Hanbali school

The Hanbali school or Hanbalism is the smallest of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. Named after and based on the teachings of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the school belongs to the Ahl al-Hadith historical tradition. Like the other Sunni schools, it primarily derives sharia from the Quran, hadith and views of Muhammad's companions. In cases where there is no clear answer in the sacred texts of Islam, the Hanbali school does not accept juristic discretion or customs of a community as sound bases to derive Islamic law on their own—methods that the Hanafi and Maliki schools accept. Most Hanbalis traditionally adhere to the Athari school of theology. Hanbalis are the majority only in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, comprising barely 1% of the Sunni Muslim population worldwide. With the rise of the 18th-century conservative Wahhabi movement, the Hanbali school experienced a great reformation. The Wahhabi movement's founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, collaborated with the House of Saud to spread Wahhabi teachings around the world. However, British orientalist Michael Cook argues that Ahmad ibn Hanbal's own beliefs played "no real part in the establishment of the central doctrines of Wahhabism", and that "the older Hanbalite authorities had doctrinal concerns very different from those of the Wahhabis". Wahhabi scholars such as al-Albani, Muqbil al-Wadi'i and Ibn Baz eventually began to criticize taqlid to any of the four schools, including the Hanbali school.