Abstract
A Halanay inequality with distributed delay of non-convolution type is considered. We establish a decay of solutions as a Mittag-Leffler function composed with a logarithmic function. A general sufficient condition is found and a large class of admissible retardation kernels is provided. This needs the preparation of several lemmas on properties of the Hadamard derivative and some basic fractional differential problems with this kind of derivative. The obtained result is then applied to a Hopfield neural network system to discuss its stability.