Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal TRADITIONALIST and FAQĪH

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1 Architects of Civilisation : Ibn Ḥanbal July 2014 Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal TRADITIONALIST and FAQĪH Karim D. Crow & Mohd Fariz Zainal Abdullah For centuries Ḥanbalī jurisprudence, or the fiqh attributed to Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, has been viewed as the fourth school of Sunnī jurisprudence. The important movement of Traditionists or asḥāb al-ḥadīth collected and purified the Hadith of the Prophet, and compiled the vast mass of narrated reports transmitted over generations on the authority of the Successors from the Companions, on the Prophet (S). Hadith formed the basis of the Prophetic Sunnah, religious Law, and basic creedal Doctrine on the fundamentals of faith (uṣūl al-dīn). Traditionists praised him as an expert in Islamic law and the founder of the Ḥanbalī legal school; yet in his lifetime Ibn Ḥanbal was recognized as a foremost traditionist rather than a faqīh. LIFE AND WORK. Abū Abd Allāh Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥanbal al- Marwazī al-shaybānī (whose family came from Marw in N.W. Iran, of the Arab Shaybān tribe) was born in Baghdad in 164 H/ 780. Fourteen years before his birth, another great Iraqi legal scholar Abū Ḥanīfah had died in Baghdad, noted for championing rational techniques of jurisprudence. Aḥmad is commonly known as Ibn Ḥanbal after his illustrious grandfather Ḥanbal, a supporter of the Abbasid revolution who was appointed governor of Sarakhs (N.W. Iran). Like his forebears Ibn Ḥanbal was bilingual in Arabic and Persian, and received a traditional Islamic education in mosque study circles of Qur an and Hadith in Baghdad, being strongly encouraged by his mother. During Ibn Ḥanbal s lifetime second-half of 2 nd century H and first-half of 3 rd century when the substance of classical Islamic civilisation took shape, Baghdad was the centre not only of politics and commerce but of intense Islamic religious developments and intellectual circles receptive to Greek, Persian and Indian sciences. His early studies concentrated on two major religious disciplines: Jurisprudence (fiqh), and Prophetic Traditions (ḥadīth). In Baghdad Ibn Ḥanbal began his studies under the leading jurist Qadi Abū Yūsuf (the disciple of Abū Ḥanīfah)

2 who taught rationalist techniques (ra y and qiyās) and applied istiḥsān legal preference 1 in deriving legal rulings. Ibn Ḥanbal then engaged in Hadith studies under the traditionalist scholar Hushaym ibn Bashīr (d. 183/799). His increasingly serious commitment to collecting Prophetic traditions impelled him from 179 H to undertake extensive travels for knowledge to centres in Iraq, Khurasan, Syria, Hijaz, and Yaman. One of his close travelling companions during those twenty-five years was Yaḥyā ibn Ma īn ( H), famed for expertise in the names of transmission-chains (rijāl) of Hadith reports. In each place Ibn Ḥanbal studied under leading traditionist scholars, copying down into his notebooks the Hadiths they dictated to pupils. In Kufa he worked closely with al-wakī b. al-jarrāḥ, in Basra with the leading critic Yaḥyā b. Sa īd al- Qaṭṭān, in Mecca with the great traditionist Sufyān b. Uyaynah, and for ten months in Yaman with Abd al-razzāq b. Hammām, to mention only the best known. Ibn Ḥanbal performed the pilgrimage five times, including three times on foot. In 205 H he returned to Baghdad and began teaching where his circle of pupils grew rapidly, and he became sought out by students as among the most celebrated Traditionist of the time. Normally the collecting of Hadith was a two-fold process comprising samā audition, and arḍ reading back (for textual confirmation). The teacher dictated aloud narrations he had audited from earlier authorities, while his pupils recorded these in their personal notebooks (uṣūl). Pupils would then read back to their teacher what they had written down, in order to check for accuracy and prevent errors. A few individuals did not even rely on written copies, but retained their materials in memory with great accuracy. However, assiduous collectors of Hadith might also copy narrations from the notebooks of their colleagues for their own use, without the preferred samā, and then confirm the accuracy of their copy by reading back to the teacher. This involved making personal copies of other persons notebooks or of a separate composed work 1 In juristic terminology istiḥsān refers to a ruling which goes against a relevant inferential analogy, normally on the preponderance of counter-evidence from the revealed sources, and forms a component of ijtihād; Professor Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (Selangor: 1989) pp / Ibn Ḥanbal was reported to have applied istiḥsān legal preference in certain cases (e.g. ownership of the produce of usurped land) in favor of the indicant from the hadith which contradicted the seemingly correct qiyās. 2

