فكرية

He was an imam of Ahl as-Sunnah, someone we speak of with such reverence and rightly. This is why reading the seerah and biographies of those who came before us matters greatly, beyond just historical interest. These weren’t distant, invincible figures. They were people who held firm when it would have been so much easier not to, and their example is still something we can reach for today. When our own tests are, alhamdulillah, almost never this severe, but still ask something difficult of us. May Allah have abundant mercy on Imam Ahmad, and may we be from those who benefit from his example rather than just admire it from a distance.

Before moving on to how the madhab developed, it’s worth mentioning that writing pieces like this and reading about the trial that Imam Ahmad went through is difficult. There’s a difference between knowing, abstractly, that Imam Ahmad رحمه الله went through the Mihna, and actually going through the details of it.

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Ali ibn al-Madini said afterward that Allah had honored the religion through two men, with no third: Abu Bakr on the day of the Apostasy, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal on the day of the Mihna. Bishr ibn al-Harith summarized what the trial revealed about him: “Ibn Hanbal was put into the furnace, and came out gold.”

🔖 Facts About Imam Ahmad & the Mihna ➡️The Mihna began in 218 AH, when Caliph al-Ma’mun ordered scholars across Baghdad tested on whether the Qur’an was created: a position rejected by Ahl as-Sunnah. ➡️When a large group of fuqaha and muhaddithun, including Imam Ahmad, were tested, nearly everyone eventually complied under pressure. Only four held out at first: Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Sajjada, al-Qawariri, and Muhammad ibn Nuh al-Madrub. ➡️Over the following days, Sajjada and al-Qawariri both relented and were released. Only Imam Ahmad and Muhammad ibn Nuh held their ground through every round of testing. ➡️On the road to al-Ma’mun, a Bedouin man urged him to hold firm, warning that as the one the people looked to, giving in would mean carrying the weight of everyone who followed his example. ➡️Nearing al-Ma’mun’s camp, Imam Ahmad learned the caliph had sworn to kill him with his own sword if he refused to comply. He made a quiet supplication, asking Allah to spare him. That same night, al-Ma’mun died. ➡️Imam Ahmad was imprisoned under al-Ma’mun’s successor, al-Mu’tasim, for roughly twenty-eight months, and was beaten during this period. ➡️While imprisoned, given water with ice in it on a punishing hot day, he refused to drink after learning there wasn’t enough for his fellow prisoners. ➡️Brought before al-Mu’tasim directly, he was asked to explain his position and responded by asking the caliph what Allah and His Messenger ﷺ had actually called people to, then citing the Prophet’s ﷺ own list of the pillars of faith, none of which included the doctrine being forced on him. ➡️He held that anyone who affirmed the Qur’an’s createdness under pressure, even briefly, could no longer be trusted to narrate hadith; a standard he applied even to old, close friends who had complied, like Yahya Ibn Ma’in. ➡️The Mihna continued under al-Wathiq, though this time Imam Ahmad was ordered into hiding rather than imprisoned again. ➡️The trial ended under Caliph al-Mutawakkil, roughly fifteen years after it began, who restored the freedom and standing of the muhaddithun.

