      

Sixthly: how ascetics criticized the Abbasids:

1- The real religion of the Abbasids was the worship of money/Mammon. This is why many of the myths invented by the ascetics included implied criticism of the Abbasid caliphs and their  circles, retinue members, cronies, governors, courtiers, etc. who were greedy and amassed immense wealth and were still hungry for more. The caliph Al-Mansour was very stingy and hoarded treasures inside his palaces, and the reaction of ascetic men to this was to despise and hate money that drove people to struggle against one another and kill one another for the sake of transient glory of this physical, material world.       

2- Many narratives and poetry lines that have been composed by the ascetic men directly criticize Al-Mansour in particular and such stories are mentioned in history books, especially when Al-Mansour built Baghdad as the greatest Arab city and named his palace there as the "palace of immortality". The ascetic poet Abou Hashem ridiculed Al-Mansour or assuming immorality in this transient, fleeting world, and when some monuments built by the Abbasid caliphs later on collapsed, some ascetic men wrote poetry lines on the walls of these ruins to make people draw the moral lessons from those who lived luxuriously to be fatten their bodies to be eaten by worms in marble tombs. 

Seventhly: how ascetics invented visions/dreams:

 Many ascetic men invented visions to heap praise on themselves and their sheikhs/imams to spread news of their piety; this is sheer hypocrisy. They would claim they saw their dead sheikhs/imams enjoying the bliss of Paradise, talk to angels, and send greetings to their still-alive followers on earth, as they were drawn nearer to God! such nonsense is refuted by the Quranic fact that no one enters into Hell or Paradise BEFORE the Judgment Day. 

Lastly:

 The dangerous element of inventing dreams/visions is that such nonsense provided a backdrop for inventing the earthly, man-made Sufi religion of polytheism later on in the 3^rd century A.H., though it is a peaceful and non-violent religion, unlike the case with the Sunnite and Shiite religions. The Sunnite religion has been invented by the Abbasids by their false hadiths and the fabricated biography of Muhammad to legitimize and justify bloodshed and other crimes: looting, rape, enslavement, invasion, etc. Soon enough, the Shiite Sufism and Sunnite Sufism have emerged. The history book titled (l-Muntazim) by Ibn Al-Jawzy is filled with dreams/visions and so are his other books, even the one about the life of his sheikh/imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal; this means that dreams/visions of myths were believed by the masses at the time who believed false hadiths ascribed to Muhammad centuries after his death.  

The influence of Abbasid clergymen on creating the religion of Weepers:

Introduction: let us weep and then laugh!

1- The religion of ascetics, revived as a reaction to the injustices, bloodshed, and affluence of the Abbasids who were supported by hypocritical official clergymen and fiqh scholars, resulted in the emergence of the movement of Weepers, whose religion consisted mainly of one ritual: to weep and cry individually or in groups, and this religion was based on the invention of dreams/visions to face false hadiths invented by the Abbasids and their coterie of corrupt clergymen. As far as we know, to make weeping a religious ritual was something foreign within the Arab culture, socially and religiously. This strange religion of Weepers might harken back to non-Arab cultures and their religious traditions, and this is why it vanished and died out soon as it did not suit the Arab environment; nothing remains of this strange religion of Weepers  but few lines of history about the Abbasid Era.

2- We know from the Quran that the pious, righteous ones sometimes wept as they heard the Quran or any other Scripture of the Lord and some early believers wept for being too poor to participate in self-defense endeavors within the Yathreb city-state. The Quran mentions lack of weeping within disbelievers who laughed and ridiculed the Quran. "These are some of the prophets God has blessed, from the descendants of Adam, and from those We carried with Noah, and from the descendants of Abraham and Israel, and from those We guided and selected. Whenever the revelations of the Dominant Lord are recited to them, they would fall down, prostrating and weeping." (19:58); "And when they hear what was revealed to the messenger, you see their eyes overflowing with tears, as they recognize the truth in it. They say, "Our Lord, we have believed, so count us among the witnesses."" (5:83); "Say, "Believe in it, or do not believe." Those who were given knowledge before it, when it is recited to them, they fall to their chins, prostrating. And they say, "Glory to our Lord. The promise of our Lord is fulfilled." And they fall to their chins, weeping, and it adds to their humility." (17:107-109); "Do you marvel at this discourse? And laugh, and do not weep?" (53:59-60); "There is no blame on the weak, nor on the sick, nor on those who have nothing to give, provided they are true to God and His Messenger. In no way can the righteous be blamed. God is Forgiving and Merciful. Nor on those who approach you, wishing to ride with you, and you said, "I have nothing to carry you on." So they went away, with their eyes overflowing with tears, sorrowing for not finding the means to spend." (9:91-92).

3- Weeping in these verses was something temporary in certain situations, and NEVER a religious ritual base on myths and visions/dreams. Another example was of Joseph's brothers who feigned weeping to deceive Jacob: "And they came to their father in the evening weeping." (12:16). We provide an overview of this strange religion of Weepers below.

Firstly: the emergence of the religion of weepers from the one of ascetics during the reign of Al-Mansour:

1- Of course, the inferiority complex and the feelings of frustration and depravation that led them to renounce the realities of the world made them also feel keenly their abject poetry as they needed food, clothes, etc., and within their miserable, despicable conditions, they never forgot the dominance and injustices of rulers. The dreams/visions and stories of miracles were never enough to relieve their suffering; they had to engage into rituals of group or individual sessions of long hours of weeping to vent all negative feelings caused by aborted hopes in  sad reality. This was their religion of weeping during the reign of the caliph Al-Mansour.      

2- Hence, weeping of the ascetic Weepers was a main feature within the rituals of asceticism during the reign of the caliph Al-Mansour; for instance, Ibn Al-Jawzy writes about the famous Weeper Ibn Abjar (who died in 150 A.H.) who led a group of followers who used to cry and weep in groups on a daily basis. 

Secondly: features of the weeping ritual:

Weeping and crying all one's lifetime:

  Some of the ascetic Weepers would be easily made to weep by trivial matters; for instance, Ibn Al-Jawzy writes that Ibn Al-Hassan (who died in 149 A.H.) kept weeping for 40 years because after eating one day, he used a tool pertaining to his neighbor (without permission) to wash his hands. This means that weeping for long durations daily was like a psychological cure/treatment for these frustrated ascetics who turned this strange habit into a religious ritual. 

Weeping all night while praying:

 Some ascetic men like Hisham Ibn Hassan (who died in 147 A.H.) would weep all night long for the rest of his lifetime, and his neighbors never knew the reason (or the sins expatiated that way!) as he talked to no one at all until he died.

Weeping till going blind as a form of jihad!:

 Some ascetic men kept weeping for the rest of their lifetimes until they went blind and so thin such as Al-Hassan Ibn Yazeed (who died in 149 A.H.) and Hisham Ibn Abou Abdullah (who died in 153 A.H.). An ascetic woman named Obayda daughter of Abou Kilab (who died in 163 A.H.) kept weeping on a daily basis for 40 years until she lost her eyesight. 

Weeping in groups like congregational prayers: let us all weep and cry!:

1- As weeping turned into a religious ritual for ascetics, with its special timings like prayers, they invented the habit of doing it in groups at certain days. One ascetic man named Ashaath (who died in 151 A.H.) kept weeping with his followers between the dawn prayers to the noon prayers, then between the noon prayers to the afternoon prayers, and then between the afternoon prayers to the sunset prayers, stopping only to perform congregational prayers. Before each of them returned home, they vowed to keep weeping individually till daybreak.

2- Some Weepers would weep only at home along with his family members who would weep with them at certain times, as done by Al-Hassan Ibn Saleh (who died in 169 A.H.) and Ibn Malik (who died in 146 A.H.).

Bragging of long durations of weeping: weeping hypocritically while seeking fame:

1- To weep out of fear of the Lord in piety is OK, provided that this is not done hypocritically before others. The ascetic Weepers were hypocrites who sought fame by weeping in public and inventing dreams/visions and stories of miracles to make people admire and revere them, as persons who belonged to the metaphysical realm in this world and the next, and hate the Abbasids who owned the transient material realm. This fame for Weepers made historians write about them, as history never cares for the masses unless they reach a certain level of fame.

2- As Weepers sought fame and prominence at any cost, some of the distinguished themselves using various ways. One of them, Waheeb Ibn Al-Ward (who died in 153 A.H.) vowed never to smile or laugh and his pillow was always wet with tears, and later on, he vowed never to eat fruits but to consume only uncooked beans and seeds.

3- Al-Ajely (who died in 165 A.H.) vowed never to laugh or smile, and he kept screaming all night long and weeping all day long until extreme fatigue caused his premature death. 

4- Rabah of the Qais tribe (who died in 146 A.H.) would make his followers accompany him (to narrate to people what he did?) to the cemetery to weep in groups and he would scram loudly until he would faint, and when recovered, he would go on weeping as usual with the same vigor.

5- Al-Khawwas (who died in 162 A.H.) used to weep while roaming the streets with his bag, till his white beard was wet, while addressing God to hasten his death as he longed to see Him.

6- Another Weeper named Otba (who died in 167 A.H.) used to drown the voices of preachers who delivered sermons by his screams and weeping, making no one hear a single word, and before his death he closed down his ascetic room, Spartanly furnished, where he used to weep alone, while making his followers vow never to open it until after his death. When he traveled to the Levant and died there, his followers opened his room to find a torture tool made of iron that he used to mortify his body! This means he intended to make them narrate this story about him after his death!  

7- The Weeper Ibn Saleh (who died in 160 A.H.) was a guest at the house of one of his friends, but when he kept screaming and weeping all night long, the people of the household could not sleep! At daybreak, he kept screaming at people to wake up to perform the dawn prayers, and this way, he knew his story would be repeated by the masses who were attentive to his weird ways so that his name would be mentioned in history books.    

8- Another Weeper named Saeed (who died in 171 A.H.) kept weeping all day and all night long, while praying, eating, drinking, talking to friends, etc. especially when large gatherings would be held to allow people to hear sermons and speeches delivered by Sufyan Al-Thawry, the leader/imam of ascetics.

Echoes and reverberations of the weepers' movement:

1- The movement of Weepers ended and became mere lines in history books, side by side with names of caliphs, viziers, rebels, and notable ones. The negative influence of the movement of Weepers is the fabrication of historical narratives by narrators in mosques who admired the Weepers and ascetics; their fake stories and dreams were taken as historical facts by some historians, and this reflects the mentality of the gullible masses of this era who believed in such nonsense as much as they believed in falsehoods, myths, and hadiths of the man-made, earthly Sunnite and Shiite religions crystalized in the Abbasid Era.  

2- Thus, stories in history books about ascetic men and Weepers (their deeds, dreams, and miracles) are not to be taken as facts, but as mere myths and folklore fabricated at the time and admired by the masses, preachers, and historians.

3- We quote few examples of the so many fake stories below.

3/1: A narrative asserts that the caliph Al-Mansour, shortly before his death, found on the walls of his palace some lines of poetry followed by written sighs of pain, composed by an anonymous man, reminding the caliph that amassed wealth and treasures will avail him nothing in the Afterlife, as his time of death draws nearer and people would be relieved from his injustices forever.

3/2: Several narratives about ascetics and Weepers warn and preach Al-Mansour inside his palace in the presence of his courtiers and retinue members, till he would weep in agony and feel remorse. This is unbelievable; these made-up stories were a tool to revenge themselves against the mighty, brutal caliph and to elevate the stature of Weepers among the masses. 

3/3: The worst result of the stories fabricated by ascetics and the movement of Weepers is their tarnishing the reputation of some scholars who willingly accepted to work as judges or supreme judges during the Abbasid Era, like the just and fair judge Shureik Al-Nakhay who saved many innocent men from the Abbasid injustices until the caliph had to give him the sake as he never obeyed viziers and retinue members at all nor served their whims. Weepers and ascetics followed their whims in their made-up stories as they praised to the sky the affluent fiqh scholar Abdullah Ibn Mubarak because he used to provide food for them and spent money on them; even the hypocritical ascetic leader Sufyan Al-Thawry told this scholar that he was the supreme scholar of the West and the East provinces!      

Lastly: let us laugh!:

1- We end our talking of the silly groups of Weepers by providing this laughter-inducing story mentioned by Ibn Al-Jawzy in his book (Al-Muntazim), our primary reference from which we quote information about the Weepers.  

2- Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions that the ascetic Weeper Ataa Ibn Yassar and his brother Suleiman traveled to Yathreb accompanied with a large party of friends, and Suleiman and the others left Ataa alone in the tavern room, praying, and they went shopping. A very pretty woman suddenly entered into the room of Ataa, and he thought at first that she came to beg for money or food; after he finished prayers, he asked her about what she needed. She told him she was a widow and desired to have sex with him as she was very much aroused and on heat! Ataa refused adamantly and told her to void Hell-Fire and to repent, but she tried to seduce him by touching and groping him. Ataa wept, reminded her of Hell, and told her to leave the room, but she was astonished to see him weeping and she wept with him. They kept weeping together until his brother and the rest of their friends came to find them in that state; the friends and the brother kept weeping without even asking about what happened. Seeing this, the woman stopped weeping and left the room. The story never tells us if this woman left the room as a repentant person, if she felt angry for not being satisfied by such a mad man, if she cursed her misfortune, or if she felt like running away from this madhouse. We will never know! 

Reference:

 The information quoted here about the ascetics and the weepers are from "Al-Muntazim" by the historian and fiqh and hadiths scholar Ibn Al-Jawzy: part 7, p. 85, 90, 136, 155, 188, 197, 204, 218, 219, 227, 268, 279, 291, 319, 323, and 327, and part 8, p. 77, 97, 98, 109, 117, 119, 125, 150, 172, 173, 186, 200, 259, 268, 280, and 338.

The influence of Abbasid clergymen on deifying caliphs during the reign of weak caliphs:

The Abbasid clergymen grew too powerful during the Second Abbasid Era:

1- We have mentioned above that the caliph Al-Mansour in his first sermon as a new caliph said to people that he was the embodiment of God's sovereignty on Earth who was guided by Him wisely to rule them and to do whatever he liked (History of Al-Tabari, part 9, p. 297). This means that he was the first one to declare theocracy or what was in Europe known as the divine right of kings within the Middle-Ages. Within such theocracy, rulers did not derive their authority from people/subjects but directly from God, and they cannot be questioned by people on Earth, but only by God on the Last Day. We have also mentioned before that Al-Mansour played a role in establishing the Abbasid political clergymen who invented hadiths, visions/dreams, and false revelation from God! Hadiths later on multiplied like cancerous cells, asserting that the Abbasid caliphate will go on existing until the end of days! This was one of the main features of the Abbasid religion.   

2- With the passage of time, the earthly religions of Sunnites, Shiites, and Sufis have been crystallized and developed to take their full-fledged forms during the Second Abbasid Era, and the number of deified imams/authors/sheikhs/saints increased along with the so-called 'holy' descendants of the household of Muhammad among the progeny of his Hashemite relatives and the progeny of Ali and Fatima. The gullible masses who deified Sufi mob as saints also deified the Abbasid caliphs.  

3- Strangely, within the reign of weak Abbasid caliphs, the Abbasid official clergymen and fiqh scholars attained more stature, control, and wealth, and the Abbasid caliphate never lost its spiritual and quasi-religious authority in Baghdad and elsewhere, despite the fact that weak caliphs lost political and military influence as they were controlled by military leaders and powerful viziers. 

4- The Shiite Buyyid sultans controlled the Abbasid caliphate for more than a century (334 – 447 A.H.), as they needed the spiritual authority of the Abbasid throne to rule within its name. This spiritual theocratic authority of the Abbasids continued when the extremist Sunnite Turkish Seljuks ruled large terrains in the Middle-East and in Persia (1038 – 1157 A.D.) also using the spiritual authority of the Abbasid throne to rule within its name.

5- Hence, the system of political power established by Al-Mansour dwindled and the Abbasid religious theocratic authority of powerful clergymen grew stronger; let us prove this by citing two incidents of history below, which took place during the powerful Buyyid sultan Adad Al-Dawla and the reign of the powerful Seljuk sultan Tughril-Beg.

Scene I:Time: 369 A.H., Place: the Abbasid palace in Baghdad, Main Figures: the Buyyid sultan and the weak Abbasid caliph Al-Taa'ie Li-Allah, Other Figures: attendants of both the sultan and the caliph, Topic: the Buyid sultan requested from the Abbasid caliph to grant him a title to increase his power, within a formal ceremony attended by clergymen who performed rituals that show the Abbasid caliph as a deified, worshipped figure, Source: (Al-Muntazim) by Ibn A-Jawzy, part 14, events of 369 A.H.:

  After the Buyid sultan requested to be granted a new title, he was made to sit down on a settee in the middle of the Holy Chamber of the Abbasid Royal Court, wearing a gold crown encrusted with precious stones, surrounded by 100 attendants who carry their swords and finest garments. He was commanded to hold a scepter in one hand while touching the Othman copy of the Quran, and to carry the sword of Muhammad by his other hand. Notables, retinue members, judges, the supreme judges, representatives of the Abbasids and the Alawites, and courtiers were then allowed to enter into the place, and the Buyyid sultan kissed the ground and prostrated before the feet of the Abbasid caliph after removing the curtain that separated him from the caliph. One of the Persian attendants of the Buyyid sultan felt angry as prostration is only before the Lord God, but the Buyyid sultan ignored him as another attendant reminded the sultan that the caliph is the shadow of the Lord God on Earth. The sultan then kissed the bare right and left feet of the Abbasid caliph, then the caliph commanded the sultan to sit down again, but he demurred politely, but the  caliph insisted until the sultan obeyed him. The caliph announced to all people gathered that he bestowed on the Buyyid sultan the title he deserved and he deputized him to rule in his name. One vizier of the caliph gave the sultan a richly embroidered expensive garment along with a fine sword that was put earlier on a cushion of silk. The Buyyid sultan and his procession moved through the streets of Baghdad in celebration, and the masses shouted his name and hailed him as their leader.       

Scene II:Time: 449 A.H., Place: the Abbasid palace in Baghdad, Main Figures: the Seljuk sultan and the weak Abbasid caliph Al-Qayyim Bi-Allah, Other Figures: attendants of both the sultan and the caliph, Topic: the Seljuk sultan requested from the Abbasid caliph to grant him a deputization to rule in his name, within a formal ceremony attended by clergymen who performed rituals that show the Abbasid caliph as a deified, worshipped figure, Source: (Al-Muntazim) by Ibn A-Jawzy, part 16, events of 449 A.H.:

   The Seljuk sultan desired to get more authority deputized to him by the Abbasid caliph, and to attend the ceremony in the Abbasid palace within the Holy Chamber of the Abbasid Royal Court, he embarked with his attendants into his ship into the river, preceded by musicians who played their musical instruments. Upon reaching the shore, he led his procession on the back of a huge elephant, while his attendants rode on horseback. Once the Seljuk sultan entered the palace, he was led into the Holy Chamber of the Abbasid Royal Court, and all of the Baghdad notables, retinue members, judges, the supreme judges, representatives of the Abbasids and the Alawites, and courtiers entered to salute him. The sultan was carried by strong slaves on a howdah, and the curtain separating him from the Abbasid caliph was removed after the sultan left his sword and regalia inside the howdah; the sultan kissed the ground under the feet of the caliph and prostrated before him, and once given the permission to speak, he requested to be deputized to rule certain regions within more authority granted to him by the Abbasid caliph. The Abbasid caliph spoke to the gathered people, proclaiming that he, the shadow of God on Earth, would grant the Seljuk sultan his wishes, along with a gold crown studded with precious stones, a golden scepter, and seven colored garments of the finest silk. After wearing the crown, the sultan could not kneel again before the Abbasid caliph, who told the sultan that he did not have to kneel again before him. Music played again and celebration began in the palace and in the streets of Baghdad.          

The earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans complete their development during the Abbasid Era:

Introduction:

1- Features of the theocracy were completed within the Abbasid caliphate; the Abbasids began their secret movement to topple by military force the Umayyads and mobilized the masses to join their troops under the motto (contentment is fulfilled by a ruler of the household of prophet Muhammad) as if the mythical figure of Al-Mehdi (who should be among the progeny of Ali and Fatima) had appeared but hidden somewhere as per hadiths invented by the Shiites and adopted and propagated by the Abbasids; the masses who suffered grave injustices of the Umayyads believed that a salvation of some sort was drawing near within a coming caliphate of justice, but their hopes were dashed and the harsh reality of the Abbasid caliphate dispelled any illusions. The Abbasids continued to employ narrators and scholars of hadiths and fiqh to invent hadiths to praise the Abbasid caliphate while predicting their rule and mentioning some of them by name! Al-Siyouti in his book titled (History of Caliphs, p. 30-37) mentions many hadiths of this type and so does Ibn Al-Jawzy in (Al-Muntazim, part 7, p. 335); as if Muhammad were predicting the rise of the Abbasids to power! All of them forgot the Quranic fact that Muhammad never knew or talked about the future or the metaphysical realm of the unknown, as per these Quranic  verses: 6:50, 7:188, and 46:9. 

2- Abdullah Ibn Abbas – grandfather of the Abbasids – was an eleven-year-old child when Muhammad died; he lived with his father, Abbas, Muhammad's paternal uncle who hated and fought Islam and early Muslims. Abdullah Ibn Abbas saw Muhammad for the very first and last one when Muhammad entered into Mecca shortly before his death, and Abbas 'converted' to Islam along with his son. Muhammad returned to Yathreb and died there, while Abbas and his sons, including Abdullah, moved to Yathreb months before Muhammad's death, and they attended his funeral and burial. Hence, Abdullah Ibn Abbas was NEVER on speaking terms with Muhammad; yet, inventors of hadiths make Abdullah Ibn Abbas as among 'grand' senior companions who narrated hundreds of thousands of hadiths ascribed to Muhammad! Of course, those fabricators of hadiths aimed to please the Abbasid caliphs by making their grandfather, Abdullah Ibn Abbas, as a narrator of hadiths, especially ones predicting the rise of Abbasids to power and that they would rule until the end of days; and there is a myth that Hulago of the Mongols desired to prevent that such prediction would come true, and he put the Abbasid dynasty members to death (yet, some managed to flee to Cairo, Egypt) after destroying and invading Baghdad, and he never dared to attack the city unless after a Persian astronomer asserted to him that he would be victorious! (Jawami' Al-Tareekh by Al-Hamazany, Cairo edition, Egypt, 1960, p. 278-280, translated into Arabic by Sadiq Nashaat et al.). It is noteworthy that Sunnite hadiths scholars in the Mameluke Egypt – after the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate – including Ibn Al-Jawzy who died in 751 A.H. have written in their books that Abdullah Ibn Abbas could never have 'heard' more than 20 hadiths (see Al-Wabil A-Sayyib Min Al-Kalam Al-Tayyib, p. 77, Cairo edition, Egypt, 1952 & Al-Muntazim by Ibn Al-Jawzy). 

3- Within this Abbasid theocracy, the Sunnite, Shiite, and Sufi trends have become full-fledged religions influenced by a cultural climate of diversity as conquered nations had centuries-old civilizations, sources, and roots; writing down books of fiqh, hadiths, philosophy, science, etc. began along with translating into Arabic knowledge from other past civilizations in all literary, scientific, and philosophical fields.    

The development of the earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans from mere doctrines into full-fledged religions:

1- The three earthly Sunnite, Shiite, and Sufi religions were at first trends, sects, and doctrines, and many of them emerged for purely political reasons or linked to some political movements within the typical dominant culture of the Middle-Ages of manipulating religion and distorting it to serve any political ends.

2- Some trends (like Al-Mu'tazala group, who appellation in Arabic literally means: those who withdrew away from the mainstream thinking) emerged without ascribing lies to God, to Islam, or to Muhammad, but once members of this group meddled in the political affairs, they caused their trend to disappear abruptly. Some other trends began as philosophical schools or fiqh schools that never interfered in the political scene, but they were later on subdivided and branched into other smaller trends within endless intellectual, philosophical, and fiqh debates. Some political movements that sought power like Al-Khawarij died out gradually when its energy was sapped after decades-long military struggle against the Umayyads and then the early decades of the Abbasid Era. The cultural, intellectual climate of the Abbasid Era managed to obliterate ideas of Al-Khawarij from the collective mind; they are mere history now. Some religious trends died out as its followers died or joined other trends/sects and some 'moderate' peaceful sects had many books in its heritage and managed to exist until the present now, like the Shiite Abady sect in Oman and some areas in North Africa.     

3- Thus, three earthly Sunnite, Shiite, and Sufi religions have been crystalized and developed as the main religions during the Abbasid Era, and they still subsume various trends and sects, and their dead imams/authors/sheikhs/saints are still deified beings for hundreds of millions of the Muhammadans in our modern world today. 

