المحنة بالقرآن

The Mihna was the test by which the caliph al-Ma'mun examined judges and scholars on the question of whether the Qur'an was created, beginning in 218 AH. It is related by al-Tabari and al-Suyuti, and its story extends to the time of al-Mutawakkil. ^{1 2}

In 218 AH al-Ma'mun wrote to Ishaq ibn Ibrahim ordering him to examine the judges and the transmitters of hadith, and ordered a number of them brought to him at al-Raqqa. Al-Ma'mun died in the same year. ^{1 3}

Al-Suyuti says that al-Ma'mun ordered them examined on the creation of the Qur'an, and that whoever did not confess it created would not have his testimony accepted nor be trusted in any work. He ordered seven brought, among them Ibn Sa'd, the secretary of al-Waqidi, and Yahya ibn Ma'in. He examined them and they answered him out of dissimulation, and he sent them back to Baghdad. He ordered Ishaq to bring in those who refused, among them Ahmad ibn Hanbal. ²

Al-Suyuti says that Ahmad was asked and said: it is the speech of God; I add nothing to this. Sajjada, Muhammad ibn Nuh al-Ajli and al-Qawariri refused with him, and Ishaq put them in chains. Then Sajjada and al-Qawariri gave in, and Ahmad and Ibn Nuh were sent in fetters toward the Byzantine lands, but news of al-Ma'mun's death reached them before they arrived. ⁴

Al-Suyuti says that al-Mu'tasim followed what al-Ma'mun had ended his life with, and wrote to the regions to that effect and ordered teachers to teach it to children. People suffered hardship from it, and Imam Ahmad was beaten in the year 220. ⁵

Al-Mutawakkil ordered the imams and muezzins of Basra examined in 231 AH, and then at the end of his time he went back on it. ⁶ Al-Suyuti quotes al-Buhturi's praise of al-Mutawakkil for lifting the trial. ⁷

The views of scholars on the question itself, and what contemporary researchers say about the motives of the trial, are not in the data for this page. This needs an additional source.