The Life and Legacy of Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal: A Pioneer in Islamic Jurisprudence
Imam al-Shafi’i said,
“I went forth from Baghdad and left not behind me a more pious and a better jurisconsult than Ibn Hanbal.” Historians relate that his funeral was attended by 800,000 men and 60,000 women (or around 2.8 million to 1 million people in total) and that 20,000 Christians and Jews converted to Islam on that day.
Celebrated as the founder of the Hanbali Fiqh, Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal is mostly famous for his collections of the Traditions (Hadith) and his emphasis on the Qur’an and the hadith as the primary sources of legal knowledge. His most famous work is Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal which is a collection of around 28,199 traditions.
Abu Abd Allah Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal ibn Hilal al-Shaybani was born in Baghdad in Iraq in 780. He was from a noble Arab clan, the Banu Sahyban. This clan had played an important part in the Muslim conquests of Iraq and Khurasan during the first century of Islam.
Ibn Hanbal developed an enthusiasm for the religious sciences from an early age. In Baghdad, which at the time was the seat of Islamic learning, he studied lexicography, jurisprudence, and the Prophetic Traditions (hadith). Famous Sufi, jurist, theologian, and Islamic preacher Abdul Qadir Gilani (or Abdul Qadir Jeelani) was highly influenced by Ahmad bin Hanbal.
Hanbali Fiqh is one of the four major traditional Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence and is mostly followed in Saudi Arabia. Among the most prominent adherents of the Hanbali doctrine were Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and, more recently, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792) whose alliance with Ibn Saud, ancestor of the founders of Saudi Arabia, resulted in the Hanbali school becoming the official doctrine in the country.
Sources:
Kitab al-Jarh wa-al-ta‘dil 1:312
Tarikh Madinat Dimashq 5:330–5
Siyar a‘lam al-nubala’ 11:339–40, 343