al-Mihan
- Author died
- 333 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-‘Ulūm
al-Mihan (The Ordeals) is a historical and biographical work by the Ifriqiyan Maliki jurist, hadith scholar, and historian Abu al-Arab al-Tamimi (d. 333 AH / 945 CE) that chronicles the persecutions, trials, imprisonments, and executions suffered by righteous Muslims from the early Islamic period down to the author's own time .
Purpose and Scope
The author composed the work to document the trials of upright believers, opening with prophetic traditions stating that the prophets and the righteous face the greatest trials in this life as an expiation and purification for sins, including the hadith: الأَنْبِيَاءُ ثُمَّ الأَمْثَلُ فَالأَمْثَلُ يُبْتَلَى الْعَبْدُ عَلَى حَسَبِ دِينِهِ ("The prophets, then the next best, then the next; a servant is tested according to the strength of his religion") . Abu al-Arab explicitly outlines his scope at the opening of the biographical material: to mention those who were tested by being killed, imprisoned, beaten, or threatened among the foremost generations of the Muslim community and their righteous successors, tracing events chronologically and geographically through chains of transmission received from his teachers .
Structure and Content
The work is organized thematically and geographically into sections dedicated to specific forms of adversity:
- Slain early figures: Beginning with the assassination of the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab and subsequent prominent figures of the early community .
- The Inquisition (Mihna) over the createdness of the Quran: Accounts of the scholars summoned under the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun and the chief judge Ibn Abi Du'ad, detailing figures who refused compromise and dissimulation (taqiyya), such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Nu'aym al-Fadl ibn Dukayn, Yahya ibn Abd al-Hamid al-Himmani, Mutarrif ibn Abd Allah, Abu Bakr ibn Abi Uways, and Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Hakam (or his son) .
- Geographical surveys of the flogged and imprisoned: Distinct subsections listing scholars, ascetics, and jurists subjected to flogging and detention across different provinces, including Iraq (such as Abu Bakrah and Qatada ibn Di'ama), Syria and Egypt (such as Hisham ibn Ammar), Yemen and the frontier posts (such as Wahb ibn Munabbih and Abu Ishaq al-Fazari), and Ifriqiya (such as al-Buhlul ibn Rashid and Asad ibn al-Furat) .
- Trials under early Fatimid rule in Ifriqiya: Eyewitness and near-contemporary accounts of the oppression of Sunni scholars and callers to prayer under the Fatimids (the Ubaydis), such as the torture and killing of the muezzin Arus and other students of knowledge .
Abu al-Arab employs a strict hadith transmission methodology throughout the text, providing full chains of narration (isnads) going back to his direct teachers, such as Isa ibn Miskin, Bakr ibn Hammad, and Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Sallam .
Transmission and Reception
The book was transmitted directly from Abu al-Arab by his son Abu Ja'far Tamim ibn Muhammad . It became a recognized source of historical and biographical reports, preserved in transmission catalogs such as the Fahrasa of Ibn Khayr al-Ishbili via Abu Muhammad ibn Attab . Later Western Islamic historians and biographers, notably Qadi Iyad in Tartib al-Madarik, extensively drew upon and quoted al-Mihan for biographical notices concerning Maliki jurists and events in Egypt and North Africa .
Editions
al-Mihan has been published in modern printed editions, notably:
- Edited by Yahya Wahib al-Juburi, published by Dar al-Gharb al-Islami in Beirut (1403 AH / 1983 CE, with subsequent reprints) .
- Edited by Umar Sulayman al-Uqayli, published by Dar al-Ulum in Riyadh (1404 AH / 1984 CE) .
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