Hanbali school

The Hanbali school or Hanbalism (Arabic: ٱلْمَذْهَب ٱلْحَنْبَلِيّ, romanized: al-madhhab al-ḥanbalī) is one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It is named after and based on the teachings of the 9th-century scholar, jurist and traditionist Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and later institutionalized by his students. It is the smallest and most strictly traditionalist of the four major Sunni schools, the others being the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi'i schools.

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.

It is found primarily in the countries of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where it is the official jurisprudence. Hanbali followers are the demographic majority in four emirates of the UAE: Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Ajman. Large minorities of Hanbali followers are also found in Bahrain, Syria, Oman, Yemen and among Iraqi and Jordanian bedouins.

With the rise of the 18th-century conservative Wahhabi movement, the Hanbali school experienced a great reformation. Historically being considered the smallest school, the movement's founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, collaborated with the House of Saud to greatly aid the school's propagation around the world according to their interpretation of its teachings. However, the historian Michael Cook argues Ahmad's own beliefs actually played "no real part in the establishment of the central doctrines of Wahhabism", and in spite of their shared tradition, "the older Hanbalite authorities had doctrinal concerns very different from those of the Wahhabis". Other scholars maintain Ahmad was "the distant progenitor of Wahhabism" and also inspired the similar Salafi movement.

One who ascribes to the Hanbali school is called a Hanbali, Hanbalite or Hanbalist (Arabic: ٱلْحَنْبَلِيّ, romanized: al-ḥanbalī, pl. ٱلْحَنْبَلِيَّة, al-ḥanbaliyya or ٱلْحَنَابِلَة, al-ḥanābila).