Quora Answer: What is the Ahl al-Ahadits Faction during the Mihnah, & How were They Different from Modern Islam & the Salafis?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What is the Ahl al-Ahadits faction during the Abbasid era mihnah, inquisition, and how were they different or similar to the now established Sunni orthodoxy, and modern Salafism?” 

The Ahl al-Ahadits, the People of Narrations, are one of the two broad movements in Sunni jurisprudence.  The other being the Ahl ar-Ra’yy, the People of Rational Thinking.  Then, as now, the nucleus of the movement was the Shafi’i and Hanbali madzahib, schools of jurisprudence.  The Ahl al-Ahadits emphasised the use of narrations, whether ahadits or atsar, over common sense and rational deduction, out of a sense of wara’, caution.  This is the opposite of the Hanafi and Maliki schools, which emphasised common sense over narrations, also out of a sense of wara’. 

This is because in the formative period of the Ahl ar-Ra’yy, the science of accreditation and authentication of ahadits was in its infancy.  There was no real need for it when the swahabah and tabi’un were still around, people who lived during and just after the time of the Prophet (s.a.w.).  This was also in a period of sectarian strife, and the Umayyad and other factions manufactured fake ahadits, particularly from Kufa.  This explains the early Hanafi wariness of ahadits. 

By the time of Imam Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi’i (r.a.), the generation of the swahabah had perished.  There was a need to categorise and authenticate the vast quantities of narrations.  It was Imam ash-Shafi’i (r.a.) that put in place the foundations of this science, and his madzhab evolved around this musthalah al-ahadits.  Imam Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal (r.a.) was the student of Imam ash-Shafi’i (r.a.), and it was his generation that faced the mihnah khalaq al-Qur’an.  The Shafi’i madzhab is the 2^nd most extent madzhab in Sunni Islam.  The Hanbali madzhab is one of the four major madzahib al-fiqh, schools of jurisprudence, in Sunni Islam. 

al-Mihnah khalaq al-Qur’an, however, was not about jurisprudence, but an issue of theology.  This pitted the Atsari creed of Imam ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal (r.a.) against the Mu’tazilah position on the Createdness of the Qur’an.  The Atsari position is that it is not, whereas the Mu’tazilah position is that the Qur’an is Created.  Imam Ahmad (r.a.) was the founder of a school of jurisprudence, the Hanbali; as well as a school of theology, the Atsari. 

The modern Salafi movement, the Wahhabi sect, is based on the neo-Atsari creed, not the Atsari creed.  Whereas the Atsari creed declines to comment on the mutashabihat, allegorical verses, the neo-Atsari takes them literally.  The former is out of wara’, whereas the latter has lead them to shirk and kufr, polytheism and disbelief.  The Wahhabi sect is a modern incarnation of an ancient heresy, the Khwarij movement, and are considered out of the fold of Islam.