Hanbali school
[9] The Wahabbi movement's founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, collaborated with the House of Saud to spread Hanbali teachings with a Wahabbist interpretation around the world.
[17] Like Al-Shafi'i and Dawud al-Zahiri, Ahmad was deeply concerned with the extreme elasticity being deployed by many jurists of his time, who used their discretion to reinterpret the doctrines of Qur'an and Hadiths to suit the demands of Caliphs and wealthy.
His guiding principle was that the Quran and Sunnah are the only proper sources of Islamic jurisprudence, and are of equal authority and should be interpreted literally in line with the Athari creed.
[21][self-published source] Much of the work of preserving the school based on Ibn Hanbal's method was laid by his student Abu Bakr al-Khallal; his documentation on the founder's views eventually reached twenty volumes.
Led by the Hanbalite scholar Al-Hasan ibn 'Ali al-Barbahari, the school often formed mobs of followers in 10th-century Baghdad who would engage in violence against fellow Sunnis suspected of committing sins and all Shi'ites.
[24] During al-Barbahari's leadership of the school in Baghdad, shops were looted,[25] female entertainers were attacked in the streets,[25] popular grievances among the lower classes were agitated as a source of mobilization,[26] and public chaos in general ensued.
[27] Their efforts would be their own undoing in 935, when a series of home invasions and mob violence on the part of al-Barbahari's followers in addition to perceived deviant views led to the Caliph Ar-Radi publicly condemning the school in its entirety and ending its official patronage by state religious bodies.
[18] Ibn Hanbal rejected the possibility of religiously binding consensus (Ijma), as it was impossible to verify once later generations of Muslims spread throughout the world,[18] going as far as declaring anyone who claimed as such to be a liar.
[50] The Hanbalites, led by Al-Barbahari, reacted by stoning Tabari's home several times, inciting riots so violent that Abbasid authorities had to subdue them by force.
[51] Upon Tabari's death, the Hanbalites formed a violent mob large enough that Abbasid officials buried him in secret, in an attempt to prevent further riots.
The branch that was largely instigated by Ibn Hazm which developed in al-Andalus, al-Qarawiyyin and later became the official school of the state under the Almohads, differed significantly from Hanbalism.
He adopted an attitude where he'd reject hadiths if he discovered something suspicious about the lives of those who reported it, or in the case where a narrator in the Sanad (transmission chain) is not a widely known figure.
[citation needed] By the end of the classical era, the other three remaining schools had codified their laws into comprehensive jurisprudential systems; enforcing them far and wide.
[55] Sufism, often described as the inner mystical dimension of Islam, is not a separate "school" or "sect" of the religion, but, rather, is considered by its adherents to be an "inward" way of approaching Islam which complements the regular outward practice of the five pillars; Sufism became immensely popular during the medieval period in practically all parts of the Sunni world and continues to remain so in many parts of the world today.
As Christopher Melchert has pointed out, both Hanbalism and classical Sufism took concrete shapes in the ninth and early tenth-centuries CE, with both soon becoming "essential components of the high-medieval Sunni synthesis.
[56] There is evidence that many early medieval Hanbali scholars were very close to the Sufi martyr and saint Hallaj, whose mystical piety seems to have influenced many regular jurists in the school.
[57] This is likely due to Al-Hallaj himself being a fanatical follower of Hanbali school with reports saying he would pray 500 time a day outside the tomb of Ahmed Bin Hanbal.
[62] Both these men, sometimes considered to be completely anti-Sufi in their leanings, were actually initiated into the Qadiriyya order of the celebrated mystic and saint Abdul Qadir Gilani,[62] who was himself a renowned Hanbali Faqih.
Although Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab is sometimes regarded as a denier of Sufism, both he and his early disciples acclaimed Tasawwuf; believing it to be an important discipline in Islamic religion.
Extolling the virtuous Sufi Awliya (saints) who attained Ma'rifa (highest stage of mystical awareness in Sufism) as exemplars to his followers, Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab stated: " “From among the wonders is to find a Sufi who is a faqih and a scholar who is an ascetic (zahid).” For indeed those who are concerned with the piety of the heart are often associated with a lack of ma‘rifah, which would necessitate abstinence from wrong and make jihad necessary.
