This chapter provides a comprehensive examination of how hostility towards Abu Hanifa evolved over three centuries among the proto-Sunni traditionalist network. It argues that the construction of heresy and orthodoxy depended on the circulation of discourses of heresy among textual communities. Transregional proto-Sunni traditionalists developed informal ways to regulate, discipline, and shape conceptions of orthodoxy and heresy. The chapter brings into sharp focus the key agents of proto-Sunni traditionalist orthodoxy: its texts, scholars, and figures who articulated and promulgated discourses of heresy. We can now discern a mature and virulent discourse of heresy among an influential network of proto-Sunni traditionalists seeking to malign, exclude, and marginalise Abu Hanifa and his followers from the proto-Sunni traditionalist conception of orthodoxy. In the tenth century, however, we can observe some attempts by proto-Sunni traditionalists to depart from the network’s emerging consensus and adopt a more accommodating tone towards Abu Hanifa and his followers, which marks the beginning of a broader conception of Sunni orthodoxy.

This chapter documents the ways in which discourses of heresy and orthodoxy were anchored in wider social beliefs and mentalities about the sacred and profane nature of places, holy and unholy regions, the divine curse, and the devil’s role in society. To illustrate this connection between regionalism and heresy, the chapter analyses al-Fasawi’s ninth-century history which hosts a section dedicated solely to discourses of heresy against Abu Hanifa and the region he settled in, Kufa. We see vividly how proto-Sunni traditionalists established a link between unholy regions and heresies.