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Dear listeners, welcome back to Conflicted. I'm Thomas Small, and this is the second part of our epic exploration of the life and times of Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal, the great 8th and 9th century Islamic scholar,
whose teachings still define the way Islamists think, act, and worship today. If you haven't heard the first part, do not listen on. Go back. In part one, we covered the world in which Ahmed lived in the 8th century Iraq. We set the scene. We built up his character. Go listen to that. Come back here and finish this great story. Eamon Dean, you're here with me as you always are. Hello, Eamon. I'm always with you, Thomas, wherever you are. Oh, man.
For you are my disciple and I'll always be with you. No, no, all right. No way. Let's get right back into it. Ahmed bin Hanbal, let's go. Amen. I think it would be good right at the start to remind listeners why we're talking about Ahmed bin Hanbal. He's very, very relevant still to the worldview, the theology, the religious mentality, the piety even of modern day Salafis.
including Salafi jihadists. Of course, because he is, to be more precise, the reason why many Salafist jihadist groups and ideologies and movements have this rich narrative of eschatology, thanks to him.
The rich narrative of eschatology, by which you mean stories of the end times, of the end of the world and the role that they believe, the Salafi jihadists believe they're playing in that drama, that epic end of the world drama. Exactly. The prophecies, because Ahmed bin Hanbal, through his misguidedness,
of collecting the hadith did not sift enough through the narratives and wasn't skeptical enough of both the narrators and the text in order to weed out, you know, the Abbasid propaganda, which then seeped through, as we said in the last episode, into the imagination of both, by the way, of both Shia and Sunni eschatological groups.
I think this sort of focus on the end of the world, the fact that any day now, all of this, everything we see around us is coming to an end, will be thrown into the great funeral pyre of God's purgative wrath, his judgment before the resurrection and the life to come.
That kind of mentality, if you're focused on that mentality, it has some consequences in terms of your personality. And I think it's important to point out before we move on with Ahmed's story that he, you know, along with a lot of very pious people of any religious tradition, but, you know, certainly within Salafism, he had a religious mentality that emphasized detachment from the world, right?
He did not want to become too involved in the world, which was coming to an end. Instead, he cultivated an attitude of fear of God's judgment, of sadness, of mournfulness when he imagined the possibility of hell and its torments.
And a basic disinclination to sully himself, to upset the purity he was striving for by becoming too attached to the world. Exactly. And this is why in Egypt they have this brilliant prophecy.
proverb, whenever they wanted to describe someone as someone so strict, someone who basically forbids fun, the Egyptian people have a phrase for people like that. They call them, you know, so when they say this, they say it means this guy is strict and humbly. Yeah.
So Hanbali means in modern sort of Egyptian, at least. But, you know, in general, Muslims know that Hanbali is not to be trifled with. These people are serious. They're strict people. Puritans. In other words, the Egyptians understood, you know, Hanbalis to be Puritans, you know, in their pursuit of...
of absolutism and purity in faith. - To prepare for this recording, I read the excellent primer into Ahmed bin Hambal by Christopher Melchert. It's part of the One World series of Muslim Lives.
And Melchert has a great story. I think that really characterizes or rather really summarizes perfectly this weird extent of detachment that Ahmed bin Hanbal cultivated. The story goes like this. Ahmed, that is to say bin Hanbal, Ahmed was walking with his leading disciple leaning on his arm. They came across a woman carrying a lute.
which the disciple took from her, smashed and trampled underfoot, destroyed it. Now, obviously, because music was considered to be, you know, a reprehensible distraction, as Melcher puts it, for a Muslim. So Ahmed just stood by looking at the ground, paying no attention whatsoever to this ruckus going on. Word of the incident spread and eventually came back to Ahmed's house.
It was only at that point, though, that Ahmed declared that he had learned what his disciple had done. He hadn't even noticed it.
Now, this may be an apocryphal story, but it illustrates the degree to which Ahmed remained unattached to the world. His disciple, in a fit of rage, destroys a woman's musical instrument, and he claims not even to notice. In fact, that is nothing, Thomas, in comparison to what one of my clerics when I was young said about Ahmed Hanbal. He said that during a lesson about his life, he said that he was...
Sometime able to detach himself from the world that even under flogging, when he was being flogged, and we will talk about this later, he, after several lashes, would then, you know, forget the pain and would go into deep contemplation of the
the hadith he used to collect. And he would remind himself what was the text, what was the relevance of the text, and who were the narrators. And he's trying to remember, you know, whether these narrators met each other, talked to each other, whether there is any gap in the narration that he needs to be aware of.
This level of disassociation is incredible. Absolutely incredible. That is a great piece of foreshadowing there, Eamon, because the climax of this episode will involve this question of the flogging and torture of Ahmed bin Hanbal and the degree to which he did manage to completely detach himself from that pain. The sources don't agree, but...