3 (taṣnīf or muṣannaf), which was normal practice during the 2 nd century H among Madinan scholars such as al-zuhrī, Ja far al-ṣādiq, or Mālik b. Anas. However, the Iraqi traditionists insisted on the necessity of oral aural transmission (mouth-to-ear), rather than reliance on book transmission. Ibn Ḥanbal had a phenomenal memory, and was never seen without a reed pen between his ink-stained fingers busied with copying and correcting Hadith. He exemplified the Traditionalist jurist who minimized employing rational procedures of ra y or qiyās, and who sought support for legal opinions, juridical rulings, and ascertaining creedal doctrine primarily on the basis of received Hadith. In Ibn Ḥanbal s view, in order to perform this function a competent scholar should have at his command (recorded in his written notebooks, or preferably alive in memory) at least five hundred thousand Hadith or more. Ibn Ḥanbal s pupil the reputable Traditionalist Abū Zur ah al-rāzī (d. 264 H) estimated that Aḥmad preserved by memory one million Hadith both isnād and matn. Abū Zur ah himself was present on the day of Ibn Ḥanbal s burial in Baghdad in 241, when his original Hadith notebooks (kutub al- uṣūl) and other manuscript writings were catalogued: their total volume was twelve and one-half camel loads (twenty-five bales /wasaq)! 2 THE MUSNAD. Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal compiled his famous Musnad consisting of about 30,000 Hadith arranged under names of Companions who audited them from the Prophet, and transmitted them to their pupils the Successors. These narrations were gleaned out of approximately 750,000 he had recorded directly from tradents he met personally during his years of search for knowledge. Therefore, for his Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal selected about four per cent of materials at his disposal. The very order in which he listed the Companions in his Musnad beginning with the first Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, followed by those of the Shūra council and the Ten promised paradise, and then the Family of the Prophet, etc., was an explicit affirmation of emerging Sunnī orthodoxy. As with several other of his writings, his second son Abd Allāh (d. 290 /903) assisted his father in compiling and recording the Musnad, while adding some of his own additions (ziyādāt). Ibn Ḥanbal was destined to exert a formidable impact on 2 Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib al-imām Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, pp

4 Sunnī doctrinal creed (ahl al-sunnah wa l-jamā ah) establishing essential Traditionalist beliefs by means of his confrontation with caliphal power. THE INQUISITION. Abbāsid Caliph al-ma mūn (rg H/ ) entertained intellectual ambitions to unite the Islamic world around his person as final authority over true doctrine (perhaps modeled after the politico religious image of the IMĀM in Zaydī thought). Encouraged by rationalist thinkers in his entourage, the caliph enforced his new doctrinal conformity through an Inquisition or Miḥnah aimed strongly aganst Traditionalist dogmas especially their belief that the Qur ān is uncreated being the pre-existing Word of GOD (or HIS Speech kalām Allāh). In 218 /833 his last year as caliph, al-ma mūn arrested a number of prominent Traditionalists and forced them to publicly recant their views by affirming the Qur ān to be created-in-time and not pertaining to Divine essence. Ibn Ḥanbal was singled out and spent the next twenty-eight months in prison, but he did not renounce his belief despite repeated interrogations by the chief of police, and then a severe flogging in Ramaḍān 219 /September 834 conducted in the presence of al-ma mūn s successor caliph al-mu taṣim (rg / ). However the majority of Traditionists and judges (including Yaḥyā ibn Ma īn and Ibn Sa d) quickly gave verbal compliance to caliphal authorities to avoid mistreatment and suffering. As he lay nursing his wounds, his old travelling companion Ibn Ma īn visited to pay him sympathy but Ibn Ḥanbal turned his face to the wall refusing to speak to one who compromised his faith. Ibn Ḥanbal s courageous persistance and willingness to suffer persecution for the truth caught the imagination of the masses who magnified him as their hero, giving a powerful boost for the eventual success of Traditionalist doctrines. Caliph al-mu taṣim finally released him into house arrest, under the condition he refrain from teaching pupils enforced into the reign of caliph al-wāthiq (rg / ). The prestige attached to his person helped the emergence of a body of legal precedents resulting in the Ḥanbalī legal madhhab. This School was the product of the generations after Aḥmad who systematised a body of teachings in his name. At his death in 241/855 aged seventy-seven very large crowds attended his burial. 4