An overview of the Sunnite religion:

 The main gods/deities/authors of the Sunnite religion and its hadiths and fiqh are Abou Hanifa (who died in 150 A.H.), Malik (who died in 179 A.H.), Al-Shafei (who died in 204 A.H.), Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (who died in 241 A.H.), Al-Bokhary (who died in 256 A.H.), and Moslem (who died in 261 A.H.). The original meaning of the Quranic term "Sunna" is sharia of the Lord God; the polytheistic Sunnites have turned this term into a political one denoting anything pertaining/ascribed to Muhammad and his lifetime. This term was used orally at first by the anti-Umayyad political discourse, but the Abbasids used it to denote its own formulated religions of hadiths as opposed to the Shiite foes and their religion and its power-seeking discourse. Within the Second Abbasid Era, the terms ''Sunna'' and ''Sunnite'' came to mean the official religion of the Abbasid caliphate. We provide a very brief overview of these changes to the term "Sunna".         

1- The original meaning of the Quranic term "Sunna" is the way/method/sharia of the Lord God and it is always ascribed to God in Quranic verses; e.g., 33:38. This Quranic terms also denotes how God has punished and smitten ancient nations of disbelievers who rejected signs and miracles they witnessed worked by prophets sent to them to prove that they were truly sent by the Lord God the Creator.

2- The term "Sunna" (literally in Arabic means way/method/law) was used within the Umayyad Era by political foes who opposed the Umayyads as they insisted that the Umayyad caliphs should have followed way/method/Sunna of Prophet Muhammad when he led the Yathreb city-state with justice. This was the very first time the term "Sunna" was used in a political sense, instead of the religious one. 

3- When the Shiite Kaysanites created their secret movement to topple the Umayyad dynasty by spreading a rumor about the unknown waited Al-Mehdi imam (from the progeny of Fatima and Ali) hidden somewhere and troops must join him to make him enthroned to rule justly under the motto (contentment is fulfilled by a ruler of the household of prophet Muhammad), the Abbasids adopted the same motto and propagated hadiths concocted to serve this purpose, and when the revolting people supported troops of Abou Moslem Al-Khorasany (managed and commanded by the Abbasids secretly), they were shocked to the core to see the newly enthroned caliph as Al-Saffah of the Abbasid Hashemite household and not from the Alawites. This caused former supporters of the revolt to topple the Umayyads to oppose the Abbasids and their supporters, as they expected a caliph from the progeny of Ali Ibn Abou Talib (the current supreme Shiite deity) and Fatima, the  daughter of Muhammad. Hence, the term "Shiites" (as was the case during the Umayyad Era) denotes those supporters of the Alawites, while supporters of the Abbasids revived the term "companions" which denote contemporaries of Muhammad to assert that the progeny of Abbas (one of the paternal uncles of Muhammad) were the ones fit to rule. Once Al-Mansour, the second Abbasid caliph, was enthroned, he fought the Alawites in Hejaz and Iraq, and he managed to quell the revolt of M. Al-Nafs Al-Zakiyya and his brother Ibrahim, who both were among the descendants of Ali and Fatima. Other Abbasid caliphs adopted the term "Sunna" ascribed to Muhammad as the name of their formal, official religion of their theocratic rule, whereas the term "Shiites" was used to denote their foes the Alawites (and the two Arabic derogatory terms ''Rafida''/''Rawafid'' which literally mean "the rejecters") who rebelled many times against the Abbasid caliphate. The Abbasid caliph Al-Motawakil hated very much Shiites, Sufis, and Al-Mu'tazala group, and thus, he officially proclaimed that the Sunnite religion is the religion of the Abbasid caliphate, and he sent his Sunnite preachers everywhere to chase away preachers of the Shiite, Sufi, and Al-Mu'tazala ideas and to impose and preach the Sunnite religion within all provinces under the Abbasid rule.           

4- Sunnite fiqh scholars who invented narratives/hadiths ascribed to Muhammad were ridiculed and criticized by the Al-Mu'tazala group of thinkers and the Arab philosophers who were well-versed in Greek/Hellenistic philosophy books (translated into Arabic) during the First Abbasid Era. The derogatory term used by them to mock Sunnites was "the stuffers", denoting that they stuff their minds with mythical, illogical, and nonsensical narratives instead of using their minds and logical reasoning to interpret the Quranic text. Sunnite scholars hated philosophers, especially Al-Mu'tazala thinkers, as they could not argue with them at all. Sadly, the Abbasids supported the Sunnite fiqh scholars and narrators/fabricators of hadiths and made them dominate the cultural and religious scene, and this gained momentum when Abou Hassan Al-Ashaary deserted Al-Mu'tazala and joined the Sunnite scholars. This means that the term ''Sunna'' at this point in time denoted the trend of the religious conservatives who assume that the only authoritative fiqh schools to follow were those of the four imams/saints/deities Abou Hanifa, Al-Shafei, Malik, and Ibn Hanbal, who lived within the era of fiqh intellectual ijtihad. Ironically, with that established, and after the death of the thinker-cum-scholar Al-Ashaary, Sunnite fiqh scholars hated theological philosophy (a.k.a. Kalam branches of philosophy) and argued against it to the extent of prohibiting it in the second half of the second Abbasid Era. Thus, fiqh scholars from this point on stopped ijtihad (innovative, creative thinking) as they imitated and repeated views held by the four imams/saints within their doctrines and the thousands of hadiths invented decades ago and assumed to be true.

5- Yet, within the branch of 'knowledge' labeled as hadiths books, we see the overlapping between hadiths and fiqh views/fatwas in many parts and chapters of Sunnite books; many scholars tried to sort and sift through hadiths to remove doubted, fabricated ones based on different criteria; yet, such endeavors to exclude and include hadiths (and their series of narrators) resulted in increasing the number of hadiths! Fiqh and hadiths scholars typically differed and disputed over most issues and matters and some invented hadiths to support their views! The Sunnite hadith-making machines never stopped until near the end of the Mameluke Era! Let alone the countless hadiths of Shiites and Sufis!    

6- This was paralleled to the branch of 'knowledge' named as Quranic sciences; i.e., to distort meanings of Quranic verses as per political and religious whims of rulers and clergymen. This coincided with the emergence of the faulty notion of "Naskh"; i.e., that hadiths ascribed to Muhammad replace/supplant Quranic sharia laws! The cognates and derivations of the term "Naskh" in the Quran means to assert and confirm, and NOT to omit, replace, or delete. This notion has been initiated by Al-Shafei, and the Abbasid official faith scholars and clergymen used it to undermine and discard the Quranic sharia legislations to make their invented hadiths, fiqh rules, and fatwas replace them!

The Shiite religion:

1- The derivations and cognates of the term (Shiite); i.e., group(s)/ party(ies) in Arabic, come in the Quran in different contexts as follows:

1/1: To denote any groups in general (see 6:65, 28:4, and 28:4), as warring groups or divided/oppressed castes within a society. Or group of people of one religion like Abraham and Noah; see 37:79-83.

1/2: To denote divisions within man-made religions as people dispute and differ over almost everything after rejecting the Divine Scripture descended from Heaven; see 15:10-11 and 19:68-69.

1/3: To denote religious groups who reject the Quranic Truth, as God warns true believers against divisions in religion; see 6:159 and 30:31-32.

1/4: To denote the spread of something among groups, like those who loved to see the sin of fornication spread among the believers in the Yathreb society; see 24:19.

2- The Shiite group as a political term has been established since the first major Arab civil war (Mu'aweiya vs. Ali), and it continue to exist throughout the Umayyad Era as it was used by rebels and oppositional figures (e.g., Al-Zubayr, Abbas, and Ammar Ibn Yasser) who assumed that Ali and his children were the 'legitimate' rulers/caliphs. As early as during the caliphate of Ali, the founder of the Shiite religion the Jewish Yemenite clergymen Abdullah Ibn Saba was the first one to deify Ali. Shiite sects and doctrines increased and multiplied throughout the Abbasid Era, each complete with its own hadiths ascribed to Muhammad, 'holy' books, different rituals, and sanctified imams, authors, and leaders.  

3- The Ismaili Shiite sect that branched from the Shiite sect of holy imams managed to establish the Fatimid rule in North Africa, Egypt, and the Levant (and parts of Iraq) for more than 200 years (909 – 1171 A.D.). The Fatimids were about to crush the Abbasid caliphate at one point. The Fatimids built Cairo and Al-Azhar; Fatimid mosques and other monuments and buildings are still there in Cairo. The Shiite religion managed to establish mobile states like the Zanj  rebellion (of black slaves) in southern Iraq and the Qarmatians in Iraq and the Levant, who were mostly desert-Arabs.     

The Sufi religion (Sufism):

1- Sufism has always reflected the religiosity of masses oppressed and ruled by caliphs and their imposed religions; Sufism has revived the centuries-old notions of sanctifying and deifying things (mausoleums, items of nature, creatures, relics, etc.) and mortals (dead or alive sheikhs, saints, imams, etc.) under the pretext of divine love/passion and pantheism (i.e., God resides in nature and human mortals, or that the universe itself is God). 

2- Sufism began, on the margin of Shiite religion, with deifying and sanctifying the household of Ali, but early Sufis, albeit peaceful, were persecuted because of the Shiite-Sunnite armed struggles. Gradually, Sufism separated itself from the Shiite religion and Sufis shunned political life for centuries at first. Sufi hypocritical sheikhs within the last decades of the Second Abbasid Era specialized in flattering and heaping praise on rulers and governors to ease persecution inflicted on Sufi sheikhs and their followers. Gradually, this persecution ended, especially that Sufism dominated the Mameluke Era as the official, formal religion of the Mameluke sultanate that ruled Egypt, the Levant, and Hejaz. The Sunnite Hanbali extremist used to persecute Sufis for centuries during the Second Abbasid Era. Within the Mameluke Era, Sufi sheikhs as the official clergymen of the Mameluke sultans persecuted the Hanbali imams, especially Ibn Taymiyya. We provide more details in the points below.   

The struggle between the Ibn Hanbali scholars and Al-Mu'tazala thinkers during the Abbasid Era:

Introduction: the conflict between the Sunnite extremists (of the Ibn Hanbal doctrine) and the (secular philosophers) Al-Mu'tazala:

1- As a theocracy, the Abbasid caliphate had its own hired official obsequious clergymen, scholars, and sheikhs who serve the Abbasids by providing fatwas to support their quelling all opposition movements and rebels. If any scholars would refuse to 'cooperate' and serve the Abbasid caliphate, they were persecuted; this occurred at varying degrees with Abou Hanifa, Malik, Al-Shafei, and Ibn Hanbal.  

2- The Abbasid caliphate commissioned translators to translate into Arabic gems of philosophical wisdom and literature from the Greek, Indian, and Syriac languages (among others), and this led to a revival of old schools of Greek philosophy in cities like Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, Gundeshapur, and Harran. This resulted in the trend of those philosophers, poets, and literati who renounced religion altogether and embraced atheism, but they were never penalized by the theocratic Abbasids who even employed some of them in the governmental posts; yet the political enemies and foes of the Abbasids who were put to death were accused of sedition and apostasy.   

3- Of course, it is expected that ultra-conservative fiqh scholars would reject this trend of philosophers who were influenced by the Greek and Western/Christian philosophers. Traditional fiqh scholars and theologians hated very much Al-Mu'tazala thinkers who were well-versed in philosophy and criticized the dominant religiosity in an intellectual way that challenged religious conservatism.   

