142 No god but God
However, he has rebuffed all attempts to make him compromise,
insisting instead on maintaining his heretical position that the Quran,
the Speech of God, is one with God.
Too exasperated to argue, al-Mu’tasim sits back down and allows
his Inquisitor to commence the questioning. “Ahmad ibn Hanbal,”
Ibn Abi Du’ad begins, “do you regard the Quran to be created or
uncreated?”
The Caliph leans forward, glaring at the old man, waiting for his
answer. But, as he has done so many times before, Ibn Hanbal ignores
the Inquisitor’s question and instead replies with a slight smile, “I tes-
tify that there is no god but God.”
Al-Mu’tasim sinks back into his throne, cursing his brother under
his breath, while Ibn Hanbal is taken outside, suspended between two
poles, and flogged.
Al-Ma’mun had become Caliph by laying siege to Baghdad—the cap-
ital of the Abassid Caliphate—and killing his half-brother, al-Amin.
But because al-Amin had been designated co-Caliph by their father,
the infamous Harun al-Rashid (d. 809), al-Ma’mun was compelled to
justify what was essentially an illegitimate usurpation of the Caliphate
by claiming divine sanction. God had bestowed the Caliphate upon
him, al-Ma’mun declared, and God must be obeyed.
None of this was new, of course; violent internecine conflict was a
regular feature of all Muslim dynasties, and most usurpers are forced
to legitimize their rule by asserting some kind of divine endorsement.
The entire Abassid Empire had excused their usurpation and indis-
criminate massacre of the Umayyads by declaring themselves agents
of God. But what made al-Ma’mun different from his predecessors
was that he seemed honestly to believe that God had given him the
Caliphate so that he could guide the Muslim community toward what
he understood to be the correct interpretation of Islam.
“I am the rightly guided leader,” he announced in a letter to the
army, informing them of the new political and religious order in
Baghdad and demanding absolute obedience to his divine guidance.
This was a startling statement. Ever since Mu‘awiyah had trans-
formed the Caliphate into a monarchy, the question of the Caliph’s
religious authority had been more or less settled: the Caliph ran the