The Storytellers: Ibn al-Jawzi's Kitab al-Qussas and the Fabricated Hadith of the Pulpit
Baghdad's most famous preacher wrote the case file against preachers: Kitab al-Qussas wa-l-Mudhakkirin. Ahmad ibn Hanbal's sentence "the most lying of people are the storytellers," the preacher who cited seventeen Ahmad ibn Hanbals, and the Qur'an that calls itself "the best of stories" — both columns of the dispute, exactly as the books record them. You decide.
By John Shaqi · July 23, 2026 · 15 min read
Seventeen Men Named Ahmad ibn Hanbal
The Rusafa quarter of Baghdad — so the story is told in the books. A storyteller takes his seat in the mosque, the crowd thickens, and he opens his chain of transmission with the two most feared names in hadith criticism: "Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Yahya ibn Ma'in narrated to us..." Then comes the hadith: whoever says la ilaha illa Allah, God creates from each word of it a bird whose feathers are pearl and whose beak is coral...
Sitting in that very audience, the report says, were Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Yahya ibn Ma'in themselves. Each turned to the other: did you narrate this? Each swore he had never heard it until that hour. When the session ended and the coins were gathered, Yahya beckoned the man over: I am Yahya ibn Ma'in, and this is Ahmad ibn Hanbal; we never narrated a word of this. The storyteller's reply outlived the sermon:
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