The Baqliyya was an extremist Shīʿī, probably Carmathian (Qarmaṭī), sect mentioned in Iraq in early ʿAbbāsid times. The Kitāb al-aghānī of Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. 356/967) mentions a figure from the time of the caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 136-58/754-75), a boon companion of the heretic ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya, a certain al-Baqlī (whose name derived from Arabic baql , "vegetables, greens"), who held that "mankind is like the vegetable: when it dies it never comes back" (Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī 11:231). This