I have seen fifty works by him at Baghdád and in the neighbouring districts, and some in Khúzistán and Fárs and Khurásán. All his sayings are like the first visions of novices; some of them are stronger, some weaker, some easier, some more unseemly than others. When God bestows a vision on anyone, and he endeavours to describe what he has seen with the power of ecstasy and the help of Divine grace, his words are obscure, especially if he expresses himself with haste and self-admiration: then they are more repugnant to the imaginations, and incomprehensible to the minds, of those who hear them, and then people say, “This is a sublime utterance,” either believing it or not, but equally ignorant of its meaning whether they believe or deny. On the other hand, when persons of true spirituality and insight have visions, they make no effort to describe them, and do not occupy themselves with self-admiration on that account, and are careless of praise and blame alike, and are undisturbed by denial and belief. Footnote 95: The famous physician Abú Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyá al-Rází, who died about 320 A.H. See Brockelmann, i, 233. It is absurd to charge al-Ḥalláj with being a magician. According to the principles of Muḥammadan orthodoxy, magic is real, just as miracles are real; but the manifestation of magic in the state of perfection is infidelity, whereas the manifestation of miracles in the state of perfection is knowledge of God (_ma`rifat_), because the former is the result of God’s anger, while the latter is the corollary of His being well pleased. I will explain this more fully in the chapter on the affirmation of miracles. By consent of all Sunnites who are endowed with perspicacity, no Moslem can be a magician and no infidel can be held in honour, for contraries never meet. Ḥusayn, as long as he lived, wore the garb of piety, consisting in prayer and praise of God and continual fasts and fine sayings on the subject of Unification. If his actions were magic, all this could not possibly have proceeded from him. Consequently, they must have been miracles, and miracles are vouchsafed only to a true saint. Some orthodox theologians reject him on the ground that his sayings are pantheistic (_ba-ma`ni-yi imtizáj ú ittiḥád_), but the offence lies solely in the expression, not in the meaning. A person overcome with rapture has not the power of expressing himself correctly; besides, the meaning of the expression may be difficult to apprehend, so that people mistake the writer’s intention, and repudiate, not his real meaning, but a notion which they have formed for themselves. I have seen at Baghdád and in the adjoining districts a number of heretics who pretend to be the followers of al-Ḥalláj and make his sayings an argument for their heresy (_zandaqa_) and call themselves Ḥallájís. They spoke of him in the same terms of exaggeration (_ghuluww_) as the Ráfiḍís (Shí`ites) apply to `Alí. I will refute their doctrines in the