The reader may judge from these extracts whether the _Assemblies_ of Ḥarírí are so deficient in matter as some critics have imagined. But, of course, the celebrity of the work is mainly due to its consummate literary form--a point on which the Arabs have always bestowed singular attention. Ḥarírí himself was a subtle grammarian, living in Baṣra, the home of philological science;[629] and though he wrote to please rather than to instruct, he seems to have resolved that his work should illustrate every beauty and nicety of which the Arabic language is capable. We Europeans can see as little merit or taste in the verbal conceits--equivoques, paronomasias, assonances, alliterations, &c.--with which his pages are thickly studded, as in _tours de force_ of composition which may be read either forwards or backwards, or which consist entirely of pointed or of unpointed letters; but our impatience of such things should not blind us to the fact that they are intimately connected with the genius and traditions of the Arabic tongue,[630] and therefore stand on a very different footing from those euphuistic extravagances which appear, for example, in English literature of the Elizabethan age. By Ḥarírí's countrymen the _Maqámát_ are prized as an almost unique monument of their language, antiquities, and culture. One of the author's contemporaries, the famous Zamakhsharí, has expressed the general verdict in pithy verse-- "I swear by God and His marvels, By the pilgrims' rite and their shrine: Ḥarírí's _Assemblies_ are worthy To be written in gold each line." [Sidenote: The religious literature of the period.] Concerning some of the specifically religious sciences, such as Dogmatic Theology and Mysticism, we shall have more to say in the following chapter, while as to the science of Apostolic Tradition (_Ḥadíth_) we must refer the reader to what has been already said. All that can be attempted here is to take a passing notice of the most eminent writers and the most celebrated works of this epoch in the field of religion. [Sidenote: Málik b. Anas (713-795 A.D.).] The place of honour belongs to the Imám Málik b. Anas of Medína, whose _Muwaṭṭa’_ is the first great _corpus_ of Muḥammadan Law. He was a partisan of the ‘Alids, and was flogged by command of the Caliph Manṣúr in consequence of his declaration that he did not consider the oath of allegiance to the ‘Abbásid dynasty to have any binding effect. [Sidenote: Bukhárí and Muslim.]