the Jahmiyyah, the Haruriyyah, the Rafidah, and the Murji’ah. Tell us, then, the doctrine you affirm and the faith to which you subscribe.

[Al-Ashʿarī’s explicit declaration of adherence to the school of Imām Aḥmad]

He was told:

“The statement we profess and the religion by which we worship Allah is to hold fast to the Speech of our Lord and the Sunnah of our Prophet, together with what has been transmitted by trustworthy narrators from the Companions, the Followers, and the leading hadith scholars. To all of this we cling.

Furthermore, we say whatever Abū ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—may Allah brighten his face, raise his rank, and abundantly reward him—said, and we distance ourselves from anyone who contradicts his words. For he is the virtuous imam, the consummate leader through whom Allah made the truth manifest, repelled misguidance, clarified the path, suppressed the innovations of the innovators, the deviations of the deviant, and the doubts of the doubters. So may Allah’s mercy be upon him, a foremost imam…"