در farkon rabin karni na tara, yawancin al'ummar Daular Abbasiyawa Kiristoci ne, Yahudawa, Zoroastrians ko ma masu bautar gumaka. Musulmai, waɗanda su ne ƙananan masu mulki, sun fuskanci, kusan a kowane lokaci, barazana ko jan hankalin wasu hanyoyin rayuwa da tunani, waɗanda suka samo asali sosai daga muhalli, tarihi da al'ada. Babu abin mamaki da suka sha jin cewa an matsa musu, ko kuma suka faɗa cikin jaraba: hakan na iya zuwa ta hanyar gayyata zuwa gidan maƙwabci, wata alaƙar soyayya ko ta jima'i ba tare da wata niyya ba, ko buƙatar binne iyaye wanda ba Musulmi ba. Dai dai dai, akwai buƙatar cikakken koyarwa game da halayen yau da kullum. Ana iya neman shiriya a cikin Alƙur'ani, amma yawancin abubuwan da ke cikinsa ba su bayyana ba ko kuma an bar su ba tare da faɗi ba. Hadisai, wato maganganu da ayyukan Annabi ﷺ, sun yawaita domin cike gibin. Babban masanin shari'a, al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204 H/820AD), ya goyi bayan ikon hadisai sosai a cikin littafinsa mai muhimmanci, Risala kan Ka'idojin Shari'a (wanda aka fassara kwanan nan don Laburaren Adabin Larabci).

During the first half of the ninth century, most of the Abbasid Caliphate’s subjects were Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians or even pagans. The ruling minority of Muslims faced, at almost every turn, the threat—or allure—of other ways of life and thought, deeply rooted in landscape, history and custom. No wonder they often felt embattled, or succumbed to temptation: it might come in the form of an invitation to a neighbor’s house, a casual romantic or sexual encounter, or the need to bury a non-Muslim parent. There was, in any event, a need for detailed instruction about everyday deportment. Guidance might be sought in the Qurʾan, but much in it was ambiguous or left unsaid. Traditions about the Prophet’s sayings and doings (hadiths) proliferated to fill the gap. The eminent legal thinker, al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204 H/820AD), strongly advocated the authority of hadiths in his epoch-making Epistle on Legal Theory (recently translated for the Library of Arabic Literature).

A cikin tsara ta gaba, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241H/855AD) ya sami suna da ba zai taɓa shuɗewa ba, ba kawai a matsayin mai tara hadisai ba tare da gajiyawa ba, har ma a matsayin ɗaya daga cikin mafi kyawun misalai, bayan Annabi ﷺ da kansa, na halayen da hadisai suka umarta.

In the next generation, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241H/855AD) made a reputation that has never faded, not just as an indefatigable collector of hadiths, but also as one of the greatest exemplars, after the Prophet himself, of the conduct the hadiths prescribed.

Ibn Ḥanbal ya bayar da amsoshi masu yawa ga tambayoyin 'yan'uwansa Musulmi masu ibada, wanda hakan ya nuna wani kyakkyawan hoto na rayuwar yau da kullum a Baghdad a karni na tara. Sai dai a idon talakawa, suna girmama Ibn Ḥanbal musamman saboda jajircewarsa wajen jure bulala mai tsanani da aka yi masa bisa umarnin Halifa al-Ma'mun (r. 198–218H/813–833AD).

The numerous responses Ibn Ḥanbal offered to enquiries from pious fellow Muslims present a lively picture of daily life in ninth-century Baghdad. In the eyes of ordinary people, however, Ibn Ḥanbal’s reputation rested chiefly on his unflinching endurance of a severe flogging at the command of the Caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218H/813–833AD).

Wannan shi ne sakamakon da Ibn Ḥanbal ya samu saboda tsayuwarsa kan koyarwar cewa Alƙur'ani ba halitta ba ne, maganar Allah mai rai. Al-Ma'mūn yana so ya maye gurbin wannan ra'ayi da wani ra'ayi game da littafi mai tsarki wanda zai bar wuri ga fassarar mutum bisa hankali. Al-Ma'mūn yana da nasa ra'ayoyi na musamman game da fassara littafi mai tsarki da kuma, gabaɗaya, game da tushen iko a Musulunci; amma juriyar Ibn Ḥanbal ta taimaka sosai wajen nasarar binciken malamai a kan nufin khalifa wajen tantance koyarwar Musulunci. Sannu a hankali, dogaro ga ilimin tafsirin Alƙur'ani ya fara a fahimci a matsayin wanda ya hana amfani da hujja ta hankali ko tunani mai zurfi; waɗannan su ne zunubban masana falsafa. Alhali kuwa al-Ma'mūn yana da alaƙa sosai da fassara falsafar Girka zuwa Larabci, Ibn Ḥanbal kuwa ba ya so ko kaɗan da irin waɗannan rubuce-rubuce, waɗanda ba Larabci ba ne kuma ba na Musulunci ba ne.

