According to Sunni tradition, when "tested", traditionist Ahmad ibn Hanbal refused to accept the doctrine of createdness despite two years imprisonment and being scourged until unconscious.
Eventually, due to Ahmad ibn Hanbal's determination,[6] Caliph al-Mutawakkil released him and the Mu'tazila doctrine was silenced for a time.
[7] The influential scholar al-Tabari (d.923) declared in his aqidah (creed) that (in the words of Islamic historian Michael Cook) the Quran is God's uncreated word however it is written or recited, whether it be in heaven or on earth, whether written on the 'guarded tablet' or on the tablets of schoolboys, whether inscribed on stone or on paper, whether memorized in the heart or spoken on the tongue; whoever says otherwise is an infidel whose blood may be shed and from whom God has dissociated Himself.
[8]12th century Almoravid jurist Qadi Iyad, citing the work of Malik ibn Anas, wrote: He said about someone who said that the Quran is created, "He is an unbeliever, so kill him."
[11] Al-Islam.org, a website which collects Shia scholarly works, cites ibn Babawayh (c. 923–991) as disagreeing with Sunnis on the issue of the Quran's createdness on the grounds that God's attributes of doing (creating, giving sustenance, etc.)
Akhtar Rizvi states: But as we, the Shi'ah Ithna ‘asharis, distinguish between His personal virtues and His actions, we say: [quoting Ibn Babawayh]
God is its Creator, Sender and Guardian..."[12][13]However, the site quotes another leading Shia Ayatullah Sayyid Abulqasim al-Khui (1899–1992) (in Al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur’an, the Prolegomena to the Qur’an), declaring that "the question of whether the Qur'an was created or eternal is an extraneous matter that has no connection with the Islamic doctrine", and blames the intrusion of the ideas of alien "Greek philosophy" into the Muslim community for dividing the Ummah "into factions which accused each other of disbelief".
[18] Believers in a created Quran emphasize free will given to mortals who would be rewarded or punished according to what they chose in life on judgement day.
Walter Patton (in Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal and the Miḥna) presents him as a stalwart of belief, claimed that he did more than any other to strengthen the position of “orthodoxy”.
Walter Patton for instance, claims that while partisans might have made political capital out of the public adoption of the doctrine, al-Ma’mun's intention was “primarily to effect a religious reform.” [22] Nawas on the other hand, argues that the doctrine of createdness was a “pseudo-issue,” insisting that its promulgation was unlikely an end in itself since the primary sources attached so little significance to its declaration.
In fact, the letter that Al-Ma’mun sent to his lieutenant in Baghdad instituting the mihna stipulated that the test be administered to qadis and traditionists (muhaddithin).
Indeed, to admit the insufficiency of the hadith corpus to adjudicate what with the institution of the mihna becomes such a visible dispute would necessarily marginalize the authority of traditions.