Conflicted S4 E4: The First Fundamentalist (Part 2)

Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean

Thomas: 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 Ahmad bin Hanbal, the great eighth and ninth 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 Ahmad lived in the eighth century Iraq. We set the scene; we built up his character. Go listen to that. Come back here and finish this great story.

Aimen Dean, you're here with me as you always are. Hello, Aimen.

Aimen: I'm always with you, Thomas, wherever you are, for you are my disciple, and I'll always be with you.

Thomas: No, no. Alright. No way. Let's get right back into it. Ahmad bin Hanbal. Let's go.

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Aimen, I think it would be good right at the start to remind listeners why we're talking about Ahmad 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.

Aimen: 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.

Thomas: 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.

Aimen: Exactly. The prophecies, because Ahmad bin Hanbal through his method of collecting the Hadith, did not sift enough through the narratives, and wasn't sceptical enough of both the narrators and the text in order to weed out 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 visions.

Thomas: 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, we’ll be thrown unto the great funeral pyre of God's purgative wrath, his judgement 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 Ahmad's story, that he, along with a lot of very pious people of any religious tradition, but certainly within Salafism, he had a religious mentality that emphasised detachment from the world. 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 judgement, 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.

Aimen: Exactly. And this is why in Egypt, they have this brilliant 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 [speaking foreign language].

So, when they say this, they say it means this guy is strict and Hanbali.

Thomas: So, Hanbali means, in modern sort of Egyptian at least, but in general, Muslims know that Hanbali is not to be trifled with, these people are serious. They're strict people.

Aimen: Puritans, in other words, the Egyptians understood Hanbalis to be Puritans, in their pursuit of absolutism and purity and faith.

Thomas: To prepare for this recording, I read the excellent primer into Ahmad bin Hanbal by Christopher Melchert. It's part of the one world series of Muslim lives.

And Melchert has a great story, I think that really characterises, or rather, really summarises perfectly this weird extent of a detachment that Ahmad bin Hanbal cultivated.

The story goes like this, Ahmad, 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 a reprehensible distraction as Melchert puts it for a Muslim.

So, Ahmad 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 Ahmad's house. It was only at that point though, that Ahmad declared that he had learnt 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 Ahmad remained unattached to the world. His disciple and a fit of rage destroys a woman's musical instrument. And he claims not even to notice.

Aimen: In fact, that is nothing Thomas, in comparison to what one of my clerics when I was young, said about Hanbal. He said 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 forget the pain and would go into deep contemplation of 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 whether these narrators met each other, talk to each other, whether there is any gap in the narration that he need to be aware of. This level of disassociation is incredible, absolutely incredible.

Thomas: That is a great piece of foreshadowing there, Aimen. Because the climax of this episode will involve this question of the flogging and torture of Ahmad 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, memorising 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.

Aimen: This was what later scholars would call the Way of the Salaf, the way of the ancestors, 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.

Thomas: 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 Ahmad 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 Sunnism today, had not yet reached a fixed form.

And so, in addition to men like Ahmad bin Hanbal, who emphasised the Hadith and emphasised the memorization and the transmission of the Hadith, there were other ways of expressing and exploring Muslim religiosity at the time.

And in fact, Ahmad 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 practising the Sunnah, to practising the example of the prophet and his companions to a tee.

Now, we've talked about Ahmad. Now we're talking about the great bad guy from Ahmad'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 favourably. He's associated with that flourishing in Baghdad of secular knowledge, scientific exploration, philosophical wisdom that people associate with the golden age of Islam.

Aimen: Yeah, the age of Dar al-Hikmah, the greatest library in the world has ever seen, until then. It was a centre for translation, a centre where wise scholars and philosophers and people of medicine and mathematics would come from all over the world to actually settle in Baghdad.

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.

Thomas: The Dar al-Hikmah, the House of Wisdom, absolutely famed by history. And the Caliph al-Ma’mun situated himself really at the centre of that social circle. I can imagine that his court was probably a really fun place to hang out. I would've liked to hang out there, I'm sure.

