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A Reexamination of Three Current Explanations for al-Maʾmun's Introduction of the Miḥna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

John A. Nawas
John A. Nawas
Affiliation:
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of History, University of Utrecht, Kromme Nieuwegracht 66, 3512 HL Utrecht, The Netherlands.
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Extract

The seventh Abbasid caliph ʿAbd Allah al-Maʾmun (r. 813–833) was noted for the breadth of his intellectual horizons, and historians often associate him with the Golden Age of Islam. This image of glory is tarnished, however, by two particular actions that the caliph took: his declaration (in 827) of a doctrine asserting that the Qurʾan was created and his ordering of a miḥna an inquisition, that was designed to ensure acquiescence in this doctrine. The miḥna, an unprecedented event in the history of Islam, was begun by al-Maʾmun just four months before his sudden death in 833 and continued by his two immediate successors, al-Muʾtasim and al-Wathiq. It lasted some sixteen years until it was finally abolished by the tenth Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , November 1994 , pp. 615 - 629
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 I collected all the primary sources cited by modern writers concerned with the issue; this “master list” of 72 sources comprised chroniclers of universal and local histories (42) including all the Arabic standard sources (al-Yaʾqubi, al-Tabari, al-Masʾudi, etc.); biographical dictionaries and genealogical works (16); adab works (4); theoretical works (8); other works (1); and collections (1). Coverage spans the period from the miḥna itself to the 17th century.

2 The primary sources said very little about the declaration of the doctrine and nothing whatsoever about the circumstances surrounding it or why al-Maʾmun promulgated it. All they say is that in the year 827 the caliph “made public the view that the Qurʾan was created” (aẓhara al-qawl bi-khalq al-Quʾ ān). They also provide no clues as to why al-Maʾmun made this view known in 827 rather than some other year.

3 Amīn, Aḥmad, Ḍuḥa al-lslām, 3 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1933–1936), 3:98, 159Google Scholar. Hitti, Philip K., History of the Arabs, 10th ed. (London: Macmillan Press, 1970), 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kennedy, Hugh, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (London: Longman, 1986), 163–64Google Scholar; Patton, Walter M., Aḥmed ibn Ḥanbal and the Miḥna (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1897), 52Google Scholar; Watt, W. Montgomery, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), 145Google Scholar.

4 al-Dīnawarī, Abū Ḥanīfa ibn Dāwud, al-Akhbār alṭiwal, ed. al-Zayn, Ḥasan (Beirut: Dār al-fikr Al-ḥadith, 1988), 396Google Scholar.

5 al-Murtaḍā, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn, Ṭabaqāt al-Muʾtazila, ed. Diwald-Wilzer, S. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1961), 49Google Scholar.

6 ʿAli al-Mas ʿ ūdī, Abū al-ḤasanʿAli ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʾādin al-jawhar, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1983), 4:227Google Scholar.

7 al-Murtaḍā, Ibn, Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtaiila, 61Google Scholar.

8 ibn, Abū al-ʿAbbās Shams al-Dīn AḥmadKhallikān, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn, Wafayāt al-Aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ Abnaʿ al-Zamān, 8 vols., ed. ʿAbbās, Iḥsān (Beirut: Dār al-thaqāfa, n.d.), 6:177Google Scholar; ibn, Abū al-Fataḥ Muḥammadal-Shahrastānī, ʿAbd al-Karim ibn Abī Bakr Aḥmad, al-Milal wa-al-Niḥal, 2 vols., ed. lānī, Muḥammad Sayyid Kay (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Ḥalabi, 1979), 1:71Google Scholar.

9 al-Tabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, Ṭa ʾ rlkh al-Rusul wa-al-Mulūk, 3rd series, ed. Goeje, Michael Jan de (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879–1901), 3:1139Google Scholar; also recorded in Ibn Khallikān's account of the life of Duʾad, Ibn Abi (Wafayāt, 1:84)Google Scholar.

10 Goeje, Michael Jan de and Jong, Paul de, eds., Kitāb al-ʿUyūn wa-Al-Ḥadaʾiq fi Akhbār al-Ḥaqāʾiq (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1869), 380Google Scholar.

