The founder of Islam had too much human nature and common sense to demand of his countrymen such mortifying austerities as were practised by the Jewish Essenes and the Christian monks. His religion was not without ascetic features, _e.g._, the Fast of Ramaḍán, the prohibition of wine, and the ordinance of the pilgrimage, but these can scarcely be called unreasonable. On the other hand Muḥammad condemned celibacy not only by his personal example but also by precept. "There is no monkery in Islam," he is reported to have said, and there was in fact nothing of the kind for more than a century after his death. During this time, however, asceticism made great strides. It was the inevitable outcome of the Muḥammadan conception of Allah, in which the attributes of mercy and love are overshadowed by those of majesty, awe, and vengeance. The terrors of Judgment Day so powerfully described in the Koran were realised with an intensity of conviction which it is difficult for us to imagine. As Goldziher has observed, an exaggerated consciousness of sin and the dread of Divine punishment gave the first impulse to Moslem asceticism. Thus we read that Tamím al-Dárí, one of the Prophet's Companions, who was formerly a Christian, passed the whole night until daybreak, repeating a single verse of the Koran (xlv, 20)--"_Do those who work evil think that We shall make them even as those who believe and do good, so that their life and death shall be equal? Ill do they judge!_"[424] Abu ’l-Dardá, another of the Companions, used to say: "If ye knew what ye shall see after death, ye would not eat food nor drink water from appetite, and I wish that I were a tree which is lopped and then devoured."[425] There were many who shared these views, and their determination to renounce the world and to live solely for God was strengthened by their disgust with a tyrannical and impious Government, and by the almost uninterrupted spectacle of bloodshed, rapine, and civil war. Ḥasan of Baṣra († 728)--we have already met him in connection with the Mu‘tazilites--is an outstanding figure in this early ascetic movement, which proceeded on orthodox lines.[426] Fear of God seized on him so mightily that, in the words of his biographer, "it seemed as though Hell-fire had been created for him alone."[427] All who looked on his face thought that he must have been recently overtaken by some great calamity.[428] One day a friend saw him weeping and asked him the cause. "I weep," he replied, "for fear that I have done something unwittingly and unintentionally, or committed some fault, or spoken some word which is unpleasing to God: then He may have said, 'Begone, for now thou hast no more honour in My court, and henceforth I will not receive anything from thee.'"[429] Al-Mubarrad relates that two monks, coming from Syria, entered Baṣra and looked at Ḥasan, whereupon one said to the other, "Let us turn aside to visit this man, whose way of life appears like that of the Messiah." So they went, and they found him supporting his chin on the palm of his hand, while he was saying--"How I marvel at those who have been ordered to lay in a stock of provisions and have been summoned to set out on a journey, and yet the foremost of them stays for the hindermost! Would that I knew what they are waiting for!"[430] The following utterances are characteristic:--