Ahmad Ibn Hanbal was an honorable and righteous scholar may Allah have mercy and blessings upon him. He meets with the kinship of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) at Nizar one of his great grandfathers. He was born in Rabi^ Al-Awwal in 164H. His mother came from a city called Maroo to Baghdad while she was pregnant with him. Then his father who was a soldier died, so his mother raised him in an Islamic and proper way.
He started acquiring the knowledge about religion in 179H. He first heard from Hashim then Ibrahim Ibn Sa^d, Yazid Ibn Haroun and the honorable Imam Muhammad Ibn Edris ash-Shafi^iyy.
He was a great scholar in Hadith and its rules. He was also a great model in fearing Allah, acquiring the Islamic Knowledge and in leaving the worldly pleasures. Ibrahim Al-Harbiyy said: I’ve never seen like Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. He was given every type of knowledge. He used to give the correct judgment and withhold the incorrect one.
He wrote many beneficial books such as Al-Musnad, An Nasikh wal-Mansoukh, Ar-Rad ^alaz-Zanadiqah and many others.
He died in 241H of 77years old leaving a great set of beneficial books to this nation.
It was narrated that those who attended his funeral were as follows: –
800,000 men, 60,000 women and 20,000 of jews, Christians and Majous embraced Islam.
Qutaybah Ibn Sa^id said: After the death of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal the innovations of misguidance will appear. That is in fact what happened to people who falsely claimed to be among his followers. They believed that Allah resembles his creations and speaks with sounds and letters in contrary to what Ahmad Ibn Hanbal had taught during his lifetime.
From those deviants was Ibn Taymiyah who lived about seven hundred years ago and the Wahhabis who emerged from Saudi Arabia about 250 years ago. Therefore, you have to be warned against those wahhabis who come to people with many innovations of misguidance such as believing that Allah sits on the throne and that He got a shape, body and organs. They also believe that all Muslims around the world are none-believers and they are the only Muslims at the present time. They also prohibit Muslims from celebrating the occasion of the prophet’s birth.
In the end, we ask Allah to protect this nation from those imposters and deviants and we ask Him to enable us to defend His glorious Religion Ameen.