Also what you just said about how in the midst of his torment, he retreated inward and contemplated, meditated upon the hadith. And this reminds us of what we talked about in the previous episode, that his entire life's work was dedicated to finding hadith, that is to say, memories of the Prophet's actions and words, memories of the companions of the Prophet's actions and words,
Collecting them, memorizing them, and meditating upon them as a religious act, as an act of piety, as an almost spiritual salvific sort of activity. You meditate upon the words of the prophet as a way of purifying your soul and remaining anchored in that source of divine revelation.
This was what later scholars would call the way of the self, the way of the ancestors, you know, seeking knowledge wherever they can and trying to transition from the oral tradition to the written text.
And this is why they used to say that it was in that period that the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr, because finally it was written down. That is a great quote. The ink of a scholar is worthier than the blood of a martyr. So a little bit more scene setting. Though Ahmed spent his life collecting the hadith, writing them down,
collating them, codifying them, sharing them with disciples. He lived at a time when Islam was still developing. The form of Islam that we call Sunism today had not yet reached a fixed form. And so in addition to men like Ahmed bin Hanbal who emphasized the Hadith and emphasized the memorization and the transmission of the Hadith, there were other ways of expressing and exploring Muslim religiosity at the time. And in fact,
Ahmed will soon find himself caught between these two ways, between the way of the hadith scholars like himself and the other way, the more, let's say, speculative, philosophical, mystical way of approaching the revelation.
But as for himself, he was living now in Baghdad. He'd finished his travels. He'd gathered around himself a group of like-minded scholars and disciples, and he was dedicated to practicing the sunnah, to practicing the example of the Prophet and his companions to a T. Right, now we've talked about Ahmed. Now we're talking about the great bad guy from Ahmed's point of view, the caliph,
al-Ma'mun. We mentioned al-Ma'mun in the last episode. Al-Ma'mun was the caliph that, in his fight against his brother al-Amin, overthrew his brother and established himself as caliph in Baghdad. Al-Ma'mun is associated by Western scholars with the golden age of Islam. So in the West in general, Western scholarship remembers al-Ma'mun
pretty favorably. He's associated with that flourishing in Baghdad of secular knowledge, scientific exploration, philosophical wisdom that people associate with the golden age of Islam. Yeah,
the age of Dar al-Hikmah, you know, the greatest library the world has ever seen until then. It was a center for translation, a center where wise scholars and philosophers and people of medicine and mathematics would come from all over the world to actually settle in Baghdad and
And there they will actually be paid in order to transmit whatever knowledge that they have and for this knowledge to be translated and then incorporated as books and manuscripts into the Dar al-Hikmah repository of books. The Dar al-Hikmah, the house of wisdom, absolutely famed.
And the Caliph al-Ma'mun situated himself really at the center of that social circle. I can imagine that his court was probably a really fun place to hang out. I would have liked to hang out there, I'm sure. Exactly. Except it wasn't a place for Ahmed. No. See?
Or his like-minded, you know, hadith scholars, Ahl al-Hadith, as they started to become known. The people of hadith. Yes, because for them, you know, this is nothing short of an intellectual orgy, as they used to call it.
Well, even worse, it seemed to them to be deviant, to deviate from the law of God as expressed in the hadith. And this is why some of them used to call Dar al-Hikmah Dar al-Zandaqa, which means instead of the house of the wisdom, they used to call it the house of heresy.
The other thing, you know, I mean, obviously, as you said, Ahmed is the perfect contrast to the caliph al-Ma'mun. Another thing about the caliph, which I think is really important to stress at the outset, is that he had a very rigorous, a very maximalist view of the office of the caliph.
He called himself the caliph, the deputy of God. Khalifatullah al-Arz, which means God's successor on earth. This is the divine right of kings. What does it remind you of, Thomas? It reminds you, it foreshadows, you know, that almost 800 years later, this is exactly the struggle that will happen between the English king
the first against the Puritans. Exactly. It's true. It's right. Puritans who challenged the divine rights of kings to rule, you know, and this is exactly where Ahmed was.
who established that the beginnings, the embryonic stages of the Puritan Islam in challenging, you know, the divinity of the caliphs. It also, of course, is reflected in Sunni attitudes today towards ideas like the Iranian idea of the Ayatollah and the supreme leader of the Iranian revolution, who has...
In his own kind of right, the sense of himself as some divinely appointed source of wisdom, he had an image of the caliphate that is a bit like the Shia imamate today. And this is another indication of
of how the times that we're talking about were this middle period when Islam was developing and when the defined barrier that we've set up between Shi'ism and Sunnism, etc., was not so fixed yet. It was very porous. Everything was in flux. Nothing had been defined. And all of this would definitely come to a head within Ahmed's life. So in the year 827,
Al-Ma'mun formally declares, so this is a huge thing in the history of Islam. It's a huge thing. In 827, the Caliph Al-Ma'mun declares that the Quran was created. He makes this formal declaration of a dogmatic theological proposition that the Quran is created. Now,
This might sound sort of like utterly abstract to normal people. Why does it matter? The Quran is created. The Quran is uncreated. But it totally rocked the Islamic world.
