Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Ahmad ibn Hanbal (. Ahmad ibn Hanbal أحمد بن حنبل, DMG Aḥmad Ḥanbal; * 780 in Baghdad, † 855 ibid.), full name Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ḥanbal, in the literature mainly short called Ibn Ḥanbal, was an Islamic theologian and jurist with sphere in Basra and Baghdad. He is considered the founder of one of the four traditional schools of law of Sunni Islam, the so-called Hanbali.

Life

Ibn Hanbal 's family came from Basra and moved to Merv later. His father, a member of the Arab tribe Banu Schayban of Rabi'a, served in the Abbasid army in Khorasan and settled with his family in Baghdad. Ibn Hanbal regularly studied with Hushaym b. Bashir and Sufyan ibn ' Uyaina. Also, teaching the Hanafi Abū Yūsuf Kadis (d. 798 ), the disciple of Abu Hanifa, was Ibn Hanbal said to have visited. Abū Yūsuf but little influence on Ibn Hanbal had. To say that Ibn Hanbal also said to have been a pupil of Muhammad Idris al - Shafi'i, is exaggerated. Ibn Hanbal has al - Shafi'i probably only met once in the year 810 in Baghdad. In the year 795 he took up traveling extensively, which led him to Syria, Yemen, Khorasan, after Mecca and Medina. Several authorities of the hadith literature of the early 9th century had a great influence on his education, foremost among them Sufyan ibn ' Uyaina († 811 ) in Mecca, Abd al -Rahman ibn Mahdi († 813) in Basra and Waki ' ibn al - Dscharrah († 812) in Kufa, the then undisputed representatives of the ashab al - hadith.

Ibn Hanbal is the youngest among the founders of the four established in Sunni Islam directions ( madhhab ) of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh ), namely of the Hanbali school named after him. But he himself, who was anxious to derive all laws from the Quran, the Sunnah and the consensus ( ijma ') of the first generation is considered, especially as a theologian and not as a lawyer. The sources defined by al- Shafii of fiqh - the analogy ( qiyas ) and the independent expert opinion (ra ʾ y) - lose their significance in the hanbalistischen legal doctrine. This depends primarily together with the strictly theological and dogmatic attitude of the school's founders, the more perverted than in those circles in the hadith scholars of lawyers.

Ibn Hanbal has written thus no right compendium as its predecessors; the subject areas of his legal issues ( masa'il ) his successors - among them his sons Salih, who later became Qadi of Isfahan, († 878 ) and Abdallah, the hadith literature devoted to († 903) - collected and towards the end of the 9th century edited. However, it is also in these collections not only to purely legal responsa, but also dogmatic and ethical versions of the school 's founder. Its proximity to the theology also determined his fate during the Mihna, as al - Ma ʾ mun the teaching of mu ʿ tazila explained about the createdness the Koran state doctrine. In September 834, he had to appear with other members of the ahl al- sunna on Kalifenhof and submit to the Mihna. He was whipped, imprisoned and placed under house arrest. Only under al - Mutawakkil ' alā ' llāh ( from 847 ) he could undisturbed teach and perform publicly. Eight years later, he died after a brief illness in Baghdad.

His son Salih has /, The Biography of Ahmad ibn Hanbal ' summarized his father's life entitled سيرة أحمد بن حنبل / Sirat Aḥmad b.Ḥanbal. The book was first published in 1995 in Riyadh pressure.

Works

• Al - Musnad / المسند His most famous work is his monumental collection of more than 29 thousand hadiths of the Prophet Mohammed, which he gained after many sources and passed on to his sons. According to its structure, the work bears the simple title al - Musnad. It is a collection that Ibn Hanbal after the key witness, the Prophet's companions ( sahaba ) who have heard the sayings of the Prophet directly from him, together. The work begins with the traditions that have been handed down the first Caliph after the Prophet, followed by the Meccan emigrants ( muhajirun ), al - Ansar, the so-called helpers and companions of the Prophet who in the Muslim start-ups in the provinces ( Kufa, Basra, Syria, etc.) established during the Islamic conquest. At the end of this collection, which lacks any thematic order of the Hadith are the traditions of Anonymous and women who have given sayings of Muhammad. The work in six volumes has been printed for the first time in 1895 in Bulak (Cairo ) and reprinted several times. There are also several revisions that replace the old Bulak edition now with a modern font.

• كتاب السنة The Kitāb al - Sunan (also: al -Sunna ) has dogmatic issues in the strict interpretation of Sunni Muslims on the subject. In this written in the form of responsa collection of two volumes Ibn Hanbal provides information about how prophets traditions and the narrators of the same from the point of view he represents ahl as- sunna wal- Jamaa'ah أهل السنة والجماعة / ahl as- sunna wa - ʾ l - ʿ ǧamā a /, the followers of the Sunnah and the harmony of Muslims ' in detail are to be assessed.

• كتاب الأشربة / Kitaab al - ašriba "The Book of Drinks " dedicated exclusively to those traditions that deal with the Qur'anic prohibition of alcohol in Islam and its interpretation. Thus, it is a treatise with limited subject matter of only 60 printed pages (Baghdad 1967).

The treated by Ibn Hanbal legal rights issues in the processing of his students in the form of questions and answers su'alat / سؤالات / su ʾ alat been handed down under different titles. They also deal with issues of tradition criticism. One of these collections hadithkritischen goes back to Abū Dāwūd al - Siǧistānī († 888 in Basra ) and is in the National Library - al - Zahiriya - (now Maktabat Asad ) of Damascus received. It has been recently printed in Medina in 1994.

• Al - masa'il / المسائل / al - Masa ʾ il, also in the processing of Abū Dāwūd, is a collection of legal issues and is organized according to the chapters of fiqh. This work is preserved in the library of Damascus and one of the oldest manuscripts in the Islamic world from the year 879 Probably the manuscript is an autograph ( see photo).