In the latter part of the 3rd cent. we begin to find evidences of a “new Sufism,” which was inspired by religious ideals other than those which had been dominant in early Islam, and which developed from those ideals a theology of its own, which for a long time was not admitted as orthodox. Asceticism still occurs, but whilst, on the one hand, it begins to take a more definite character in the deliberate seeking of poverty and mortification, it is, on the other hand, relegated to a subordinate place as a merely preparatory stage in the Sufi life, which is technically described as a “journey.” Poverty, which amongst the early Muslims was esteemed simply in so far as it reproduced the modest life of the Prophet and his companions, and was a standing protest against the secularisation of the Umayyads, now assumed greater prominence as a devotional exercise, a change which appears definitely in Da´ud at-Ta´i (d. 165), who limited his possessions to a rush mat, a brick which he used as a pillow, and a leather water bottle. In later Sufism poverty takes a position of great prominence: the terms _faqir_, “poor man,” and _darwish_, “mendicant,” become synonyms for “Sufi.” But in Sufi teaching religious poverty does not mean absence of possessions only: it implies the absence of all interest in earthly things, the giving up of all participation in earthly possessions, and desiring God as the only aim of desire. So mortification is the subjugation of the evil part of the animal soul, the _nafs_ which is the seat of the lust and passions, and so the weaning of the soul from material interests, a “dying to self and to the world” as a beginning of a living to God.