in Islām, the most fundamentalist of the four Sunnī schools of religious law. Based on the teachings of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (780–855), the Ḥanbalī legal school (madhhab) emphasized virtually complete dependence on the divine in the establishment of legal theory and rejected personal opinion (raʾy), analogy (qiyās), and the Hellenistic dogma of the Muʿtazilah school of theology, on the grounds that human speculation is likely to introduce sinful innovations (bidʿah). The school thus relied solely on a literal reading of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth (narratives relating to the Prophet’s life and sayings) in formulating legal decisions. Popular in Iraq and Syria until the 14th century, the traditionalist Ḥanbalī legal approach was revived in the 18th century through the teachings of Ibn Taymīyah (1263–1328) in the Wahhābīyah movement of central Arabia. This madhhab has since become the official legal school of 20th-century Saudi Arabia.
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