HANABILAH

also called Madhhab Hanbal, English Hanbalites in Islam, the most fundamentalist of the four Sunni schools of religious law. Based on the teachings of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780855), the Hanbali legal school (madhhab) emphasized virtually complete dependence on the divine in the establishment of legal theory and rejected personal opinion (ra'y), analogy (qiyas), and the Hellenistic dogma of the Mu'tazilah school of theology, on the grounds that human speculation is likely to introduce sinful innovations (bid'ah). The school thus relied solely on a literal reading of the Qur'an and Hadith (narratives relating to the Prophet's life and sayings) in formulating legal decisions. Popular in Iraq and Syria until the 14th century, the traditionalist Hanbali legal approach was revived in the 18th century through the teachings of Ibn Taymiyah (12631328) in the Wahhabiyah movement of central Arabia. This madhhab has since become the official legal school of 20th-century Saudi Arabia.