Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855 AD) is the most traditionalist of the four school founders — his Musnad is a massive collection of over 27,000 hadiths, and his legal methodology insists on the most literal adherence to Quran and Sunnah with minimal recourse to reason or opinion. Ibn Hanbal’s defining moment: his imprisonment and flogging under the Mutazilite-influenced Abbasid caliphs who tried to compel him to affirm that the Quran was ‘created’ (not eternal). He refused for years, becoming the symbol of traditionalist resistance to rationalist theology. The Hanbali school is the smallest in traditional terms but the most influential in modern Islam: Wahhabism and Salafism are essentially ultra-Hanbali movements. The Hanbali school is the official madhab of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.