The ritual differences between the Bayázi and other schools are small; in prayer the arms and hands are extended down the thighs, instead of being folded over the waist. Contrary to the practice of Sunnis and Shiahs, they may wear gold or silver rings of indefinite weight, and silks and satins, provided that the latter be removed during prayer. These sectarians cannot marry women with whom they have cohabited; divorce is imperative from wives whom they have visited at a forbidden season, and they allow legitimacy to children horn within two years after the father’s death. Amongst the Shafei the period extends to four years: physiological ignorance of ovarian dropsy fixed the time; and mistaken charity has refused to shorten it. In general the Bayázi, like the Druze, appears unwilling to explain his tenets, a remarkable contrast with the self-assertion and the controversial readiness of other Moslems. When betrayed into argument they quarrel about their belief—a sign of weakness; the calmly and thoroughly convinced, for instance an honest Scotch country minister, only smiles with pity upon the man who dares to differ from him. The studied simplicity and literalness of the sect and its fierce intolerance, combined with its crass semi-barbarism and isolation from the great family of nations, have favoured the progress of Wahhabi puritanism, and accordingly many Bayázi have ranged themselves under the uncompromising banner of puritanical ‘Unitarianism’—literalism and Koranolatry. Of old the Kharijis were the flowers of the Islamitic garden; and history will ever dwell upon the literary glories of Seville and Cordova. It was this heresy that produced the Allámat (doctissimus) El Ghazali, and the celebrated Persian grammarian and poet, the Imam Abú’l Kasim Mohammed bin Omar, El Zamakhshari. His wife attacked his vile belief in man’s Free-will with an argumentum ad hominem more demonstrative than purely logical. It caused him, however, to recant the error and to express his penitence in that glorious ode beginning— يا من يرا مدّ البعوض جناحه فی ظلمة ليل البهيم اّليالى ‘O Thou who seest the midge extend her wing Athwart the gathered glooms of gloomiest night,’ and to end life in the firm conviction of fate and predestination. His commentary (the Kashsháf ’an Hikáik el Tanzíl) displayed a logical reasoning, a profundity of learning, and purity of style which made it popular throughout El Islam, and it cleared the way for a long procession of similar productions.