11 Ess, Josef van, “Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr und die ‘Cahmlyal’: Biographie einer vergessenen Schule,” Der Islam 43 (1967): 241–79Google Scholar; Ibid., 44 (1968): 1–70, 318–20; in particular 30 ff.

12 This is reflected in two episodes I have encountered. One has to do with al-Maʾmun's intent on cursing the Umayyad caliph Muʿawiya. Ibn Aktham dissuaded al-Maʾmun from doing so by cautioning the caliph against the hazards of needlessly arousing passions; al-Maʾmun took the advice to heart; see Ṭayfūr, Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir, Kitāb Baghdād, ed. Keller, H. (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1908), 91–92Google Scholar. On another occasion, Yahya ibn Aktham was able to dissuade the caliph from sanctioning the mut ʿ a marriage; see ʿAli, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn, al-Baghdādī, al-Khaṭib, Taʾ rikh Baghdād, 15 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʾilmiyya, n.d.), 14:199–200Google Scholar.

13 A number of such late sources summarily contend that al-Maʾmun “was a Muʿtazilite”; so said, for instance, the Hanbalite chronicler al-Falaḥ, AbūImād, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy ibn al-ʿ, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-āfāq al-jadīda), 2:39Google Scholar. The heresiologist al-Baghdadi also maintains that al-Ma ʾmun was a Mu ʿtazilite, adding that he had been enticed into becoming one by Thumama ibn Ashras, see ibn, Abu Manṣūr al-Qāhiral-Baghdādī, Ṭāhir, al-Farq bayn al-Firaq, ed. al-Kawtharī, Muḥammad (Cairo: Maktab Nashr al-thaqāfa al-islāmiyya, 1948), 103Google Scholar. Al-Maʾmun's name also appears in a list of the caliphs who allegedly held Muʾtazilite views in al-Murtaḍā's, IbnṬabaqat al-Muʿtazila (122, 127)Google Scholar, but no detailed are given.

14 ūdi, Al-Masʿ, Murūj, 4:227Google Scholar.

15 ibn, Aḥmad ibn Abī YaʿqūbWāḍiḥ, Jaʿfar ibn Wahb ibn, al-Yaʿqūbī, , Taʿ rikh al-Yaʿqūbī, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār Ṣadir, n.d.), 2:467–68Google Scholar.

16 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1112 ffGoogle Scholar.

17 Ṭayfūr, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir, Kitāb Baghdād, 66Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., 82, 86. Interpreted similarly by van Ess, “Ḍirār ibn ʿ Amr,” 34.

19 See Ess, Josef van, “Ibn Kullāb und die Miḥna,” Oriens 18–19 (1967): 92–142Google Scholar (recently translated into French and published in Arabica 37 [1990]: 173–233) for variants of the doctrine by, for instance, non-Muʿtazilite mutakallimūn.

20 The Muʿtazilite argument, which al-Maʾmun also used, is anchored in the assertion about the absolute unity of God: the Qurʾan could not be eternal because, if that were the case, an object (the Qurʾan) would then share in an attribute of God (eternity). This in turn would violate God's absolute unity. The Muʾtazilites therefore concluded that the Qurʾan must be created.

21 al-Muḥasin, Jamāl al-Dīn AbīTaghrībirdī, Yūsuf ibn, al-Nujūm al-Zāhirafl Mulūk Miṣr wa-al-Qāhira, 16 vols. (Cairo: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa al-Irshād al-Qawmī, 1929–1972), 2:225Google Scholar, tells us that al-Maʾmun “had distinguished himself (baraʾa) in law according to the school of Abū Ḥanīfa.” Also cited by Martin Hinds, s.v. “miḥna,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.

22 On Abu Hanifa's argumentation against an uncreated Qurʾan and the differences with the Muʿtazilite stance, see Madelung, Wilferd, “The Origins of the Controversy Concerning the Creation of the Koran” in Orientalia Hispanica sive studia F. M. Pareja octogenario dicata, ed. Barral, J. M. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), 504–25, esp. 511Google Scholar.

