When times changed men were put to death for holding the opposite opinion. The Imam As-Shafa'i held a public disputation in Baghdad with Hafs, a Mutazilite preacher, on this very point. Shafa'i quoted the verse, "God said _be, and it was_," and asked, "Did not God create all things by the word _be?_" Hafs assented. "If then the Quran was created, must not the word _be_ have been created with it?" Hafs could not deny so plain a proposition. "Then," said Shafa'i, "All things, according to you, were created by a created being, which is a gross inconsistency and manifest {138} impiety." Hafs was reduced to silence, and such an effect had Shafa'i's logic on the audience that they put Hafs to death as a pestilent heretic. Thus did the Ash'arian opinions on the subject of the Divine attributes again gain the mastery.[122] The Mutazilites failed, and the reason why is plain. They were, as a rule, influenced by no high spiritual motives; often they were mere quibblers. They sought no light in an external revelation. Driven to a reaction by the rigid system they combated, they would have made reason alone their chief guide. The nobler spirits among them were impotent to regenerate the faith they professed to follow. It was, however, a great movement, and at one time, it threatened to change the whole nature of Islam. This period of Muslim history, famed as that in which the effort was made to cast off the fetters of the rigid system which Islam was gradually tightening by the increased authority given to traditionalism, and to the refinements of the four Imams, was undoubtedly a period of, comparatively speaking, high civilization. Baghdad, the capital of the Khalifate, was a busy, populous, well-governed city. This it mainly owed to the influence of the Persian family of the Barmecides, one of whom was Vizier to the Khalif Harun-ur-Rashid. Harun's fame as a good man is quite undeserved. It is true that he was a patron of learning, that his Empire was extensive, that he gained many victories, that his reign was the culminating point of Arab grandeur. But for all that, he was a morose despot, a cruel man, thoroughly given up to pleasures of a very questionable nature. Drunkenness and debauchery were common at court. Plots and intrigues were ever at work. Such was the state of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, periods {139} of Muslim rule. This, too, was at a time most favourable for the development of any good which Islam might have possessed. It should be remembered that whatever glory is rightly attached to this period is connected with an epoch when heresy was specially prevalent, when orthodoxy was weak in Baghdad. The culture of the time was in spite of, not on account of, the influence of orthodox Islam. 2. ANGELS.--Of this article of the creed Muhammad Al-Berkevi says:--