"If Gnosis were to take visible form, all that looked thereon would die at the sight of its beauty and loveliness and goodness and grace, and every brightness would become dark beside the splendour thereof.[727] "Gnosis is nearer to silence than to speech." [Sidenote: Dhu ’l-Nún al-Misrí († 860 A.D.).] We now come to Dhu ’l-Nún al-Misrí († 860 A.D.), whom the Ṣúfís themselves consider to be the primary author of their doctrine.[728] That he at all events was among the first of those who helped to give it permanent shape is a fact which is amply attested by the collection of his sayings preserved in ‘Aṭṭár's _Memoirs of the Saints_ and in other works of the same kind.[729] It is clear that the theory of gnosis, with which he deals at great length, was the central point in his system; and he seems to have introduced the doctrine that true knowledge of God is attained only by means of ecstasy (_wajd_). "The man that knows God best," he said, "is the one most lost in Him." Like Dionysius, he refused to make any positive statements about the Deity. "Whatever you imagine, God is the contrary of that." Divine love he regarded as an ineffable mystery which must not be revealed to the profane. All this is the very essence of the later Ṣúfiism. It is therefore desirable to ascertain the real character of Dhu ’l-Nún and the influences to which he was subjected. The following account gives a brief summary of what I have been able to discover; fuller details will be found in the article mentioned above. His name was Abu ’l-Fayḍ Thawbán b. Ibráhím, Dhu ’l-Nún (He of the Fish) being a sobriquet referring to one of his miracles, and his father was a native of Nubia, or of Ikhmím in Upper Egypt. Ibn Khallikán describes Dhu ’l-Nún as 'the nonpareil of his age' for learning, devotion, communion with the Divinity (_ḥál_), and acquaintance with literature (_adab_); adding that he was a philosopher (_ḥakím_) and spoke Arabic with elegance. The people of Egypt, among whom he lived, looked upon him as a _zindíq_ (freethinker), and he was brought to Baghdád to answer this charge, but after his death he was canonised. In the _Fihrist_ he appears among "the philosophers who discoursed on alchemy," and Ibnu ’l-Qifṭí brackets him with the famous occultist Jábir b. Ḥayyán. He used to wander (as we learn from Mas‘údí)[730] amidst the ruined Egyptian monuments, studying the inscriptions and endeavouring to decipher the mysterious figures which were thought to hold the key to the lost sciences of antiquity. He also dabbled in medicine, which, like Paracelsus, he combined with alchemy and magic. Let us see what light these facts throw upon the origin of the Ṣúfí theosophy. Did it come to Egypt from India, Persia, or Greece? [Sidenote: The origin of theosophical Ṣúfiism.]