23 To be sure, Ahmad ibn Abi Duʾad was a participant in the deliberations of the miḥna during the reign of al-Maʿmun and after his death. However, he was one of a number of participants, and nowhere did I find material to link him to the order which al-Maʿmun himself issued, though he may well have played a more influential role during the reign of the intellectually frail al-Muʾtasim.

24 The link between al-Maʿmun and the Muʾtazilites is deeply entrenched, but the reasons for it are unknown. The persistence of the idea may have had its roots in the generations of Sunni chroniclers who considered the Muʿtazilites “evil-doers” and who saw al-Maʾmun as an errant caliph who was in collusion with them or simply did their bidding. Ibn al-Jawzī, for instance, tells us that al-Maʾmun was reluctant to introduce both the doctrine and the miḥna but finally gave in under Muʿtazilite pressure. See ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Jawzī, Abū al-Faraj, Manāqib al-Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ed. al-Kutubī, Muḥammad Amīn al-Khājī (Beirut: Khānjī wa-Ḥamdān, n.d.), 309Google Scholar. Al-Maʾmun's, reluctance is also noted by al-Dīn, Abū ʿAbdallāh Shamsal-Dhahabī, Muḥammad, Tarjamat al-Imām Aḥmad, ed. Shākir, A. M. (Beirut: Dār al-maʿārif lil-ṭibāʿa, 1946), 40Google Scholar. Both Ibn al-Taghrībirdī and Al-Ṣafadī explain that the caliph had acquired that sophistication in philosophy and the sciences for which the Muʾtazilites were noted; eventually it lead him to the “erroneous” doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾan. See Taghrībirdī, Ibn, al-Nujūm, 2:225Google Scholar; Ṣafadi, Khalīl ibn Aybak al-, al-Wāfl fl al-Wafayāt, 22 vols., ed. Krawulsky, D. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982), 17:655Google Scholar. Al-Subkī uses the same theme but turns it around by ascribing al-Maʾmun's adoption of the doctrine to his shallowness of knowledge of philosophy and the sciences. See ibn, Tāj al-Dīn Abī Naṣr ʿAbd al-Wahhābal-Subkī, ʿAli ibn ʿAbd al-Kāfī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfʿiyya al-Kubra, 10 vols., ed. al-Ṭannāḥi, Maḥmūd and al-Ḥilw, ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ (Cairo: Dār iʾyā al-kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1964), 2:56–57Google Scholar.

25 Sourdel, Dominique, “La politique religieuse du calife ʿabbaside al-Maʾmun,” Revue des ètudes islamiques 30 (1962): 27–48Google Scholar.

26 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “mutʿa” (W. Heffening).

27 Ibid.

28 al-Baghdādī, Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh, 14:199–200Google Scholar.

29 Within what later would become known as Sunni circles there was also a wide variety of opinions regarding muʿa; on this see Motzki, Harald, Die Anfänge der islamischen Jurisprudent: Ihre Entwicklung in Mekka bis zur Mine des 2./8. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991)Google Scholar, index s.v. “mutʾa.”

30 So said al-Maʾmun in 827. See al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrlkh, 3:1099;Google Scholaribn, Abū Zakariyyā Yazīdal-Azdī, Muḥammad ibn Iyās al-Qāsim, Taʾrikh al-Mawṣil, ed. Ḥabība, ʿAlī (Cairo: Dār al-tahrir lal-ṭabʿwa-al-nashr, 1967), 373Google Scholar; Miskawayh, , Tajārib al-umam, ed. Goeje, Michael Jan de (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1871), 463Google Scholar; Kitāb al-ʿuyun, 370. This public declaration was a restatement of what he had said around 819 when he pointed out that the preeminence of ʿAli did not necessarily entail a demeaning of al-salaf, the other early Muslims (Ṭayfūr, Ibn Abi Ṭahir, Kitāb Baghdād, 75–79Google Scholar).

31 The most elaborate discussion of the relationship between al-Maʾmun and theʿAlids is provided by Gabrieli, Francesco, Al-Maʾmun e gliʿAlidi (Leipzig: Verlag Eduard Pfeiffer, 1929)Google Scholar.

