This chapter demonstrates how proto-Sunni traditionalists deployed forms of ethno-racial reasoning in constructing discourses of heresy and orthodoxy. It explores five interrelated themes embedded within such discourses: the confessional ambiguity of Abu Hanifa’s ancestors; conflicting accounts of Abu Hanifa’s genealogy; attempts to establish Abu Hanifa’s servile social status; a wider semantic field of foreignness to label Abu Hanifa; and criticisms of his views on Persian as a liturgical language. In this way, the relationship between orthodoxy, heresy, and society comes into sharp relief.