4- The Abbasid caliph Al-Maamoun (813 – 833 A.D.) admired very much Al-Mu'tazala trend, as he loved philosophy very much and spent his time discussing issues with Al-Mu'tazala thinkers. Soon enough, he was convinced by a strange view adopted by Al-Mu'tazala thinkers: that the Quran has been created by God. Al-Maamoun felt offended very much that conservative theologians and hadiths and fiqh scholars rejected this notion foreign to Islam. One unknown man among the hadiths scholars resisted and opposed this view outspokenly; he asserted that the Quran is not to be described unless by being God's Word, and nothing more, and he suffered the persecution inflicted by the caliph but never adopted the caliph's view; this obscure man was thus catapulted into fame: he was the imam of Persian origin named Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, whose view was asserted by the famous historian M. Ibn Saad and the fiqh scholar M. Ibn Nooh. Al-Maamoun insisted on imposing his view, using his political power as caliph, on all Sunnite clergymen, fiqh scholars, theologians, and hadiths scholars. This marked the beginning of the plight of Sunnite scholars, as most of them had to declare their adopting the view of the caliphs, under the threat and pressure of being persecuted. Ibn Hanbal and Ibn Nooh were imprisoned as they insisted to reject the view of Al-Maamoun. On his death bed, Al-Maamoun wrote his will and testament that his successor, Al-Motassim, must continue imposing the view that the Quran has been created. Fearing that the credibility and stature of the Abbasid caliphate would be compromised, Al-Motassim commanded the flogging of Ibn Hanbal in his prison cell in 218 A.H., until he was released in 220 A.H. All people admired him for his unrelenting stance against the Abbasid heretic view of the Quran. The Hanbali scholars sang his praises after his death and admired his plight, deemed as striving for God's sake; they spread the idea that their grand imam/deity Ibn Hanbal suffered intense pains in his body (because of being flogged in prison) for the rest of his lifetime; Ibn Hanbal died in 241 A.H. (Manaqib Ibn Hanbal, by Ibn Al-Jawzy, Al-Muntazim by Ibn Al-Jawzy, part 11, p. 43, and History of Al-Tabari, part 8, p. 631-645). The word Manaqib means miracles and praises of saints    

The ordeal of Ibn Nasr Al-Khozaay:

 The plight of Ibn Hanbal resulted in mutual hostility and severing all relations between the Abbasid caliphate and the conservative Hanbali fiqh scholars, and the latter made use of their stature among common people to control streets of Baghdad and to incite sedition and rebellion against the Abbasids. This led to general unrest and insurgences led by extremists scholars who assured people of 'religious' legitimacy of their rebellions, based on this silly hadith of changing vice by force. The Hanbali imams formed a sort of rudimentary religious police that roamed streets of Baghdad. Once enthroned, the caliph Al-Wathiq who cared for medicine, philosophy, and other sciences managed to quell such disruption in the streets of Baghdad by arresting, crucifying, and beheading the Hanbali leader Ibn Nasr Al-Khozaay on 231 A.H. (History of Al-Tabari, part 9, p. 135-140, Al-Muntazim, part 11, p. 165). The ordeal of Ibn Nasr Al-Khozaay led to the spread of the false hadith of changing vice by force. The stature and influence of the Hanbali doctrine scholars diminished as Sufism dominated the masses, within the religious notion of never protesting against anything in life, as everything is preordained by Fate. In our modern era, the Hanbali false hadith of changing vice by force is adopted by Wahabi clergymen and terrorists to intimidate people.

The Ibn Hanbal Sunnite doctrine became the official religion of the Abbasid caliphate during the reign of the caliph Al-Motawakil:

The persecution of the leaders of other earthly religions:   

1- When Al-Mu'tazala influence dominated the Abbasid caliphate, the powerful vizier Ibn Al-Zayyat (of the Al-Mu'tazala group) dominated the affairs of the caliphate and controlled the crown-prince of the caliph Al-Wathiq (who, after being enthroned, is named Al-Motawakil). Ibn Al-Zayyat attempted to intimidate the crown-prince to cede his position to the son of Al-Wathiq. When Al-Wathiq died suddenly, Al-Motawakil was enthroned in 232 A.H./847 A.D., and he put Ibn Al-Zayyat to death. Al-Motawakil ended the influence of the Al-Mu'tazala and drew the Hanbali scholars nearer to him and to his palace court. Al-Motawakil received Ibn Hanbal and gave him generous gifts, and he sent many of the Hanbali scholars to all Abbasid provinces to preach their religion, and this mobilized the masses to be under the command of the Hanbali scholars.    

2- The aloof Al-Mu'tazala group thinkers never contacted common people; they were content to be nearer to Abbasid caliphs and to control them sometimes, but the influence of the Hanbali scholars was different; they controlled the caliphate, the masses, and the streets, and this pleased and appealed to the extremist fanatical caliph Al-Motawakil. This drove Al-Motawakil to inflict persecution on many people; he gave the sack to Arab and Persian soldiers as he favored the Turks, and he persecuted Jews and Christians by imposing on them a certain dress code; in addition, he persecuted Shiites and demolished their 'holy' mausoleum in Karbala, and he put to trial Sufi pioneers (this included the known ordeal of Semnoon the Sufi sheikh). Al-Motawakil persecuted his elder son as he favored his second son Al-Moataz, the son of his favorite concubine Qabeeha; this drove the eldest son to assassinate his father so as to be enthroned as caliph who took the title of Al-Montasser (History of Al-Tabari, part 9, p. 161, and Al-Muntazim, part 11).    

3- When the Hanbali scholars dominated the streets of Baghdad, they persecuted their foes Al-Mu'tazala, and they made sure no disciples would ever exist to follow Al-Mu'tazala thinkers: Al-Jahiz (who died in 255 A.H.), Al-Alaaf (who died in 235 A.H.), Ibn Yassar Al-Nizam (who died in 231 A.H.), and Al-Jabaa'i (who died in 303 A.H.). The former disciple of Al-Mu'tazala, Abou Al-Hassan Al-Ashaary (who died in 246 A.H.), joined the Hanbali scholars to cope with his era and he was made into a great imam after his death. The caliph Al-Qadir crushed Al-Mu'tazala trend totally when he was enthroned in 381 A.H. The Hanbali scholars focused on rumormongering against Al-Mu'tazala thinkers and they declared them as 'infidels' and 'apostates' as part of the dominant religion at the time, and this climate influenced Al-Qadir (who died in 422 A.H.) and the Hanbali scholar and historian Al-Khateeb Al-Baghdadi (who died in 436 A.H.) who declared Al-Mu'tazala thinkers as 'infidels' and 'apostates' as he wrote their biographies. Al-Khateeb Al-Baghdadi in his book titled "History of Baghdad" heaped praise on Al-Qadir as he defended the Hanbali religion, thought at the time to be 'true' Islam, by force and by a short book he penned himself. This Hanbali caliph was 'rewarded' by the Hanbali scholars in later eras who authored a hadith in which Muhammad is made to appear to predict his assuming the caliphate throne for 40 years! (History of Baghdad, by Al-Khateeb Al-Baghdadi, part 4, p. 37-38).     

4- Indeed, the Hanbali scholars terrorized, persecuted, and intimidated the imams of the Sunnite religion who followed the other three main doctrines if they disagree with them; for instance, Al-Tabari in his old age (who was indeed more knowledgeable than Ibn Hanbal) rejected their notion of the Throne of the Lord God, and the Hanbali followers upon orders of their scholars sieged his house and never had mercy for him despite his pleading for pardon as he apologized for them, and they put him to death by demolishing his house on his head, and he died under the debris, and the Hanbali followers prevented anyone giving him a proper burial! The Abbasid caliph could not save Al-Tabari (see Al-Wafi by Al-Safadi, part 2, p. 284).   

Al-Mu'tazala thinkers leave the arena early:

1- Al-Mu'tazala thinkers were engrossed in the political life and were keen on maintaining control of the Abbasid caliphate, and this brought much hatred against them incited by the Hanbali scholars who invented so many false hadiths and issued fiqh fatwas spread by their preachers, orators, and narrators to the effect that philosophizing is a grave sin. The masses believed such nonsense as the Hanbali scholars dominated the streets of Baghdad. The unjust grand vizier Ibn Al-Zayyat used to torture his foes to death (especially Hanbali scholars) in a dungeon that contain cells made of iron, and when Al-Motawakil was dominated by the Hanbali scholars, they incited him to torture Ibn Al-Zayyat in the same dungeon until Ibn Al-Zayyat himself died of severe torture.  

2- Al-Mu'tazala thinkers inevitably had to leave the arena early in their struggle against the Sunnite religion, not only because they disdainfully refused to contact and educate the common people and let the Hanbali ignoramuses control the streets of Baghdad, but also because they never invented hadiths attributed to Muhammad nor an earthly religion of any type; they never ascribed their views to God as divine revelation. Thus, the ideas of Al-Mu'tazala never moved out of private meetings of sharing knowledge among the limited members/philosophers of Al-Mu'tazala group. Al-Mu'tazala thinkers never preached their notion in mosques or elsewhere; in contrast, Sufis, Sunnites, and Shiites spread their falsehoods by ascribing them to divine revelation attributed to Muhammad or to God, and within visions/dreams, while imposing on people to believe such nonsense as part of Islam, not mere views that might be adopted or rejected as per personal whims.     

3- Hence, Al-Mu'tazala group consisted of a limited number of very cultured philosophers who formed a closed circle; in contrast, any ignoramuses could join the clergymen of Sufis, Sunnites, and Shiites by merely wearing a certain attire and repeating certain narratives to win the masses to their side. This led to the spread and continuity of the three earthly religions of the Muhammadans despite the incessant conflicts among the clergymen of each of them.     

4- When the trend of Al-Mu'tazala ended, the Sunnite religion kept struggling against the Sufi and Shiite ones – until now in our modern era, causing bloodshed and wreaking havoc worldwide. The three earthly religions of the Muhammadans share things in common; they deify Muhammad among other mortals: imams/saints as well as mausoleums, and each earthly religion has its 'holy' tomes/volumes/books. The Abbasid Era ended centuries ago, but its imams and authors are still deified and sanctified until now: Malik, Al-Shafei, Ibn Hanbal, Al-Bokhary, Al-Ghazaly, Jaffer Al-Sadiq, Al-Kulayni, etc.       

5- Countries worldwide move ahead and make advances on all levels, whereas Sunnites in the Arab world still deify and sanctify these Abbasid deities!  

The military struggle and mutual propaganda between the Sunnites and the Shiites during the Abbasid Era:

Firstly: during the First Abbasid Era (132 – 232 A.H.):

1- The Alawites and Shiites kept the military struggle against the Umayyad rule, and each side had men who authored oral narratives and hadiths as part of propaganda war. Abou Hurayrah was known for his siding with the Umayyads; he even invented many hadiths to belittle Ali and to praise Mu'aweiya! In contrast, Abdullah Ibn Abbas, the foe of Abou Hurayrah, defended the Alawites against the Umayyads and supporters of Al-Zubayr. The Alawites authored hadiths to praise Ali and his progeny and called them (the household of Muhammad). Hadiths of both sides were mere oral narratives, written down only during the Abbasid Era, as the Abbasids adopted the Sunnite religion officially and the number of Sunnite hadiths increased exponentially, and the same applies to Shiite and Sufi hadiths as well.   

2- The Shiite secret movement (that spread the notion of Al-Mehdi as forthcoming caliph) managed to topple the Umayyad caliphate in 132 A.H., but the secret leaders of the movement turned out to be Abbasids and not Alawites. This led Alawites, led by M. Al-Nafs Al-Zakiyya, to raise arms and revolt against the Abbasids. The Abbasids manage to assassinate M. Al-Nafs Al-Zakiyya and to imprison his followers among the senior Alawites in 145 A.H. The armed struggle between the Alawites and the Abbasids went on in Hejaz region, led by Hussein Ibn Ali (who was among the descendants of Hussein who was murdered in Karbala massacre), but the Abbasids defeated him in the battle of Fakh, during the reign of Al-Hadi in 169 A.H. The only two survivors among the men massacred in Fakh were two brothers; the first one was Yahya Ibn Abdullah who fled to the region of the Daylamites in Middle Asia and revolted against Harun Al-Rasheed; this caliph deceived him by assuring him of security, but he promptly imprisoned him and put him to death. The second brother was Idris Ibn Abdullah who fled to Egypt in 172 A.H., and then to Morocco, where he revolted against Harun Al-Rasheed; this caliph sent a spy who poisoned this man in Morocco in 177 A.H. Yet, his concubine was pregnant, and the Berbers waited until she gave birth to a son, and they named him Idris, hailing him as caliph by pledging fealty to them. This is how the state of the Idrisids came into being in Morocco. Shiites and Alawites made other revolts like the one led by M. Al-Dibaj, the son of Jaffer Al-Sadiq, and before it, the caliph Harun Al-Rasheed murdered another son of Jaffer Al-Sadiq, namely Moussa Al-Kadhim, in 179 A.H., based on mere suspicions. The Idrisids were precursors to the Shiite Fatimid caliphate in Tunis and Morocco that later on annexed Egypt, the Levant, and some regions of Iraq in the 4^th century A.H.          

3- Within such military struggles between the Sunnite Abbasids and the  Shiite Alawites, in Middle Asia and North Africa, propaganda wars in both sides were waged by inventing hadiths. After two centuries of the death of Abou Hurayrah, the Abbasids used his name to pass of hundreds of fabricated hadiths as 'true, authentic' ones, and the same occurred to the name of Abdullah Ibn Abbas, the forefather of the Abbasids. Ironically, neither Abou Hurayrah nor Abdullah Ibn Abbas saw Muhammad except when they were children, but Abbasids used their names after their death to create sham credibility to the Sunnite hadiths invented during the Abbasid Era. During the First Abbasid Era, imams of fiqh who expressed views/fatwas that differed from the ones adopted and spread by the Abbasids through their official clergymen were persecuted (as was the case with Malik and Al-Shafei) or imprisoned and assassinated (as was the case with Abou Hanifa). The two disciples of Abou Hanifa, namely, Abou Youssef and Abou Al-Hassan, served the Abbasids and were handsomely rewarded by them; both fiqh scholars established the Abou Hanifa school/doctrine of fiqh to obsequiously please the Abbasids, and they changed and disregarded much of the views  of their independent tutor Abou Hanifa. We must bear in mind that the Abbasid Era witnessed the writing down of books pertaining to the Sunnite religion to face the Shiite one and its books. Both religions have been fashioned in the midst of cultural climate that was influenced by translated books of the Greeks and the Eastern culture into Arabic.       

