Ibn Hanbal’s (d. 241/855) Argumentative Strategies In this paper I will address the argumentative and epistemological paradigm of Ibn Hanbal, who became the symbol of opposition to the mode of thinking about religion, advocated and aggressively imposed by the proponents of syllogism-based rationalism. Ibn Hanbal’s al-Radd ‘ala l-Jahmiyya wa-l-Zanadiqa (“The Refutation of the Jahmites and the Heretics”) gives us a number of significant insights into the issue at hand, of which I will analyze three aspects: [I] Ibn Hanbal’s reconciliation of “contradictory” verses of the Qur’an and his refutation of the doctrine of the created Qur’an. The syllogistic system tends to operate with binaries, meaning that everything is either something or its opposite with no modalities tolerated. This system leads the heretics to see contradictions in the Qur’an and the Jahmites to conflate ja‘ala, to make, with khalaqa, to create. The traditionalist system avoids absolute categories and operates within a matrix of modalities, which allows maintaining the complexity of any issue at hand. [II] The narrative of a discursive encounter between Muslims and non-Muslims, which may serve as an illustration of how the adoption of the syllogism-based rationalism might have happened. Still a religious and ethnic minority, Muslims were forced to adopt the mode of discourse common to the conquered people. The upside of this was that they could dispute effectively; the downside, however, was that they had to deal with issues, which were [1] outside of the nascent Islamic teaching, as well as with [2] those, which were imposed by this very new mode of thinking. It seems that eventually all but traditionalists adopted this new system of reasoning, in which “captious questions” (maghalit), basically — sophisms, served as the main offensive tactics. [III] Ibn Hanbal’s instructions on how to deal with these “captious questions” (e.g. “Is the Qur’an God, or other than He?”). Ibn Hanbal penetrates the nature of this offensive discursive device, showing that it is meant to render unsophisticated opponents defenseless, since either answer will be equally discrediting. Ibn Hanbal offers tactics of parrying these questions. To sum up, close reading of Ibn Hanbal’s epistle shows that the traditionalist system is way more sophisticated than conventionally considered as well as anything but literal. Undeniably, it is less effective as argumentative strategy, but way more subtle as epistemological system.