Aimen: Exactly. Except it wasn't a place for Ahmad.

Thomas: No.

Aimen: Or his like-minded Hadith scholars, Ahl al-Hadith, as they started to become known.

Thomas: The people of Hadith.

Aimen: Yes. Because for them, this is nothing short of an intellectual orgy, as they used to call.

Thomas: Well, even worse, it seemed to them to be deviant, to deviate from the law of God as expressed in the Hadith.

Aimen: And this is why some of them used to call Dar al-Hikmah, Dar Zandaqa, which means instead of the house of the wisdom, they used to call it the house of heresy.

Thomas: The other thing, I mean, obviously as you said, Ahmad 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.

Aimen: [Speaking foreign language] 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 that almost 800 years later, this is exactly the struggle that will happen between the English King Charles I, against the Puritans.

Thomas: And the Puritans.

Aimen: Exactly.

Thomas: It’s true. It’s right.

Aimen: The Protestant Puritans who challenged the divine rights of kings to rule, and this is exactly where Ahmad, who established that the beginnings, the embryonic stages of the Puritan Islam in challenging the divinity of the Caliphs.

Thomas: 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 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 Shiism and Sunnism, et cetera, 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 Ahmad'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.

Aimen: For some listeners, they would be thinking, 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 Allah khaliq kula shay', 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, 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.

Thomas: 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.

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 into-

Aimen: A second dimension, a second dimension of God, basically.

Thomas: 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 al-Hadith, people like Ahmad bin Hanbal. He accuses them of by opposing the doctrine of the Quran's createdness of falling into the same era 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 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-

Aimen: At least, I'm not going to flog you.

Thomas: Well, we'll wait and find out.

Thomas: The point is that Ahmad 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 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, which 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 Ahmad, 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, “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 Ahmad bin Hanbal. He calls them people who dispute about vain and useless things, and then invite others to adopt their views.

They consider themselves adherence 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 death 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 mediaeval historian al-Tabari quotes from this letter, from the Caliph al-Ma’mun to his governor in Baghdad. And you can hear history rippling, because it's an amazing moment.

Aimen: Well, I mean, and the fact that the historians later would call it Al Mihna, because Al Mihna means the catastrophic test.

Thomas: The ordeal, the trial.

Aimen: Yes. And it was an ordeal. It was a trial. And between you and me, in the end when it was over, people might have asked themselves, was it really worth it?

Thomas: 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.

Ahmad 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, Ahmad 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 Ahmad is among them, and all of them, except for two capitulate, one of the two who refused, was of course Ahmad bin Hanbal.

Now, this utterly infuriated the Caliph. In another letter, which the great historian, al-Tabari recounts, the Caliph writes to the governor in Baghdad, “As for Ahmad 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 Ahmad and anyone else who “refuses to abandon their polytheism,” their shirk, “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 on block to the sword, inshallah. And there is no power except in God.”

He was pissed off.

Aimen: Well, stubbornness do that to people who think of themselves as the divinely inspired kings.

Thomas: So, Ahmad 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 Ahmad bin Hanbal was hauled before the great Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun. Stay tuned.

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Dear listener, we're back. Aimen’s with me. We're right in the thick of it with Ahmad 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.

It's a pretty dramatic scene. Wouldn't you say, Aimen?

Aimen: I don't know what was going through Ahmad bin Hanbal's mind. He's about to be presented before a very angry, self-righteous Caliph who just going to chop off his head if he doesn't say the Quran is created, but he is also very stubborn.

Thomas: One thing is that the march to Tarsus on the frontier must have been extremely tough. The other scholar who had also alongside Ahmad 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. Ahmad was on his way. He hadn't reached Tarsus yet, when word comes that the Caliph al-Ma’mun has suddenly unexpectedly died.

What is this, Aimen? Is this divine justice? Is God speaking quite clearly through the outworkings of his providence? What do you think?

Aimen: No, it's just like mediaeval water being polluted, as simple as that. Someone must have been peeing up the river or worse.