4- Shiites were mostly very clever to infiltrate the Sunnite religion by using names of dead imams/narrators to spread Shiite hadiths inside the Sunnite canon of hadiths; this topic is very lengthy and beyond the scope of the book you are reading now here. This Shiite hadiths interpolated into the Sunnite canon resulted in the emergence of new trends that overtly had nothing to do with the Shiite religion, and soon enough, they were separated from it after gathering considerable followers. These trends include Sufism.

5- Al-Mu'tazala trend was also at first born out of the Shiite religion and it opposed the Umayyads. The appellation of Al-Mu'tazala thinkers means literally in Arabic (those who withdrew away from the mainstream thinking). Hence, the coterie of Al-Mu'tazala rejected the Shiite religion and the Sunnite one and adored philosophy, and this drove them later on to be antagonistic against all views adopted by the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and by the masses in the society. The Shiites were derogatively called by Sunnites of the authority and the dominant culture as rejecters (or in Arabic: ''Rafida''/''Rawafid'') and this term along with Al-Mu'tazala symbolized the disdainful look of Sunnite toward those who reject the Sunnite religion. It is noteworthy that during the last decade of the Umayyad Era, Abou Hanifa was a leader among the Al-Mu'tazala group; he never believed in the so-called hadiths, and he hated narrators of hadiths and deemed them as inveterate liars; his enmity toward and disputes with Al-Awzaay and Abbasid official fiqh scholars and clergymen were known to all his contemporaries. This is why we say that disciples of Abou Hanifa betrayed his school of thought to gain stature and wealth from the Abbasid caliphs they served. Anyway, Al-Mu'tazala thinkers (though they dominated and controlled the caliphs Al-Maamoun and Al-Motassim) left the political scene very early after being chased away by the Hanbali scholars who dominated the political scene and the official religious sphere, while Shiites infiltrated the covert, secret religious sphere in regions dominated by Sunnites, and there was also room for the Sufi religion that emerged in the 3^rd century A.H.        

Secondly: during the Second Abbasid Era (232 – 658 A.H.):

 The Second Abbasid Era witnessed the weakness of caliphs who were dominated and controlled by non-Arab military leaders coming from Middle Asia with their huge troops to Baghdad seeking power, authority and control, after being mere slaves bought and trained in warfare by previous caliphs; the Abbasid caliphate at the time became merely a symbol which stood for the Sunnite religion. The Second Abbasid Era began by the reign of Al-Motawakil (232 – 247 A.H.), the worst caliph as far as fanaticism and extremism are concerned. Al-Motawakil made the fatal mistake of disbanding all Arab and Persian soldiers and military leaders and he replaced them with Turkish soldiers and military leaders, who controlled the Abbasid caliphate for a century (232 – 334 A.H.). The Buyyids controlled the Abbasid caliphate for more than a century (334 – 447 A.H.), and though the Buyyids were Shiites, they submitted to the Sunnite caliphate that became a symbol and an emblem with spiritual authority that lent some sort of a quasi-religious and political legitimacy for rule at the time. The Seljuks (whose reign and dynasty existed during 329 – 552 A.H.) controlled the Abbasid caliphate after the Buyyids grew weak. The Seljuks were extremist, fanatical Sunnites; they persecuted the European pilgrims who came to Jerusalem, and this incited the European fanatics to mobilize people within crusades to invade the Levant and establish kingdoms in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq, after defeating the Seljuks in these regions. The Abbasid caliphs were too weak (and were engrossed in a promiscuous lifestyle) to participate in the military struggle against the crusaders; jihad against them was undertaken by other Sunnite states (independent but loyal to the Abbasids) that rose and collapsed as others inherited them. This began with the Atabegs in the Levant and Iraq, who succeeded the Seljuks, then Emad-Eddine of the dynasty of the Zengids in Mosul fought bravely against the crusaders and his fame grew (he originally served the Seljuk sultan M. Ibn Malik Shah, but after the collapse of the Seljuks, the Zengid dynasty ruled instead. Emad-Eddine was succeeded by his son Noor-Eddine and he continued his military jihad against the crusaders. One of his military leaders, Salah-Eddine (or Saladin), grew in fame and military prowess, and he established the Ayyubid dynasty after the Zengids collapsed. Saladin invaded and annexed Egypt after he destroyed the Fatimid caliphate there. The military slaves (i.e., the Mamelukes) of the Ayyubids inherited their state after destroying the Ayyubid dynasty. The Mamelukes ended the crusaders' presence in the Levant forever.                

The Shiite states that were enemies to the Abbasids during the Second Abbasid Era:

1- Within the First Abbasid Era, the Shiites establish the state of the Idrisids in Morocco, and the Abbasids helped establish the state of the Aghlabids in Tunisia to stop the spread of the Shiite influence elsewhere, especially in Egypt. 

2- In the early decades of the Second Abbasid Era, two independent states were established in Egypt and the Levant but remained loyal to the Abbasids in Baghdad. They were the states of the Tulunids (254 – 292 A.H.) and of the Ikhshidids (323 – 334 A.H.).

3- The Shiite Fatimids, who managed to establish their caliphate in Tunisia in 296 A.H. when led by Obayd-Allah Al-Mehdi, desired to annex Egypt, and they took advantage of the deterioration of the conditions there during the Ikhshidid rule to conquer Egypt peacefully; they built Cairo and Al-Azhar in 358 A.H./ 972 A.D.  

4- The Shiite-Sunnite religious conflict took a different turn when the Fatimid caliphate was established in Egypt, the Levant, and parts of Iraq. The Fatimid military leader Al-Basasiri who served the Fatimid caliph Al-Mustansir managed even to invade some districts of Baghdad in 450 A.H. and made the preachers of the Friday sermons pray and implore God for the sake of Al-Mustansir.  

5- The Fatimids persecuted Sunnites; crucifixion and the capital punishment was the penalty for declaring one's Sunnite faith in public (especially by praising Abou Bakr and Omar). Al-Makrizi the historian mentions many occurrences of this nature in his book titled (Al-Khetat). When the Abbasids caliphs grew weak, their powerful viziers controlled them. It was laughable to combine the deification of Fatimid caliphs and their being too weak and controlled by their viziers. 

6- The military and political struggle of the Fatimids against the Sunnites and crusaders brought about the downfall of the Fatimid caliphate. The two powerful viziers during the reign of the weak Fatimid caliph Al-Aadid, Sha-wer and Dirgham, struggled against one another, and this resulted in the burning down of the district of Al-Fustat in Cairo. Crusaders and the Zengids (who ruled parts of the Levant) competed for annexing Egypt by controlling the weak Fatimid caliph. Noor-Eddine sent his military leaders – Shirkoh and Saladin – to save Egypt from a possibly imminent invasion by the crusaders; Shirkoh became a powerful vizier who controlled the weak Fatimid caliph for the sake of the Sunnite Zengid dynasty that was loyal to the Abbasids. Once Shirkoh died, Saladin assassinated the weak Fatimid caliph, Al-Aadid, and imprisoned his children. Saladin ruled Egypt and the Levant as he established the Ayyubid dynasty (567 – 648 A.H.), and he abolished the mention of the Fatimids from Friday sermons (replacing them with the Abbasids who formed a spiritual authority and legitimacy needed by Saladin).

7- Before the collapse of the Fatimids, it caused the emergence of a subversive Hashasheen group that terrorized people for about 150 years: the founder of this group of assassins was Al-Hassan Al-Sabah in Alamut (near the Caspian Sea). Al-Hassan Al-Sabah was in Egypt when the Fatimid caliph Al-Mustansir died in 487 A.H. The powerful grand vizier, Al-Afdal, interfered to make the crown-prince the younger son Al-Musta'li instead of the elder brother Nizar, as per Shiite Fatimid traditions that the first-born should be the crown-prince to succeed his father. As a result, the Fatimids were divided into the Nizariyya opposition group (led by Al-Hassan Al-Sabah) who fought the group of supporters of Al-Musta'li. Later on, Al-Hassan Al-Sabah left Egypt and made his soldiers control Alamut and he trained them there to be suicide assassins (the Hashasheen group: named as such because they often smoked hash) who were sent to murder his foes among sultans, caliphs, governors, viziers, fiqh scholars, and crusaders. The Hashasheen assassins spread terror among Arabs and crusaders alike, until Hulago (military leader of the Mongols and the Tartars) massacred them on his way to Baghdad. A very known story is that Saladin woke up one day to find a dagger under his bed pillow as a threat from the Hashasheen group of assassins. Because they were famous as hired terrorists who made many suicide operations and political assassinations for money, the crusaders have in their languages the terms (assassin and assassination) derived from the Arabic word ''Hashasheen'', which literally means "those who smoke hash". 

The fabrication of the Sunnite Sufism to replace the Shiite religion in Egypt:

1- Saladin had to face Shiite religion and the Shiite Sufism intellectually after he put an end to the Fatimid caliphate politically. This intellectual war of ideas was won by Saladin who supervised the of the Sunnite Sufism to face the Sufi and Shiite religions.      

2- All of the states of the Abbasids, Seljuks, Ayyubids, Mamelukes, and Ottomans collapsed, but the Sunnite Sufism remains until now as the religion of the vast majority of the Muhammadans, since the era when Saladin (who died in 589 A.H.) managed to create and spread it.

3- Before tackling Sunnite Sufism and the political scene of its emergence and propagation, we provide below a brief overview of the Sufi religion itself and how Sufis linked themselves to the Sunnite religion.

An overview of the Sufi-Sunnite religion: its start and dominance:

Introduction:

1- The Sunnite religion has emerged and has been crystalized within the reign of caliphs who were descendants of the Qorayish tribe; it reflects dominance, hegemony, rule, and authoritarianism. The Sunnite religion has emerged and has been crystalized as an expression of the nationalist Persian culture, as Persians hated very much caliphs of the Arab conquests (Abou Bakr, Omar, and Othman, as well as the Umayyads) and anyone sided with them and anyone who were foes of Ali (who is the supreme Shiite deity). Later on, in the 3^rd century A.H., the Sufi religion has emerged as a reflection of the tenets of the masses who were formerly among the People of the Book before their conversation to 'Islam'; they used to deify and sanctify mortals, items/things, relics, and mausoleums by attributing to them God-like qualities and epithets (e.g., miracles, intercessions, mediations, dominance over the universe, and omniscience). In order to make the masses worship and venerate their saints/deities, Sufi sheikhs made their pantheon of saints to include the main mortal deities of the Sunnite and Shiite religion: the so-called companions of Muhammad and the household members of Muhammad. Soon enough, Sufis have included their own saints in this pantheon by making them as descendants of Alawites (i.e., among the progeny of Ali and Fatima, who was Muhammad's daughter).   

2- We have published online our encyclopedia of Sufism of the Mameluke Era in Egypt; we quote from it some indications about Sufism and its development.  

Firstly: Sufism contradicts Islam:

1- The difference in the source of legislation: within Islam, the only source of sharia legislation is the Quran, God's Word, for all believers, including Muhammad who was the first Muslim. As for Sufism, Sufi sheikhs issue sharia legislations for their followers and disciples as per their whims, tastes, and desires, while claiming to receive special 'divine' revelation directly from God. This contradicts the Quranic fact that there is not any revelation from God after the Quranic revelation ended as the perfected religion: "...Today I have perfected your religion for you, and have completed My favor upon you, and have approved Islam as a religion for you..." (5:3). Sufi sheikhs would claim omniscience, knowledge of the metaphysical realm, working miracles, intercession, etc. and indirectly ask their followers and disciples to worship, venerate, and deify them and to ask their aid during their lifetime and after they die! Real believers must never seek aid except from God; it is polytheism to ask aid from Muhammad, and any other mortals, as this is a sin of deifying human beings beside God.     

2- The basic difference is deifying Sufi sheikhs (while alive and after their death) as saints: within Islam, Allah is the only Omnificent, Dominant Lord, but the self-deified Sufi sheikhs attribute to themselves God-like qualities and ask others to worship them; this is utter polytheism and disbelief. 

