History

Ahmad ibn Hanbal's family was originally from Basra, Iraq, and belonged to the Arab Banu Shayban tribe. His father was an officer in the Abbasid army in Khurasan and later settled with his family in Baghdad, where Ahmad was born in 780 CE. Ibn Hanbal had two wives and several children, including an older son, who later became a judge in Isfahan.

A?mad bin Mu?ammad bin ?anbal Abu ?Abd Allah al-Shaybani often referred to as A?mad b. ?anbal or Ibn ?anbal for short, was an Arab Muslim jurist, theologian, and hadith traditionist. An enormously influential and vigorous scholar during his lifetime,Ibn Hanbal went on to become "one of the most venerated" and celebrated personalities in the tradition of Sunni Islam, within which he was often referred to by such reverent epithets as Sheikh al-Islam and Imam of Baghdad.He has been retrospectively described as "the most significant exponent of the traditionalist approach in Sunni Islam,"with his "profound influence affecting almost every area of" orthodox Sunni thought. One of the foremost classical proponents of the importance of using hadith literature to govern Islamic law and life, Ibn Hanbal is famous for compiling one of the most important Sunni hadith collections, the celebrated Musnad Ibn Hanbal, an enormous compendium of prophetic traditions that has continued to wield considerable influence in the field of hadith studies up to the present time. Additionally, Ibn Hanbal is also honored as the founder of the Hanbali school of Sunni jurisprudence, which is one of the four major orthodox legal schools of Sunni Islam.

Having studied fiqh and hadith under many teachers during his youth, Ibn Hanbal became famous in his later life for the crucial role he played in the Mihna, the inquisition instituted by the Abbasid Caliphate al-Ma'mun towards the end of his reign, in which the ruler gave official state support to the Mutazilite dogma of the Quran being created, a view that contradicted the orthodox doctrine of the Quran being the eternal, uncreated Word of God. Suffering physical persecution under the caliph for his unflinching adherence to the traditional doctrine, Ibn Hanbal's fortitude in this particular event only bolstered his "resounding reputation" in the annals of Islamic history.

Throughout Islamic history, Ibn Hanbal was venerated as an exemplary figure in all the traditional schools of Sunni thought, both by the exoteric ulema and by the mystics, with the latter often designating him as a saint in their hagiographies.

Ahmad Ibn Hanbal studied extensively in Baghdad, and later traveled to further his education. He started learning jurisprudence (Fiqh) under the celebrated Hanafi judge, Abu Yusuf, the renowned student and companion of Imam Abu Hanifah. After finishing his studies with Abu Yusuf, ibn Hanbal began traveling through Iraq, Syria, and Arabia to collect hadiths, or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Ibn al-Jawzi states that Imam Ahmad had 414 Hadith masters whom he narrated from. With this knowledge, he became a leading authority on the hadith, leaving an immense encyclopedia of hadith, the al-Musnad. After several years of travel, he returned to Baghdad to study Islamic law under Al-Shafi'i. He became a mufti in his old age, but is remembered most famously, as the founder of the Hanbali madhab or school of Islamic law, which is now most dominant in Saudi Arabia, Qatar as well as the United Arab Emirates. Unlike the other three schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi), the Hanbali madhab remained largely traditionalist or Athari in theology.

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