We have now reached the third stage of the history of the Mu`tazilites, that which marks their decline. During this latter period they divide into two schools, that of Basra giving its attention mainly to the attributes of God, that of Baghdad being chiefly occupied with the more purely philosophical discussion of what is meant by an existing thing. The Basrite discussions received their final form in the dispute between _al-Jubbay_ (d. 303) and his son _Abu Hashim_ (d. 321). The latter held that the attributes of God are distinct _modes_ of being, we know the essence under such varying modes or conditions, but they are not _states_, nor are they thinkable apart from the essence, though they are distinct from it but do not exist apart from it. Against this his father objected that these subjective attributes are only names and convey no concept. The attributes are thus asserted to be neither qualities nor states so as to imply subject or agent, but they are inseparably united with the essence. Against all views of this sort the orthodox adhered, and still adhere to the opinion that God has real qualities. Those who laid emphasis on this in opposition to the Mu`tazilite speculations are commonly known as _Sifatites_ (_sifat_, qualities), but they admit that, as God is not like a man, the qualities attributed to him in the Qur´an are not the same as those qualities bearing the same names which are referred to men, and it is not possible for us to know the real import of the qualities attributed to God. A more pronounced recoil against the Mu`tazilite speculations appears in Abu `Abdullah b. Karram (d. 256) and his followers who were known as Karramites. These returned to a crude anthropomorphism and held that God not only has qualities of precisely the same kind as a man may have, but that he actually sits on a throne, etc., taking in plain literal sense all the statements made in the Qur´an. The Mu`tazilite school of Baghdad concerned itself mainly with the metaphysical question--“what is a thing?” It was admitted that “thing” denotes a concept which could be known and could serve as subject to a predicate. It does not necessarily exist, for existence is a quality added to the essence: with this addition the essence becomes an entity (_mawjud_), without this addition it is a non-entity (_ma`dum_) but still has substance and accident, so that God creates by adding the single attribute of existence.