Thomas: Because someone peed in that water, Ahmad 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, Ahmad 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.

Aimen: Thomas, the two years that Ahmad 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 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 the Quran is a created entity. Ahmad'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 Ahmad spread like wildfire, eating dry twigs all over the place from Arabia to Khorasan which is Iran today, to Egypt, to Damascus, to Mecca, Medina, to Sanaa, to all the centres of learning in the Muslim world, people were mentioning Ahmad is standing firm. He hasn't yet recounted. And these stories spreading around gave hope that maybe just maybe the Ahl al-Hadith stance might survive.

Thomas: To be fair to the Hadith scholars who had capitulated. And really also to be fair to Ahmad'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, 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 Ahmad 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.

Aimen: Remember Thomas, that even Ahmed bin Hanbal, he was 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 trauma that the successor of al-Ma’mun, Caliph 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 Ahmad bin Hanbal through even more torment, more flogging and more torture, and really almost ended his life. Yet when the news reached Ahmad bin Hanbal, that al-Mu’tasim won a great victory against the Roman Byzantines, Ahmad 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 Ahmad, he remembers that the Prophet Muhammad ordered the Muslim Muslims to obey 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.

Thomas: 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 solidified. So, the Caliph still felt that he co could command his believers in matters of faith and worship as well. And this was clashing with the nascent Ahl al-Hadith’s 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 the 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 soldiers.

The Ottomans, the Safavids, the Mongols, all of those great, the mamluks in Egypt, all of those great empires had been like Turkified, and it was under al-Mu’tasim that is understood that this process begins.

Now, the thing about al-Mu’tasim that is important for Ahmad 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.

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 kilometres north along the Tigress 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 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, Ahmad 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 Ahmad 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 Ahmad. But what does Ahmad do, Aimen?

Aimen: Ahmad 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 Ahmad infuriates al-Mu’tasim by refusing to give him what he wanted. A debate.

Thomas: 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 honour 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 Ahmad 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.

Aimen: Indeed. This shows exactly the detachment of the Caliph as well as the Caliphates Court from the theological realities of their subjects, that there are people who really do not care whatsoever, about anything except ultimately pleasing God in the purest, absolutest possible way that they could pursue. And Ahmed was one of them.

Thomas: 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, Ahmad bin Hanbal they won't do it. They are very, very fixed.

But 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 Ahmad and whipping him on the back twice.

That literally means that Ahmad may have been subjected to upwards of 300 lashes. This would've 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 Ahmad's own memory of the experience. It goes like this. He says, “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.”

Now, there's another account 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, Ahmad simply recited two Quranic verses, “Say, he is God, one.” And also, “there is no God, but Allah.”

Hearing this, the vlogger cried out, “Oh, commander of the faithful he has said, as you say. And so, the Caliph ordered that he be released.

Aimen: The view that at least I was taught when I was young, and especially from the book of Islamic history, by Ahmad Shakir, who is considered to be one of the Salafist historians who lived in the 19th century.

And he stated that al-Mutasim wanted to hear what he wanted to hear, because he was afraid that Ahmad, 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 al-Hadith at the time on his hand.

And especially with the sentiment in Baghdad being against him and against his unruly, uncouth, uncivilised Turkish entourage. So, he decided, just let him go. I heard what I wanted to hear, and that's the end of it.

But the reality is that neither Ahmad capitulated, neither al-Mu’tasim changed his mind is just al-Mu’tasim just realised that I don't want to kill the man. That's the last thing he wanted.

Thomas: 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 neutralise the threat of the scholars and their followers.

In fact, that's not what happened. Ahmad 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 Ahmad. 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-Wathiq, the Caliph al-Wathiq.

Al-Wathiq 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-real person. Again, it's part of this process of the caliphate being transformed into a more worldly, more secular kind of power structure.

That 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 Hanbal, and the people of Hadith. Chaos is spreading.

And I think that all of this may have depressed Ahmad 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've been like the end of the world.