For some listeners, they would be thinking, you know, why on earth does it matter? I mean, basically, whether the Quran is created or not. But at that time, the question was that if in the Quran it says, Allahu khaliqu kulli shaykh.
God is the creator of everything. The Quran is a thing. Therefore, it is created. But this is where the clash happened. No, no, no, no, no. Excuse me. The people, the literalists, you know, Ahl al-Hadith, the traditional scholars came back and pushed back and said, no, no, no, no. This will open the door to many other heresies to come through. Because if we agree that the Quran is a thing, that the Quran is a creature,
then it is open for corruption. Not only would the Quran then be liable to corruption, to being forgotten, but it would also be open to interpretation in a way that transcended the literal sense of
Now, the people on the other side, people like the caliph who said, no, the Quran is created. It's not that they were like secularists or not religious. They were tremendously religious themselves and they were great theologians. And their focus was on the divine unity. They were like, look, no.
God is one. There is no other divine reality apart from God. And if you say that the Quran, the word of God, the speech of God is also uncreated, is also divine, you're introducing a second divine principle. A second dimension, a second dimension of God, basically. A second divine principle in there. And this is what I find interesting as a Christian. Al-Ma'mun explicitly accuses
His opponents in the Allah Hadith, people like Ahmed bin Hanbal, he accuses them of by opposing the doctrine of the Quran's createdness of falling into the same error as Christians. This is so interesting for me because the Christian world in the third and fourth centuries was rocked by the same sort of debate. Is the word of God created or
or uncreated. The Christians decided that the Word of God was uncreated, and that's to this day Orthodox Christian doctrine. Now, we've got to move on. You and I, my God, we could debate the uncreatedness or createdness of the Word of God forever, but the point is... At least I'm not going to flog you, you know? We'll wait and find out.
The point is that Ahmed opposed the caliph's pronouncement. So six years after the caliph made this pronunciation—
He was in Turkey, what is now Turkey, along the frontier with the Byzantines campaigning. His headquarter was actually in Tarsus, which is in the southern coast of Turkey today, waging the war against the Byzantines. And this is, you know, this is one of these things in history that scholars, they don't know why this happened. They don't know why he made this decision. But he writes a series of letters to his governor in Baghdad.
establishing what is often called in the West an inquisition, and which is known in Arabic as the mihna. He basically doubled down. He's not just saying that the caliph states that the Quran is created. He's now saying that everyone who works in government and all religious scholars, like Ahmed,
will be hauled before a formal committee and compelled to agree with that doctrine, compelled to confess that the Quran is created. In the letter, he accuses the great mass of people as being, quote, "sunk in ignorance and in blindness about God, plunged into error regarding the true nature of his religion and his unity and faith in him."
These are people who fall short of being able to grasp the reality of God as he should be recognized and to distinguish between him and his creation.
Then he goes on to specify the Ahl al-Hadith, the people of Hadith, like Ahmed bin Hanbal. He calls them people who dispute about vain and useless things and then invite others to adopt their views. They consider themselves adherents of the Sunnah and make an outward show of being people of the divine truth and assert that all others are people of false beliefs, infidelity, and schism.
These are the people whom God has made deaf and has blinded their eyes. Do they not consider the Quran or are there locks on their hearts? God made it incumbent upon the Imams and Caliphs of the Muslims that they should be zealous in establishing God's religion, which he has asked them to guard faithfully, in the heritage of prophethood, of which he has made them inheritors, in the tradition of knowledge, which he has entrusted to their keeping."
Summon together all the judges. Read out to them this letter. Test them out concerning their beliefs about God's creating and originating the Quran in time. The great medieval historian At-Tabari quotes from this letter from the Caliph al-Ma'mun to his governor in Baghdad. And you can hear this.
you know, history rippling, you know, because it's, you know, it's an amazing moment. Well, I mean, and the fact that the historians later would call it al-mihna, because al-mihna means the catastrophic test. The ordeal, the trial. Yes. And it was an ordeal. It was a trial. And between you and me, like, I mean, in the end, when it was over, you know, people might have asked themselves,
Was it really worth it? Well, the governor in Baghdad receives this letter and complies with the caliph's demands. He first arrests seven prominent hadith scholars and orders them to testify to the Quran's createdness.
Ahmed, in fact, had studied under two of them. And this will become important down the line, so don't forget this. Two of the men first hauled before the Inquisition, Ahmed had studied under. And all seven of those initial Hadith scholars capitulated. They all
in the end, confessed that the Quran is created. Next, a larger group is rounded up by the caliph's agents and hauled before the inquisition. This time, Ahmed is among them. And all of them, except for two, capitulate. One of the two who refused was, of course, Ahmed bin Hanbal. Now this utterly infuriated the caliph.
