Abdullah Mantıcı 200553006

HIST 311 Fall 2023-24

Mihna
After the Prophet’s passing, the Islamic Empire struggled over certain chronic topics
which do not have certain answers for them still. And one of them is the issue of authority
over the subjects. In the time of Prophet ‫ ﷺ‬, as because people were willfully obeying him
and also his being as the prophet of this new but final religion, there was no problem seen.
However, as He ‫ ﷺ‬faced the inevitable, the ummah, referring the political entity composed
of both Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, started to seek for solutions. The time for four
rightly-guided caliphs has lasted fluctuating in discomfort since even amongst the
companions, the issue of “who is going to be the head/caliph” was the main problem. As is
seen from the time of Uthman and Ali, the struggle for the authority has even not step back
from (shedding) blood. In the time of Muawiya, the problem has, for better or worse, been
solved by the sultanate.

As the time passed, the Umayyad Empire founded by the Muawiya, lost a battle
against the Abbasid authorities and now all the land and prosperity belonged to the Umayyad
Empire transferred directly to the Abbasid Empire. However, the power of sultanate and the
legitimacy did not always go in accordance with the state’s political and military power. As
the Quranic verses, and the Prophetic narrations and traditions approved and encouraged,
people who held the knowledge of the religion, namely scholars (ulema: ‫)علماء‬, were also
another but one of the most powerful legitimacy sources in the Islamic tradition. A Muslim
ruler cannot go against the doctrines of the religion, thus, he also cannot go against the people
who know and execute the doctrines of Islam. However, as we proceed, there is a caliph
named Ma’mun who had some problems with the ulema being this much at the core of the
religion and sovereignty. He is responsible for starting the mihna, a painful time period when
the scholars alive were interrogated about their opinion on the createdness of the Quran and
were punished if they were not on the same opinion with the state.

What’s Mihna?

The word mihna comes from Arabic verb m-h-n (‫ )محن‬meaning to test. However the
word mihna (‫ )محنة‬had the meaning of ordeal or severe interrogation. The reason for this
specific word to be chosen is because the scholars of that time, mostly ahl al-sunnah, had very
painful times under the mihna administration. As can be understood, naming of the period is
from the perspective of the persecuted ones, not from the conductors. The reason for that can
be given as “history is written by victors”, after the mihna-supporter caliphs had passed away,
the ahl al-sunnah took the power and had gotten rid of the opposite side. So the victors in this
context is firstly-persecuted group. However, even though I had searched for it many times, I
could not find any source when the name mihna given for this period of time. Given the
possibility for the name to be given in the period when actual incidents were happening,
primary sources of the time did not bother themselves to spare a title for the word mihna at
all.

Createdness of The Quran

Before explaining the actual incidents, it is worth to mention on what basis and
foundation the mihna event constructed. From the early stages of Islamic history, Muslim
theologians had argued over some serious creedal matters, often leading them to split their
path and continue their journey on another creedal acceptance. One, maybe the most serious,
of them is the topic of attributes of Allah. According to ahl al-Sunnah’s point of view, the
attributes of Allah are neither from his essence nor something distinct from him. However,
there is a group, later to be named as “Mutazilite”, rejected the idea of attributes of Allah and
advocated that Allah does whatever he does with his own essence, he does not need any kind
of attribute. By this dispute, there happened two major distinction in creedal side of Islamic
theology: Ahl al-Sunnah and Mutazilite. Deriving from the same discussion, people who
follow Mutazilite school elaborated that, since kalam (‫ )كالم‬is one of the attributes of Allah
and the Quran is named as the kalam of Allah ( ‫)كالم الله‬, they say, as in other attributes of
Allah, kalam is also created, thus, the Quran itself is created. This theoretical acceptance
emerged firstly in the Umayyad Empire. Nonetheless, found its true supporters in the Abbasid
period.

Who did coined it first?

There are a handful of narrations on who firstly introduced the idea of createdness of
the Quran. Serdar Demirel listed the names attributed to the idea:
Walid Ibn Mughirah: He was known as one of the most vile enemies of Islam and has been
criticized in the Quran for a great number of times. According to the verse, he said “this is
(the Quran) is nothing but a speech of a man.” 1 However, as can be seen from the context, his
words are not on the nature of the Quran, contrarily, he was rejecting it as a divine revelation.
So it would be a weak statement if we accept him being the first one to show this idea up.
Ca’d Ibn Dirham: He is widely accepted as one of the two people who firstly introduced the
idea of createdness of the Quran. He was also tutor and mentor of the last Umayyad caliph
Marwan II. This means that the idea has reached even to the palace. He was executed in h.124
by the order of Hisham, the caliph.
Cahm Ibn Safwan: He is also one of the strong narrations on this idea. Besides from Ca’d,
he was known to be first to spread the idea in Khorasan.
Yuhanna al-Dimashqi: He was an active Christian theologian with a considerable amount of
followers and influence over the Christian congregation. His fame also came from his rebuttal
pamphlets and books on Islamic topics. As is known, Muslims accept neither Jesus being the
son of God, nor is he any kind of divine being rather than a prophet. However, al-Dimashqi
proposed that he is a divine being, using the Quranic verses. In the Quran, Jesus was
attributed as “A Word of Allah (‫”)كلمة الله‬, referring to his birth without a father but with a
direct order from God. So he used the idea of the Quran not being created and said “If the
Quran is not created (‫)قديم‬, then a word from Allah is also not created, thus, Jesus is not
created and he is a divine being.” Later we will see that Ma’mun, in letters, criticized and
accused the Muslim theologians of being ignorant who said the Quran was not created, for
strengthening Christians’ hand by this statement.
Abu Hanifah: In a famous book called Tarih al-Baghdad, Abu Hanifah was accused of being
the first to introduce such an idea. However he was acquitted from this charges by another
famous and preeminent theologian, Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari. He stated that these accusations
were solely slander.
However, there is a reason for Abu Hanife and all Hanafis are accused in a number of books.
Considerable amount of Mihna supporters, referring to Mutazilites, were following Hanafi
school in their non-creedal topics. And a few of administrators who used the state power to
force people to believe in this idea were also Hanafis. That’s why, after the Mihna incidents
ceased, Hanafis experienced an extensive smear campaign against them.
Bishr Ibn Ghiyas al-Marisi: He was a student of Abu Yusuf, famous student of Abu Hanifah,
and he was suspended from Abu Yusuf’s circle because of his erroneous creedal ideas. He was
1
Al-Muddasir, 74/24-25
threatened by the Calip Harun al-Rashid because of his idea of the createdness of the Quran.
Nonetheless, he managed to hide for over 25 years and later in the time of Ma’mun he was
praised by him.
Ibn Ebu Duad: He was also following the Mutazilite and Hanafi school and was a high rank
state official at the time. He first started to use state’s power to force the idea of createdness of
the Quran and started to interrogate the famous scholars and persecute them if they were not
willing to accept. 2

Mihna Is Starting

Caliph Ma’mun, despite his father Harun al-Rashid and brother Emin’s unprecedented
opposition to the idea of createdness of the Quran, firstly introduced his opinion on the topic
of createdness of the Quran by h.212 but it remained solely his declaration his own opinion at
that time. However, after roughly six years, h.218 he wrote his famous letters to his Baghdad
Governor, Ishaq Ibn Ibrahim, to interrogate the scholars on this matter and report their
answers to him as soon as possible. He continued that if they were to refuse to accept, do not
give them any kind of state-related duties and do not accept their testimony. This is a major
undertake because declaring that somebody’s testimony is not accepted will denounce them
and lower their importance in the eyes of other scholars and amongst the ordinary people.

Most of the scholars accepted the idea because they were afraid of harm they would
get from the authorities. Few were to refuse and strongly disagree the idea, their names
became the parable of Mihna narrative. According to the sources, at first there were four
scholars who strongly refuse the state-forced narrative; Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Muhammad Ibn
Nuh, al-Saccadah and al-Qavariri. However, because of fear of death, latter two gave up on
their statements and accepted the idea. However, the first two stayed firm about what they
think and jailed because of that. While Ma’mun in Tarsus, today’s Turkey, he summoned the
two scholars from Baghdad. On the road, Muhammad Ibn Nuh, fearing of his youth,
premonish the Ahmad Ibn Hanbal to not give up on his statement, no matter what happens to
him or whatever he says. While they were being brought up to Tarsus, on the road they have

2
Serdar Demirel, Hadis Tasnifinin Altın Çağında Halku’l-Kur’ân Meselesi Ve Hadis Kaynaklarına Etkisi
(İstanbul: İHÜ Yayınları, 2021).
gotten the wind of Ma’mun’s death, only after four or five months he introduced the state
interrogations.3

Figure 1: The Abbasid Caliph's List (Yellow-Colored ones are the ones in whose reign the mihna was still present.)