Aimen: Remember, for people of Hadith, they always expected that the day of judgement 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 judgement.

And so, 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-Wathiq when there was plagues going around in Khorasan and in Arabia and in Egypt.

So, people talking about, oh, it's the end of the world. The end is nigh. But for a man like Ahmad, 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 to be saved. I'm ready for the salvation.

Thomas: In the midst of this darkness. So, after that 10-year period where very little is said about Ahmad, he is told that the new Caliph at this time, al-Wathiq, 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 Hegirae, 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? Some historians suggest that he was 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?

Aimen: I think it's more of Ahmad the 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 a rebellion. That's the last thing he wanted. He did not want any blood spilled.

Thomas: There was a rebellion in 846, an attempt to overthrow al-Wathiq. It fails. At that point, Ahmad'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. It's chaos everywhere. He's not a good Caliph.”

But even then, Ahmad says that you should curse al-Wathiq in your heart, but not openly 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, Aimen, I think that's probably why he stopped relating the Hadith. He realised 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, 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 Sammara 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 “Sunni orthodoxy”, and he marks this by formally inviting Ahmad to come to Sammara and asks Ahmad to instruct his son, the man who would become the future Caliph, al-Mu’tazz, to instruct him in Hadith.

This is the context of Ahmad 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 Ahmad's eyes of the createdness of the Quran, by wanting to bring him into the fold, by wanting to pollute him as he saw it by royal power. He thought this is the greatest trial of all.

Aimen: Ahmad answered the Caliph’s request and invitation to come and teach his son al-Mu’tazz. However, what the courts might have faced would have perplexed them. 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 semis presentable, in front of the Caliph and his son, he wouldn't move.

Why? Because Ahmad, in the end, viewed himself being invited into the court under the favour of the caliphate and as much trying and as much testing as when he was asked under the lash to accept that the Quran was created for him.

For him the worldly luxuries were something repulsive, as repulsive as what he sees as heresies and impurities polluting Islam.

Thomas: 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.

Aimen: Yeah, me too. Definitely.

Thomas: Although, at the extremes as we know, it results in Salafi jihadism and other such phenomena. It can go to such extremes that it becomes a big problem.

And I think it's fair to say that Ahmad bin Hanbal, also manifested some of those more disquieting qualities, especially at the very end of his life. The Caliph, the new Caliph al-Mutawakkil, probably equally annoyed with Ahmad's stance of detachment and silence as his predecessor had been, sends him back to Baghdad.

Nonetheless, he still like in favour and regular visit visitors to Ahmad from Sammara, from the Caliph's courts come bearing presence often, and he always refuses the presence. He doesn't want anything to do with them.

So, in 855, Ahmad 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’s 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. He faces the wall and refuses to say anything to them.

Aimen: Unforgiving.

Thomas: Again, a sense of this unforgiving attitude, which 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. I think, well, come on Ahmad, grow up, man.

Aimen: Yeah. But do you know how it was justified? 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.

Thomas: That's about as perfect to 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 Ahmad 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 ninth century, from Ahmad's own lifetime, if the story is genuine. His son Salih, invited a Sufi to sing renunciate poems.”

So, this is to sing poems, celebrating asceticism, celebrating renouncing the world and its trappings.

Now, music is not something that Ahmad bin Hanbal approved of, as we know. Melchert goes on, “By one account, Salih thought it was safe to do this because his father had gone to bed, but then Salih heard a noise on the roof.

He went up to the roof to investigate, and in Salih’s words, ‘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, Ahmad 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 secretly as he thought privately to dance along with it.

I kind of want to end this story of Ahmad bin Hanbal there, leaving our listeners with this very human picture of the man. Had you heard that story before, Aimen?

Aimen: No, this is the first time I hear it. You are always full of surprises, Sheik Thomas.

Thomas: Ahmad bin Hanbal, died in that very year, 855. The reports from the time 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 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 Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the founder of Wahhabism, 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 schools 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.

Aimen: Indeed, ibn Taymiyyah, indeed.

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Thomas: 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 Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.