In another letter, which the great historian Atabari recounts, the caliph writes to the governor in Baghdad, as for Ahmed bin Hanbal and what you write about him, tell him that the commander of the faithful has understood the significance of that view and his conduct regarding it. And from it, he deduces as proven his ignorance and defective intelligence.
The caliph writes that Ahmed and anyone else who, quote, refuses to abandon their polytheism, their shirk, quote, send them all in bonds to the commander of the faithful's encampment so that the commander of the faithful himself may require them to give their answer.
If they do not recant and repent of their errors, he will consign them en bloc to the sword, inshallah, and there is no power except in God. End quote. He was pissed off. Well, stubbornness do that, you know, to people who think of themselves as divinely inspired kings, right?
So Ahmed was arrested, clapped in chains as the caliph had demanded, and marched to the Byzantine frontier for an audience with the caliph himself. And that's where we're going to leave him. We're going to take a little break now, and we're going to come back and find out what happened when Ahmed bin Hanbal was hauled before the great Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun. Stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little...
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Dear listener, we're back. Ayman's with me. We're right in the thick of it with Ahmed bin Hanbal and his life. He's been arrested, clapped in chains. He's marching towards the frontier in Turkey with the Byzantines where the caliph is waiting for him to compel him to confess that the Quran is created on pain of death.
you know, it's a pretty dramatic scene, wouldn't you say, Ayman? - I don't know what was going through Ahmed bin Hanba's mind. He's about to be presented before a very angry, you know, self-righteous caliph who just, you know, going to chop off his head if he doesn't say the Quran is created. But he is also very stubborn. - One thing is that the march, the march to Tarsus on the frontier must have been extremely tough
The other scholar who had also alongside Ahmed refused to confess, he died on the way. That's an indication of just how tough the conditions must have been. Now, just to remind everyone, we're in the year 833, August of 833. The Caliph Ma'mun is there in Tarsus. In fact, on the 7th of August, this is a kind of funny anecdote. On the 7th of August that year, the Caliph was sitting beside a river
enjoying some dates. You can imagine the scene, it's very orientalist, it's an orientalist fantasy. He saw the freshness of the water moving past him, this beautiful river, and he said, "Everyone, let's drink the water with these dates." This is this beautiful water of Tarsus. So they all drank the water, they all got sick, and the Caliph al-Ma'mun died.
This is just four months after launching the Inquisition. Ahmed was on his way. He hadn't reached Tarsus yet when word comes that the Caliph al-Ma'mun has suddenly, unexpectedly
What is this, Eamon? Is this divine justice? Is God speaking quite clearly through the outworkings of his providence? What do you think? No, it's just like medieval water being polluted, as simple as that. Someone must have been peeing, you know, up the river. Or worse. Or worse.
Because that someone peed in that water, Ahmed bin Hanbal was granted a sudden and unexpected reprieve, and he was sent back to Baghdad. And instead of facing justice in front of the caliph himself, he was thrown into prison.
where he languished for two years. Ahmed bin Hanbal spent two years in a Baghdad prison because he refused to confess that the Quran was created. He refused to confess anything that did not receive explicit sanction in the Hadith. Thomas, the two years that Ahmed bin Hanbal spent in that prison in Baghdad, I think were the most crucial two years for the survival of Ahl al-Hadith and the Salafist movement.
Why? Because up until then, the vast majority of Muslim scholars, in particular Hadith scholars, capitulated because they did not want to go and have a short haircut, you know, where there will be one head shorter and six feet under. No one wants that. And
They decided to agree with the caliph's demand to accept that the Quran is a created entity. Ahmed's defiance made him into a martyr and gave hope that this so-called heresy, as far as Ahl al-Hadith were concerned,
is being challenged and the reputation of Ahmed spread like wildfire eating dried twigs all over the place, from Arabia to Khorasan, which is Iran today, to Egypt, to Damascus, to Mecca, Medina, to Sana'a, to all the centers of learning in the Muslim world. People were mentioning Ahmed
is standing firm. He hasn't yet recanted. And this stories spreading around gave hope that maybe, just maybe, the Ahl al-Hadith in a stance might survive. - To be fair to the Hadith scholars who had capitulated, and really also to be fair to Ahmed's own perspective,
It's not only that they didn't want to die. That makes sense. No one wants to be executed. It's also that they were, I think, like genuinely torn because in their own sort of faith, they believed that the caliph was appointed by God. They believed that the caliph should be obeyed.
