152 Christopher Melchert
- Ibn Taymiyya, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (d. Damascus, 728/1328).
38 citations, always as al-Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn. For biographical infor-
mation, see Al-Matroudi, The Ḥanbalī School.
- Ibn Rajab, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad (d. Damascus, 795/1393).
31 citations, of al-Qawāʾid al-fiqhiyya (The Juristic Principles). For
biographical information, see al-ʿUlaymī, al-Manhaj al-aḥmad, vol. 5,
pp. 168–171.
- al-Ādamī, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Baghdādī (8th/14th?).
31 citations, of al-Muntakhab (The Selected), al-Munawwar (The
Illuminated). For biographical information, see al-ʿUlaymī, al-Manhaj
al-aḥmad, vol. 5, p. 72.
As for the history of the Ḥanbalī school, the list suggests who were
its most important figures, at least as expounders of Ḥanbalī law and
from the viewpoint of the later 15th century. There are other ways of
getting at who were the most important. Writing in the early twenti-
eth century, Ibn Badrān states that the most important works of the
Ḥanbalī school have been three: al-Khiraqī (d. Damascus, 334/945–
946), al-Mukhtaṣar (The Epitome); ʿAlā’ al-Dīn al-Mardāwī, al-Tanqīḥ
al-mushbiʿ (The Satiating Revision); and al-Futūḥī (d. Cairo, 972/1564–
65?), Muntahā al-irādāt (The Ultimate of Wishes). From this point
forward, people devoted themselves to this last and, from laziness and
oblivion, abandoned other books. Then along came Mūsā al-Ḥujāwī
(d. Cairo, 1051/1641), who wrote al-Iqnāʿ (The Convincing). Ḥanbalī
writers henceforward depended on these two books, by al-Futūḥī and
al-Ḥujāwī.^5 This seems to be a list of leading textbooks for teaching
5 Ibn Badrān, ʿAbd al-Qādir: al-Madkhal ilā madhhab al-imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal
(The Entryway into the School of the Leader Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal), Cairo n. d.,
p. 221 = ed. by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, Beirut 1401/1981,
pp. 434–435. Khiraqī’s Mukhtaṣar was the first epitome of Ḥanbalī positions,
whose publication provided the nascent Ḥanbalī school with a basis comparable
to that provided to the Mālikī school by the epitomes of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (d.
Old Cairo, 214/829) and Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī (d. Medina, 242/857) and to the
Shāfiʿī by the epitomes of al-Buwayṭī (d. Baghdad, 231/846?) and al-Muzanī (d.
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