32 Cf. Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, vol. 1, The Classical Age of Islam, 481, n. 2.

33 In the document making ʿAli ibn Musa al-Rida heir, we read that the caliph considered theʿAlids to be just as integral a part of the Hashimite family and the House of the Prophet as their cousins the Abbasids were. A copy of the designation letter is found in ibn, Abū al-ḤasanʿAlīal-Irbili, ʿIsa ibn Abi al-Fatāh, Kashf al-ghumma bi-macrifat al-aʿimma, 4 vols., ed. al-Rusuli, Hashim (Qum: al-Maṭba ʿa al-ʿilmiyya, 1961–1962), 3:123 ffGoogle Scholar.

34 The Shiʿis derived the prescribed five takbīrs from their belief that Seth had prayed over Adam using this same number; see Kohlberg, Etan, “Some Shīʿī Views of the Antediluvian World,” Studia Islamica 52 (1980): 41–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 62–63. The Sunni schools of law reject this number and their prescription calls for four takbīrs. For the standard Sunni version, see Grütter, Irene, “Arabische Bestattungsgebräuche in frühislamischer Zeit (nach Ibn Saʿd und Buẖārī),” Der Islam 31 (1954): 147–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ibid., Der Islam 32 (1957): 79 –104, 168–94, in particular pt. V (“Das Gebet iiber dem Toten”).

35 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrikh, 3:1105;Google Scholaral-Azdi, , Taʾrikh al-Mawṣil, 405Google Scholar; al-Karam, Abū al-ḤasanʿAli ibn Abiibn, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammadal-Shaybānī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥīd, al-Athīr, Ibn, al-Kāmil fi al-Taʾrlkh, 10 vols. (Beirut, Dār al-kitāb al-ʿArabi, 1983), 5:220Google Scholar.

36 Manṣūr, Al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad ibn, al-Nuʿmān, al-Qāḍī, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. Fayḍī, ʿAwaḍ (Cairo: Dar al-maʿārif, 1951), 1:205Google Scholar.

37 al-Kulīnī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb, al-Uṣūl wa-al-Furūʿmin al-Kāfi, 8 vols., ed. al-Ghaffārī, ʿAli Akbar (Beirut: Dār al-aḍwāʾ, 1985), 3:310, nos. 3 and 7Google Scholar; al-Mūsawī, Abū al-Qāsim ʿAli ibn al-Ḥusayn, al-Murtaḍā, al-Sharīf, al-lntiṣār, ed. al-Khurasān, MuḤammad Riḍā al-Sayyid Ḥasan (Beirut: Dār al-aḍwāʿ, 1985), 40Google Scholar. My thanks go to Professor Etan Kohlberg for helping me on this matter.

38 One can muse over al-Maʾmun's order having a contemporary likeness in Saddam Hussein's decision to add the takbīr to the Iraqi flag during the Gulf War of 1991.1 am indebted to Dr. Gauthier H. A. Juynboll for suggesting this possible interpretation of the episode.

39 The first time this usage occurred was in the Risālāt al-khamīs around 813. The text is given in Ṣafwat, Aḥmad ZakI, Jamharat rasāʾil aI-ʿArab, 4 vols. (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Halabī, 1937), 3:377–97Google Scholar. The second formal document designatedʿAli ibn Musa heir in 817, al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:123 ffGoogle Scholar. The third is to be found in the letters that initiated the miḥna; al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1112 ffGoogle Scholar.

40 Nagel, Tilman, Rechtleilung und Kalifat: Versuch ilber eine Grundfrage der islamischen Geschichte. Studien zum Minderheitenproblem in Islam 2 (Bonn: Selbstverlag des Orientatischen Seminars der Universitat, 1975), 386 ffGoogle Scholar.

41 Watt, , Formative Period, 177–79Google Scholar. Watt's account is highly speculative. He argues that there is a great difference in the “prestige” value of a created versus an uncreated Qurʾan. One cannot, for example, change an uncreated Qurʾan since then one would be tampering with God himself. “A created Qurʾān had not the same prestige [as an uncreated one], and there could not be the same objection to its provisions being overruled by the decree of an inspired imam” (ibid., 179). An imam, as a “true caliph,” towers above mankind because he is chosen by God and is endowed with superhuman qualities which presumably make it permissible for him to tamper with the Qurʾan. So much for Watt's views. Since al-Maʾmun's first use of the term imam dates to 813 and it was not until fourteen years later that he publicly came up with the idea that the Qurʾan was created, a connection is unlikely. Further, there is no record or report that suggests al-Maʾmun placed himself above, or questioned, the Qurʾan—or the hadith for that matter—and every Qurʾanic verse he cited in his miḥna letters was interpreted by him with impeccable logic and fidelity to the text. Watt's position is criticized on other grounds by Hinds, see Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “miḥna.”