This was Ibn Ḥanbal’s recompense for insisting on the doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Qurʾan as God’s living word, for which al-Maʾmūn sought to substitute a view of scripture that left room for human interpretation based on reason. Al-Maʾmūn had his own distinctive ideas about interpreting scripture and in general about the sources of authority in Islam; but Ibn Ḥanbal’s resistance contributed decisively to the triumph of scholarly research over caliphal will in determining Muslim doctrine. Increasingly, an attachment to Qurʾanic scholarship was construed as excluding resort to ratiocination or speculation—these were the sins of the philosophers. Whereas al-Maʾmūn was closely associated with the translation of Greek philosophy into Arabic, Ibn Ḥanbal would have no truck with such writings, which were neither Arabic nor Muslim.

Madhhab Ḥanbalī—wanda aka sanya wa suna da sunan Ibn Ḥanbal—ya riga ya bunƙasa a ƙarni na goma, duk da gasa daga sauran madhhabai na tunanin shari'a. Ya ci gaba da sabunta kansa a cikin ƙarnukan da suka biyo baya, da farko a Baghdad, sannan a Damascus. Ya ƙara rauni bayan mamayar ƙasashen Larabawa a farkon ƙarni na goma sha shida daga Ottoman, waɗanda suka fi son madhhabin Ḥanafī na tunanin shari'a. Ta ɗaya daga cikin irin daidaituwar tarihi da da Ibn Ḥanbal kansa zai iya yabawa, a ɗan nesa da yankunan Ottoman ne, a tsakiyar Larabawa a ƙarni na goma sha takwas, makarantarsa ta samu farfaɗowarta mafi tuna wa, kamar yadda Annabi ﷺ da kansa ya bayyana a cikin ɓoyayyen yanayin Hijaz a ƙarni na bakwai, domin ya magance tare da warware rikicin siyasa da na akida da ke addabar daulolin makwabta na Sasanid Iran da—musamman—Gabashin Roma (Byzantium).

The Ḥanbalī school—named for Ibn Ḥanbal—was already flourɍishing by the tenth century, despite competition from other schools of legal thought. It continued to renew itself during the centuries that followed, first in Baghdad, then in Damascus. It prospered less after the conquest of the Arab lands in the early sixteenth century by the Ottomans, who favored the Ḥanafī school of legal thought. By one of those symmetries of history that Ibn Ḥanbal himself would perhaps have appreciated, it was a little outside the Ottoman domains, in eighteenth-century Central Arabia, that his school experienced its most memorable revival, just as the Prophet himself had arisen in the relative obscurity of the seventh-century Hijaz, to address and resolve the political and theological tensions that were tormenting the neighboring empires of Sasanid Iran and—especially—East Rome (Byzantium).

Idan aka duba girman tasirin tsarin addinin Musulunci na Saudiyya a yau, da kuma yadda yake bin Ibn Ḥanbal bashi, yawancin muhimmancin aikin Michael Cooperson mai tsanani kan littafin Ibn al-Jawzī, Life of Ibn Ḥanbal, na iya ɓacewa ga waɗanda ba su gan shi a cikin mahallinsa ba, ba kawai a Baghdad ta zamanin Abbasiyawa ba, har ma da Wahabiyanci a Larabawa.

Given the global reach of the Saudi version of Islam today, and its debt to Ibn Ḥanbal, much of the significance of Michael Cooperson’s painstaking work on Ibn al- Jawzī’s Life of Ibn Ḥanbal is in danger of being lost on those who fail to see it in the context, not just of Abbasid Baghdad, but also of Wahhabism in the Arabian Peninsula.

A cikin littafinsa mai zurfi kuma rubutacce cikin kyau, mai suna "Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought" (2001), wanda ya zama abin dogaro a fagen tarihin Hanbaliyya, Michael Cook ya kawo bambanci mai ban mamaki. A gefe guda akwai Ibn Ḥanbal mai kaucewa rikici, wanda ya yi Allah wadai da aikin sharri amma ya hana tsanantawa ga masu aikata shi, ya nisanci hukumomin danniya na gwamnati, kuma ya guji harkokin siyasa. A ɗaya gefen kuma akwai malamin Hanbaliyya Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d.

