The Musnad of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal: How It Was Composed and What Distinguishes It from the Six Books

The Musnad dictated by Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal to his son Ἁbd Allāh is the largest of the great ninth-century collections of ḥadῑṯ to survive. It did not gain a place among “the Six Books” that became more or less the Sunnī canon of ḥadῑṯ from the tenth to the twelfth century C. E. But it was included in most lists that went beyond the Six Books; for example, al-Ḥusaynī’s directory of men in the ten books. Al-Ḥusaynī, al-Taḏkira bi-maʽrifat riǧāl al-kutub al-ʽašara, ed. Rifʽat Fawzī Ἁbd al-Muṭṭalib, covering the six plus a collection from each eponym, mainly Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Ǎāfiʽī, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. What follows is an attempt to determine above all how it was collected and what makes it so much longer than other collections.