Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims, and simultaneously the largest religious denomination in the world. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagreement over the succession to Muhammad and subsequently acquired broader political significance, as well as theological and juridical dimensions. According to Sunni traditions, Muhammad left no successor and the participants of the Saqifah event appointed Abu Bakr as the next-in-line. This contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad appointed his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor.
Mu'tazilism was an Islamic sect that appeared in early Islamic history and flourished in Basra and Baghdad. Its adherents, the Mu'tazilites, were known for their neutrality in the dispute between Ali and his opponents after the death of the third caliph, Uthman. By the 10th century the term al-muʿtazilah had come to refer to a distinctive Islamic school of speculative theology (kalām). This school of theology was founded by Wasil ibn Ata.
The Hanbali school or Hanbalism is one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It is named after and based on the teachings of the 9th-century scholar, jurist and traditionist Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and later institutionalized by his students. It is the smallest and most strictly traditionalist of the four major Sunni schools, the others being the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi'i schools.
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī was a 9th-century Muslim muhaddith who is widely regarded as the most important hadith scholar in the history of Sunni Islam. Al-Bukhari's extant works include the hadith collection Sahih al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-Kabir, and al-Adab al-Mufrad.
Abu al-Abbas Abd Allah ibn Harun al-Rashid, better known by his regnal name al-Ma'mun, was the seventh Abbasid caliph, who reigned from 813 until his death in 833. He succeeded his half-brother al-Amin after a civil war, during which the cohesion of the Abbasid Caliphate was weakened by rebellions and the rise of local strongmen; much of his domestic reign was consumed in pacification campaigns. Well educated and with a considerable interest in scholarship, al-Ma'mun promoted the Translation Movement, the flowering of learning and the sciences in Baghdad, and the publishing of al-Khwarizmi's book now known as "Algebra". He is also known for supporting the doctrine of Mu'tazilism and for imprisoning Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the rise of religious persecution (mihna), and for the resumption of large-scale warfare with the Byzantine Empire.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, traditionist, ascetic and eponym of the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence—one of the four major orthodox legal schools of Sunni Islam. The most highly influential and active scholar during his lifetime, Ibn Hanbal went on to become "one of the most venerated" intellectual figures in Islamic history, who has had a "profound influence affecting almost every area" of the traditionalist perspective within Sunni Islam. One of the foremost classical proponents of relying on scriptural sources as the basis for Sunni Islamic law and way of life, Ibn Hanbal compiled one of the most significant Sunni hadith collections, al-Musnad, which has continued to exercise considerable influence on the field of hadith studies up to the present time.
In Islamic jurisprudence, qiyas is the process of deductive analogy in which the teachings of the hadith are compared and contrasted with those of the Quran, in order to apply a known injunction (nass) to a new circumstance and create a new injunction. Here the ruling of the sunnah and the Quran may be used as a means to solve or provide a response to a new problem that may arise. This, however, is only the case providing that the set precedent or paradigm and the new problem that has come about will share operative causes. The ʿillah is the specific set of circumstances that trigger a certain law into action. An example of the use of qiyās is the case of the ban on selling or buying of goods after the last call for Friday prayers until the end of the prayer stated in the Quran 62:9. By analogy this prohibition is extended to other transactions and activities such as agricultural work and administration. Among Sunni Muslims, Qiyas has been accepted as a secondary source of Sharia law along with Ijmāʿ, after the primary sources of the Quran, and the Sunnah.
The Mihna was a period of religious persecution instituted by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun in 833 CE in which religious scholars were punished, imprisoned, or even killed unless they conformed to Muʿtazila doctrine. The policy lasted for eighteen years as it continued through the reigns of al-Ma'mun's immediate successors, al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq, and four years of al-Mutawakkil who reversed it in 851.
Ahl al-Ḥadīth is an Islamic school of Sunni Islam that emerged during the 2nd and 3rd Islamic centuries of the Islamic era as a movement of hadith scholars who considered the Quran and authentic hadith to be the only authority in matters of law and creed. They were known as "Athari" for championing traditionalist theological doctrines which rejected rationalist approaches and advocated a strictly literalist reading of Scriptures. Its adherents have also been referred to as traditionalists and sometimes traditionists. The traditionalists constituted the most authoritative and dominant bloc of Sunni orthodoxy prior to the emergence of mad'habs during the fourth Islamic century.
In Islam, Allah is seen as the creator and sustainer of the universe, who lives eternally and will eventually resurrect all humans. God is conceived as a perfect, singular, immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient god, completely infinite in all of his attributes. Islam further emphasizes that God is most merciful. The Islamic concept of God is variously described as monotheistic, panentheistic, and monistic.
