Hanbali school

The Hanbali school (Arabic: المذهب الحنبلي‎‎) is one of the four orthodox Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence (fiqh). It is named after the Iraqi scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), and was institutionalized by his students. The Hanbali madhhab is the smallest of four major Sunni schools, the others being the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi`i.

Hanbali school derives Sharia predominantly from the Quran, the Hadiths (sayings and customs of Muhammad), and the views of Sahabah (Muhammad's companions). In cases where there is no clear answer in sacred texts of Islam, the Hanbali school does not accept jurist discretion or customs of a community as a sound basis to derive Islamic law, a method that Hanafi and Maliki Sunni fiqhs accept. Hanbali school is the strict traditionalist school of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam. It is found primarily in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where it is the official fiqh. Hanbali followers are the demographic majority in four emirates of UAE (Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Ajman). Large minorities of Hanbali followers are also found in Bahrain, Oman and Yemen and within Iraqi and Jordanian bedouins.

The Hanbali school experienced a reformation in the Wahhabi-Salafist movement. Historically the school was small; during the 18th to early-20th century Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Al Saud greatly aided its propagation around the world by way of their interpretation of the school's teachings. As a result of this, the school's name has become a controversial one in certain quarters of the Islamic world due to the influence he is believed by some to have had upon these teachings, which cites Ibn Hanbal as a principal influence along with the thirteenth-century Hanbali reformer Ibn Taymiyyah. However, it has been argued by certain scholars that Ibn Hanbal's own beliefs actually played "no real part in the establishment of the central doctrines of Wahhabism," as there is evidence, according to the same authors, that "the older Hanbalite authorities had doctrinal concerns very different from those of the Wahhabis," rich as medieval Hanbali literature is in references to saints, grave visitation, miracles, and relics. Historically, the Hanbali school was treated as simply another valid interpretation of Islamic law, and many prominent medieval Sufis, such as Abdul Qadir Jilani, were Hanbali jurists and mystics at the same time.

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