Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855) is often remembered as the uncompromising voice of the ahl al-ḥadīth: a champion of transmitted reports, suspicious of speculation, and hostile to human reasoning in law. Wael Hallaq, for example, paints him as surpassing even al-Shāfiʿī in his rejection of rationalist methods, a jurist whose legal vision was “too austere and rigid” to last. For Hallaq, the later Hanbalī school only survived by softening Aḥmad’s harsh traditionalism and “adopting analogy” (qiyās), which Aḥmad allegedly abhorred.
This portrait, however, deserves scrutiny. While Aḥmad certainly privileged hadith over speculative reasoning, evidence from his student Isḥāq b. Manṣūr al-Kawsaj (d. 251/865) complicates the notion that he was a radical literalist. Al-Kawsaj’s Kitāb al-Masāʾil ʿan Imāmay Ahl al-Ḥadīth preserves a wide range of questions he posed to Aḥmad. In these exchanges, Aḥmad consistently reasons from Prophetic precedent to address novel situations, often extending rulings by analogy. What emerges is not a jurist allergic to reasoning but one who employed it cautiously and faithfully, tethered always to the authority of hadith.
Al-Kawsaj once asked Aḥmad if it was permissible to remunerate a knitter for his work on a garment by giving him a percentage of its ownership. Aḥmad responded: “Everything like this, such as yarn, a house, a mount (dābba), or anything given to a laborer who receives a third or a fourth of ownership as compensation, is treated like the event of Khaybar (fa ʿalā qiṣṣa Khaybar).” Here Aḥmad alludes to the famous hadith concerning the agreement after the battle of Khaybar, where Muḥammad contracted the Jews to cultivate the land and, rather than being paid wages, they received half the harvest.
The original precedent involved an agricultural *muzāraʿa* contract, yet Aḥmad extrapolates its rationale and applies it to an entirely different craft—knitting. In his reasoning, any contract where the laborer is compensated through partial ownership of the product is valid. This ruling demonstrates his use of analogy to extend the principle of Khaybar beyond agriculture, applying it to crafts, real estate, and other services.
In another exchange, al-Kawsaj asked about a man who entrusts a good (māl) to another for safekeeping (*istawdaʿa*), and that trustee then sells it for himself to make a profit. Aḥmad replied that the profit belongs to the owner of the commodity, citing the hadith of ʿUrwa al-Bāriqī concerning sheep.
According to the hadith, the Prophet gave ʿUrwa a dinar to purchase a sheep. Instead, ʿUrwa purchased two sheep with the dinar, then sold one of them for a dinar, and returned to the Prophet both the sheep and the extra dinar. The Prophet prayed for blessing in ʿUrwa’s transactions. From this precedent, Aḥmad reasons that an agent who profits while violating the terms of his commission does not own the profit; it belongs to the one who appointed him.
Al-Kawsaj then asked about a different case: a laborer in a *muḍāraba* contract who profits while contradicting the financier’s terms. Aḥmad again appealed to the hadith of ʿUrwa, declaring that the profit in such a case belongs to the financier. Thus, Aḥmad extends the principle derived from the sheep transaction to both safekeeping (*wadīʿa*) and *muḍāraba*. This demonstrates how he uses a single Prophetic precedent to adjudicate multiple unprecedented situations.
Al-Kawsaj also asked Aḥmad about the amount a person should leave as a bequest at death. Aḥmad answered that it should be restricted to a third of his wealth. When asked further about a man who bequeaths to non-relatives, whether the wealth should instead revert to relatives, Aḥmad replied in the negative. He allowed the bequest to non-relatives but insisted it be limited to one-third, with two-thirds returning to relatives.
His reasoning rests on the hadith of ʿImrān b. Ḥusayn. A man, upon his death, manumitted all six of his slaves, leaving no other wealth. When the Prophet heard, he rebuked the man, gathered the slaves, and divided them into three groups of two. He then cast lots, freed two, and returned the other four to slavery. From this, Aḥmad inferred the principle that manumission at death may not exceed one-third of one’s wealth. He then extended the principle to bequests in general, reasoning that just as manumission is capped at one-third, so too are other posthumous transfers.