42 Sourdel, “La politique religieuse du calife,” 37; Watt, , Formative Period, 177Google Scholar; al-Dūri, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, al-ʿAsr al-ʿAbbāsi al-awwal (Beirut: Dār al-ṭalica lil-ṭibaʿa wa-al-nashr, 1945), 153, n. 5Google Scholar; and ʿUmar, Fārūq, Buḥūthfi al-taʾrikh al-ʿAbbāsi (Beirut: Dār al-qalam lil- ṭibaca, 1977), 222Google Scholar.

43 Arazi, Albert and Elʿad, ʿAmikam, “L'èpître à l'armée: al-Maʾmûn et la seconde daʿwa,” Stadia Islamica 66 (1988): 27–70Google Scholar; ibid., 67 (1988): 29–73; pages 47–48, n. 155, provide us with a long list of references in major historical sources that show that al-Maʾmun's Abbasid predecessors did refer to themselves as imams both officially and informally. A coin has been unearthed, showing as date of issue the year A.H. 193 (808–9) and carrying the inscription “al-imām Muḥammad [al-Amin],” al-Maʾmun's predecessor; see Miles, George C., The Numismatic History of Rayy (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1938), 90Google Scholar. Al-Maʾmun also used the title of imam on a number of his coins, some of which date back to 818 (ibid., 105).

44 Madelung, Wilferd, Der Imam al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhim und die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965), 153 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. It was only during the period that followed al-MaDmun's death that the Shiʾis/Zaydites had incorporated into their systems Muʿtazilite ideas which presumably included the doctrine that the Qurʾan was created; see Madelung, Wilferd, “Imamism and Muʿtazilite Theology,” in Le shiʿisme imāmite: Colloque de Strasbourg (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1970), 13–30Google Scholar; idem, “Imam al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim and Muʿtazilism,” in On Both Sides of Bab al-Mandab: Ethiopian, South-Arabic and Islamic Studies Presented to Oscar L曶fgren on His Ninetieth Birthday, Transactions of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, vol. 2 (Stockholm, 1989), 39–48Google Scholar.

45 Lapidus, Ira M., “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 363–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crone, Patricia and Hinds, Martin, God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. 93–96Google Scholar.

46 In Ṣafwat, , Jamharat, 377–97Google Scholar, who in a footnote makes mention of other risālāt al-khaīms written by previous Abbasid caliphs. A French translation of the letter is found in Arazi, and Elʾad, , “L'èpître à l'armée”. Cf. Nagel, Rechtleitung, 140 ff.Google Scholar, who provides an analysis of al-Maʾmun's risāla.

47 The text used here is the version given by al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:123 ff.;Google ScholarCrone, and Hinds, , God's Caliph, app. 4Google Scholar, give an English translatīon of another copy of it found in al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʾshā, which differs only very minutely from al-Irbilī's version.

48 The only complete version of these letters is found in al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1112–21Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., 3:1136–40.

50 Al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124Google Scholar.

51 Ṣafwat, , Jamharat, 426–27Google Scholar.

52 Al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1117Google Scholar.

53 al-Balādhurī, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jābir, Futūḥ al-buldān, ed. al-Munjid, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Cairo: Maktabat al-nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1957), 37Google Scholar.

54 Al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrikh, 3:1112Google Scholar.

55 Ṣafwat, , Jamharat, 426–27Google Scholar.

56 Al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25Google Scholar.

57 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrikh, 3:1112–13Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., 3:1113.

59 Ṣafwat, , Jamharat, 383 ff.;Google Scholaral-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25Google Scholar.

60 Ṣafwat, , Jamharat, 383 ffGoogle Scholar.

