[584] _Karkh_ is the name of a part of the town of Baghdad upon the western side of the Tigris, where the khalif Mansúr built the town and his palace; this is the ancient Baghdad; the actual town of Baghdad, upon the eastern side of the river, has been built later. Karkh is chiefly inhabited by Shiâhs, who had frequent quarrels with the Sonnites, dwelling in the other part of the town. One of the most serious tumults between the two parties took place under the khalif Mostasem. Karkh is the actual suburb of Baghdad, in which the tombs of Zobeidah, wife of Harun Rashid, and of the pious Súfí Marúf Karkhí, above mentioned, are to be seen. The latter died in the year of the Hejira 200, A. D. 815.――(See _Voyage en Arabie, par Niebuhr_, t. II. pp. 245-246, and _Chrestomathie arabe de Silvestre de Sacy_, t. I. pp. 66-70). [585] The eighth Imám, son of Mussa. [586] The Arabs divide in general the history of philosophy into two great periods: the first comprises the _ancient philosophers_, who are subdivided into those anterior, and those posterior, to Aristotle; the second period is that of the _Muselman philosophers_, who form two classes, those before, and those after, Ebn Sina. [587] This appears partly to contradict the view which a recent judicious author, Doctor Schmolders (see his _Essai sur les Écoles philosophiques des Arabes_, pp. 105. 106. 133. 139, Paris, 1842), takes of this sect. According to him, the Motkalemins professed the creation from nothing; they disputed about the reality or non-reality of general notions; they endeavoured to adapt philosophy to the dogmas of the Koran; in short, they were the philosophic theologians of the orthodox sects, or dogmatic philosophers. [588] See above, p. 381. [589] مجتهيد _mujtahid_, is a doctor who exerts all the faculties of his mind to find the truth in contested and undecided matters; he is supposed to possess the science of the Koran, and the traditions with their different meanings, readings, and interpretations, and to be besides skilled in the disquisition in which truth is sought by analogy and comparison. (_Silvestre de Sacy, Chrestomathie arabe_, pp. 169. 170. 171). This term is also used “of one who strives and contends, even to battle, in the cause of God;” and expresses further the highest dignity in the Muhammedan faith, equivalent to Bishop, or Archbishop with us.――(See _the Life of Shaikh Muhammed Alí Hazin_, _translated by F. C. Belfour, M. A. Oxon., F.R.A.S., LL.D._, p. 36.) [590] تقيه _takíyat_, in the dictionary, “fear, caution, piety.” I thought it more correctly translated, here and elsewhere, by “religious zeal.”