Among the _Maksud chep_, who are a more intelligent people, the author of this book found himself in the house of one of them. There a man called _Hushíar Refik Nikarindah_, asked him: “If it were not permitted to drink intoxicating liquors, how was it that the former prophets, and some of the khalifs, the sons of Ommiah,[548] drank wine?” He answered: “The wine could not overcome their understanding; with us, it is not so.” Hushiar said again to the author of this work: “If the khalifs, after the prophet, possessed the power to create and to annihilate lives, why did they not render the heretics dumb?” The answer was: “A king sent a phial of deadly poison to the Amir of the believers, Omar (the grace of God be with him!) that he may give it to an enemy; the khalif said: ‘I have no greater enemy than my own spirit,’ and he drank the whole phial, from which however his sacred body received no harm; now, the gentle-minded personage, who could drink poison, how would he not hear the abuse of mistaken men? So represent to thyself the other khalifs.” The _Cheps_ are a tribe of the people of Shekunah. [498] Sheheristâni is the surname of _Al Fath Mohammed Ben Abdalkerim_, one of the most celebrated doctors of the Ashârian sect, an account of which is to follow. He died in the year of the Hejira 548 (A. D. 1153). He composed several works upon metaphysics and the scholastic theology of the Muselmans, and among others that which is entitled _Nehajat alekdam fi êlm al Kelam_, and on account of which he is entitled _Mâtakellam al-Ashari_, “the scholastic of the Ashârian.” We have also from him a book called _Al Melal u alnahal_, “the means of curing wearisomeness and melancholy.”――(Herbelot.) [499] According to Sheheristani, quoted by Pococke (p. 211, 1st edit.), the Magians were divided into seventy sects; the Jews into seventy-one; the Christians into seventy-two; and the Moslem into seventy-three. Among the sects there was always one to be saved.