ABSTRACT
The Åanbalj School of law is acknowledged to be amongst the four canonical Sunni madhhhib.1 It is named after Abu ‘Abd Allah Aåmad b. Muåammad Ibn Åanbal (d. 241/855), a scholar who was born in Baghdad, in the year 164/780. His father died when he was a child, so his mother assumed responsibility for his upbringing from an early age. He was to become one of the most distinguished personalities of Islam, by virtue of his extensive studies of various Arabic and Islamic sciences in different parts of the Islamic world and his famed uncompromising stand against the inquisition instituted by the Abbasid al-Ma’mun. He travelled to numerous places including Kufah, Baßrah, Makkah, Madjnah, Yemen and Syria.2 Even after he had become a famous scholar he did not cease to undertake these expeditions in pursuit of knowledge. When some of his contemporaries expressed their amazement at his frequent journeys, despite his considerable accomplishments and elevated station, he remarked: ‘With the ink-pot to the grave-yard’, that is, until the end of life!3 Aåmad realised that knowledge was a bottomless sea, devoid of boundaries, and he was therefore obligated to pursue it to the end of his life. He knew also that he would be deemed ignorant if he was to rest on his laurels claiming mastery of everything. The era in which Aåmad lived has become known amongst the scholars of the evolution of jurisprudence as the era of mujtahids,4 owing to the great number of leading scholars who flourished at the time.
