A long-standing assumption in Islamic intellectual history is that, following a 10th-century “golden age,” scholarship in the Islamic world underwent a long period of stagnation or decline. Even as historians increasingly abandon this narrative, much work remains to be done in identifying and mapping out the major trends that characterized the later period. This paper argues that one significant area of scholarly activity in Morocco during the 10th/16th and 11th/17th centuries centered on whether and how to teach theology to general Muslim populace. Perhaps the best-documented instance of this activity was in northern Morocco, where the scholar ?Abd All?h al-Hab?? (d. 963/1556) and his companions traveled from village to village training the locals in basic theological doctrine before ultimately establishing a Sufi lodge for this purpose near Chefchauen. By drawing on a range of sources, from fatwas to short theological tracts and from biographical dictionaries to a treatise on marriage, I analyze the intellectual basis for their anxiety that people ignorant of creed were unbelievers who would spend eternity in hell and show how, because of that anxiety, the northern scholars understood their pedagogical efforts as fulfilling the ethical injunction to “command right and forbid wrong.” From these same sources – barely acknowledged in the historiography – it is additionally clear that Hab??’s activities did not emerge from nowhere but rather represented the coming together of two main trends from the prior century. The first was a mode of Sufism inspired by Mu?ammad b. Sulaym?n al-Jaz?l? (d. 869/1465), who encouraged his followers to undertake programs of social, religious, and agricultural reform in the Moroccan countryside. The second was the already deeply influential theological oeuvre of Mu?ammad b. Y?suf al-San?s? (d. 895/1490), a hallmark of which was the insistence that all Muslims, regardless of education, had the obligation to understand basic theological doctrine and its rational underpinnings. Both Jaz?l? and San?s? cast long shadows onto subsequent intellectual and social practices in the Maghrib, and Hab??’s circle was far from alone in forging from their legacies an activist creedal pedagogy. Yet the ample documentation that this particular set of scholars left behind make them a rich starting point for understanding the intellectual contours of the broader trend, as they address such key matters as the nature of valid belief, how people of different educational levels can acquire it, and the role of scholars in facilitating that process.