🔖 Imam Ahmad Was an Imam in Every Field Imam as-Shafi’i said that Imam Ahmad was an imam in eight distinct fields: the Qur’an, the Sunnah, hadith, fiqh, asceticism, poverty, cautious piety, and the Arabic language. Imam Ahmad had numerous writings other than Musnad Ahmad. These include: كتاب فضائل الصحابة كتاب الأشربة كتاب الورع الرد على الزنادقة و الجهمية أصول السنة كتاب الزهد علل الحديث ومعرفة الرجال كتاب الصلاة أحكام النساء رسالة أحمد إلى مسَدَّد بن مُسَرْهَد المقدم والمؤخر في كتاب الله Everything that he is an imam in came together before and after the years that followed one of the most defining parts of his life, which was the Mihna. This was when the state tried to force scholars to publicly affirm that the Qur’an was created, and Imam Ahmad refused. He was among the only scholars who defended the religion against the caliph at the time, al-Ma’mun.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِكُمْ أَوِ الْوَالِدَيْنِ وَالْأَقْرَبِينَ "O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives." [4:135] Justice is an obligation, owed even when the one committing the wrong is close to us. And our beloved Prophet ﷺ was a perfect example of that. Islam doesn't need borrowed ideology to justify opposing oppression. Islam is a perfected religion, and it does not need anything else outside of it to aid Muslims, but it also shouldn’t be used as a tool for harming others when that was never intended. If you find yourself in this mindset, or come across those who feel this way, you should, of course, sit with someone knowledgeable who can answer such questions, but also don’t let it be a means for you to ignore what Allah has given us as a means for safeguarding. اللهم اهدنا جميعاً

This has been lost amongst many, thinking that a) Islam allows for oppression to happen and is overlooked, and b) that they need to resort to other ideologies outside of Islam for justice. Islam is comprehensive, and the Shari’ah is sufficient for mankind. Justice, mercy, accountability, and the rights owed to women are already legislated in the texts and worked out across centuries of fiqh. The starting question for a wrong you witness should be "what does the Qur'an, Sunnah, and scholarship say about this," not "what does this other framework say, that I now need Islam to agree with or apologize to." Know that Allah is not a Lord of oppression or injustice. إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَظْلِمُ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ ۖ وَإِن تَكُ حَسَنَةً يُضَاعِفْهَا وَيُؤْتِ مِن لَّدُنْهُ أَجْرًا عَظِيمًا "Indeed, Allah does not do injustice, [even] as much as an atom's weight; while if there is a good deed, He multiplies it and gives from Himself a great reward." [4:40] No act of injustice against a woman (or anyone), whoever committed it and whatever justification was offered, escapes Him. People will misuse religious language to justify cruelty. The conduct of the worst of us is not a verdict on what Allah has commanded, and it does not require concluding that the religion itself is the source of the harm, or that the men causing it are its correct interpreters. It requires the opposite: holding them to the standard the religion sets, and not letting their conduct stand in for it.

One of the first things you learn when studying the religion (or introduction to fiqh) is the Maqasid al-Shariah (the objectives of Islamic law). They are the goals that Allah, the Legislator, has set. Allah, exalted is He, did not create this universe in vain nor leave it without purpose. He created mankind to worship Him alone, with no partner, and created this universe to facilitate and ease the performance of this. وَمَا خَلَقۡتُ ٱلۡجِنَّ وَٱلۡإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعۡبُدُون And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me. [51:56] وَسَخَّرَ لَكُم مَّا فِي ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَمَا فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ جَمِيعٗا مِّنۡهُۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَٰتٖ لِّقَوۡمٖ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ And He has subjected to you whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth—all from Him. Indeed, in that are signs for a people who give thought. [45:13] Sh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said, إن الشريعة الإسلامية جاءت بتحصيل المصالح وتكميلها وتعطيل المفاسد وتقليلها، وترجيح خير الخيرين إذا لم يمكن أن يجتمعا، ودفع شر الشرين إذا لم يمكن أن يندفعا. ومن مقاصد الشريعة الإسلامية المحافظة على الكليات الخمس التي تواترت رسل الله تعالى على وجوب المحافظة عليها، وهي الدين، والنفس، والعقل، والنسب، والمال، والعرض، ومنها اليسر ورفع الحرج والمشقة. [الاستقامة, ١ / ٢٨٨] "Indeed, the Islamic Shari'ah came to attain benefits and complete them, and to nullify harms and reduce them, and to prefer the better of two goods when they cannot both be achieved, and to repel the worse of two evils when they cannot both be trolled." So, among the objectives of the Shari’ah is the preservation of the five universals upon which the messengers of Allah have successively agreed on the obligation of protecting: religion, life, intellect, lineage, wealth, and honor, and among them also are ease, the lifting of hardship and difficulty.

