RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESat the Nestorian monastery on Mt. Izla in about 600. At a time of
increasing hostility towards Monophysites and of danger from the
Mesallyane, some of the monks living in cells isolated from the main
monastery had taken women in to live with them and were only
exposed when their children gave them away. The Arab monk Mar
Eliyya, who had discovered them, roused the entire community by
sounding the wooden gongs (Syr. naqqus). After an investigation, not
only were the offending monks expelled from the monastery, but when
it was discovered that Mar Ya'qub had known about them without
denouncing them, he, too, was expelled. Mar Ya'qub went off to
Adiabene, where he refounded the monastery of Beth 'Abhe. The
traditions of that monastery preserved the opinion of some of the
monks that Mar Ya'qub had acted properly in sheltering the sinners
and leaving them to the Divine examination, even though he had seen
their wickedness.^52 This entire episode and the attitudes it reveals
among Nestorian monks at the beginning of the seventh century seems
to foreshadow the way in which the position of the sinner in the
Muslim community was discussed in the later seventh century, even
to the Khariji insistence that those who withheld judgment were un-
believers.
AUTHORITY AND DESTINYIrjii' was also used to sanction support for the regime against rebels.
This kind of irjii' was associated with the 'Uthmaniyya whose pursuit
of revenge for the death of 'Uthman was transformed into loyalty to
the Sufyanis and then to the Marwanis.^53 However, the ideology used
by these regimes justified their authority in a more direct way. They
presented themselves as the legitimate leaders of the Islamic community
in religious as well as secular matters. From Mu'awiya to the last
Marwani, Muslim rulers called themselves the Servant of God (,Ab-
dullah) and saw themselves as the representatives or agents of God
on earth. In the aftermath of the second (itna, the early Marwanis
began to make three additional claims to increase their religious le-
gitimacy. They claimed to rule according to the Qur'an and sunna.
They allowed themselves to be represented as the source of religious
guidance and leadership; Farazdaq called 'Abd al-Malik "the Imam
S2 Thomas of Margha, Governors, I, 29-33, 35; Il, 53-60, 62.
53 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, Il, 90-92; Thomson, "Early Islamic Sects," pp. 92-
93; Montgomery Watt, Formative Period, pp. 75-77.