3- The pivotal point of difference between Islam and Sufism: the basic tenet of Islam is the testimony of (There is no God but Allah). God does NOT resemble anything or anyone: "...There is nothing like Him..." (42:11); "Say, "He is God, the One.God, the Absolute. He begets not, nor was He begotten. And there is nothing comparable to Him."" (112:1-4). This means that God's names, epithets, and qualities should never be used to describe any mortals. As for the basic Sufi tenet, it is (nothing exists but God); this is pantheism or that God is nature or the universe itself, and this means that the Creator and the creatures overlap and that Sufi sheikhs must feel and declare this hidden 'truth' that God manifested Himself or resides in him. This is sheer polytheism and self-deification denounced and refuted in the Quran.  

Sufism and the Sunnite religion are against the Quran:

1- Sufism, asceticism, and mysticism are never mentioned in the Quran; yet, monasticism is mentioned negatively as something never authorized by God (see 57:27). This verse sheds negative light on Sufis who link their earthly religion to asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism.   

2- Sufi sheikhs who invented hundreds of thousands of hadiths ascribed falsely to Muhammad never dared to include the word (Sufism) and its cognates in such hadiths; everyone knew that this term was never known in the 7^th century Arabia. The only poly Sufis had to use was to refer to ascetics in such hadiths as (the poor ones), as poverty, for sure, has existed in all eras; this would give a false impression that prototypes of 'Sufis' might have existed in Muhammad's lifetime in Arabia; Sufism predates Islam but it existed in other civilizations, and never in Arabia at all; Sufism that ascribes itself forcibly to Islam emerged only in the 3^rd century A.H.  

3- The term (Sufism) is mentioned for the first time in Arab heritage in a book by Al-Mu'tazala thinker Al-Jahiz, who died in 255 A.H., titled "Al-Bayan and Al-Tabyeen".

4- Ibn Khaldoun, in his seminal book titled "The Introduction", rightly mentions that Sufism is ''a newly invented branch of knowledge in religion'', but he is in the wrong the assume that the Sufi mythology of personal tastes, whims, and desires would be deemed as a branch of knowledge; this is not to mention that Sufism is a new religion that emerged in the 3^rd century A.H.    

Two types of Sufism:

1- There are two types of Sufism: religious and philosophical. Religious Sufism contradicts Islam (i.e., the Quran) as deification and sanctification are due only to Allah; otherwise, it is sheer polytheism to sanctify, venerate, and deify mortals and creatures. Philosophical Sufism is not less polytheistic that the other type; it supports religious Sufism by 'proving' and arguing for Sufi tenets of disbelief that include the following: unity of existence, God is the universe itself, and God manifests Himself in human beings.   

2- Because Sufism is a new religion, it has introduced new terminology never known before by the Muhammadans in their religious culture; e.g., Sufi miracles, Sufi disciple, Sufi status/stature, Sufi trance, Sufi intoxication, Sufi taste, Sufi manifestation, Sufi unveiling of secrets, Sufi witness, Sufi spiritual retreat, the Sufi truth, Sufi asceticism, Sufi orders, Sufi saints, Sufi realm, Sufi illumination, Sufi union/communion, Sufi unity, and Sufi hierarchy. Of course, the meanings of such terms differ from one Sufi book/author to another, and common words that denoted ordinary things were adopted within a new semantic level of meanings by Sufi sheikhs.    

3- The topics of both religious and philosophical Sufism contradict Islam (i.e., the Quran) by assuming that the Creator and His creatures overlap as one unit, that Sufi saints might fly up to the realms of heavens to see and hold a conversation with God, that God resides in nature or creatures or that He is the universe itself, and that Sufi saints are part of the Lord God (i.e., self-deification by claiming that God resides in their bodies).  

4- All Sufi orders and sheikhs/authors share many notions in common, but they differ in the degree of being outspoken about it in their books, or hypocritically concealing their ideas except for their loyal, close disciples and expressing this using highly figurative symbolic language in their books. This applies to the early decades of Sufism and within the eras when it was powerful and dominating as the official religion of the State.

How the Sunnite Sufism emerged and dominated:

1- Turkish military leaders controlled the Abbasid caliphate for a century (232 -334 A.H.) since the reign of Al-Motawakil who persecuted Persians/Shiites. The Hanbali scholars (who are extremist fanatical Sunnites) dominated the streets of Baghdad and persecuted Shiites, Sufis, and Al-Mu'tazala thinkers and all those who oppose Hanbali views/fatwas. At the same time, ascribing falsehoods to God and to Muhammad in the name of hadiths increased; books of the Sunnite religion increased exponentially and views/hadiths in them have been ascribed falsely to Muhammad two centuries after his death, a crime committed by authors of Persian origin who are in later eras (and until now!) deemed as infallible, revered, venerated deities never to be criticized or questioned so as to avoid the accusation of 'denying Sunna', a sin punishable by death in the Sunnite religion of Satan; these Persian authors include the following list: Ibn Hanbal (who died in 241 A.H.), Al-Bokhary (who died in 256 A.H.), Moslem (who died in 261 A.H.), Abou Dawood (who died in 275 A.H.), Al-Tirmizy (who died in 278 A.H.), Al-Nisaa'i (who died in 303 A.H.), and Ibn Maja (who died in 275 A.H.). By the way Ahmad Ibn Hanbal was not a fiqh scholar but merely a hadith fabricator and he did not arrange his hadiths as per branches of fiqh, unlike the case of Al-Bokhary and others. Yet, the dominance and authority of the Hanbali scholars made Ibn Hanbal after his death as an imam of a fiqh school that carried his name which later on evolved as Wahabism that brings terrorism to people now worldwide in our modern era.         

2- Sufism was at the time making its first steps; the Abbasids made trials for its deities/sheikhs to imprison them, and the ordeal/trial of Semnoon was famous at the time. The wave of arresting and incarcerating Sufi sheikhs made them practice Taqiyya (i.e., concealing their faith and pretending to be Sunnites). Yet, The Abbasid caliph Al-Moqtadir (295 – 320 A.H./ 908 – 932 A.D.) put the Sufi sheikh named Al-Halaj to death in 309 A.H., after long political debates following his imprisonment in 301 A.H. (Al-Muntazim, part 13, p. 201), because he was outspoken in declaring his self-deification and because of suspicions about him that he joined the Shiite Qarmatian rebels. Sufism began by the Sufi pioneer Maaruf Al-Karkhy was a former Christian who converted to the Shiite religion and followed the Alawites and wrote about Sufism. After his death, Al-Motawakil persecuted and arrested all Sufi pioneers like Semnoon, Zu Al-Noon Al-Masry of Egypt, and Al-Jeineid of Iraq. Persecuting masters and disciples of Sufism severely led some of them like Al-Jeineid, the master of a Sufi order, take hiding and teach Sunnite fiqh, while circulating his book on Sufism only to his very close Sufi disciples, while in his public sermons, he would assert his adherence to the Sunnite religion and the Quran, while stipulating that no true Sufis do not memorize the Quran and Sunnite hadiths. The Sufi author Al-Shaarany in his book titled (Al-Tabakat Al-Kobra) mentions that Al-Jeineid used to hold secret meetings at home with his very close Sufi disciples, after closing the door with his key and putting it under his thigh, under the pretext offered to his disciples that 'saints' like him who are closer to God could not be humiliated and denied by the masses or accused of being 'infidels' by the authority. The Sunnite Abbasid caliphs like Al-Motawakil and his successors demolished the Shiite mausoleum in Karbala and persecuted Shiites and Sufis severely, while imposing on Jews and Christians to stick to dress codes as part of their being despised and humiliated. Despite weakness of Sunnite Abbasid caliphs, they tried, imprisoned, persecuted, exiled, executed, and murdered many Sufi pioneers.            

3- The Abbasid caliphate soon enough paid a heavy price for such persecutions; during the period 334 – 447 A.H., the Shiite Buyyids, who hated the Sunnite religion, controlled and humiliated the Abbasid caliphs though they ruled in their name. Thus, no Sunnite imams/authors emerged during this period; in contrast, the Shiite Fatimids in North Africa seized the chance to conquer Egypt peacefully in 358 A.H. and built the city of Cairo and Al-Azhar institution to proselytize and preach the Shiite religion, and this enabled the Fatimids to annex the Levant without much difficulty, as the Shiite Buyyids did not protest at all and the Abbasids were too weak to oppose them. This means that the Sunnite religion was sieged by the Buyyids in Baghdad and Middle Asia and the Fatimids in Egypt, the Levant, and regions of Iraq. Sufis took advantage of the siege of the Sunnite religion and the dominance of the Shiite religion  to spread Sufism that branched in terms of theorization and philosophy and was propagates among the masses as it grew in popularity. This was called later on as the Shiite Sufism.       

4- This state of affairs changed suddenly once the Turkish Seljuks emerged, who were extremist Sunnites, during the period 329 – 552 A.H., but by the time they managed to control the Abbasid caliphate, Sufism grew too powerful to be crushed; Sunnites had to resort to a containment measure by creating what was called later on as the Sunnite Sufism.

5- The Sufi author Al-Qosheiry (c. 376 – 465 A.H.) was the advocate of the so-called 'moderate' Sufism as he followed the footsteps of Al-Jeineid in Taqiyya. In his book of apologia (i.e., in defense of Sufism) titled ''Al-Risala Al-Qosheiriyya'', he attacks Sufi rabble and mob among the masses who spread during his lifetime, in order to undermine the authority of the extremist Hanbali scholars and imams and to convince readers of Sunnite Sufism and how Sufis stick to the Sunnite tenets. In this book, Al-Qosheiry attacks self-deified Sufism who assumed that Allah is manifested in their bodies, who intentionally discarded acts of worship (prayers, fasting, etc.), and who committed sins like fornication and homosexual debaucheries as part of Sufi rituals that drew them nearer to God! Strangely, Al-Qosheiry endorses such notions and practices indirectly in other parts of his books as he defends pioneer Sufi sheikhs who declared such polytheistic notions and committed the same sins. After the death of Al-Qosheiry, many Sufi authors who claimed to be Sunnite Sufis and 'moderates' attacked their contemporaries and heaped praise on dead Sufi sheikhs/saints while endorsing all Sufi polytheistic notions indirectly on the margin, as if only those very close to the private Sufi circle would be the only ones to understand these 'refined' concepts. Ibn Al-Jawzy who lived in the 6^th century A.H. laments in his book, Al-Muntazim, how the Hanbali scholars and imams were too powerful since the era of Al-Motawakil and persecuted Sufis but lost their power gradually, and Sufi sheikhs persecuted the Hanbali scholars in the 6^th century A.H. Ibn Al-Jawzy severely attacks Sufism in his book titled (Talbis Iblis) and laments the fact that many hypocritical Hanbali scholars made peace with Sufis and Sufism institutions. This was among the many stages that resulted in the emergence of Sunnite Sufism as the dominant culture and religion.      

6- The final reconciliation between Sufism and the Sunnite religion that resulted in the emergence of Sunnite Sufism has been made by Al-Ghazaly (who died in 505 A.H.) in his many-volume seminal book titled ''Ehiaa Olom Eddine'' (i.e., literally in Arabic: Revival of Religious Sciences). Al-Ghazaly was the most famous and grandest Sufi and fiqh scholar within the Seljuk-Abbasid period; he mixes in his book Sunnite fiqh with Sufism, and he indirectly teaches readers all Sufi polytheistic notions between the lines. Al-Ghazaly in an another book titled (Mish-kat Al-Anwar) endorses the same Sufi notions of unity of the universe, God manifested in nature and man, Sufi saints fly up to heaven to meet God, etc. There were many Sufi saints/authors who followed the footsteps of Al-Ghazaly, and the last one of them was Al-Shaarany (c. 898 – 973 A.H., and thus, he lived in the 9^th century A.H./ the 16^th A.D.) in Egypt, and he lived within the last decades of the Mameluke Era and the early decades of the Ottoman Era. The Sufi books of Al-Shaarany dominated the mentality of Al-Azhar sheikhs and clergymen throughout the Ottoman. Within the era of the Sunnite Seljuk dominance, Al-Ghazaly was a leader for both Sufis and fiqh scholars at the same time, but of course, he leaned more toward Sufism and he managed to reconcile Sufism with Sunnite fiqh so that the Sunnite Sufism would emerge and Sufis would not be persecuted as was the case in previous periods. Al-Ghazaly was influenced by the Greek philosophy of illumination (i.e., as if knowledge were rays of light from the Divine to the hearts of mystics or Sufis who follow spiritual exercises to gain such knowledge). This is similar to the philosophy called new-Platonism that opposes the rationality of Aristotle. Al-Ghazaly inherited this hatred toward Aristotelian philosophy and its followers like Al-Mu'tazala; he attacks them in his writings as he calls for stopping intellectual endeavors and ijtihad thinking under the motto of nothing better or more creative could be written. This is part of his defense of Sufism. This is why his book titled "Ehiaa Olom Eddine" is deemed now as an endorsement of Sufi notions while attacking (within Taqiyya) extremist and promiscuous Sufis who denied Sunnite notions and rejected acts of worship. Sunnite Sufis celebrated Al-Ghazaly for centuries after his death and gave him the honorific title of (Hujjat ul-Islam), which means literally "Proof of Islam''; this is very insulting to God and to the Quran; s if the Quran were not enough proof of Islam as God's religion and as if Islam/Quran were defenseless and proof-less until 'proven' true only by Al-Ghazaly! This honorific title is utter blasphemy. Thus, the emergence of Sunnite Sufism was officially launched by Al-Ghazaly culturally and intellectually as the religion of the masses within the sponsorship of the Seljuks who were bent on facing Shiite Sufism. The Seljuks, and others after them (e.g., Saladin), provided the political power to protect Sunnite Sufism against Shiites and their sects (especially the Hashasheen/assassins who were the first brainwashed group of killers who suicide operations and obey their leaders blindly, while assuming they would go to Paradise after their death!).         

