MUSLIMS: THE COMMUNITYDuring the second (itna, Shuray}:!. is said to have refused to commu-
nicate with anyone for nine years to show his disapproval of the
sedition of 'Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr.7^5 But among Muslims the tend-
ency towards pious silence was countered by the Qur'anic injunction
to intervene actively in society by commanding what is good and
forbidding what is evil, by the feeling that it was better to exhort
people to abandon sin and to live virtuously, and by the belief that
speech which glorified God was better than silence,76 The fact that
active piety outweighed passive piety among Muslims is one of the
best explanations for the shift of religious dynamism from Christians
to Muslims in this period.
Weeping was part of worship. As an expiatory exercise it may be
derived ultimately from the weeping of the neo-Babylonian king in
atonement for the sins of the year,77 but in Late Antiquity it was most
immediately of Manichaean origin. The Middle Iranian and Soghdian
texts require prayer, weeping, and sadness because of sin, and compare
the Manichaean Elect to white-feathered doves who wail, lament, and
are full of sorrow.^78 The same attitude is present in Ephrem Syrus,
who speaks of pouring tears in prayer to purify the body of guilt,79
Jewish rabbis tended to resist such practices, and the Talmud cautions
that blindness may result from too much weeping.80 But some such
practice probably existed among the ascetic mourners for Zion (hence
the Rabbinic opposition). A suggestion ofJewish influence on Christian
weeping can be found in a list of heretics from the end of the Sasanian
period which describes monks who put particular emphasis on fasting,
mourning, and weeping as nazfre.^81 Abraham Qidonaya (d. 637) was
such a weeper, and it is said that "every hour he poured his soul in
prayer, and every hour he troubled his eyes in weeping."82 Isaac of
Nineveh considered tears to be a sign of grace that opened the eyes
to true perception and a mourner (Syr. abhfla) to be one who spent
his time in hope of heaven.^83 But the older idea of expiation is still
7-5 Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat, VI, 97.
76 G. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam (Chicago, 1962), pp. 126-27; Qur'an, 3:104,
110.
77 G. Roux, Ancient Iraq (Hammondsworth, Middlesex, 1966), p. 363.
78 V66bus, History of Asceticism, I, 126-27.
79 V66bus, Ephrem, p. 111.
80 Rodkinson, Talmud, 11(1) "Sabbath," 355.
81 V66bus, History of Asceticism, 11, 125.
82 Ibid., p. 11, 58.
83 Issac of Nineveh, "Mystic Treatises," pp. 34-35, 57.