They just believed that this caliph was going against the Hadith. So they were torn between two focuses of obedience. And even Ahmed was torn. Now, in the end, he refused to capitulate. It's true. But it doesn't mean that he did so because he was against the caliph. Certainly not at the beginning. He himself was torn. He just...
erred on the side of that primary allegiance toward the Hadith. Whereas most people in the end, they said, well, it's true, we should obey the Caliph. Okay, we'll do it. - Remember Thomas, that even Ahmed bin Hanbal, he was a Abbasid loyalist through and through, coming from a long line of Abbasid loyalists, his father, his grandfather.
And in fact, even when after all the traumas that the successor of al-Ma'mun, al-Khalifa al-Mu'tasim, his younger brother, when he came to power, he continued with the Mihna, he continued with the Inquisition. So nonetheless, after al-Mu'tasim put Ahmed bin Hanbal through even more trauma and more flogging and more torture and really almost ended his life.
Yet when the news reached Ahmed bin Hanbal that Al-Mu'tasim won a great victory against the Roman Byzantines, Ahmed bin Hanbal prayed for him.
and praised him. You see, he never ever wanted to rebel against the political authority of the caliph. This question was never political. He wasn't defying the caliph out of political ambition. He wasn't seeking anything. And this is why maybe others were torn about, oh, we must obey the caliph. But for Ahmed, he remembers that the Prophet Muhammad ordered the Muslims to obey the
their caliphs to obey their commanders except in a matter that displeases God. So he found this little loophole which says, I will obey you on everything except if you compel me
to adopt a heresy. I can't. So that sort of hadith, that sort of memory of the Prophet is possibly a memory that emerges precisely at this time and helps to codify what would become the classical Sunni view towards the Caliphate. But as we said before, this view had not yet
So, you know, the caliph still felt that he could command his believers in matters of faith and worship as well. And this was clashing with the nascent Ahl al-Hadith view. Now, you mentioned the new caliph, al-Ma'mun's half-brother, al-Mu'tasim.
Al-Mu'tasim is a great character. He's particularly famous in history for his reliance upon an elite squad of Turkic slave soldiers.
He relied upon them so much that this is when historians say that the Turkic takeover of Islam began. People who know Islamic history more generally know that in the end, by the 14th century, all the great empires of Islam are basically dominated by Persianified Turkic people.
You know, the Ottomans, the Safavids, the Mughals, all of those great, you know, the Mamluks in Egypt, all of those great empires had been like Turkified. And it was under Al-Mu'tasim that it's understood that this process begins. Now,
The thing about al-Mu'tasim that is important for Ahmed bin Hanbal is that his reliance upon these Turkic troops caused tremendous resentment among the people of Baghdad and especially the Abbasid aristocracy who fanned the flames of popular resentment. As a result of which, Baghdad was becoming increasingly difficult to govern. Chaos was spreading everywhere.
This is part of the general discontent that was rising as a consequence of the inquisition among the Hadith scholars and their supporters. As a result of which, al-Mu'tasim decides to leave Baghdad and to build a new capital north, about 80 kilometers north, along the Tigris River, which is called Samarra.
A completely new foundation, essentially a huge palace complex. It's been compared to Versailles, the Palace of Versailles under Louis XIV. Utterly resplendent, utterly luxurious, enormous. Aristocrats were compelled to build quarters there and to live in those quarters, to remain close to the caliph, away from the foment wars.
within Baghdad, this marked a fundamental change to the caliphate along more kind of, as you said, absolutist, divine rights sort of tremendously authoritarian caliphate. As we said, Ahmed bin Hanbal's reputation has grown enormously in the two years he was in prison. The caliph thinks that this is the chief cause of a lot of this discontent. And so he hauls Ahmed before him.
demands again that he publicly confess the Quran's createdness.
This time, however, he tries something new. He brings along with him, the caliph does, a group of theologians and philosophers who are going to politely but persuasively debate the question with Ahmed. But what does Ahmed do, Ayman? Ahmed bin Hanbal really uses the best tactic at this time, and he basically just refuses to debate.
I'm not going to debate. First, tell me a verse from the Quran or a text from the Hadith that says that this thing is created. Give me one text from the Quran or the Hadith. He keeps saying it. No debate. I'm not going to debate. And he kept insisting and insisting. And of course, they have nothing. What Al-Mu'tasim wanted was a great debate, a spectacle.
And Ahmed infuriates al-Mu'tasim by refusing to give him what he wanted.
I debate. Mu'tasim gets more and more frustrated with this silent, stubborn man in front of him refusing to debate. He begins to double down. He begins to say, look, I'm not just going to give you your freedom if you confess, but listen, I'll also give you high status. I will honor you. He says himself, I will come to visit you with my entourage and my clients, and I will extol your name.
Obviously, these are things that would not move Ahmed bin Hanbal one iota. He had detached from the world. He wanted nothing to do with court finery or wealth or status. He was unmoved. He remained silent. Indeed, this shows exactly the detachment of the caliph
as well as the caliphate's court from the theological realities of their subjects, that there are people who really do not care whatsoever about anything except the ultimately pleasing God
in the purest, absolutest possible way that they could pursue. And Ahmed was one of them. - A lot of Muslim governments, Muslim leaders today, when facing their Salafi subjects, often have the same experience of just like, "Jesus, will you just bend the knee?" But Salafists, like their idol, Ahmed bin Hanbal, just, they won't do it. They are very, very fixed.