7- Saladin (who died in 589 A.H.) was the one who managed to manipulate Sunnite Sufism as a political tool against the Shiite religion and the Shiite Sufism more aptly than his predecessors (i.e., the Seljuks and the Zengids). This Sunnite-Shiite intellectual struggle within the early years of the Ayyubid state indicates two mysterious aspects in Saladin as a military leader. (1) The first mysterious aspect of Saladin is that he knew that intellectual war of ideas must be introduced to crush and chase away certain ideologies and impose the ideology of the state, as military and political confrontations were never enough. Thus, he knew that a previous religion would be chased away from hearts of the masses by the introduction of another religion that oppose and yet overlaps with the previous one. Strangely, no one after Saladin imitated him in his intellectual war of ideas. Mohamed Ali Pacha, governor of Egypt and later on its king and founder of a dynasty, destroyed the first Saudi kingdom in 1818 A.H. with his military troops for the sake of the Ottomans, but he disregarded the fact that the Wahabi ideology was spreading (and this resulted in the rise of the second and then the third current Saudi kingdoms). Abdel-Nasser in Egypt crushed and quelled the terrorist Wahabi MB group (established by GB and the KSA) by incarcerating its members and forcing others to choose self-exile, but he disregarded the fact that the Wahabi ideology was spreading in Egypt without being questioned or refuted, and this enabled Sadat to allow the MB members to control the religious life in Egypt since the 1970s and to manipulate it to their advantage. This query is raised: why did not the military leaders like M. Ali Pacha, Abdel-Nasser, and then the American generals of our era  reach the genius of Saladin who employed the peaceful intellectual war of ideas to defeat political foes and undermine their quasi-religious ideology? (2) The second mysterious aspect of Saladin is his leniency and tolerance toward crusaders against which he fought; for instance, he would release thousands of captured prisoners (i.e., POWs among crusaders) and this would allow them to fight him again as they re-join the crusaders' armies, and at the same time, Saladin never showed mercy or tolerance toward Sufi and Shiite extremists. When Jawhar Al-Seqilli built Cairo as the new Fatimid capital in Egypt to be a center of proselytizing the Shiite religion through Al-Azhar institution he built as well, this Fatimid leader aimed to fight the Sunnite religion and ideology within a peaceful intellectual war of ideas. After he put the last Fatimid caliph to death, Saladin closed down Al-Azhar institution and he built instead the Sufi-Sunnite institution called Khanqah Saeed Al-Suadaa; he even imported non-Egyptian Sunnite Sufis to help him in Cairo and they pleased him by inventing religious rituals that appealed to the Egyptian masses and made them forget the Shiite religion and gradually remove it from their hearts. Yet, Saladin never loved Sufism and extremist Sufi sheikhs; in 587 A.H., he put to death Al-Suhrawardi the extremist Sufi leader/sheikh who is known for his philosophy of illumination. Thus, Saladin aimed at imposing a 'moderate' form of Sunnite Sufism that would leave no room for Sufi extremists nor for Hanbali Sunnite extremists.            

8- After the death of Saladin, the 'new' religion of Sunnite Sufism was applied within the Sufi motto of combining sharia (i.e., Sunnite fiqh sharia of the four main doctrines and performing acts of worship) and the Sufi truth (i.e., all Sufi notions of polytheism and self-deification) while imposing on people never to question Sufi sheikhs/saints who claim receiving knowledge directly from God! Decades later, Sunnite fiqh scholars tolerated the sanctification of 'moderate' Sufi sheikhs as saints/allies of God; likewise, Sufi sheikhs allowed their followers to sanctify imams of the four main Sunnite doctrines and to ascribe miracles to them and heap praise and good qualities on them (or Manaqib = hagiography). Thus, Sunnite Sufis deify all Sunnite imams and all companions of Muhammad, especially Abou Bakr, Omar, and Othman (hated by Shiites) along with Ali and his progeny and household members (hated by non-Sufi Sunnites).

9- Sunnite Sufism spread and dominated as the official religion since the 6^th century A.H., helped by factors such as injustices of weak rulers who fought against one another (e.g., the Seljuks and the Ayyubids), until the powerful Mameluke sultans emerged with unprecedented cruelty and injustices. The Mameluke sultans hated the Hanbali Sunnite religion as its scholars aimed to dictate their views on rulers and to dominate the masses in the streets by the sword based on the silly hadith of changing 'vice' by force. The Mameluke sultans desired to draw closer to them in their palace courts obsequious, hypocritical Sufi clergymen who would readily flatter and agree with them. Sufi clergymen served the Mameluke sultans by spreading notions of passivity, submission to tyrants, non-protest, stoicism, and acceptance of injustices and oppression as part of Fate and divine punishment for the subjects of the Mameluke sultanate. Sufi sheikhs at the time, of course, were hypocritical ones who flattered sultans and participated in propaganda for rulers and congregational supplications addressed to God to aid the sultans in all their endeavors. Sufis drew nearer to the masses by claiming they perform miracles and they receive divine words from God directly (in dreams/visions and through flying up to heaven!), and they gathered so many disciples and followers. Sufism appealed to the masses because it allows sinning within 'quasi-religious' justification; e.g., the promiscuous heterosexuals and homosexuals were happy to engage into their debaucheries and orgies than included wine drinking, while claiming that such sins were Sufi rituals and acts of worship. Sufism appealed to those who follow their whims and love singing and dancing festivities, those who love traveling to worship devotedly at mausoleums, and those who love partying and banquets to fill their bellies within merriment. Thus, the masses liked very much the revived Pharaonic religion (among other mythologies) of worshipping entombed saints/deities in the so-called holy mausoleums and venerating living 'holy' sheikhs/saints, thus ensuring their entering into Paradise merely through direct contact with this or that physical, tangible, dead or living deity. As for the cultured class of fiqh scholars, they were too weak to protest such habits and deeds, and their level of knowledge was lowered as their submission to those in power increased, as it served their purposes to weather the storm and cope with the zeitgeist.                        

10- Sufi orders: the theoretical, philosophical Sufism that was previously confined to some cultural elite members metamorphosed into ever-increasing several popular Sufi orders that appealed to the masses. These orders were based on Sufi sheikhs/saints claiming to inherit the covenant of the dead Sufi sheikhs/saints through the past eras whose alleged lineage would reach up to Ali and Fatima, then Muhammad, Gabriel, and then God! this imaginary chain was seen as the reason behind Sufi saints claiming they receive 'divine' revelations, just like the case of Sunnite series of narrators ending in Muhammad, Gabriel, and then God! This is how Sunnite and Sufi fabricators of hadiths have ascribed hadiths to God Himself. The widespread of so many Sufi orders created easily (complete with their holy saints/sheikhs and its mausoleums, rituals, festivals, etc.) made most people embrace Sunnite Sufism out of faith or out of gaining authority or engaging into moneymaking: peasants, merchants, fiqh scholars, governors, princes, rulers, sultans, the jobless, etc. Thus, Sunnite Sufism became the dominating religion practiced by most Muhammadans in many regions, and this has decreased the number of followers of the Shiite religion and non-Sunnite Sufism.         

11- Sunnite Sufism dominating and supplanting the Sunnite religion: the undeniable origin of Sufism is the Shiite religion; both religions share many things in common in terms of form and basics (e.g., deifying and sanctifying the household members of Ali and Fatima). Thus, the Shiite Sufism never added anything new to the non-Sufi Shiites and their religion. In contrast, when Sunnite Sufism dominated for centuries, it stripped the non-Sufi Sunnites and their religion of their main features. The Sunnite religion and the term (Sunna) became mere political banners held by the Mameluke sultanate that derived its political legitimacy from the presence of the remnants of the Abbasid household members among the retinue and courtiers of Mameluke sultans (after Hulago destroyed Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate). Hence, the term (Sunna) became a mere motto to allow the Mameluke sultanate face its Shiite foes. Sufi sheikhs serving the Mameluke sultans made the Sunnite religion confined only to acts of worship and fiqh sharia, as opposed to the Sufi truth, which is the Sufi faith tenets (unity of the universe, deifying mortals and creatures, God is one with His creatures, etc.) that contradict the Quran.  of course, Sunnite fiqh imams knew that Sufi tenets contradict the four major Sunnite doctrines; Al-Shafei and Ibn Hanbal rejected Sufi ideas when Sufism was still a nascent, burgeoning religion. The Hanbali scholars during the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th centuries A.H. fought and persecuted Sufi sheikhs and accused them of apostasy. Within the Mameluke Era, Sunnite Sufism dominated the religious life of the Muhammadans; more details about this are mentioned in CHAPTER IV of this book.              

Realistic examples from history of the earthly, man-made religions during the Abbasid Era:

Introduction:

1- What we call as earthly, man-made religions were called in the Middle-Ages theological books of the Sunnites as (creeds and doctrines), as a branch of 'religious sciences' that compare and contrast all religions and denominations with the Sunnite religion (deemed falsely as if it were Islam).   

2- The first Sunnite authors to write about (creeds and doctrines) to compare and contrast them with the Sunnite fiqh were Abou Al-Hassan Al-Ashaary (who died in 330 A.H.), Al-Malti (who died in 377 A.H.), Ibn Hazm (who died in 456 A.H.), and Al-Shahristany (who died in 548 A.H.). These authors, of course, defend and heap praises on their Sunnite religion and fiqh and criticized and ridiculed all other denominations. We hope that young Quranist researchers would verify the veracity of such authors regarding writing views of their foes.      

3- We provide below three passages exemplifying the reality of earthly, man-made religions during the Abbasid Era, and we comment on each of the three passages (about the Sufi, Shiite, and Sunnite religion) quoted from the book by the Al-Shafei doctrine scholar and hadith-narrator Al-Malti (who died in 377 A.H., in Ashkelon) titled (Al-Tanbeeh wi Al-Rad) about comparing and contrasting all creeds/doctrines (by mentioned their notions, tenets and practices known during his era) with his Sunnite religion.  

FIRSTLY: Al-Malti writes the following about the faith tenets of the Sunnite religion: (... M. Ibn Okasha said that Ibn Hammad said that ... Al-Zohary said that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon his soul, said that any man who performs complete ablution on a Friday night and pray two Raqas while reciting the Quranic Chapter 112 one thousand times, he will be visited by Prophet Muhammad in a vision while asleep. ... M. Ibn Okasha said he tried this method and he saw Prophet Muhammad in a vision and he asked him about certain branches of the faith ... Upon waking up that very night, M. Ibn Okasha repeated this method and he saw the apparition of the Holy Prophet Muhammad visiting him in his bedchamber, while filling it with intense silver light, and he was wearing .... M. Ibn Okasha asked him about all controversial issues of fiqh ... Prophet Muhammad asserted to him to accept whatever good or bad events as part of Fate preordained and predestined by the Almighty Lord Allah, and that real believers never argue about issues of religion with anyone ... and that one can put water above one's shoes instead of bare feet when performing ablution before prayers ... and that true faithful ones must perform jihad and join troops of the rulers ... and that true faithful believers must never rebel or disobey governors, rulers, and caliphs as they are enthroned by God ... and that one must never declare any followers of the religion of Prophet Muhammad as disbelievers however sinful they are and however grave their sins are ... and that no one is to slander the holy companions ... and that Abou Bakr is better than Omar, and Omar is better than Othman, and Othman is better than Ali  ...) (Al-Tanbeeh wi Al-Rad, p. 15-17).

