Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Abu Abd Allah Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal al-Shaybani (164-241 AH / 780-855 CE) was a scholar of hadith (reports of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds) and of law who became the eponymous founder of the Hanbali madhhab, one of the four surviving Sunni schools of jurisprudence (fiqh). He was born into a family of Khurasanian origin; sources disagree on whether his birthplace was Merv or Baghdad, with most later biographers favoring Baghdad, where his widowed mother raised him. His father, an Abbasid army officer, died young.

As a young man Ahmad devoted himself to collecting hadith, traveling to the great centers of learning of his day, including Kufa, Basra, the Hijaz (Mecca and Medina, which he reached on several pilgrimages), Yemen, and Syria. In Sana'a he studied with the traditionist Abd al-Razzaq.

He is best remembered for two things. First, his vast hadith collection, the Musnad, organized by the Companion who transmitted each report. Second, his role in the mihna ("inquisition"): when the caliph al-Ma'mun and his successors compelled scholars to affirm the doctrine, associated with Mu'tazili theology, that the Qur'an was created rather than eternal, Ahmad refused. He was, by traditional accounts, imprisoned and flogged, becoming a symbol of traditionist resistance for those who held the Qur'an to be uncreated. The trials eased under the caliph al-Mutawakkil. He died in Baghdad, where his tomb became a site of veneration.