May Allah have mercy on ʿImrān al-Qaṣīr, who said:
“Beware of wrangling and disputation, and beware of those who keep asking, ‘Have you considered? Have you considered?’”

And may Allah be pleased with ʿUmar al-Fārūq, who declared:
“A people will come to you brandishing specious arguments drawn from the Quran; confront them with the Sunnah, for the people of the Sunnah know Allah’s Book best.”

Here, then, is the Imam of the Sunnah—may Allah have mercy on him—the venerable Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, the foremost authority on the Sunnah, rising up against that faction who had flung from their necks the yoke of Islam: the heretics and the Jahmiyyah. In his valuable treatise he dismantled the assertions of the deviant and the misguided. Imam Aḥmad introduced nothing novel; rather, he remained true to the way of his predecessors among the Prophet’s Companions—peace and blessings be upon him—and their Followers, may Allah be pleased with them.

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, said:
“Although Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal became famous as the Imam of the Sunnah and for his steadfastness during the ordeal, this was not because he alone advanced a view or innovated a doctrine. Rather, the Sunnah already existed and was well known before him; he understood it, championed it, and remained patient when tested by those who wished him to abandon it. The leading scholars before him had died prior to the trial. When the ordeal of the Jahmiyyah—those who deny the divine attributes—erupted at the beginning of the third century AH1, during the reign of al-Maʾmūn, followed by his brother al-Muʿtaṣim and then al-Wāthiq, they summoned the people…"