Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal – The Champion of Islamic Belief

So far in our four part series on the four great imams of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), we have seen each one of the imams have a special and enduring role in Islamic history. Imam Abu Hanifa was the trailblazer when it came to codifying fiqh and establishing the basics of how it is to be studied. Imam Malik upheld the importance of hadith in the field of fiqh through his landmark collection of hadith, al-Muwatta. And Imam al-Shafi’i revolutionized the study of fiqh by establishing the field of usul al-fiqh, the principles behind the study of fiqh.

For the last of the four great imams, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, his contribution went beyond just fiqh. Although he was one of the greatest jurists and scholars of hadith of his time, perhaps his greatest legacy was his courage to stand for the orthodox beliefs of Islam as they were imparted to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in the face of persecution and imprisonment at the hands of the political authority. For this reason, Imam Ahmad’s legacy is far more than just the establishment of the Hanbali madhab, but also includes the preservation of core Islamic beliefs against political oppression.

Early Life

Ahmad ibn Hanbal al-Shaybani was born in 778 in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. The relatively new city was fast becoming a center of scholarship of all forms. So as a child, Ahmad had numerous opportunities to learn and expand his intellectual horizons. Thus, by the time he was 10 years old, he had memorized the entire Quran and began studying the traditions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the hadith.

Imam Ahmad traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula in search of knowledge

Like Imam Shafi’i, Imam Ahmad lost his father at a very young age. So in addition to spending his time studying fiqh and hadith under some of Baghdad’s greatest scholars, he also worked in a post office to help support his family. He was thus able to afford studying under one of Imam Abu Hanifa’s foremost students, Abu Yusuf. From Abu Yusuf, the young Ahmad learned the basics of fiqh such asijtihad (intellectual decision making), andqiyas (analogical deduction). 

After becoming proficient in the Hanafi Madhab, Ahmad ibn Hanbal began to study Hadith under some of the greatest Hadith scholars of Baghdad, including Haitham ibn Bishr. He was so eager to expand his knowledge of the sayings and doings of the Prophet ﷺ that he would regularly be waiting after fajr outside of the homes of his teachers, ready to start that day’s lesson. After studying in Baghdad, he went on to study in Makkah, Madinah, Yemen, and Syria. During this time, he even met Imam al-Shafi’i in Makkah. Al-Shafi’i helped the young Ahmad move beyond just memorization of hadith and fiqh, and be able to instead also understand the principles behind them. This collaboration between two of the four great imams clearly shows that the schools of Islamic law are not opposed to each other, but rather work hand in hand. In fact, when Imam al-Shafi’i left Baghdad, he was recorded as having said, “I am leaving Baghdad when there is none more pious, nor a greater jurist than Ahmad ibn Hanbal.”

Ahmad ibn Hanbal the Scholar

After studying with Imam al-Shafi’i, Imam Ahmad was able to begin to formulate his own legal opinions in fiqh. When Imam Ahmad was 40 years of age in the year 820, his mentor Imam al-Shafi’i passed away. At this point, Imam Ahmad began to teach hadith and fiqh to the people of Baghdad. Students would flock to his lectures, and he especially took care of the poorer ones, keeping in mind his own humble origins.

Despite being in the capital of the Muslim world, Baghdad, Imam Ahmad refused to be attracted to a life of luxury and wealth. He continued to live on very humble means, and rejected the numerous gifts that people would offer him, instead choosing to live on whatever small amounts of money he had. He especially insisted on not accepting gifts from political figures, ensuring his independence from the political authority which could affect his teachings.

The Mihna

Imam Ahmad was in Baghdad during the time of the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun, who reigned from 813-833. Although al-Ma’mun was vital to the establishment of Baghdad as an intellectual center, he was heavily influenced by a group known as the Mu’tazila. Mu’tazili philosophy championed the role of rationalism in all aspects of life, including theology. Thus, instead of relying on the Quran and Sunnah to understand God, they relied on philosophical techniques first developed by the Ancient Greeks. Chief among their beliefs was that the Quran was a created book, as opposed to the un-created literal word of Allah.

Al-Ma’mun believed in the Mu’tazili line of thought, and sought to impose this new and dangerous belief system on everyone in his empire – including the scholars. While many scholars pretended to subscribe to Mu’tazili ideas in order to avoid persecution, Imam Ahmad refused to compromise his beliefs.

Legal writings based on the Hanbali Madhab written by Abu Dawud in the late 800s.

Al-Ma’mun instituted an inquisition known as the Mihna. Any scholars who refused to accept Mu’tazili ideas was severely persecuted and punished. Imam Ahmad, as the most famous scholar of Baghdad, was brought before al-Ma’mun and ordered to abandon his traditional Islamic beliefs about theology. When he refused, he was tortured and imprisoned. His treatment at the hands of the political authority was extremely severe. People who witnessed the torture commented that even an elephant could not have handled the treatment that Imam Ahmad was subject to.

Despite all of this, Imam Ahmad held to traditional Islamic beliefs, and thus served as an inspiration for Muslims throughout the empire. His trials set the precedent that Muslims do not give up their beliefs regardless what the political authority imposes on them. In the end, Imam Ahmad outlived al-Ma’mun and his successors until the Caliph al-Mutawakkil ascended in 847 and ended the Mihna. Imam Ahmad was again free to teach the people of Baghdad and write. During this time, he wrote his famous Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, a collection of hadith that served as the basis of his school of legal thought, the Hanbali Madhab.

