ABSTRACT
The Hanbalites of Damascus were strengthened when fresh refugees began to arrive as the Mongols moved westwards into Iraq. There had been vigour, even if tinged with fanaticism, among the Hanbalites in Baghdad in the eleventh century; and at that period Baghdad seems to have been their main centre. Before the end of the century, however, there were Hanbalite schools in Jerusalem and Damascus; and these eventually came to be concentrated in Damascus when the jurists of Jerusalem had to flee before the Crusaders. The names are known of many Hanbalites scattered through the following centuries, not only in Damascus, but also in Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo, who were either explicit followers of Ibn-Taymiyya or at least his admirers and to some extent under his influence. The vitality imparted to Hanbalism by Ibn-Taymiyya led to the appearance in the eighteenth century of the Wahhabite movement. Thus the upsurge of vitality in Hanbalism in the person of Ibn-Taymiyya continues down.
