But our immediate point is the matter of constant, free prayer. In the Qur’an (xxxiii, 41) the believers are exhorted to “remember (_dhikr_) God often;” this command the Sufis obeyed with a correlative depreciation of the five canonical prayers. Their meetings for the purpose, much like our own prayer-meetings, still more like the “class-meetings” of the early Methodists, as opposed to stated public worship, were called _dhikrs_. These services were fiercely attacked by the orthodox theologians, but survived and are the darwish functions which tourists still go to see at Constantinople and Cairo. But the more private and personal _dhikrs_ of individual Sufis, each in his house repeating his Qur’anic litanies through the night, until to the passer-by it sounded like the humming of bees or the unceasing drip of roof-gutters, these seem, in the course of the third century, to have fallen before ridicule and accusations of heresy. [Sidenote: TAWAKKUL] Another point against the earlier Sufis was their abuse of the principle of _tawakkul_, dependence upon God. They gave up their trades and professions; they even gave up the asking for alms. Their ideal was to be absolutely at God’s disposal, utterly cast upon His direct sustenance (_rizq_). No anxiety for their daily bread was permitted to them; they must go through the world separated from it and its needs and looking up to God. Only one who can do this is properly an acknowledger of God’s unity, a true _Muwahhid_. To such, God would assuredly open the door of help; they were at His gate; and the biographies of the saints are full of tales how His help used to come.