Some of the more recent scholarship on the Mihna suggests that al-Ma’mun may have used it as an opportunity to reassert his religious authority as Caliph. In a series of letters to his governors, al-Ma’mun's elaborated on the caliph's role as the guardian of God's religion and laws. He appeared to draw upon the Shi’ite notion that the caliph-imam alone possessed esoteric knowledge, and used this to emphasis his role as an educator to lead the people out of ignorance in religious matters. Al-Ma’mun's Mihna appeared to be an effort to wrestle authority over religious knowledge from the scholars (‘ulama), notably from traditionalists such as Ahmed ibn Hanbal whose authority to interpret the religion was rooted in their expertise in the Prophet's traditions. However, in the longer trend of pre-modern Islamic history, religious authority would become the exclusive purview of the scholars, while the caliph was reduced first to a political authority, and gradually to a symbolic entity. This explanation for the Mihna is the position taken up by most modern scholars.