Musnad Ibn Hanbal

Musnad Ibn Hanbal

Front cover of the book
Author	Ibn Hanbal
Language	Arabic
Genre	Hadith collection
Publication place	Abbasid Caliphate

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Musnad Ibn Hanbal (Arabic: مسند ابن حنبل, romanized: Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal) is a collection of hadith in the musnad format compiled by the Islamic scholar Ibn Hanbal (d. 855) to whom the Hanbali school is named after.^[1]

Musnad Ibn Hanbal is one of the most famous and comprehensive books of hadith, which occupies an advanced position among the Sunnis as it is considered one of the main sources of hadith. It is the most famous of the Musnads, and the hadith scholars have placed it after the Six Books.^[2] It contains approximately 40 thousand hadiths of the Prophet, of which approximately 10 thousand are repeated.^[3]

It is arranged according to the names of the companions who narrated the hadiths, as he arranged it by placing the narrations of each companion. The number of companions who have chains of transmission are approximately 900. He divided the book into eighteen chains of transmission, the first of which is the chain of transmission of the ten promised paradise and the last of which is the chain of transmission of women. It contains many authentic hadiths that are not found in the two sahihs.

He said about his Musnad in the introduction: “I made this book an imam, if people differ about the Sunnah of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, they would refer to it.”.^[4]

It is said by some that Ibn Hanbal made a comment in regard to his book which reads as follows: "I have only included a hadith in this book if it had been used as evidence by some of the scholars." The Hanbali scholar Ibn al-Jawzi ironically claimed that the Musnad contains hadiths that are fabricated by interpolation (i.e. the narrator jumbling up information, mixing texts and authoritative chains), which were said to be nine Hadiths by some, or fifteen hadiths by others. However, it is agreed that the hadith that are suspected to be fabricated are not new hadiths that are creations of a dubious narrator's imagination.^[5]

Historians differ about when Ibn Hanbal began composing the Musnad. Some of them believe that he began collecting hadith at the age of sixteen when he began studying hadith in the year 180 AH.^[4] Abu Musa al-Madini believed that he began classifying the Musnad when he returned from Abd al-Razzaq al-San'ani from Yemen in the year 200 AH when he was thirty six years old but it is more likely that he classified his musnad after the ordeal of the creation of the Quran (220 AH), because Ibn Hanbal did not narrate in his Musnad about those who fell into the ordeal.^[6]

• Characterstics of Musnad of Imam Ahmed by Abu Musa Al-Madani^[7]
• al-Qawl al-musaddad fi Musnad Ahmed by Ibn Hajr
• Al-Muṣ'ad al-Aḥmad fī Khatm Musnad al-Imām Ahmed by Ibn al-Jazari

• Sharḥ wa Takhrīj al-Musnad by Ahmad Muhammad Shakir^[8]
• Nafthāt Ṣadr al-Mukmad wa Qurrat ‘Ayn al-Masaad by Al-Saffarini^[9]
• ‘Aqūd al-Zabarjad ‘ala Musnad Aḥmad by Al-Suyuti^[10]

The book has been published by many organizations around the world, including:

• Musnad Imam Ahmad Bin Muhammad Bin Hanbal: Published: Noor Foundation USA ^[11]
• English Translation Of Musnad Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal (4 Vols) : Published: Darussalam ^[12]
• English Translation Of Musnad Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal (5 Vols) : Published: Darussalam ^[13]

• Brown, Jonathan A.C. (2014). Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy. Oneworld Publications. p. 41. ISBN 978-1780744209.

• Methodology of Imam Ahmad (Arabic)

Arabic Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal