"The fakír holds fast to his 'poverty' and is profoundly convinced of its superior merit. He prefers it to riches because he longs for the Divine recompense of which his faith assures him ... and whenever he contemplates the everlasting reward, he abstains from the fleeting joys of this world and embraces poverty and indigence and fears that if he should cease to be 'poor' he will lose both the merit and the prize. Now this is absolutely unsound according to the doctrine of the Ṣúfís, because he hopes for recompense and renounces the world on that account, whereas the Ṣúfí does not renounce it for the sake of promised rewards but, on the contrary, for the sake of present 'states,' for he is the 'son of his time.'...[446] The theory that 'poverty' is the foundation of Ṣúfiism signifies that the diverse stages of Ṣúfiism are reached by the road of 'poverty'; it does not imply that the Ṣúfí is essentially a fakír." [Sidenote: The early Ṣúfís.] The keynote of Ṣúfiism is disinterested, selfless devotion, in a word, Love. Though not wholly strange, this idea was very far from being familiar to pious Muḥammadans, who were more deeply impressed by the power and vengeance of God than by His goodness and mercy. The Koran generally represents Allah as a stern, unapproachable despot, requiring utter submission to His arbitrary will, but infinitely unconcerned with human feelings and aspirations. Such a Being could not satisfy the religious instinct, and the whole history of Ṣúfiism is a protest against the unnatural divorce between God and Man which this conception involves. Accordingly, I do not think that we need look beyond Islam for the origin of the Ṣúfí doctrines, although it would be a mistake not to recognise the part which Christian influence must have had in shaping their early development. The speculative character with which they gradually became imbued, and which in the course of time completely transformed them, was more or less latent during the Umayyad period and for nearly a century after the accession of the House of ‘Abbás. The early Ṣúfís are still on orthodox ground: their relation to Islam is not unlike that of the mediæval Spanish mystics to the Roman Catholic Church. They attach extraordinary value to certain points in Muḥammad's teaching and emphasise them so as to leave the others almost a dead letter. They do not indulge in profound dialectic, but confine themselves to matters bearing on practical theology. Self-abandonment, rigorous self-mortification, fervid piety, and quietism carried to the verge of apathy form the main features of their creed. [Sidenote: Ibráhím b. Adham.]