Mihna

The Mihna (Arabic: محنة خلق القرآن, Miḥnat khalaq al-Qurʾān "ordeal [regarding] the createdness of the Qur'an") refers to the period of religious persecution instituted by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun in 833 CE in which religious scholars were punished, imprisoned, or even killed unless they conformed to Muʿtazila doctrine. The policy lasted for eighteen years (833–851 CE) as it continued through the reigns of al-Ma'mun's immediate successors, al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq, and four years of al-Mutawakkil who reversed it in 851.

The abolition of Mihna is significant both as the end of the Abbasid Caliph's pretension to decide matters of religious orthodoxy, and as one of the few instances of religious persecution among fellow Muslims in Medieval Islam.