The Mihna and Ibn Hanbal's Refusal

In 833 the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun established the mihna, a formal inquisition requiring religious scholars to publicly affirm that the Quran was created, in order to impose the Mutazili position as state orthodoxy. Scholars examined under the mihna who refused to affirm the doctrine faced imprisonment and could face further punishment for continued refusal. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, already a respected traditionist scholar, became the most prominent figure to resist, enduring flogging and imprisonment between 833 and 835 rather than assent to the createdness of the Quran under interrogation. His endurance made him, in the traditionist memory of the episode, the figure most closely identified with the uncreated position's eventual triumph. The inquisition continued under al-Mamun's immediate successors before being abandoned by the caliph al-Mutawakkil in the 840s, after which the uncreated Quran became settled Sunni doctrine and Ibn Hanbal's refusal was remembered as the decisive act of resistance that made the mihna's failure, and not its success, the lasting outcome. Al-Mamun died within months of establishing the inquisition, but his successor al-Mutasim continued it, and al-Mutasim's own son al-Wathiq maintained it through his reign; only al-Mutawakkil, who came to the throne in 847, reversed the policy the following year, closing an episode that had run for roughly fifteen years.