empty, and this was reported as a miracle. Soon afterwards the devotee re-appeared to the villagers and told them that he had been set free by angels, and then he escaped to Syria. After his departure the Qaramata continued to preach and expand the doctrines which he had learned, and in this was assisted by the other nakibs. According to Ibn Athir, cited by Nuwayri, this Qaramat or Hamdan was a man who “affected a religious life, detached from the world and mortified,” and “when anyone joined his sect Hamdan took a piece of gold from him, saying that it was for the Imam. From them (_i.e._, his followers) he chose twelve _nakibs_ whom he charged to call men to his religion, saying that they were the apostles of Isa b. Maryam.” The A. text refers to Husayn’s death, the B. text says that he went to Syria. Tabari speaks of the devotee as coming from Khuzistan, but Akhu Muhsin says that he was sent by Ahmad from Salamiya. De Goeje (p. 18) suggests that he may have been Ahmad’s son Husayn. According to the _Kitab al-Oyun_ (MS. Berlin, 69—cited by de Goeje) Saʿid, the son of Husayn, the son of Ahmad, the son of ʿAbdullah, was born at Salamiya in 259 or 260. But evidently there is some error here. Husayn was the grandson, not the son, of Abdullah, and the head of the sect did not leave Askar Mokram before 266: probably not until after the repression of the slave rebellion in 270. No open revolt of the Qarmatians took place until 286. In his _Chronicle_ Bar Hebraeus applies to the sect of the _Nusayri_ all that he says about the Qarmatians, and so the books of the Druses in their references to the Nusayri prove that they hold very much the same doctrines as the Ismaʿilians. It is supposed that the Nusayri sect is a survival of an ancient pagan community (cf. René Dussand: _Hist. et religion des Nosairis_, _Paris_, 1900). This fits in with the advice given to the missionaries that Manichaean converts may be admitted to a higher grade without hesitation.