5 TRIUMPH OF TRADITIONALISM. In the course of the 2 nd /8 th century a keen tension arose between Hadith Folk (ahl al-ḥadīth) who confined legal knowledge to the sacred texts of revealed Qur ān and Hadith, and the rationalist jurists (ahl al-ra y) based mainly in Iraq who viewed knowledge to be the body of legal rulings reached primarily by individual reasoning exertion (ijtihād al-ra y) sometimes without explicit reference to Hadith. 3 In the second century H the ahl al-ra y were ascendant and dominated legal reasoning; by the last quarter of the second century the Traditionalists experienced a strong upsurge exerting powerful pressure upon rationalists leading to their partial decline. During the 3 rd /9 th century conversion from the rationalist to the traditionalist camp was frequent, and the Traditionalist movement took a sharp turn towards total opposition to rationalism including its use of the method of qiyās. By the middle of the third century partisans of Hadith had won the war against ra y, and most jurists combined the two in some way. The final retreat of the rationalists was exemplified both in the withdrawal of the Miḥnah or Inquisition initiated by Caliph al-ma mūn in 218 H, and the emergence of its victims as heroes with Ibn Ḥanbal at the forefront. Independent human reason could not stand on its own as a central method of interpretation and was ultimately made subservient to revelation. The triumph of the Traditionalists was partly due to the withdrawal of political support from an increasingly unpopular position. Caliphs and governors now increasingly began to turn toward popular religious leaders for legitimation and support, and the Ḥanbalīs emerged exercising people power on the streets of Baghdad with unruly crowds of their supporters asserting their doctrinal preferences and intimidating their opponents. Characterized by an austere piety and unshakeable conviction of the sacred importance of their task, Traditionalists applied to themselves a famous utterance of the Prophet: 4 3 On this controversy see the balanced appraisal by Wael Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2004) pp. 52 4, 74 6, , , M. Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, index s.v. aql, provides details on juristic reasoning techniques. 4 Preserved in the collections of al-bukhārī, Muslim, Ibn Mājah, and Ibn Ḥanbal s Musnad. This utterance was often taken to refer to the Abdāl Saintly Substitutes so named since whenever one expired another takes his place to fulfill his task. They were itinerant hermits who sought 5

6 A band from my community shall not cease to establish the truth, while those who forsake and oppose them harm them not, until God s affair is accomplished and they achieve mastery over the people. Primacy of Hadith was paramount over and above any linguistic, rational or symbolic attempts to explicate meaning the transmitted narratives must be accepted word for word just as they reached us without inquiring how or why. Certain anthropomorphic and spatial expressions describing God in the Qur an were handled by leaving knowledge of their real meaning to God, a position known as tafwīḍ entrusting (ultimate knowledge to God alone). Regarding the contested doctrines of divine pre-ordainment of human deeds (qadar), of God being seen by an eyewitnessing, and of the Qur ān as uncreated Divine Speech, Ibn Ḥanbal explicitly affirmed that one must: 5 give assent to narrated-traditions regarding (these doctrines) and believe them Why? is not to be said, nor How? rather it is a matter of assenting and believing in these traditions. Whomever did not know the explanation of the specific ḥadīth, and his intelligence informs him (of the meaning), then that suffices and is proper for him; so belief in it and consent is incumbent upon him he is not to reject a single letter of these traditions nor other narrations transmitted through reliable authorities. Nor should you dispute or debate with anyone over their meaning, nor teach others disputation so that he abandons disputation and gives consent and believes in the transmitted reports. For we deem Hadith must be accepted in its literal external form ( alā ẓāhirihi) just as it has come down to us from the Prophet (S), and theological debate over it is a reprehensible innovation; indeed we believe in it literally and do not dispute rationally over its import with anyone! uninhabited areas to pursue intense devotions in isolation and practice self-mortification, and Ibn Ḥanbal favored them; see Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib al-imām pp. 147, 180 1, Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib al-imām p The leading theologian al-ash arī stated (Maqālāt p. 294) that ahl al-ḥadīth wa l-sunnah disapprove of disputation and ostentatious-display in contention regarding doctrine or arguing over qadar and in defending their doctrines they contend by assenting to sound transmissions nor do they say how? or why?, for that is a reprehensible innovation. 6