61 Ibid., 385.

62 Al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:125Google Scholar.

63 Al-Masʿūdī, , Murūj, 4:332–34;Google Scholaral-Ṭabarī, , Ta'rikh, 3:1112;Google ScholarṢafwat, , Jamharat, 426–27Google Scholar.

64 Al-Masʿūdī, , Murūj, 4:332–34Google Scholar.

65 Al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25Google Scholar.

66 Al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1117Google Scholar.

67 Al-Balādhuri, , Futūh, 37Google Scholar.

68 Al-Ṭabari, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1117Google Scholar.

69 Ṣafwat, , Jamharat, 383 ffGoogle Scholar.

70 Ibid.; al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25.Google Scholar

71 Al-Ṭabari, , Taʾīkh, 3:1117Google Scholar.

72 Al-Balādhuri, , Futūḥ, 33Google Scholar.

73 Al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25Google Scholar.

74 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1137Google Scholar.

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76 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1138Google Scholar.

77 Al-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25Google Scholar.

78 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1138Google Scholar.

79 Miskawayh, , Tajārib al-umam, 447–48;Google ScholarKitāb al-ʿuyūn, 358–59;Google Scholaral-Tabarī, , Ṭaʾrīkh, 3:1117;Google Scholaral-Irbilī, , Kashf, 3:124–25;Google ScholarKathīr, Abū al-Fidāʾ ibn, al-Bidāya wa-al-nihaya, 10 vols. (Beirut: Maktabat al-Maʾ ārif, 1966), 10:250–51Google Scholar.

80 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1125–26Google Scholar.

81 Al-Jahshiyārī, , Kitāb al-wuzarāʾ wa-al-kuttāb, ed. al-Saqqā, Muṣṭafā (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Ḥalabī, 1980), 315–16Google Scholar.

82 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1132Google Scholar.

83 Ibid., 3:1116.

84 The second letter (ibid., 3:1116) simply instructed the governor to dispatch seven men to be interrogated by the caliph in person. In the fifth letter (ibid., 3:1131–32) Ishaq ibn Ibrahim is instructed to tell Bishr ibn al-Walid, one of the men interrogated, that he had erred in interpreting a particular Qurʾanic verse; and Ishaq ibn Ibrahim was asked to dispatch to Tarsus all those already interrogated by the governor, except for Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Muhammad ibn Nuh who had been sent to al-Maʾmun earlier.

85 The complete text of the first letter is found in al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1112–16;Google ScholarṬayfūr, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir only has the beginning of this letter, Kitāb Baghdād, 338 ffGoogle Scholar.

86 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1116Google Scholar.

87 Bosworth, C. Edmund, trans., The Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, vol. 32, History of al-Ṭabarī (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 200;Google Scholaroriginal text: al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1113Google Scholar.

88 Bosworth, , trans., Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, 202;Google Scholaroriginal text: al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrikh, 3:1114Google Scholar.

89 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1117–21Google Scholar.

90 Ibid., 3:1120.

91 Ibid., 3:1125–31.

92 The fourth letter seems not to have been written by the same man as the others. Why its tone and focus have changed is open to speculation. It is quite possible that al-Maʾmun was reacting to the messages he received from his governor, which would mean that the caliph may have realized he had underestimated the degree of opposition that was now being encountered. This could explain why the caliph's threats became increasingly harsh and specific and why he dispatched this letter with a special courier (ibid., 3:1130), as though he were intent on wrapping up the case with maximum speed and efficiency.

93 Bosworth, , trans., Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, 199–200;Google Scholar original text: al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1112Google Scholar.

94 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1117Google Scholar.

95 Bosworth, , trans., Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, 202;Google Scholaroriginal text: al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1114Google Scholar.

96 Cf.Lapidus, , “Separation of State and Religion”, 363–85.Google Scholar

97 Al-Ṭabarī, , 3:1112–14Google Scholar.

98 Ibid., 3:1126.

99 ibid., 3:1125.

100 Ibid., 3:1118.

101 Ibid., 3:1119.

102 Bosworth, , trans., Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, 216;Google Scholaroriginal text: al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1127Google Scholar.

103 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 3:1124Google Scholar.

104 Ibid., 3:1123.

105 Ibid., 3:1117.