then, is responsible for the heresies of Abu'l-Ala! Allah be praised! But this view of the matter was not new to me. I have heard it expressed by zealous Muslem scholars, who see in Abu'l-Ala an adversary too strong to be allowed to enlist with the enemy. They will keep him, as one of the "Pillars of the Faith," at any cost. Coming from them, therefore, this rhyme-begotten heresy theory is not surprising.
But I am surprised to find a European scholar like Professor Margoliouth giving countenance to such views; even repeating, to support his own argument,r such drivel. For if the system of rhyme-ending imposes upon the poet his irreligious opinions, how can we account for them in his prose writings? How, for instance, explain his book "Al-fusul wal Ghayat (The Chapters and the Purposes), a work in which he parodied the Koran itself, and which only needed, as he said, to bring it to the standard of the Book, "the polishing of four centuries of reading in the pulpit?" And how account for his "Risalat ul-Ghufran" (Epistle of Forgiveness), a most remarkable work both in form and conception?—a Divina Comedia in its cotyledenous state, as it were, only that Abu'l-Ala does not seem to have relished the idea of visiting Juhannam. He
must have felt that in his "three earthly prisons"
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