ABSTRACT
Some of the Kharijites from Basra had sympathized with Ibn-az-Zubayr and had given him active help. Two Kharijite movements which greatly stimulated theological development sprang up and grew to a considerable size during the civil war of Ibn-az-Zubayr. The first of these is the sub-sect of the Azraqites, so named from their original leader, Nafi' ibn-al-Azraq. The second sub-sect which became prominent about the same time was the Najdites. The Azraqites stimulated theological thinking because, with a fair measure of logic, they worked out the Kharijite position to an extreme conclusion. In what is recorded of Najdite views on matters readers see the beginnings of a reconsideration of the Kharijite conception of the true Islamic community so as to make allowances for human imperfections. The strict Kharijite view, from which the Najdites presumably started, was that a man who commits a grave sin belongs to the "people of Hell".
