h), having
assembled the Pundits and Sanyasis who are the expounders of the
Vedas and Upanishads, he caused a translation to be made of the
latter into Persian. This was completed in the year of the
Hegira, 1067, A.D., 1656. Every difficulty was elucidated
by this ancient compilation, which, without doubt, is the first of
inspired works, the fountain of truth, the Sea of the Unity; not
only consentaneous with the Koran, but a commentary on it."

[61] Founded by Abdul Qadir Gilani.

[62] According to the reported saying of Muhammad, "He who knows
himself, knows God."

[63] Chapter 5.

[64] The great mystic poet of Persia (A.D. 1207-1272).

APPENDIX I

MOHAMMEDAN CONVERSIONS

By Mohammedan Conversion is not here meant conversion from Christianity
to Mohammedanism, or _vice versa_, but those spiritual crises which take
place _within_ Mohammedanism, as within Christianity, by which the soul
is stung as with a regenerating shudder to use George Eliot's phrase, to
rise from a notional to a real belief in God. Mohammedan theologians are
as aware of this distinction as Christian ones. Thus Al Ghazzali, in his
_Revival of the Religious Sciences_, is very sarcastic on the indulgence
in the common expletive, "We take refuge in God," by Mohammedans without
attaching any real meaning to it. He says: "If you see a lion coming
towards you, and there is a fort close by, you do not stand exclaiming,
'I take refuge in this fort!' but you get into it. Similarly, when you
hear of the wrath to come, do not merely _say_, 'I take refuge in God,'
but take refuge in Him."

This transformation of a notional into a real belief has proved the
crisis in the lives of many of the saints and mystics of Islam, without,
as far as it appears, any contact on their part with Christianity. Thus,
Ibn Khalliqan, in his great Biographical Dictionary, tells of Al-Fudail,
a celebrated highwayman, who, one night, while he was on his way to an
immoral assignation, was arrested by the voice of a Koran-reader
chanting the verse, "Is not the time yet come unto those who believe,
that their hearts should humbly submit to the admonition of God?" On
this he exclaimed, "O Lord! that time is come." He then went away from
that place, and the approach of night induced him to repair for shelter
to a ruined edifice. He there found a band of travellers, one of whom
said to the others, "Let us set out"; but another answered,