[Sidenote: Mutawakkil returns to orthodoxy.] The Mu‘tazilite controversy became a burning question in the reign of Ma’mún (813-833 A.D.), a Caliph whose scientific enthusiasm and keen interest in religious matters we have already mentioned. He did not inherit the orthodoxy of his father, Hárún al-Rashíd; and it was believed that he was at heart a _zindíq_. His liberal tendencies would have been wholly admirable if they had not been marred by excessive intolerance towards those who held opposite views to his own. In 833 A.D., the year of his death, he promulgated a decree which bound all Moslems to accept the Mu‘tazilite doctrine as to the creation of the Koran on pain of losing their civil rights, and at the same time he established an inquisition (_miḥna_) in order to obtain the assent of the divines, judges, and doctors of law. Those who would not take the test were flogged and threatened with the sword. After Ma’mún's death the persecution still went on, although it was conducted in a more moderate fashion. Popular feeling ran strongly against the Mu‘tazilites. The most prominent figure in the orthodox camp was the Imám Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, who firmly resisted the new dogma from the first. "But for him," says the Sunnite historian, Abu ’l-Maḥásin, "the beliefs of a great number would have been corrupted."[691] Neither threats nor entreaties could shake his resolution, and when he was scourged by command of the Caliph Mu‘taṣim, the palace was in danger of being wrecked by an angry mob which had assembled outside to hear the result of the trial. The Mu‘tazilite dogma remained officially in force until it was abandoned by the Caliph Wáthiq and once more declared heretical by the cruel and bigoted Mutawakkil (847 A.D.). From that time to this the victorious party have sternly suppressed every rationalistic movement in Islam. [Sidenote: The end of the Mu‘tazilites.]