They played a major role in strengthening the latter's...

They played a major role in strengthening the latter's government and supporting and helping it, hence Haroun of the concubines and promiscuity did not permit anyone to be appointed as judge or mufti except with the consent of both of these men who never appointed any judge except if he was a follower of Abu Hanifah's sect.

Abu Hanifah, therefore, came to be regarded as the greatest scholar, and his sect as the greatest sect of fiqh implemented, despite the fact that his contemporary scholars went as far as calling him kafir and atheist. Among such scholars were both Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash`ari.

Likewise, the Shafi`i sect could not have spread nor gained any momentum had it not been for the support of Abbaside authorities during the time of al-Mu`tasim when Ibn Hanbal retracted his theory that the Holy Qur'an was created, so his star shone during the Nasibi caliph al-Mutawakkil.

His sect gained strength and was disseminated when colonial authorities supported Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab during the past century, and when the latter cooperated with Al Saud who immediately lent him their support and assisted him and worked diligently to propagate his sect in Hijaz and the Arabian peninsula.

The Hanbali sect, thus, became the sect attributed to three Imams the first of whom was Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who never claimed that he was a faqih but only a scholar of hadith, then to Ibn Taymiyyah whom they called "Shaykh al-Islam," mentor of Islam, and "Mujaddid al-Sunnah," the one who revived the Sunnah, and whom his contemporary scholars regarded as kafir because he decreed that all Muslims who sought nearness to Allah through the Prophet were polytheists.

Then came in the past century Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, henchman of British colonialism in the Middle East, who also tried to "revive" the Hanbali sect through verdicts which he borrowed from Ibn Taymiyyah. Ahmad ibn Hanbal became a thing of the past because now they call their sect Wahhabism. There is no room to doubt the fact that the dissemination, fame and prominence of all these sects was through the support and with the blessing of various rulers.

And there is also no room to doubt the fact that all those rulers, without any exception, were enemies of the Imams of due to their continuous fear that those Imams threatened their very existence and the abolishment of their authority.