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The "inquisition" (Mihnah) unleashed by the seventh Abbasid caliph, 'Abdallah al-Ma'mun (r. 813-833), has long attracted the attention of modern scholars of the intellectual, political, and religious history of the early Abbasid era. Historians have seen it as the key to a wide array of puzzles and problems in early Islamic history.
In this incisive study, John Nawas subjects the various proposed explanations of these events to a sober and searching analysis and, in the process, presents a new interpretation of al-Ma'mun's political and religious policies, contextualized against the background of early Abbasid intellectual and social history.
Appended to the volume is a reprint edition of Walter M. Patton's Ahmed ibn Hanbal and the Mihna (Leiden 1897), which still has much that is useful for modern scholarship, including one enormous additional benefit; it contains most of the relevant passages in Arabic from the primary sources
Nawas makes a compelling and eloquent argument that requires our attention. To begin understanding the minha, one must start here. The editors of the series are to be commended for their efforts to gain the larger audience that is its due.
— John P. Tucker
John Nawas is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His research centres on the religio-political and social history
Series Editors' Preface
Foreword
Author's Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: 'Abdallah al-Aa'mun: His Life and Reign
Chapter 3: The Mu'tazilism, the Shi'ism, and the 'Alid Hypotheses
Chapter 4: The Caliphal Authority Hypothesis
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Appendix 1: Chronological Information, by Genre, on the Compilers of the Sources Used
Appendix 2: Information on Those Interrogated
Appendix 3: Timetable of Key Events during al-Ma'mun's Reign
Bibliography
Index
William Patton, Ahmed ibn Hanbal and the Mihna (1897)