Ibadi Muslims affirm that the Quran is created in time rather than eternally co-existent with God. The question convulsed early Islam: the rationalist Mutazila held the Quran created, while the emerging Sunni consensus, associated with Ahmad ibn Hanbal, affirmed it uncreated and eternal, and made that affirmation a test of orthodoxy. Ibadism, the tradition descended from the early Kharijite movement and surviving chiefly in Oman, retained the position that the speech of God as a written, recited scripture is a created thing, holding that only God is eternal.
The dispute reached its sharpest point in the Mihna, an inquisition imposed by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun beginning in 833 CE, which required scholars and judges to publicly affirm that the Quran was created; Ahmad ibn Hanbal refused under imprisonment and flogging and became a symbol of resistance, and the policy was abandoned by Caliph al-Mutawakkil around 848 to 851, after which the doctrine of an eternal, uncreated Quran hardened into the Sunni mainstream position and the Mutazila went into decline as an organised school. Ibadism's own retention of the createdness position developed independently of the Mutazila, from within its Kharijite theological inheritance, but it is frequently discussed alongside the Mutazili view because both stood, on this specific question, against the position that came to dominate Sunni orthodoxy.