94periods the world is decomposed, and the units re-combine to construct a new universe. Wahid Mahmud succeeded in founding a sect which was cruelly persecuted, and finally stamped out of existence by Shah `Abbas. It is said that the poet Hafiz of Shiraz believed in the tenets of this sect.
The third great school of Sufiism conceives Reality as essentially Light or Thought, the, very nature of which demands something to be thought or illuminated. While the preceding school abandoned Neo-Platonism, this school transformed it into new systems. There are, however, two aspects of the metaphysics of this school. The one is genuinely Persian in spirit, the other is chiefly influenced by Christian modes of thought. Both agree in holding that the fact of empirical diversity necessitates a principle of difference in the nature of the Ultimate Reality. I now proceed to consider them in their historical order.
The application of Greek dialectic to Islamic Theology aroused that spirit of critical examination which began with Al-Ash`ari, and found its completest expression in the scepticism of Al-Ghazali. Even among the Rationalists there were some more critical minds - such as Nazzam - whose attitude towards