A slight break from what I usually discuss on here and from the previous posts. This week I read an essay on Substack from a girl who wrote about her experience losing faith in Islam's regard for women, mainly using her lived experiences and witnessed abuses to the conclusion that no religion, including her own (Islam), genuinely cares about women, and grappling with the guilt and fear of admitting that. You can read my full response on Substack, but I wanted to discuss it here too. It's obviously very unfortunate that she feels that way, and I don't think it's any good to dismiss her points about harm and oppression. Unfortunately, many women have been deeply wounded by those who have weaponized religious texts. It's not helpful to dismiss that but instead to offer Islam as the solution to this oppression. As Muslims, it's important for us to think about issues like these, especially because they are coming up a lot in modern-day discussions. Too many Muslims today think that Islam is only a set of individual practices, that your prayer, fasting, and personal conduct are the only things Islam obligates or calls to. But that is a false understanding of the Shari'ah. It has individual and communal practices, as well as a systematic framework for ending oppression. That is embedded in the texts themselves.

A story from his time in Mecca captures this well. Imam Ahmad had the chance to sit in the gathering of Ibn 'Uyayna, already a well-established authority, but instead chose to sit with a young, then-unknown scholar named Muhammad ibn Idris, later known as Imam ash-Shafi'i. Asked why, he said a missed hadith with a short chain of transmission could always be recovered elsewhere, but he wasn't sure he'd get another chance to learn from a mind like this one. He'd never seen anyone more capable of understanding the Book of Allah. This approach shaped his fiqh as a whole: strict adherence to the text in matters of worship, and openness in matters of transaction until a text explicitly forbids it. He left little room for personal opinion unless necessary, saying, "Do not make a statement about an issue unless you have an imam therein"; not ruling out derivation or analysis, but insisting the evidence be fully exhausted before an opinion was formed.

The role of Imam Ahmad's teachers was crucial in shaping his education and intellectual development. The Hanbali madhab gives precedence to the Sunnah without denying that there are things that should be understood and derived from the texts of Islam, and this gave the madhab a leg up in the sheer number of evidence that it collected. Their teachings and guidance helped him become one of the most prominent scholars of his time and a leading figure in the development of the Hanbali school and thought. Most of the way fiqh is compiled was through their students asking them questions, writing them down, and then codifying them. Other than Imam ash-Shafi’i, none of the four imams actually wrote their own fiqh. Even for Imam Malik, he wrote his Muwatta, but his fiqh is narrated from him in the form of questions asked by his students.

🔖 Imam Ahmad's Hadith Study and the Start of His Fiqh Imam Ahmad held those devoted to the study and preservation of hadith in the highest regard, referring to them as "the princes of knowledge." He once watched a group of hadith scholars arrive with their inkwells in hand and said simply, "These are the lamps of Islam." Some scholars claimed Imam Ahmad was only a muhaddith and not a faqih, but his life shows otherwise. Over the course of his life, he was asked and answered thousands of legal questions, drawing from the Qur'an and Sunnah, the practice of the Companions, the Salaf, and his own ijtihad, turning to qiyas only when nothing else could be applied. Abd al-Razzaq said he'd never seen anyone more capable in fiqh, nor more scrupulous, and Abu 'Ubayd, surveying the four most learned men of the era, ranked him first in jurisprudence among them.