In a further case, al-Kawsaj cites a question about a man who sells his female slave but stipulates that if she is pregnant, the child remains his. Aḥmad answered by recalling that Ibn ʿUmar once manumitted a female slave but excepted what was in her womb. Aḥmad then declared: “Sale and manumission, according to me, are similar.”
By equating the two distinct acts of transfer, Aḥmad reasoned that if a partial exclusion is valid in manumission, it is likewise valid in sale. This demonstrates how he used analogy to bridge distinct but related legal categories, extending rules beyond their textual base.
Taken together, these examples complicate the image of Aḥmad as radically anti-reason. Far from rejecting reasoning altogether, he engaged in it frequently, though cautiously, and always anchored in transmitted precedent. His jurisprudence reveals a rudimentary but active use of analogy, suggesting continuity with later Hanbalī methods rather than rupture.
If this is the case, then later Hanbalīs did not “betray” their founder by adopting analogy. Rather, they elaborated and systematized practices already latent in his approach. His condemnations of qiyās, therefore, must be understood as directed against speculative reasoning that disregarded hadith—not as opposition to analogy altogether.
Aḥmad is indeed reported to have condemned qiyās. But when examined closely, his condemnations target a very specific practice: treating qiyās as an independent fourth source of law, especially when it conflicted with a sound text. His well-known maxim, “How can analogy be made when a hadith exists?” is best read as a warning that analogy must never override revelation.
Yet in cases where no explicit text applied, Aḥmad did not hesitate to reason by analogy, as the foregoing examples show. Thus, he opposed qiyās as a competitor to hadith, but embraced reasoning as a faithful extension of revelation. This distinction—between qiyās as speculative source and qiyās as embedded reasoning—is essential to appreciate his true jurisprudential stance.
When compared to his contemporaries, Aḥmad’s position becomes clearer. Abū Ḥanīfa and his circle openly embraced raʾy and istiḥsān, theorizing them as indispensable tools of law. Al-Shāfiʿī, for his part, codified qiyās in his Risāla, granting it formal recognition as a source of jurisprudence.
Aḥmad charted a more cautious course. He avoided formal theorization, resisted speculative system-building, and confined himself to reasoning grounded in hadith. Yet in practice, he did what other jurists did: extrapolate principles, extend rulings, and resolve new cases with analogy. This makes him, in effect, methodologically conservative but substantively pragmatic.
He thus stands closer to the middle of the spectrum between ahl al-raʾy and ahl al-ḥadīth than either extreme suggests. Rather than a rigid literalist, he emerges as a careful traditionalist who nonetheless reasoned dynamically when precedent demanded it.
Reconsidering Aḥmad’s jurisprudence shows that even the most traditionist of early jurists was not averse to reasoning. The distance between ahl al-raʾy and ahl al-ḥadīth, therefore, was narrower than the sharp dichotomy often presented in scholarship. Instead of a radical rupture healed only by al-Shāfiʿī’s “Great Synthesis,” what we see is an ongoing continuum of methods already converging in practice.
This insight also repositions Aḥmad in the genealogy of Islamic legal theory. His method illustrates that the synthesis of reason and tradition was not imposed from outside upon reluctant traditionalists, but emerged organically from the interpretive practices of the traditionists themselves.
In Part 3, we turn to Christopher Melchert’s analysis of “traditionist-jurisprudents.” Melchert offers a subtler picture than Hallaq, describing a gradual convergence rather than a sudden synthesis. Yet even his account may overstate the distance between the two camps at the outset.
- Wael B. Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- Isḥāq b. Manṣūr al-Kawsaj (d. 251/865), Kitāb al-Masāʾil ʿan Imāmay Ahl al-Ḥadīth Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal wa-Isḥāq b. Rāhwayh, ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī (Cairo: Dār Hajar, 1411/1990).
- Christopher Melchert, “Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the Framing of Islamic Law,” Islamic Law and Society 8, no. 3 (2001): 383–406.
