The Hanbali School of Law was established by Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

He
is known to be more learned in the traditions than in jurisprudence. He got
his status from his collection and exposition of the Hadiths. The Hanbali is
not that popular unlike the other three Sunni schools. Their followers were
considered reactionary and troublesome. This was attributed to their
reluctance to give personal opinions on matters of law, their rejection of
analogy, their intolerance of views of other than their own, and their
exclusion of opponents from power and judicial office. The school accepts
authoritative opinion given by a Companion of the Prophet. In case of
disagreement with other Companion, the opinion closer to the Qurán or the
Sunnah would prevail. 1
The school recognizes as sources of law the Quran, hadith, fatwas of
Muhammad’s Companions, sayings of a single Companion, traditions with
weaker chains of transmission or lacking the name of a transmitter in the
chain, and reasoning by analogy (qiyas) when absolutely necessary. It
encourages the practice of independent reasoning (ijtihad) through study of
the Quran and hadith and rejects taqlid, or blind adherence to the opinions
of other scholars, and advocates a literal interpretation of textual sources.
Ritualistically, the Hanbali School is the most conservative of the Sunni law
schools, but it is the most liberal in most commercial matters.2
Musnadul-Imam Hanbal is a collection of fifty thousand tradition or
Hadiths. Some said that Ibn Hanbal declared that he only included Hadiths in
the book if they had been used as evidence by some scholars. However, a
certain Hanbali scholar Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi claimed that Musnad contains
hadiths that are fabricated. But these suspected hadiths are not creations of
the imagination of the narrators. They are mixed up text, information or
authoritative chains. 3 Another important contribution of the Hanbali is the
Al-Madh’hab Al-Hanbali. It is the product of the Fiqh (rules and regulations)
taught by Ahmad ibn Hanbal. It deals with tawhid, elements of faith,
elements of worship, halal and haram, ethics, and dealings with other
people.
The history of the madhahibs and a search into the reasons for their
birth, existence, and spread, reveals that the various governments were the
main factor in the birth and spread of these schools. Governmental aid took
physical and financial forms by establishing schools, sponsoring books of fiqh
(law), adopting and sponsoring official madhahib, and giving freedom to the

1
http://www.philtar.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/sunni/hanb.html
2
http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e799
3
Fatawa of Ibn Tamiya, volume 1 page 248
founders and scholars of some of the “official” madhahib. This trend has
occurred in almost every religion worldwide.4
In the later history of the school, there have been fluctuations in their
fortunes. Hanbali scholars Ibn Taymiyya (died 1328) and his disciple Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya (died 1351) were more tolerant to other views.
Distinguished as a major figure in Islamic religious history, Ibn Taymiyya was
involved in the study of law, theology, philosophy, and mysticism and was
engaged in the politics of the Mamluk state. He wrote at length against the
Shiʿa, the philosophers, the logicians, and the pantheistic Sufis, though he
himself belonged to the mystical school of Abd al-Qadir al-Jili.5 Due to this,
the Hanbali has become more accessible. Under the jurisdiction of the
Abbasid Caliphate, the school of Ahlul Bayt suffered extreme oppression,
tyranny, and discrimination at the hands of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid
caliphs. But in spite of oppression, by the divine will of Allah, the school of
the Ahlul Bayt have become more active and strong in numbers during the
caliphate of al-Ma‘mun, and Shi‘ism reached so far into the governmental
dignitaries that al-Ma‘mun himself was forced to show deep sympathy
towards the ‘Alawiyiin, the descendants of Imam ‘Ali, and to show an
inclination towards Shi‘ism, to the point that he invited Imam ‘Ali ibn Musa
al-Rida, the eighth Imam of the Ahlul Bayt to be his successor—a position
which Imam al-Rida declined.6 It gradually declines under the Ottoman Turks
Empire. Ottoman Empire was created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia (Asia
Minor) that grew to be one of the most powerful states in the world during
the 15th and 16th centuries. The lasting Muslim power in Anatolia was
attributed to one of the warrior states on the Byzantine frontier. The
successive waves of Turkic migrations had driven unrelated individuals and
groups across central Islamdom into Anatolia. Avoiding the Konya state, they
gravitated toward an open frontier to the west, where they began to
constitute themselves, often through fictitious kinship relationships, into
quasi-tribal states that depended on raiding each other and Byzantine
territory and shipping.7 During the emergence of Wahabi in the 19th century,
the Habali School has revived. Ibn Taymiyya's thought exercised significant
influence on Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (died 1792), who, with the
assistance of Ibn Saʿud, founded Wahhabism, an ideology that has sustained
the Saudi state during the last two centuries. The writings of ibn Taymiyya
and ibn Abd al-Wahhab still continue to influence the Muslim reform and

4
https://www.al-islam.org/inquiries-about-shia-islam-sayyid-moustafa-al-qazwini/five-schools-islamic-
thought
5
http://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hanbali-
school-law
6
https://www.al-islam.org/inquiries-about-shia-islam-sayyid-moustafa-al-qazwini/five-schools-islamic-
thought
7
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islamic-world/Migration-and-renewal-1041-1405#ref317299
religious movements in the Middle East, from Rashid Rida (died 1935) to the
Muslim Brotherhood. Today, the School is recognized as authoritative in
Saudi Arabia and areas within the Persian Gulf.