"More than half the population of Kúfa was composed of _Mawálí_ (Clients), who monopolised handicraft, trade, and commerce. They were mostly Persians in race and language; they had come to Kúfa as prisoners of war and had there passed over to Islam: then they were manumitted by their owners and received as clients into the Arab tribes, so that they now occupied an ambiguous position (_Zwitterstellung_), being no longer slaves, but still very dependent on their patrons; needing their protection, bound to their service, and forming their retinue in peace and war. In these _Mawálí_, who were entitled by virtue of Islam to more than the 'dominant Arabism' allowed them, the hope now dawned of freeing themselves from clientship and of rising to full and direct participation in the Moslem state."[409] [Sidenote: Mukhtár and the _Mawálí_.] [Sidenote: Persian influence on the Shí‘a.] Mukhtár, though himself an Arab of noble family, trusted the _Mawálí_ and treated them as equals, a proceeding which was bitterly resented by the privileged class. "You have taken away our clients who are the booty which God bestowed upon us together with this country. We emancipated them, hoping to receive the Divine recompense and reward, but you would not rest until you made them sharers in our booty."[410] Mukhtár was only giving the _Mawálí_ their due--they were Moslems and had the right, as such, to a share in the revenues. To the haughty Arabs, however, it appeared a monstrous thing that the despised foreigners should be placed on the same level with themselves. Thus Mukhtár was thrown into the arms of the _Mawálí_, and the movement now became not so much anti-Umayyad as anti-Arabian. Here is the turning-point in the history of the Shí‘a. Its ranks were swelled by thousands of Persians imbued with the extreme doctrines of the Saba’ites which have been sketched above, and animated by the intense hatred of a downtrodden people towards their conquerors and oppressors. Consequently the Shí‘a assumed a religious and enthusiastic character, and struck out a new path which led it farther and farther from the orthodox creed. The doctrine of 'Interpretation' (_Ta’wíl_) opened the door to all sorts of extravagant ideas. One of the principal Shí‘ite sects, the Háshimiyya, held that "there is an esoteric side to everything external, a spirit to every form, a hidden meaning (_ta’wíl_) to every revelation, and to every similitude in this world a corresponding reality in the other world; that ‘Alí united in his own person the knowledge of all mysteries and communicated it to his son Muḥammad Ibnu ’l-Ḥanafiyya, who passed it on to his son Abú Háshim; and that the possessor of this universal knowledge is the true Imám."[411] So, without ceasing to be Moslems in name, the Shí‘ites transmuted Islam into whatever shape they pleased by virtue of a mystical interpretation based on the infallible authority of the House of Muḥammad, and out of