Imam Ahmad passed away in Baghdad in 855. His legacy was not restricted to the school of fiqh that he founded, nor the huge amount of hadith he compiled. Unlike the other three imams, he had a vital role in preserving the sanctity of Islamic beliefs in the face of intense political persecution. Although the Hanbali Madhab has historically been the smallest of the four, numerous great Muslim scholars throughout history were greatly influenced by Imam Ahmad and his thoughts, including Abdul Qadir al-Gilani, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Kathir, and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

Bibliography:

Haddad, Gibril. The Four Imams and their Schools. Muslim Academic Trust, Print.

Khan, Muhammad. The Muslim 100. Leicestershire, United Kingdom: Kube Publishing Ltd, 2008. Print.

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The Life of Imam Abu Hanifa

The understanding of the laws and code of conduct of Islam is something that has constantly been evolving throughout Islamic history. The first generations of Muslims after the Prophet ﷺ had a much easier time understanding what is expected out of them as Muslims because they had access to the Sahaba, the companions of the Prophet ﷺ. As history progressed, however, a need arose to codify Islamic laws into organized and easy to access law codes.

The first person who undertook this monumental task was the great scholar Imam Abu Hanifa. Through his efforts, the first school of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), the Hanafi school, developed. Today, the Hanafi school is the largest and most influential among the four schools (madhabs) of fiqh.

Early Life and Education

Abu Hanifa’s given name was Nu’man ibn Thabit. He was born in 699 in the Iraqi city of Kufa, to a family of Persian origin. His father, Thabit, was a successful businessman in Kufa and thus the young Abu Hanifa intended to follow in his father’s footsteps. Living under the oppressive reign of the governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, Abu Hanifa stayed focused on running the family silk-making business and generally steered clear of scholarship. With the death of al-Hajjaj in 713 came the removal of oppressive policies regarding scholars, and Islamic scholarship soared in Kufa, especially during the reign of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (717-720).

Thus, by his teenage years, Abu Hanifa began to study under some of the resident scholars of Kufa. He even got the opportunity to meet between eight and ten companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, among them Anas ibn Malik, Sahl ibn Sa’d, and Jabir ibn Abdullah. After learning from some of the greatest scholars of Kufa, he went on to study in Makkah and Madinah under numerous teachers, namely Ata ibn Abu Rabah, who was known as one of the greatest scholars of Makkah at the time.

He soon became an expert in the sciences of fiqh (jurisprudence), tafsir (exegesis of the Quran), and kalam (seeking theological knowledge through debate and reason). In fact, the concept of using debate and logic became a cornerstone of his methodology for seeking Islamic laws.

His School of Fiqh

The Imam Abu Hanifa Mosque in Baghdad

Imam Abu Hanifa was a firm believer that a code of laws cannot stay static for too long, at the risk of no longer meeting the needs of the people. Thus he advocated interpreting the sources of Islamic law (usul al-fiqh) in response to the needs of the people at the time. This dynamic form of legalism did not supersede the Quran and Sunnah (sayings and doings of the Prophet ﷺ), of course. Instead, he promoted the use of the Quran and Sunnah to derive laws that addressed the issues that people dealt with at that time.

A major aspect of his methodology was the use of debate to derive rulings. He would commonly pose a legal issue to a group of about 40 of his students, and challenge them to come up with a ruling based on the Quran and Sunnah. Students would at first attempt to find the solution in the Quran, if it was not clearly answered in the Quran, they would turn to the Sunnah, and if it was not there, they would use reason to find a logical solution.

Abu Hanifa based this methodology on the example when Prophet Muhammad ﷺ sent Mu’adh ibn Jabal to Yemen and asked him how he will resolve issues using Islamic law. Mu’adh responded that he would look into the Quran, then the Sunnah, and if he does not find a direct solution there, he would use his best judgement, an answer that Muhammad ﷺ was pleased with.

Using such a process for codifying fiqh, the Hanafi madhab (school of law) was thus founded, based on the rulings of Imam Abu Hanifa, and his prominent students, Abu Yusuf, Muhammad al-Shaybani, and Zuffar.

His Legacy

A map of the distribution of madhab’s worldwide today. The Hanafi madhab is in light green.

Numerous times throughout his later life, Abu Hanifa was offered a position as a chief judge in the city of Kufa. He consistently refused such appointments and thus found himself regularly imprisoned by both the Umayyad and later, the Abbasid authorities. He died in the year 767 while in prison.

A masjid was built in his honor in Baghdad years later, and was renovated in the Ottoman period by the monumental architect Mimar Sinan.

His school of law became very popular in the Muslim world not long after his death. As the official madhab of the Abbasid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires, his school became very influential throughout the Muslim world. Today, it is very popular in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, the Balkans, Egypt, and the Indian Subcontinent.

Bibliography:

Khan, Muhammad. The Muslim 100. Leicestershire, United Kingdom: Kube Publishing Ltd, 2008. Print.

Sabiq, A. Fiqh us-sunnah at tahara and as-salah. 1. Indiana: American Trust Publications, 1991. Print.