Mu'tasim ultimately loses his cool, decides this guy will not listen to reason. He can't take it anymore. And he commands that Ahmed be lashed. Now let me describe what this means. 150 floggers were selected by the Caliph. They were each given a whip and they were each told to take turns running up to Ahmed and whipping him on the back twice.
That literally means that Ahmed may have been subjected to upwards of 300 lashes. This would have killed a man. This is unbearable torment. They start one after the other. One man runs up, flogs him twice. Another man runs up, flogs him twice. This goes on for 30 lashes. And then something happens, something about which the historical sources, the original sources from the time are not clear about.
What did Ahmed bin Hanbal do? What we know is after those 30 lashes, he was released and he was allowed to return home. The caliph claimed that he had capitulated. His supporters said that the caliph had just given up.
There is a record of Ahmed's own memory of the experience. It goes like this. He says, quote, I lost consciousness and relaxed. When I sensed that I was dying, as if I were afraid of that, at that point, the caliph ordered me released. I was unconscious of that. I did not regain consciousness until I was in a chamber released from my bonds, unquote. Now, there's another account that
from the caliph's historians, and those people attached more to the caliph's party. This account says that after the 30th lash, when he was ordered to confess again, Ahmed simply recited two Quranic verses, quote, "'Say he is God, one, and also there is no God but Allah.'"
Hearing this, the flogger cried out, "O Commander of the Faithful! He has said as you say!" And so, the caliph ordered that he be released. The view that, you know, at least I was taught when I was young, and especially like, you know, from the book of Islamic history by Ahmad Shakir, who is considered to be one of the Salafist historians, you know, who lived in the 19th century.
And he stated that al-Mu'tasim wanted to hear what he wanted to hear because he was afraid that Ahmed, even after 30 lashes, would still be stubborn another 30 and he could die.
and he did not want to have the blood of the most prominent scholar of Ahl al-Hadith at the time on his hand, and especially with the sentiment in Baghdad being against him and against his unruly, uncouth, uncivilized Turkish entourage. So he decided, just let him go. I heard what they wanted to hear, and that's the end of it. But the reality is that neither Ahmed capitulated,
Neither al-Mu'tasim changed his mind. It's just al-Mu'tasim just realized that I don't want to kill the man. That's the last thing he wanted. Yeah, that analysis rings true to me. It makes sense to me based on everything we know about Mu'tasim basically being motivated by politics more than anything else at this point. He just needed to neutralize the threat of the scholars and their followers. In fact, that's not what happened. Ahmed returns to normal life.
And it's interesting, the historical sources at this point go very silent about him. For the next 10 years, very little is said about Ahmed. It's possible that the experience of prison had been very debilitating for him. Being flogged probably crushed his spirit a bit. I mean, this is just me guessing. But I imagine he might have gone through a period of something like depression, frankly. Chaos was everywhere. Al-Mu'tasim...
after he died, was followed by his son, Al-Wathik, the caliph Al-Wathik. Al-Wathik was a poet, a drinker, a sophisticate, very well-educated, remained loyal to his father's policies. But the ideal of the caliphate was really coming undone by now. There's a great fact about him. His left eye was slightly paralyzed. It had a white speck in it. And so he couldn't move his left eye
And as a result, he had a very severe look. Whenever he looked at anyone, he looked very stern. He also crowned one of those Turkic guardsmen, crowned him with secular authority, the first time that a caliph formally delegated any authority to a non-royal person. Again, it's part of this process of the caliphate being transformed into a more worldly, more secular kind of power structure.
It doesn't mean that he relaxed on the inquisition. He ratchets it up, which leads to more civil strife. A judge's house in Baghdad is burned down by partisans of of Hanbal and the people of Hadith. Chaos is spreading. And I think that all of this may have depressed Ahmed bin Hanbal enormously, or it may have also made him think the end of the world is nigh.
So he just goes into his house and waits for it. Because from his point of view, this chaos probably would have been like the end of the world. Remember.
For people of Hadith, they always expected that the day of judgment is upon us. Why? Because the Prophet Muhammad is the seal of all the prophets, is the final one. His message is the final message. And therefore, what to expect after this? The day of judgment. And so whenever there is a
When there is a period of upheaval and strife, people always expect, oh, something is going to happen. And especially there were times during the time of al-Wathuq when there was, you know, plagues going around in Khorasan and in Arabia and in Egypt. So people talking about, oh, you know, it's the end of the world. You know, the end is nigh. But for a man like Ahmed, he finds actually solace in the fact that
Well, if the world is erupting into chaos, well, so be it. I'm ready. I'm ready, you know, to be saved. I'm ready for the salvation. In the midst of this darkness, so after that 10-year period where very little is said about Ahmed, he is told that the new caliph at this time, al-Wathik, has his eyes on him.
