refusing pleasure and by chastising the flesh,
man can lift himself gradually to the height of the elect and even of
angels. If he perseveres in this path he is gradually purged from
everything human, he receives the spirit of God as Jesus did, and all
that he does is done by God.

The Shiites say, moreover, that the reason for which Hallaj was put to
death should be found not in his utterances but in the astonishing
influence which he exercised over the highest classes of society, on
princes and their courts, and which caused much disquietude to others,
especially to the orthodox mullahs. Hallaj has even been judged not
unfavourably by those among the orthodox who were characterised by a
certain breadth of view, and who, like Ghazzali, although they disliked
free-thinking, yet wished for a religion of the heart, and were not
content with the dry orthodoxy of the great majority of theologians.
Ghazzali indeed has gone so far as to put a favourable construction on
the following sayings of Hallaj: "I am the Truth," "There is nothing in
Paradise except God." He justifies them on the ground of the speaker's
excessive love for God. In his eyes, as well as in those of other great
authorities, Hallaj is a saint and a martyr. The most learned
theologians of the tenth century, on the contrary, believed that he
deserved execution as an infidel and a blasphemer. Even the greatest
admirers of Hallaj, the Sufis, are not agreed regarding him. Some of
them question whether he were a thorough-going pantheist, and think that
he taught a numerical Pantheism, an immanence of the Deity in certain
souls only. But this is not the opinion of the majority of the Sufis.
The high esteem which they entertain for him is best understood by
comparing the account they give of his martyrdom with that by orthodox
writers. The latter runs as follows:

The common people of Bagdad were circulating reports that Hallaj could
raise the dead, and that the Jinn[21] were his slaves, and brought him
whatever he desired. Hamid, the vizier of the Caliph Muqtadir, was much
disturbed by this, and requested the Caliph to have Hallaj and his
partizans arrested. But the grand chamberlain Nasir was strongly in his
favour, and opposed this; his influence, however, being less than that
of the vizier, Hallaj and some of his followers were arrested. When the
latter were questioned, they admitted that they regarded their leader as
God, since he raised the dead; but when he