Jahm bin Safwan was an Islamic theologian who attached himself to Al-Harith ibn Surayj, a dissident in Khurasan towards the end of the Umayyad period, and who was put to death in 745 by Salm ibn Ahwaz.
Jahmi was a term used by Islamic scholars to refer to the followers of the doctrines of Jahm ibn Safwan. The four schools of Sunni jurisprudence (fiqh) reject the Jahmi belief. Along with the Mutazilites, they proposed that the Quran is created.
Al-Muḥāsibī was a Muslim Arab, theologian, philosopher and ascetic. He is considered to be the founder of the Baghdad School of Islamic philosophy which combined Kalam and Sufism, and a teacher of the Sufi masters Junayd al-Baghdadi and Sirri Saqti.
Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī ibn Khalaf al-Ẓāhirī was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, and theologian during the Islamic Golden Age, specialized in the study of Islamic law (sharīʿa) and the fields of hermeneutics, biographical evaluation, and historiography of early Islam. He is widely regarded as the founder of the Ẓāhirī school of thought (madhhab), the fifth school of thought in Sunnī Islam, characterized by its strict adherence to literalism and reliance on the outward (ẓāhir) meaning of expressions in the Quran and ḥadīth literature; the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the first generation of Muhammad's closest companions (ṣaḥāba), for sources of Islamic law (sharīʿa); and rejection of analogical deduction (qiyās) and societal custom or knowledge (urf), used by other schools of Islamic jurisprudence. He was a celebrated, if not controversial, figure during his time, being referred to in Islamic historiographical texts as "the scholar of the era."
Atharism or Atharī theology, otherwise referred to as Traditionalist theology or Scripturalist theology, is one of the main Sunni schools of Islamic theology which is more strict in adherence to the Quran and Sunnah. it emerged as a school of theology in the late 8th century CE from the scholarly circles of Ahl al-Hadith, an early Islamic religious movement that rejected the formulation of Islamic doctrine derived from rationalistic Islamic theology (kalām) in favor of strict textualism in interpreting the Quran and the ḥadīth. The name derives from "tradition" in its technical sense as a translation of the Arabic word athar. Its adherents are referred to by several names such as "Ahl al-Athar", "Ahl al-Hadith", etc.
Abu al-HakamMundhir ibn Sa'īd ibn Abd Allah ibn Abd ar-Rahman al-Ballūṭī was a Muslim legal expert and judiciary official in Al-Andalus. In addition to his legal career, he was also considered a prominent theologian, academic, linguist, poet and intellectual.
The verse of the mawadda refers to verse al-Shura 42:23 of the Quran, the central religious text of Islam. This verse is often cited in Shia Islam to support the elevated status of the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, known as the Ahl al-Bayt. Most Sunni authors reject the Shia view and offer various alternatives, chief among them that this verse enjoins love for kinsfolk in general. The verse of the mawadda includes the passage,
[O Mohammad!] Say, "I ask not of you any reward for it, save affection among kinsfolk ." And whosoever accomplishes a good deed, We shall increase him in goodness thereby. Truly God is Forgiving, Thankful.
Abu 'Abdallah Ahmad ibn Abi Du'ad al-Iyadi was an Islamic religious judge (qadi) of the mid-ninth century. A proponent of Mu'tazilism, he was appointed as chief judge of the Abbasid Caliphate in 833, and became highly influential during the caliphates of al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq. During his tenure as chief judge he sought to maintain Mu'tazilism as the official ideology of the state, and he played a leading role in prosecuting the Inquisition (mihnah) to ensure compliance with Mu'tazilite doctrines among officials and scholars. In 848 Ibn Abi Du'ad suffered a stroke and transferred his position to his son Muhammad, but his family's influence declined during the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil, who gradually abandoned Mu'tazilism and put an end to the mihnah.
Ibn Kullab was an early Sunni theologian (mutakallim) in Basra and Baghdad in the first half of the 9th century during the time of the Mihna and belonged, according to Ibn al-Nadim, to the traditionalist group of the Nawabit. His movement, also called Kullabiyya, merged and developed into Ash'arism, which, along with Maturidism and Atharism, forms the theological basis of Sunni Islam.
Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Du'ad was an acting chief judge (qadi) of the mid-ninth century. A proponent of Ahmad ibn Abi Du'ad's Mu'tazili views, he was an acting chief judge of the Abbasid Caliphate in 848, however he was not influential and was merely a puppet of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil.
