It will be seen that his position is essentially a mediating one. He wishes to show that the beliefs of the mystics and of the mutakallims are really one although they are reached by different paths. In _fiqh_ he made a similar attempt. The Sufis had always looked down on those theologians who were canonists pure and simple. A study of canon law was a necessity, they thought; but as a propædeutic only. The canonists who went no further never reached religion at all. Especially they held that no Sufi should join himself to any of the four contending schools. Their controversies were upon insignificant details which had nothing to do with the life in God. But could it not be shown that their differences were not actual—one view being true and the other false—but were capable of being reduced to a unity? This was the problem that ash-Sha‘rani attacked. These differing opinions, he held, are adapted to different classes of men. Some men of greater gifts and endurance can follow the hardest of these opinions, while the easier are to be recognized as concessions (_rukhsa_) from God to the weakness of others. Each man may follow freely the view which appeals to him; God has appointed it for him. Ash-Sha‘rani was one of the last original thinkers in Islam: for a thinker he was despite his dealings with the Jinn and al-Khadir. Egypt keeps his memory. A mosque in Cairo bears his name, as does also a division of the Badawite darwishes. In modern times his books have been frequently reprinted, and his influence is one of the ferments in the new Islam. [Sidenote: THE WAHHABITES]