7 Therefore Ibn Ḥanbal discouraged his Traditionalist associates from copying the writings of prominent juristic authorities including the important Kufan traditionist-jurist Sufyān al-thawrī (d. 161 H), the great Madinan jurist Mālik b. Anas (d. 179), the jurist Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-shāfi ī (d. 204), the Iraqi philologist-traditionist Abū Ubayd al-qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224), or the Iraqi jurist Abū Thawr Ibrāhīm b. Khālid (d. 240) all of whose writings he condemned as kutub al-ra y and improperly rationalist. However, others affirmed that Ibn Ḥanbal did permit copying the early Ḥadīth compilation al- Jāmi by al-thawrī, and al-muwaṭṭa by Mālik. When reminded that the staunch Sunnī traditionist Abdullāh b. al-mubārak (d. 181/797) had himself copied such ra y writings, Ibn Ḥanbal scoffed: Ibn al-mubārak didn t descend from heaven! We are bidden to take knowledge from above (min fawq) [through the Prophet from GOD]. 6 The assiduous collector of Ibn Ḥanbal s responsa Abū Bakr al-khallāl (d. 311 /923) stated that in his early days Ibn Ḥanbal himself had studied the writings of rationalist jurists (kutub al-ra y) and even made his own copies, which he later disregarded in favor of Hadith. 7 Ibn Ḥanbal did not entirely reject tools of legal rationalism, like the Traditionalist Dāwūd al-zāhirī (d. 270/883) who founded the Ẓāhirī school was to do one generation later. Yet he accepted qiyās only when absolutely necessary, placing far more restrictions on its use than al- Shāfi ī did. Ibn Ḥanbal generally preferred to accept unsound or weak (ḍa īf) traditions as the basis for legal rulings, rather than have recourse to analogic reasoning (maqāyīs) lacking any reference to sacred Hadith texts as a less approved alternative. ḤADĪTH RELIGION. The champions of Hadith insisted upon the primacy of narrated traditions, placing them at the center of their religious and devotional activity. The unrivalled wellsprings of truth were the sacred texts of al-kitāb wa l-sunnah serving as the criterion for examining results of human reason. After obligatory ritual requirements of faith such as prayer, fasting and pilgrimage, the 6 Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib pp ; consult for more details Christoph Melchert, The Adversaries of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, Arabica 44 (1997) pp Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib pp Khallāl s statement might have been intended as a defense of his master from the charge of having been a mere muḥaddith traditionist, rather than a true faqīh jurist which certain scholars including Ibn Jarīr al-ṭabarī asserted. 7

8 greatest religious devotional act was deemed the study and teaching of Hadith defined as Prophetic utterances or Sunnah (āthār Rasūli-llāh) narrated through well connected chains-of-transmitters (musnad) from reliable authorities (thiqāt). This formed the juridical substance of the Sharī ah for regulating all aspects of individual and communal life. Indeed, the very act of writing down Hadith was preferred over supererogatory prayers or fasts. Sunnah required holding fast to what the Companions of the Prophet and the early pious authorities or salaf had practised by following their guidance, and by rejecting all reprehensible innovations and polemical disputation over divisive doctrinal matters. This type of scriptural Hadith-based thinking was important for elaboration of normative Sunnī doctrine in early Islam. Traditionalists generally avoided speculative reasoning, and did not rationally compare Qur ānic verses or Hadith narratives in order to draw juridical and doctrinal conclusions. They taught that when the Qur an, Sunnah and Consensus are joined, these lead to certain and true perceptions which no interpretation can oppose. Thus, on whether humans will see God in the Hereafter by a physical eye-witnessing, the reputable central Asian tradent al-dārimī (d. 255/869) asserted: If the Qur ān, the Messenger s utterance and the consensus of the community conjoin there is no other interpretation! Sunnī Traditionalism idealized the foundational basis of Islamic polity centered upon the Prophet Muḥammad (S), and the heroic figures of his Companions. Above all, dwelling upon the early politico-religious disputes among the Companions over the succession to the Prophet, and consequent bitter polemics over whom among the first four Caliphs possessed surpassing merit or may have committed errors, was to be absolutely avoided. This opens the door to the reprehensible innovations of theologians and rationalists, as well as the subversive doctrines espoused by the Shī ah and Ṣūfī esotericists. In his letter to the Basran traditionist Musaddad b. Musarhad al-asadī (d. 228/843) spelling out true doctrine, Ibn Ḥanbal warned him: 8 beware disputation with those holding errant doctrines, and refrain from discussing the shortcomings of the Companions of the Prophet (S), rather narrate their surpassing merits (faḍā il) and abstain from discussing what broke out between them (al-imsāk an mā shajara 8 Cited by Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib al-imām p Musaddad was among the first to compile a Musnad; Ibn Ḥajar al- Asqalānī, Tahdhīb al-tahdhīb (Ḥaydarābād) v