He goes into hiding. Now, he spends no more than three nights in the same place. This is in emulation of the Prophet who, in his hijrah from Mecca to Medina, when he was fleeing his enemies in Mecca, he also didn't stay longer than three nights in any one place. A perfect example of Ahmed bin Hanbal conforming his life to the sunnah, to the example of the Prophet. For a whole year, he's on the run.
And then he goes back to his house, he goes inside his house and he probably, probably never again comes out. And more interestingly, he promised never to relate any more hadith. He's been on the run for a year, hiding from the caliph's agents. Finally, in a period where he feels it's safe to do so, he returns to his house, locks himself away and says, "I am no longer going to teach the hadith." It's very interesting.
Why did he do that? You know, some historians suggest that he was, you know, really terrified of the caliph. He thought, I don't want to capitulate, but maybe if I don't talk anymore, they'll leave me alone. It may have been a profoundly humble act, spiritual act, to give up that thing that he loved the most, hadith, in pursuit of communion with the divine. Who knows? I think it's more of Ahmad's
deciding that he doesn't want to stand in defiance of the caliphate anymore. So he doesn't want to have any showdown with them.
because he felt that a theological showdown is inevitably now going to lead to a political and military, possibly, military showdown and rebellion. That's the last thing he wanted. He did not want any blood spilt. There was a rebellion in 846, an attempt to overthrow Al-Wathik. It fails.
At that point, Ahmed's followers come to him and said, look, should we recognize the caliph's authority? I mean, now this guy is crazy. He's killing us. He's fighting us. You know, it's chaos everywhere. He's not a good caliph. But even then, Ahmed says that you should curse al-Wathik in your heart, but not openly curse.
rebel against him to prevent any civil war, to prevent fitna. He thought fitna was just the worst. And so I think you're right, Eamon. I think that's probably why he stopped relating the Hadith. He realized that his followers were part of the problem. They were creating the conditions of fitna. So he said, oh, okay, I'll just go home. I'll contemplate God on my own. And I don't want to be involved in this. I want to be detached from
detached from the world. Now, he may have wanted to be detached, but then towards the end of his life, just when everything looked darkest, he was faced with what might have been the greatest challenge of his life. He is recounted as having said at this point of the caliphs, of the royal authority, he said,
I have kept safe from them for 60 years only to be tried by them at the end of my life." And surprisingly, what he's talking about is not being chased by the Inquisition, but the opposite. In 847, the Caliph al-Mutawakkil comes to the throne. And two years later, he invites the Hadith scholars to Samarra,
to preach against the doctrine of the Quran's createdness. So 16 years after his predecessor, al-Ma'mun, launched the Inquisition, launched the mihna, al-Mutawakkil brings it to a close. By 852, the caliph has formally embraced what we might now call, quote, Sunni orthodoxy. And he marks this by formally inviting Ahmed to come to Samarra.
and asks Ahmed to instruct his son, the man who would become the future caliph, al-Mu'taz, to instruct him in hadith. This is the context of Ahmed saying, "I have kept safe from them for 60 years only to be tried by them at the end of my life." It shows the extent to which detachment was his ideal. Even when the caliphs were reconciled to the people of hadith, even when the caliphs disavowed the doctrine, the false doctrine in Ahmed's eyes of the createdness of the Quran,
by wanting to bring him into the fold, by wanting to pollute him as he sought by royal power, he thought this is the greatest trial of all. Ahmed answered the caliph's request and invitation to come and teach his son al-Mu'taz. However, you know,
what the courtiers might have faced would have perplexed them. You know, the man was detached. The man was silent. He wasn't even moving whenever they wanted to put nice clothes on him so that he can be presentable or semi-presentable, you know, in front of the caliph and his son. You know, they will, he wouldn't move. Why? Because Ahmed in the end viewed himself being invited into the court in
you know, under the favor of the caliphate, as much trying and as much testing as when he was asked under, you know, the lash to accept that the Quran was created. For him, the worldly luxuries were something
repulsive, as repulsive as what he sees as heresies and impurities polluting Islam. It's such an insight into that literalist, fundamentalist, Salafist, let's say, mentality. The mentality that so many
Salafi Muslims today cultivate in themselves. And this is really not to insult them or to disparage them. I actually have tremendous admiration for their fidelity to their faith. Yeah, me too. Although at the extremes, at the extremes, as we know, it results in
Salafi jihadism and other such phenomena can go to such extremes that it becomes a big problem. And I think it's fair to say that Ahmed bin Hanbal also manifested some of those more disquieting qualities, especially at the very end of his life.