After Ma’mun’s death, however, the mihna interrogations had proceeded because the Mihna is
also conducted by the head judge of the Empire, Ibn Abu Duad. Later he continued to
influence other succeeding caliphs, until he lost a debate on the createdness of the Quran
against a scholar named al-Azrami. The Mihna interrogations continued in the reign of three
3
‫ ذكر محنة أبي عبد الله‬:‫ كتاب المحنة‬,‫ أبو جنة الحنبلي مصطفى بن محمد صالح الدين بن منسي‬،‫ القباني‬,،‫حنبل بن اسحاق‬
)2019 ,،‫ مركز الملك فيصل للبحوث والدراسات االسالمية‬:‫أحمد بن محمد بن حنبل الشيباني (الرياض‬.
caliphs after Ma’mun: Mu’tasim, Vasik and Mutevekkil, the last abolished the Mihna and
discharged the perpetrators from state offices.

Why Did Mihna Happened?

Explaining why the mihna happened is as vital as explaining how it happened. As the
topic touches upon both religious and political realm, a lot speculated on the topic and
delivered their opinion in the light of evidences present to them. I will be listing and
commenting the most well-supported ideas.

Nimrud Hurvitz: He presented two main ideas in his article: Caliph wanted to reshape the
Islamic theology, and he wanted to wind the ever-lasting struggle between spiritual authority
(scholars) and political authority (caliphate). He does not elaborate on the first one but mostly
on the second one. According to him, Caliphs were suffering from certain authoritative issues.
The spiritual power of caliphate had diminished from the early stages of Islamic History and
only the political side was left. Ma’mun wanted to reestablish this part of caliphate as well.
Because as in the context, the word caliph does not solely refer to a political entity, but also to
a religious leader of the ummah. This approach also suggest that the caliph Ma’mun wanted to
establish an unquestioned and supreme authority, leaving the scholars behind. He states that,
ulema has an authority over people, transmitted by their scholar chains stretching back to the
Prophet. People intrinsically tend to respect and take ulema as trusted because they held the
knowledge of most important, the religion. So they are inherently respected and taken as a
authority by the people.4 Exactly at this point, Demirel refers to Talat Koçyiğit, who
elaborates on the topic by saying that Mutazilites believed that the Quran is not everything.
By saying it is created, they might aimed to lower the rank of it in the eyes of people, later
legitimizing the ruler as a more important being.5

Montgomery Watt: She proposed that the Caliph wanted to reunite his religiously divided
subjects into one idea.6 He was known for his knowledge on a vast spectrum of topics and
love for open discussion of scholars at his rest. As is stated above, Ma’mun was the first to
involve such scholarly discussions amongst the caliphs, that means, Watt continues, he also
4
Nimrod Hurvitz, “Al-Ma’mun (r. 198/813-218/233) And The Mihna,” Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology
(Oxford, United Kingdom, 2016), 649–659.
5
Demirel, Hadis Tasnifinin Altın Çağında Halku’l-Kur’ân Meselesi Ve Hadis Kaynaklarına Etkisi.
6
W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An Extended Survey (Edinburgh: University Press,
1985).
belonged to a party in this discussion. However, she remained insufficient on explaining how
Ma’mun was trying to achieve this unity. Because it is as bright as the day itself that Ma’mun
caused even deeper divisions, let alone scholarly unity.

John Nawas: According to the evidences available to us, Ma’mun wrote five letters, giving
specific names on each other to interrogate and report their opinion. Nawas did a statistical
study on the topic to see whether the Mihna interrogations aimed specifically at one part of
scholarly class or not. What he found is that majority of interrogees were traditionists
(muhaddithun), meaning they stand exactly the opposite of state-funded and supported
theologians (mutakallimun). He later continues that this mihna incidents were nothing but a
authority struggle between the caliph and the muhaddithun. The traditionists were a huge
thread to the caliph because this group were not dependent on any kind of legitimacy source
since they were the carriers of the holy religion’s knowledge. 7 Also, he seems to have personal
problems with the mentioned group because he used very provocative and offensive language
against to-be-interrogatee people: “deluded ... depraved... untrustworthy .. heretics... the
tongue of Satan” are just a couple of them he used in his letters. Then, the caliph used the
mihna incidents as a leverage to somehow break their unity against the caliphate. However,
Demirel says that, this explanation lacks vital evidences showing everything crystal-clearly.
He accepts that this idea can be extracted but to some degree, it is also a speculation. 8

Why Do We Relate Mihna to Ma’mun?

It is worth to state that, although roughly he lived only four or five months of mihna
then died, Ma’mun is attributed to the Mihna more than any other caliph, even though they
were harsher in implication than Ma’mun. There are plenty of reasons for this reality but John
Nawas summarizes them in his article under four major title:
He was the first to force people: As can be expected, the incidents and the interrogations
started to take place firstly under his reign. So he will be known as the starter of this period.
There was no precedent of this in the history of Islam: As Nawas continues, there was no
such incident that state used its power to force people to accept certain ideology. And the
reaction the scholars gave is also the first in the history.

7
John A. Nawas, “The Miḥna of 218 A. H./833 A. D. Revisited: An Empirical Study,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 116/4 (October 1996), 698.
8
Demirel, Hadis Tasnifinin Altın Çağında Halku’l-Kur’ân Meselesi Ve Hadis Kaynaklarına Etkisi.
Violently Conducted Process: It is also attributed to him because of use of excessive power
against the ones who refused the idea. They were apparently persecuted solely for their side at
the discussion.
Usage of Caliphal Power: Relating the second point, this was the first incident ever in which
not only state power but also caliphal power used to canalize people into certain path. Before
him no caliph was to use his title as a caliph to force such ideology.9

Which schools/characters/sciences get affected from the Mihna?

Firstly, the Hanafi school, after the Mihna period ended, has faced serious smear
campaigns against them by the muhaddithun, specifically the Hanbalis. The reason for this is
because most of the Mutazilite scholars and state officials who supported and funded the
Mihna incidents were Hanafis in practice. And also the Hanafis, in Islamic Tradition, are
called ahl al-Rai (Adherents of Reasoning). That’s why there happened smear campaign
against the Hanafis aftermath of the incidents. There is also another reason for Hanafis to be
criticised this much, that Bishr Ibn al-Ghyasi was the student of Imam Abu Yusuf (R.a.), and
in the book called ‫تاريخ البغداد‬, Abu Hanifah was accused of fabricating the idea of
createdness of the Quran.10

Secondly, Ahmad Ibn Hanbal has become the parable of the Minha narrative, due to
his steadiness in refusing the idea. He, as the robust representative of the ahl al-Hadis, started
to form a whole side in the Mihna period by himself. As he leave the period as the victor who
insisted on his opinion, later he has become the ultimate decider who is right and wrong. This
helped, however, to denounce some scholarly preeminent individuals like Yahya Ibn Ma’in
and Ali al-Madani.11

Lastly, the science of theology (kalam), according to Ali Kaya, get negatively affected,
as the ahl al-Hadis gained power and depreciated the reason-based sciences, firstly the kalam.
Kaya also claims that after the mihna, since the ahl al-Hadis got more powerful, they started

9
Nawas, “The Miḥna of 218 A. H./833 A. D. Revisited.”
10
Ali Kaya, “Mihne Hadisesi Ve Hadis İlmine Etkileri Bakımından Mihne’nin Sonuçları,” Cumhuriyet
Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 19/1 (2015), 7–32.
11
Mustafa Genç - Habib Kartaloğlu, “Siyasî Bir Mühendislik Projesi Olarak Karşı Mihne Uygulamaları,”
Trabzon İlahiyat Dergisi 9/1 (June 30, 2022), 167–189.
to wrongfully declare Hanafis as untrustworthy in hadith transmission, meaning they have
done the same thing that Mutazilite and the Mihna Administration have done to them.12

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Mihna, initiated by Caliph Ma’mun during the Abbasid era, marked
a pivotal and tumultuous period in Islamic history. Stemming from theological debates on the
createdness of the Quran, the Mihna subjected scholars to severe interrogations and
persecution if their views opposed the state-endorsed ideology. The struggle for authority
between the political realm, represented by the caliphate, and the religious authority held by
scholars, especially the traditionists (muhaddithun), led to a complex web of motives.
Whether driven by a desire to reshape Islamic theology, consolidate political authority, or
quell the influence of certain scholarly groups, the Mihna had lasting repercussions on schools
of thought, individual scholars, and the field of theology itself. The enduring controversies
surrounding figures like Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, the Hanafi school, and the vilification of reason-
based sciences underscore the lasting impact of the Mihna on the diverse fabric of Islamic
intellectual traditions.

12
Kaya, “Mihne Hadisesi Ve Hadis İlmine Etkileri Bakımından Mihne’nin Sonuçları.”
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Nawas, John A. “The Miḥna of 218 A. H./833 A. D. Revisited: An Empirical Study.” Journal
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:‫ كتاب المحنة‬.‫ أبو جنة الحنبلي مصطفى بن محمد صالح الدين بن منسي‬،‫ القباني‬,،‫حنبل بن اسحاق‬
‫ مركز الملك فيصل للبحوث‬:‫ الرياض‬.‫ذكر محنة أبي عبد الله أحمد بن محمد بن حنبل الشيباني‬
2019 ,.‫ الطبعة األولى‬,،‫والدراسات االسالمية‬.