The history of Saracen culture is the history of the attainment of saner ideas and a higher plane of thought. Within a century of the Hej'ra [1041] there had arisen some rational skepticism in the Moslem schools, as apart from the chronic schisms and strifes of the faithful. A school of theology had been founded by Hasan-al-Basri at Bassorah; and one of his disciples, Wasil ibn Attâ, following some previous heretics--Mabad al Jhoni, Ghailan of Damascus, and Jonas al Aswari [1042]--rejected the predestination doctrine of the Koran as inconsistent with the future judgment; arguing for freewill and at the same time for the humane provision of a purgatory. From this beginning dates the Motazileh or class of Motazilites (or Mu`tazilites), [1043] the philosophic reformers and moderate freethinkers of Islam. Other sects of a semi-political character had arisen even during the last illness of the Prophet, and others soon after his death. [1044] One party sought to impose on the faithful the "Sunna" or "traditions," which really represented the old Arabian ideas of law, but were pretended to be unwritten sayings of Mohammed. [1045] To this the party of Ali (the Prophet's cousin) objected; whence began the long dispute between the Shiah or Shîites (the anti-traditionists), and the Sunnites; the conquered and oppressed Persians tending to stand with the former, and generally, in virtue of their own thought, to supply the heterodox element under the later Khalifates. [1046] Thus Shîites were apt to be Motazilites. [1047] On Ali's side, again, there broke away a great body of Kharejites or Separatists, who claimed that the Imaum or head of the Faith should be chosen by election, while the Shîites stood for succession by divine right. [1048] All this had occurred before any schools of theology existed. The Motazilites, once started, divided gradually into a score of sects, [1049] all more or less given to rationalizing within the limits of monotheism. [1050] The first stock were named Kadarites, because insisting on man's power (kadar) over his acts. [1051] Against them were promptly ranged the Jabarites, who affirmed that man's will was wholly under divine constraint (jabar). [1052] Yet another sect, the Sifatites, opposed both of the others, some of them [1053] standing for a literal interpretation of the Koran, which is in part predestinationist, and in parts assumes freewill; while the main body of orthodox, following the text, professed to respect as insoluble mystery the contradictions they found in it. [1054] The history of Islam in this matter is strikingly analogous to that of Christianity from the rise of the Pelagian heresy.