The new caliph, al-Mutawakkil, annoyed, probably equally annoyed with Ahmed's stance of detachment and silence as his predecessor had been, sends him back to Baghdad. Nonetheless, he's still in favor, and regular visitors to Ahmed from Samarra, from the caliph's courts, come bearing presents often.
and he always refuses the presence. He doesn't want anything to do with him. So in 855, Ahmed falls ill. Interestingly, he refuses to moan in his illness, in his pain. This is in conformity to a hadith from a Yemeni of the second generation after Muhammad relating that he did not moan during an illness. At this point, two old companions come to visit him to say goodbye.
These are the two of his companions, those two that I mentioned earlier, who had capitulated in the first roundup of the seven Hadith scholars during the Caliph al-Ma'mun's initial inquisition. Two of them, whom Ahmed had studied with, capitulated.
Well, at the end of his life, they come to pay him a farewell visit, and he turns away from them, faces the wall, and refuses to say anything to them. Unforgiving. Again, a sense of this unforgiving attitude, which I, you know, it's easy for me to say, as a Christian, I find this difficult to take, but it's more than that. As a human being, I find it difficult to take. You know, I think, well, come on, Ahmed, grow up, man. Yeah, but do you know how it was justified?
You know, when I was listening to many of the scholars in Saudi Arabia when they were talking about it, do you remember the scholar I told you about that who was at the top of the Grand Mosque in Mecca? He said that with Ahmed turning away from the two fellow scholars who capitulated,
He wanted to send a signal not only to them but to all scholars that will follow him that if you capitulate then the purity of the religion will be lost. You have been entrusted as the guardians of the sacred wisdom to guard it from the transgressions of kings and secular authorities. If you fail in this mission
then Islam will be corrupted
the purity of the faith will be lost. And you have abandoned your duty. You did not stand guard at the gate of this wisdom. You left it open for the heretics to come through. And as a result, he wanted not to teach these two a lesson, but to teach the future generations of scholars a lesson. That's about as perfect a summary of the Salafi mentality that I can imagine.
I like this story, though. This really puts a final human flourish to the character of Ahmed bin Hanbal. It comes from Christopher Melchert, whose book, Ahmed bin Hanbal, I read in preparation of this series and which I really recommend. Melchert writes, A shocking story circulated in Hanbali circles from about the end of the 9th century, from Ahmed's own lifetime, if the story is genuine. His son Saleh,
invited a Sufi to sing renunciant poems. So this is to sing poems celebrating asceticism, celebrating renouncing the world and its trappings. Now, music is not something that Ahmed bin Hanbal approved of, as we know. Melchert goes on, by one account, Salah thought it was safe to do this because his father had gone to bed. But then Salah heard a noise on the roof.
He went up to the roof to investigate, and in Sala's words, quote, I saw my father on the roof, listening, with his train under his armpit, prancing about on the roof as if he were dancing. I love that story. It shows that
For all his renunciation, for all his performance of pure detachment, Ahmed genuinely had cultivated in his heart a passionate love of his Lord and a love of the spiritual life, so that when he heard this music praising it, he couldn't help but be moved by
secretly, as he thought, privately, to dance along with it. You know, I kind of want to end this story of Ahmed bin Hambal there, leaving our listeners with this very human picture of the man. Have you heard that story before, Ayman? No, this is the first time I hear it. You know, you are always full of surprises, Sheikh Thomas. Ahmed bin Hambal died in that very year, 855 AD.
The reports from the Times say that two and a half million people lined the streets of Baghdad at his funeral.
That sounds to me an exaggeration, but it's an exaggeration that must have a kernel of truth. He was much loved, much admired, much respected by that growing number of Muslims who identified more and more firmly with that interpretation of Islam, its revelation and its tradition, which we now call Sunnism. Down the line, his name would be given to a school of jurisprudence, the Hanbali school, that bases itself on his name.
teachings, on his hadith, on the memory of his legal pronouncements during his life.
It is from this school that what is known as Salafism emerges. It is from the Hanbali school, the school which to this day is the official Islamic school that governs a country like Saudi Arabia, that Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab, the founder of Wahabism, was a member of this school. It's from this school that the modern fundamentalist movement more or less draws its inspiration. In the Middle Ages, this was the smallest of all the four Islamic legal schools, the Hanbali school.
But over the course of the 13th century, the Hanbali school spread and put down roots in Syria, especially in Damascus. And it was in Damascus where one of the school's most notorious and prolific thinkers, a true genius, would arise to confront a new and much more devastating political threat, the Mongols.
And I'm talking, of course, about Ibn Taymiyyah. Indeed, Ibn Taymiyyah, indeed. No Islamic thinker is more quoted or held in higher regard by modern Salafi jihadists than Ibn Taymiyyah. So if you want to understand them, you have to understand him. And we will be telling the full story of his life over the next two episodes. There'll be a couple of doozies, I promise you. Stay tuned.
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stock. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.