9 baynahum). He insisted upon uniform conformity to the Jamā ah Majority Assembly, as opposed to splintering into disputing sects. Therefore disputation jadal and divisive intellectual speculations must be rejected especially the controversial doctrines taught by Rationalist theologians (ahl al-kalām). Traditionalists identified some among themselves with the saintly Abdāl, a mysterious caste of inner humanity believed to exercise spiritual control over this world. Ibn Ḥanbal had a soft spot for pious renunciants (zuhhād) and selfmortifiers and compiled a valuable collection of their utterances in his Kitāb al- Zuhd. Yet he opposed the trend of proto-ṣūfī devotees who taught qadarī doctrine on the efficacy of human deeds and transmitted narratives about the religious value of human intelligence (al- aql). These were the colony of Basran renunciants on Abbādān island off the coast of the Shaṭṭ al- Arab who had thrown away their Hadith notebooks as a mark of their dedication to a higher mode of experiential knowledge (ma rifah). This was the earliest Ṣūfī convent led by Abd al-wāḥid b. Zayd (d. 150 H) the disciple of al-ḥasan al-baṣrī, and included devotees such as Dāwūd b. al-muḥabbar (d. 206) who compiled the notorious Kitāb al- Aql / On Intelligence whom Ibn Ḥanbal condemned as a liar. Ibn Ḥanbal also strongly discouraged his followers from attending the circle of the prominent Baghdadi Ṣūfī teacher al-ḥārith al-muḥāsibī (d. 243/857) and even sought to prevent him from teaching. Nevertheless, Ibn Ḥanbal himself once requested one of al-muḥāsibī s pupils to secrete him in the vicinity of his private night session where he listened to this shaykh guiding the inner work of his disciples, becoming so deeply affected that he wept. 9 Muḥāsibī was a Sunnī theologian and Ṣūfī theoretician as well as spiritual master whose pupil al- Junayd consolidated the Baghdadi esoteric trajectory. Muḥāsibī s seminal work The Essential-Nature of Intelligence influenced later Ash arite thinkers of the stature of al-juwaynī and al-ghazālī. This Sufi master lived the final years of his life closeted in his home from fear of mistreatment at the hands of radical Traditionalists in Baghdad who followed Ibn Ḥanbal. Upon al-muḥāsibī s death only four of his associates dared to attend his funeral; others were absent out of fear of public harassment at the hands of intolerant Traditionalists. 9 Manāqib pp

