, claiming that he had departed from their way and scattered their ranks. He disputed with them and they disputed with him; he cut off some of them and they likewise cut him off.

He then came to grips with another faction who, under the banner of spiritual poverty, affiliated themselves with a ṭarīqa (Sufi order) and claimed to possess its most delicate inner meaning and its clearest reality. He uncovered the true nature of those paths and, as he alleged, laid bare their baneful effects. The matter therefore reverted (1) to the first group of his opponents, and they sought help from those who nursed rancour (2) against him among the people who had broken with him. They took his case to the princes, and each of them applied his mind (3) to proving his supposed unbelief. They drafted official memoranda (4), stirred up the ruwaybiḍa (worthless rabble) to circulate them among the grandees, and pressed for his transfer to the royal court in Egypt. Accordingly he was moved, and the very hour he arrived he was lodged in prison and detained. They convened councils bent on shedding his blood and assembled for that purpose a crowd drawn from the frequenters of the zawiyas (5) and the residents of the madrasahs—some conciliatory (6) in dispute yet treacherous in deceit, others openly declaring him an unbeliever and brazenly boycotting him—subjecting him to the spectre of sudden doom. Yet your Lord knows what their breasts conceal and what they reveal (7); and the one who openly brands him an unbeliever is in no worse a plight than the one who schemes in secret.