Tabari then travelled to study in Baghdad under Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who, however, had recently died (in late 855 or early 856). Tabari possibly made a pilgrimage prior to his first arrival in Baghdad. He left Baghdad probably in 242 AH (856/7 AD) to travel through the southern cities of Basra, Kufah and Wasit. There, he met a number of eminent and venerable scholars. In addition to his previous study of Hanafi law, Tabari also studied the Shafi'i, Maliki and Zahiri rites. Tabari's study of the latter school was with the founder, Dawud al-Zahiri, and Tabari hand-copied and transmitted many of his teacher's works. Tabari was, then, well-versed in four of the five remaining Sunni legal schools before founding his own independent, yet eventually extinct, school. His debates with his former teachers and classmates were known, and served as a demonstration of said independence. Notably missing from this list is the Hanbali school, the fourth largest legal school within Sunni Islam in the present era. Tabari's view of Ibn Hanbal, the school's founder, became decidedly negative later in life. Tabari did not give Ibn Hanbal's dissenting opinion any weight at all when considering the various views of jurists, stating that Ibn Hanbal had not even been a jurist at all but merely a recorder of Hadith.