10 Ḥanbalī School. The conceptual impact of al-shāfi ī is clear in Ibn Ḥanbal s attitude toward fiqh, and this fertilised the emergence of a new legal approach among Traditionists differing from the previous work by al-thawrī, Mālik b. Anas, or al-shāfi ī himself. Emphasizing adherence to transmitted āthār and sunnah while marginalizing the use of qiyās and ra y was the hallmark of this approach of following authority ittibā for legal questions and rulings, and privileging transmitted proofs over rational proofs. At the start of the 4 th /10 th century Abū Bakr al-khallāl (d. 311/923) systematised disparate teachings in various Masā il Aḥmad writings (responsa by Ibn Ḥanbal to different pupils), reshaping these materials into a coherent legal doctrine in his work al-jāmi li- ulūm Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. 10 Other jurists such as Abū l-qāsim al-khiraqī (d. 299/912) advanced the development of Ḥanbalī fiqh through classification and independent juridical works. By the late 4 th /10 th century Muslim juridical literature began to recognize the Ḥanbalī school as a distinct legal presence. Growing integration of Ḥanbalīs into mainstream intellectual currents induced a pronounced trend toward moderation and more sophisticated intellectual approaches, leading to disavowal of anthropomophoric literalism or narrow-minded dogmatism. This was especially evident in the careers and rationally inspired works of Alī Ibn Aqīl (d. 513/1119), the influential Ḥanbalī preacher Abd al-raḥmān Ibn al-jawzī (d. 597/1201) and Najm al-dīn al-ṭūfī (d. 716/1316), and even in aspects of the thought of Ibn Taymīyah (d. 728/1328). However the die-hard wing labelled ḥashwīyah maintained uncompromising literalism in doctrine and strong hostility to rationalism. Ḥanbalī strength was originally in Baghdad, the Caspian Sea area, and Arabia; they were eclipsed in central Islamic lands by the 6 th /12 th century and then extended into Syria. The Ḥanbalīs remained the smallest Sunnī legal school in numbers and geographic extent. With the ascendency of the 18 th century Wahhābī movement spread from central Arabia in symbiosis with the ruling Family of Sa ūd, Ḥanbalī purist convictions upheld by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gained a giant footprint across the Islamic world from the late 20 th century. Today its doctrinal preferences are affecting wide sectors of Muslim 10 Ch. Melchert, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (Oxford: 2006). 10

11 societies globally as a Sunnī bulwark against westernization while at the same time driving sectarian conflict and jihadist ideology. The tenor and ethos of a Traditionalist of the caliber of Ibn Ḥanbal may be appreciated when we recall that in his zeal to practise the Prophetic Sunnah he asked permission of his wife to purchase a slave girl, keeping her as his umm walad (love slave) and naming her Rayḥānah in imitation of the Prophet; she became the mother of his son Abd Allāh. He possessed a drinking bowl (qaṣ ah) used by the Prophet himself, which he would wash in water to drink for medicinal cures; as well as a lock of the Prophet s hair to be immersed in water and drunk for the same purpose. On that fateful day in Ramadan 219 H during his interrogation by the Inquisition in the very presence of the Abbāsid Caliph al-mu taṣim, when Ibn Ḥanbal was stripped down to his drawers and severely whipped twenty-nine lashes until he lost consciousness, this precious lock of hair was wrapped in a napkin in the side pocket of his drawers. 11 His followers attributed the miracle of his drawers not dropping and humiliatingly exposing him during his ordeal, to the efficacy of this precious relic of the Prophet s hair. Selected Reading: Hassan Ansari & Ahmad Pakatchi, article Aḥmad B. Ḥanbal, in Encyclopaedia Islamica, Ed. Wilferd Madelung & Farhad Daftary. Leiden: Brill, 2012; vol. 3, pp [The best concise overview; see part two by A. Pakatchi on Transmission and Spread of Aḥmad B. Ḥanbal s FIQH.] Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad. Cairo: 1313 /1895; ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir, Cairo: (15 vols.); & new ed. Shu ayb al-arna ūt, Beirut: 1413 /1993. Nimrod Hurvitz, The Formation of Ḥanbalism: Piety into Power. London: Routledge Curzon, [Throws light on the social and religious milieu.] Abd al-raḥmān Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib al-imām Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal. 3 rd pr., Beirut: Dār al-afāq al-jadīdah, [The best traditional presentation, esp. for events of the Inquisition.] Scott C. Lucas, Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature, and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam. The Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Sa d, Ibn Ma īn, and Ibn Ḥanbal. Leiden: Brill, [Helpful to comprehend the formative impact of Hadith Traditionalism upon Sunnī doctrine.] Christopher Melchert, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. Oxford: Oneworld, [Solid brief overview.] 11 Ibn al-jawzī, Manāqib p. 177 (Rayḥānah); p. 186 (drinking bowl); p. 326 (lock of hair). 11