The Life of Ibn Ḥanbal. Ibn al-Jawzi

The Life of Ibn Ḥanbal

342, 371, 379, 385, 386, and 422).

Leaving aside the matter of length, this book was not particularly difficult to translate. Unlike some of the other works published in this series, it is not a collection of arguments about a once-burning issue, a guide for specialists in a technical field, or a monument to verbal cleverness. It is a book by and about people who believed in simple truths expressed in simple language—even if some of that simplicity has been lost to us with the passage of time. In a sense, the difficult parts were also the most enjoyable to work on. These include the references to daily life and material culture: everything from “a dried-whey stew full of meat and chard” (38.11) to the galoshes a Turkish general wears as he splashes his way through the mud to Ibn Ḥanbal’s door (73.41). The book is a trove of information on the physical and social world of the third/ninth century, and I hope some readers, at least, will mine its riches.

What I most wish the tradition had preserved for us is the voices. Ibn Ḥanbal’s life is told as a series of reports, each narrated by an eyewitness, or by Ibn Ḥanbal himself. If the words on the page really are transcriptions of speech, each report should represent a distinct voice. In practice, though, there does not seem to be much variation in register, possibly because reports originally narrated in informal Arabic, and perhaps even other languages, have been put into literary Arabic of a more or less uniform kind by one or another of the transmitters (see, e.g., 38.10). Beyond the voices of the eyewitnesses, we also have the voices of all the people they quote. These include everyone from caliphs, judges, and jailors to doctors, grocers, and bandits. Unusually, if all too briefly, we also hear the voices of women (e.g., 61.7) and children (65.9). Here again, though, all of these people seem to be speaking the same sort of Arabic, making it difficult to give them distinctive voices in English.

Another problem was names. As in nineteenth-century Russian novels, all of the important characters seem to have several names, and authors seem to use them indiscriminately. In fact (as in Russian novels) there are reasons why one name might be used rather than another. In Ibn Ḥanbal’s case, those who write about him usually call him Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (“Aḥmad the descendant of Ḥanbal”), or Aḥmad for short. But his friends, associates, and students called him ʿAbū ʿAbd Allāh, “father of ʿAbd Allāh.” This form conveys both intimacy and respect. Unfortunately, it is easily confused with ʿAbd Allāh, the name of Ibn Ḥanbal’s son. Also, Abū ʿAbd Allāh happens to be the form of address for at least two other figures in the book. After much reflection, I decided to call him Ibn Ḥanbal in the introduction and notes, where it was necessary to refer to him as unambiguously as possible, but in the translation to call him Aḥmad wherever it was necessary to convey warmth or admiration.

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

1 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 10:15.

2 Melchert, Ibn Hanbal, viii.

3 On his life see Laoust, “Ibn al-Jawzī,” which erroneously gives his birthdate as 510/1126 instead of 510/1116.

4 Perkins, “Hagiography.”

5 Kilito, Author, esp. pp. 17–23.

THE LIFE OF IBN ḤANBAL

IN THE NAME OF GOD, FULL OF COMPASSION, EVER COMPASSIONATE 0.1

The Virtues of Abū ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥanbal, of the tribe of Shaybān—God be pleased with him!—by the great religious authority Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Jawzī, God be pleased with him!

IN THE NAME OF GOD, FULL OF COMPASSION, EVER COMPASSIONATE 0.2

Praise God, Who did all things create with skill unmatch’d and chose of men who would come first and who behind. From humankind He raised His prophets and His seers, and of them both did make the righteous scholars heirs. Then of those knowing men did He a lesser number find, and to those few with gen’rous hand a special virtue give. May God bless and keep Muḥammad, of those who alight in desert lands the noblest rider of his race; and bless and save the ones who in joining him touched greatness, and those who followed him in faith, until the Day when He shall set this tott’ring world aright.

I pray, my brothers, that God crown your efforts with success; and I ask you to recall that He, mighty and glorious, made Muḥammad—God bless him and keep him—the most virtuous being in creation, and likewise placed his community above the rest. The reason for this precedence was knowledge: knowing, and acting on what one knows. Examine the life of our Prophet and you will realize that his superiority to other prophets arises from what he knew and how he put that knowledge into practice. Consider, likewise, the sciences of our learned men, and you will readily see how they elude the powers of the rabbis. Note, too, how the devotions of our worshippers put even monks to shame, for devotion restrained by the Law and undertaken against the grain of one’s desires is more arduous—and worthier—than monasticism, which merits no regard. By the grace of God, our community suffers no dearth of knowledge or of action. Even so, when I set out to find people of the Successors’ generation or later who had reached perfection in both respects—in what they knew and how they lived—I found only three whose achievement is perfect and uncompromised: al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Sufyān ibn Saʿīd al-Thawrī, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. 0.3

After compiling one volume on the merits of al-Ḥasan and another on Sufyān, I realized that Aḥmad deserves more attention than either. He gathered more knowledge than they did and suffered more for telling the truth. Several authors, admittedly, have already collected reports of his attainments. Some, however, collected too little material, while others made no effort to organize what they had amassed. I therefore resolved to devote some time to making a proper collection of reports about his manners and merits, so that those who emulate him may know the man whose example they have set out to follow.¹ May God grant success! 0.4

CONTENTS

I have divided this book into one hundred chapters, as follows—and may God help me choose aright! 0.5

Chapter 1. Ibn Ḥanbal’s Birth and Family Background

Chapter 2. His Lineage

Chapter 3. His Childhood

Chapter 4. The Beginning of His Search for Knowledge and the Journey He Undertook for That Purpose

Chapter 5. The Major Men of Learning Whom He Met and on Whose Authority He Recited Hadith