In his erudite and elegantly written guide to the history of Hanbalism, the monumental Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (2001), Michael Cook draws a striking contrast. On the one hand there is a quietist Ibn Ḥanbal who reproved wrongdoing but discouraged aggression towards its perpetrators, keeping a firm distance from the repressive apparatus of the state and eschewing political activism. On the other hand there is the Ḥanbalī scholar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d.

(1206H/1792AD), wanda tare da Emir Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd (d.

1206H/1792AD), who in alliance with the Emir Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd (d.

1179H/1765AD) ya ƙaddamar da wani gagarumin hari a kan abin da ya gani a matsayin ayyukan "shirka" a cikin tsibiran yashi da suka warwatsu a Tsakiyar Larabawa. Kamar yadda Cook ya bayyana, "Hanbaliyya yanzu ta sami kanta a cikin wani matsayi da ba ta saba da shi ba, na akidar kafa ƙasa a cikin al'umma kabilanci mai kusan rashin ƙasa." Sai dai akidar kanta, a bambance da yiwuwar amfanin siyasarta, ta ci gaba da kasancewa iri ɗaya.

1179H/1765AD) launched an all-out assault on what he saw as “polytheistic” practices in the scattered oases of Central Arabia. As Cook puts it, “Hanbalism was now cast in the unfamiliar role of a doctrine of state-formation in a near-stateless tribal society.” But the doctrine, as distinct from its possible political applications, remained the same.

Dangane da wajibcin da ya rataya a wuyan kowane Musulmi, wanda Ibn Ḥanbal ya misalta shi, na "umurni da kyakkyawa da hani daga mummuna," jihar Saudiyya a hankali ta mayar da shi tsari na hukuma, inda sarakunan yankuna ke gudanar da bincike mai zurfi (Ibn Ḥanbal ya fi son ya kawar da kallonsa idan zai yiwu, kuma ya yi tsawatarwa kawai idan ba shi da wata zabi).

As for the duty incumbent on every Muslim, and exemplified by Ibn Ḥanbal, of “commanding right and forbidding wrong,” the Saudi state progressively institutionalized it by having local emirs conduct active investigations (Ibn Ḥanbal had preferred to avert his gaze where possible, and reprove only when he had no choice).

Cook argues that once the Saudis had run out of opportunities for further expansion and jihad against the infidel, they turned their righteous aggression on the enemy within. But when in 1924–25 they finally conquered the Hijaz and the Holy Places, "the juxtaposition of Wahhābī Puritanism and the laxer attitudes of the wider Muslim world was a prescription for trouble" (182). Hence the setting up in 1926 of a "Committee for Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong," made up of scholars and notables, to control the thuggish behaviour of Bedouin enforcers towards the lucrative foreign pilgrims. Prayer-discipline, alcohol, smoking and the segregation of women were major preoccupations. Similar committees were established throughout the kingdom, and their influence has endured. Cook concludes by reflecting on the effective strangulation, through bureaucratization, of what began as "a strongly apolitical and individual doctrine" (192).

Cook argues that as the Saudis ran out of opportunities for further expansion and jihad against the infidel, they turned their righteous aggression on the enemy within. But when in 1924–25 they finally conquered the Hijaz and the Holy Places, “the juxtaposition of Wahhābī Puritanism and the laxer attitudes of the wider Muslim world was a prescription for trouble” (182). Hence the setting up in 1926 of a “Committee for Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong,” populated by scholars and notables, to control the thuggish behavior of Bedouin enforcers towards the lucrative foreign pilgrims. Prayer-discipline, alcohol, smoking and segregation of women were major preoccupations. Similar committees were established throughout the kingdom, and their influence has endured. Cook concludes by reflecting on the effective strangulation, by bureaucratization, of what began as “a strongly apolitical and individual doctrine” (192).

A cikin shafuffukan da ke biye, masu karatu za su ga da idanunsu mafi kyawun misali na wannan al'ada, wanda ya bayar da gudummawa kamar kowane mutum, bayan Annabi ﷺ da sahabbansa, wajen tsara manyan halaye na Sunna kamar yadda muke ganinsu a rayuwar yau.

In the pages that follow, readers will encounter for themselves the most convincing exemplar of that tradition, who has done as much as any other human, after the Prophet and his Companions, to shape the central characteristics of Sunni Islam as we see it lived today.

Garth Fowden Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths, Jami'ar Cambridge

Garth Fowden Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths, University of Cambridge