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Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal رحمه الله (164–241 AH) said:  إذا كان في المسألة حديث عن النبي - صلى الله عليه وسلم - لا يؤخذ بقول أحد من الصحابة، ولا من بعده خلافه، وإذا كان قول عن أحد من الصحابة مختلف تخير من أقوالهم إلى قول، وإذا كان لم يكن فيها عن النبي - صلى الله عليه وسلم - ولا عن أصحابه قول، تخير من أقاويل التابعين. "If there is a ḥadīth from the Prophet ﷺ regarding an issue (mas'ala), then the statement (qawl) of none of the Sahabah, or of those who came after them, is accepted if it contradicts it. If there are differing statements among the Sahabah, then one chooses from among their views the one that is strongest. And if there is neither a ḥadīth from the Prophet ﷺ nor a statement from his Sahabah regarding the matter, then one chooses from among the statements of the Tābiʿūn." [ 📗 Source: تسهيل السابلة لمريد معرفة الحنابلة ويليه فائت التسهيل ١/٤٤ ]

Al-Marwadhī al-Ḥanbalī (d. 275 AH) said: Ahmad ibn Hanbal was not one who responded to ignorance with harshness (he was not rough or severe). If someone treated him ignorantly, he would endure it, show forbearance, and say: “Allah is sufficient for me.” He was not spiteful, nor was he hasty. A dispute once occurred between his uncle and his neighbours. They would come to Abū ʿAbd Allāh [Imām Aḥmad], yet he would not show them any inclination toward his uncle, nor would he become angry on his uncle’s behalf. Rather, he would meet them with the honour and respect they were accustomed to receiving from him. Abū ʿAbd Allāh was extremely humble and loved the poor. I never saw a poor person honoured in anyone’s gathering more than in his gathering. He would incline toward them, while keeping himself distant from the people of the dunya. He was characterised by sakinah (tranquility) and dignity. When he sat in his gathering after ʿAṣr, he would not speak until he was asked. When he entered a gathering, he would not seek the place of prominence; he would sit wherever the gathering ended (i.e., wherever there was space). I accompanied him during travel and while at home, and he was of excellent character: always cheerful, gentle in manner, neither harsh nor coarse. He loved for the sake of Allah and hated for the sake of Allah. When he loved someone, he loved for him what he loved for himself and disliked for him what he disliked for himself. Yet his love for a person did not prevent him from restraining him and stopping him from committing oppression, sin, or something disliked if he saw him doing so. When he heard of a person’s righteousness, zuhd, or adherence to the athar, he would ask about him and wished to establish a relationship with him. He was a gentle and mild person. When he heard something he disapproved of, he would be deeply affected by it, and the change in his face would become apparent out of anger for Allah. He did not become angry for his own sake, nor did he defend himself. But when something related to the religion of Allah occurred, his anger would become intense. Abū ʿAbd Allāh was also a good neighbour. He would be harmed by his neighbours, yet he would remain patient and endure their harm. [ 📕 Source: Ādāb al-Sharʿiyyah by Ibn Mufliḥ al-Ḥanbalī ]

However, he trusted his written collections. Once, while staying in Mecca, he was robbed of his belongings. When his host broke the news, Imam Ahmad’s first question was about his papers. Everything else could be replaced, but what he’d written down from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ could not. This is why it is fitting that Imam Ahmad held those who devoted themselves to this same work in the highest regard.

He had many teachers throughout his life, those being Qadi Imam Abu Yusuf, Imam as-Shafi’i, Hushaim Bin Basheer, Ibrahim Ibn Sa’ad, Sufyan Ibn ‘Uyayna, ‘Abbad Ibn ‘Abbad, and Yahya Ibn Abi Zaidah were some of the other scholars from whom Imam Ahmad learned hadith, and many other scholars in different parts of the world. Imam Ahmad was a master of fiqh and hadith, and he achieved mastery in other branches of knowledge. But his most enduring written work is the Musnad, a vast collection of hadith organized by companion rather than by legal topic. When his son Abdullah asked why he'd resisted writing books his whole life yet compiled this one, Imam Ahmad said he built it as a reference point: so that when people disagreed about what the Prophet ﷺ actually said, they would have somewhere reliable to return to. Despite his extraordinary memory, Imam Ahmad refused to teach from memory alone. He insisted on narrating hadith only from written text, and held his students to the same standard, warning them that memory leaves too much room for error. His son Abdullah said he rarely, if ever, saw his father narrate anything without a book in front of him.