COMMENT: Al-Malti defends her his own Sunnite religion by false hadiths, Isnad (i.e., series of narrators), and false revelations; how come that we would believe that those who would pray two Raqas while reciting the Quranic Chapter 112 one thousand times would see Muhammad in a dream? Is Muhammad eternally alive to appear at will to anyone to be asked about Sunnite tenets?! This means that Sunnite fiqh imitates Sufis who assume that dreams/visions are sources of sharia legislations, and not the Quran! It is noteworthy that Al-Malti never quotes any Quranic verses at all in his book. The roots of the Sunnite fiqh and sharia include refuting notions of Qadariyya, Shiites, Al-Mu'tazala, and Al-Khawarij. The Qadariyya group of theologians who asserted that humans possess free will and thus one bears full the consequences and responsibility for one's actions in this world and the next (as opposed to the faulty notion of fatalism imposed by the Umayyads). Al-Malti refutes the Qadariyya thinkers by asserting the Sunnite notion of total submission to all preordained fate, including injustices inflicted by rulers and caliphs; Al-Malti asserts that rulers were innocent as they were mere tools in the hands of God! this shows clearly how the Sunnite religion (created by authority and power) supports and deifies rulers and prohibits any revolts or rebellions against rulers; this is why Al-Malti attacks Al-Khawarij and Shiites and refuse to declare these who commit grave, major sins as disbelievers. Al-Malti in the same context prohibits verbally abusing companions and contemporaries of Muhammad and that the four pre-Umayyad caliphs were arranged by their 'piety' (thus, he makes Ali the lowest of them all in piety in order to spite Shiites). Al-Malti invents a Sunnite sharia legislation/law of cleaning shoes with water instead of bare feet while performing ablution! This is never mentioned in the Quran, and thus, it is a silly Sunnite notion and never part of Islam.       

SECONDLY: Al-Malti writes the following about the faith tenets of the Shiite religion and its sects, while naming them as misguided rejecters and infidels (i.e., Rawafid and Rafida): (... Those infidels and apostates among the Rafida are divided into numerous sects and each has its own holy imams ... the followers of Abdullah Ibn Saba defied Ali Ibn Abou Talib during his lifetime and he was so appalled by such polytheism that he burned them alive; yet, many followers of this sect remain until now, and still, they deify Ali as an immoral being, and they assert he never died ... another sect asserts that the immortal Ali resides in the clouds; this sect followers hail the big clouds whenever spotted by them, as if Ali is watching over them ... another sect asserts that Ali died and he was a moral and not a god, but he will be resurrected shortly before the destruction of the universe on the Last Day to kill the Anti-Christ and rule the earth justly ... another sect followers assert that Ali is immortal and he hides in a cave whose gate is guarded by a dragon and a huge lion; Ali is waiting the time to get out to lead an army of his worshippers to fight the troops of the Anti-Christ and to rule the earth justly as a sovereign, before the Day of Resurrection ... a sect is called the Qarmatians who include the Daylamites, and they assert that God is Light never to be perceived by mortals, and Ali is born out of this Light like all prophets, imams, and wise men who are granted immortality, omniscience, infallibility, and miracles, and their births are surrounded with signs in nature witnessed by people ... those holy men give lights to stars and planets in the firmament and help those who invoke them ... evil people are born of darkness and they inflict calamities, sorrow, pains, sins, and deals on people ... the followers of this sect assert that acts of worship like prayers, zakat, fasting, etc. are never obligatory for those worshipers of Light and Truth ... another sect of Shiites who are Light worshippers assumes that there is no Day of Resurrection, Hell, Paradise, nor Judgment, as for them, these Quranic notions are linked only to people lifetimes on earth: hence, hell is ailments, illnesses, hunger, pain, poverty, etc. and paradise is lush gardens, eating and drinking to please the body and the senses, having sex, good music and singing, good scents and perfumes, etc.; souls of the dead return to the Light of which they were created and their bodies turn to dust of which they were created ... Some of the follower of this Shiite sect believe in reincarnation after death ... some Shiites in their sects assume that anything related to the human body (semen, sweat, urine, feces, blood, among others) is clean, as mortals were created of Divine Light; Shiite extremists sometimes prove this notion by eating human feces in public; they befriend those who join their strange sect and fight and kill those who reject it; they also have sex with one another's wives as part of religious rituals after excessive wine-drinking sessions, and they share one another's money and possessions ... sometimes their orgies include men having sex with other men and male adolescents, and those men who play the role of women in bed are deemed by them as very deep in faith ... those Shiite men who refuse to play the role of women in bed were put to death and so are wives who refuse to copulate with other men ... when Shiites of this sect fight an enemy who defeats them, they never run away as they receive death happily, thinking they join the Divine Light in the metaphysical realm and their souls get rid of the confines of the clay of the body ... thus, they are sinners who disbelieve in the Day of Judgment ... Another Shiite sect assert reincarnation (into human bodies or higher/lower animal bodies as per one's deeds/sins, then all dead ones are given new human bodies later on) and that God manifests Himself in their bodies and in certain locations that are made holy by Shiites ... a Rafida Shiite sect of apostates assume that God has sent Gabriel at first to Ali as the Last Prophet to people, but Gabriel has made a mistake and addressed Muhammad instead, and thus, God has made Ali as vizier and caliph of Muhammad, and Ali's progeny must rule the earth ... another sect include Shiites who assume that Muhammad and Ali are both immortal prophets and their teachings must be obeyed equally and this sect defied the descendants of Ali as the true caliphs who should rule, as their souls, and the souls of prophets and imams, are created of the Divine Light ... another sect of Shiite apostates comprises the followers of the leader/imam Hisham Ibn Al-Hakam; a hadith of the Holy Prophet predicts their emergence as worshippers of Ali; but they are liars, because they are in fact atheists because Hisham Ibn Al-Hakam was an atheist who never believed in God nor in the Hereafter, and he adheres secretly, as rumors have it, to Manichaeism which is an ancient Persian religion ... Hisham Ibn Al-Hakam – may Allah curse him - assumes that the Holy Prophet Muhammad made Ali his successor/caliph and a grand imam/vizier, just like the stature of Aaron to his brother Moses, that the Holy Prophet is like a city of knowledge whose gate is Ali, and that Ali will be fought for his interpretation of the Holy Quran as much as the Meccans fought the Holy Prophet because he received the Holy Quran, because Ali is the most knowledgeable Muslim ... Shiites assume that Ali is immortal and infallible imam for all humanity and that this notion is part and parcel of Islam like acts of worship! Shiites of this sect in particular declare Sunnites as rejecters of Islam since they the day they chose Abou Bakr as caliph and this led them to misinterpret the Quran and to invent hadiths; Sunna hadiths are rejected by Shiites ... Shiites hate, disown, and curse in their religious rituals Abou Bakr, Omar, Othman, Talha, Al-Zubayr, and Aisha, and they invent untrue negative stories about them, such as how Abou Bakr mistreated Fatima, wife of Ali and daughter of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and he stolen her orchard and struck her very hard, and she died of sorrow as a result ... Such fabricated stories are never believed by Sunnites who cannot imagine anyone harming Fatima ... Shiites assume that their imams are infallible and can issue religious legislations while claiming they received revelations from God; they prohibit legal things and allowed forbidden items, while they practice Taqiyya when they reside among Sunnites ... As for the Ismaili Shiites, they hate, disown, and curse in their religious rituals Abou Bakr, etc. so as to ally themselves to Ali and his descendants, and they heap praises on Ali and ascribe divine qualities to him ... the Ismaili Shiites declare those who refuse their vision of Ali as infidels and apostates, and they have 12 holy imams, and they perform the five daily prayers while including glorifying Ali ... they weep daily within rituals for the massacre of Hussein, son of Ali, in Karbala, and they pay zakat to their clergymen while wearing certain rings in their fingers like some sects of the People of the Book, and they visit mausoleums of their dead imams ... they distort meanings of many Quranic verses and introduce rituals and notions never authorized by God ... they make effigies of Abou Bakr, etc. with clothed filled with hay, and they flog and beat such effigies while verbally abusing the holy companions of the Holy Prophet; we cannot quote here such verbal abuse, of course ... the Jafferi Shiites, they are similar to the Ismaili Shiites and assume that there are no holy imams except Ali and his descendants ... the Zaidiyya Shiites specialize in fighting non-Shiites for loot, raping women, raiding, massacring men and children, burning down villages, enslaving, etc. among them was a ruler of Basra who enslaved the Arab Hashemite women and sold them in return for a dirham or two, after allowing Al-Zanj (black) soldiers to rape them for days, while in their Zaidi societies, they feign being pious and ascetic ... some of the Zaidi Shiites joined Al-Mu'tazala group of Baghdad and they assume Ali as the grand imam of all eras ...) (Al-Tanbeeh wi Al-Rad, p. 18-19, 32-34, and 156-164).

COMMENT: Al-Malti is keen to mention much details about Shiites throughout his book; he aims to ascribe promiscuity to some of their sects, and his words show he is prejudiced very much against them more than any other sects/doctrines/creeds, and this is typical in most Sunnite authors and imams. Al-Malti hates Hisham Ibn Al-Hakam and his group though they were less extremist than other Shiite groups in terms of faith notions and their non-violence, as they did not like to shed blood. The reason behind such hatred is that Hisham Ibn Al-Hakam specialized in writing books to attack 'companions' of Muhammad and to fabricate and invent false hadiths and events/narratives, thus imitating Sunnites in their ways of lending sham credibility to their stances/views. Al-Malti ascribes to Shiites the leader of Al-Zanj rebellion, though he was not a Shiite man, but a murderer who loved adventure and used the Shiite religion as a cover for his military revolt, and soon enough, he adopted Al-Khawarij ways; he even made his soldiers massacre Alawites men and rape, enslave, and sell the Alawite women for low prices. It is illogical that Al-Malti ascribe such a leader to the Zaidiyya Shiites, who were very moderate and peaceful Shiites that ascribed themselves to Zaid Ibn Ali Zayn Al-Abdeen Ibn Hussein Ibn Ali Ibn Abou Talib, who revolted against the Umayyads and was let down – as typically expected – by his Iraqi followers, and thus, his revolt failed and he was killed during the caliphate of Hisham Ibn Abdul Malik. Al-Malti mentions how Shiite tenets of his era have revived Persian ancient religion of allying oneself to the god of light/goodness (reincarnated as Ali and his household members) whose forces were in endless fight against the god of darkness/evil disowned by everyone (reincarnated as Abou Bakr, Omar, Othman, Mu'aweiya, the Umayyads, and later on, any non-Shiites at large). Persian nationalism is evident here; Persians hate Abou Bakr, Omar, and Othman who made Arabs conquer, invade, and destroy the Persian empire and to treat Persians as servants and slaves. After Al-Malti mentions Shiite sects, we notice that some sects died out and some others survived until today. The surviving ones include the Twelver in Iran, Zaidiyya of Yemen, Druze in Lebanon and Palestine, and Ismaili followers of Agha Khan in India, Europe, and the USA. Some new Shiite sects have emerged such as the Nasseriyya Alawites who rule Syria now. Some new full-fledged religions were offshoots of the Shiite religion, such as Bábism and Baha'ism.

THIRDLY: Al-Malti writes the following about the Sufis while calling them "spirituals": (... Those spirituals are of various groups and types, and they are called as such because  they claim falsely that their spirits or souls fly up to the heavens to see God and Paradise ... some of them claim to copulate with houris ... some of them claim that the Love of God dominates their bodies, behaviors, desires, whims, and will, and they allow sins to themselves such as fornication, theft, and wine-drinking, as if they were beloved by God and will be forgiven anything they do ... yet, they claim they are ascetics who renounce the world and its pleasures so as not to make their hearts and minds busy with anything related to the transient realm ... it is wrong of them to prohibit permissible food items and to assume that the poor ones are more pious and loved by God than the rich people, as many rich people pay zakat/alms and help the needy within charity  ...) (Al-Tanbeeh wi Al-Rad, p.93-94).

COMMENT: Al-Malti focuses here on Shiites, Al-Mu'tazala, and Qadariyya, and we notice that he was apparently well-informed of their notions and he was keen on refuting them using his Sunnite religion. Yet, Al-Malti was not well-informed about Sufism of his era, and he calls Sufis as ''spirituals''. Al-Malti never mentions any names of famous Sufi sheikhs of his era, despite the fact that his era witnessed so many Sufi pioneers. Besides, Al-Malti mixes between asceticism and Sufism, and makes ascetic men as Sufis within one label: ''spirituals'', though there are essential differences between both groups in faith tenets, rituals, and practices. Yet, Al-Malti might be excused for his lack of sufficient knowledge about Sufism, as this earthly religion was not yet as widespread among the masses as it would be and it has not yet at this point taken the crystalized, evolved shape that emerged a century later, in contrast to the settled forms and frameworks of the Sunnite and Shiite religion at the time (among other religions). Al-Malti elsewhere in his book mentions details about some views of Al-Khawarij group but we did not quote any of such details because Al-Khawarij group was never influential at the era of Al-Malti.