The Relation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya to the Ḥanbalī School of Law
Christopher Melchert
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya were famously adherents
of the Ḥanbalī school of law. Abdul Hakim Al-Matroudi has published
a book on what the Ḥanbalī school meant to Ibn Taymiyya.^1 My first
project here is to determine what Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya meant to the late-medieval Ḥanbalī school itself, especially
as concerns its characteristic rules. My second project is to character-
ize Ibn al-Qayyim’s jurisprudence, especially what the Ḥanbalī school
meant to him. Like the other Sunni schools of law (the Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī,
and Mālikī), the Ḥanbalī school was partly an institution for form-
ing jurisprudents. Being Ḥanbalī meant that Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-
Qayyim had studied under Ḥanbalī teachers who in time had certified
them as competent to issue juridical opinions (fatwas) in the Ḥanbalī
tradition. In their day, no attention would be paid to opinions from
anyone who had not been so certified as competent in one or another
of the Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, and Ḥanbalī traditions.^2 Those discur-
sive traditions are the second main constitutive element of the Sunni
school of laws. The theory of Islamic law that prevailed from at least
1000 C. E. is that God has revealed his will for mankind through the
Koran and the word and deed of the Prophet. On some points, God
has deigned to make the evidence so clear that no dissent is allowed;
e. g. the requirement to perform the ritual prayer five times a day. On
most points, God has given us more ambiguous evidence of his will,
admitting of multiple legitimate interpretations. Sometimes a school
will agree on some point in opposition to all the rest; for example, the
1 Al-Matroudi, Abdul Hakim I.: The Ḥanbalī School of Law and Ibn Taymiyyah.
Culture and Civilization in the Middle East, London 2006.
2 On the school of law as an institution for forming and certifying jurisprudents,
see above all Makdisi, George: The Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in
Islam and the West, Edinburgh 1981, chapters 1–3, pp. 1–223, esp. pp. 1–9.
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