Abu Hanifa (699-767)

Key dates

A disputed family origin

Abu Hanifa was born in Kufa, the Iraqi city founded by the first Muslim conquerors which had become, by the 7th century, one of the great intellectual centres of nascent Islam, around the year 80 of the Hijra, i.e. 699 of the Christian era according to the most generally accepted dating — some biographical traditions, less followed, putting forward earlier dates^[17]. His full name, Abû Hanîfa al-Nu'mân ibn Thâbit ibn Zûtâ, suggests, through that last name, a non-Arab origin: according to the most widespread tradition, his grandfather Zûtâ is said to have been captured during the Muslim conquests at Kabul, reduced to slavery and then freed at Kufa, where he became the client (mawlâ) of the Arab tribe of Banû Taym Allah^[18].

This Persian origin, long taken for granted in the classical biographical tradition — to the point that Abu Hanifa's genealogy was later attached, through legendary elaboration, to the Sassanid kings and then, further back still, to the biblical patriarch Judah^[19] — was challenged in the 20th century by the Iraqi historian Nâjî Ma'rûf, who argued instead for an Arab origin from the tribe of al-Azd^[20]. The debate remains open in historiography; what is better established, by contrast, is the family's social status: Kufan merchants, neither Companions of the Prophet nor members of the Arab tribal aristocracy, Abu Hanifa's forebears illustrate the rapid social and intellectual advancement enjoyed, in the decades following the conquests, by many families of non-Arab clients (mawâlî) converted to Islam^[21].

The silk merchant who preferred law to speculative theology

The son of a merchant, the young Nu'mân first took up the silk cloth trade (khazz), a prosperous activity that secured him, throughout his life, a financial independence decisive for the rest of his career: unlike many jurists of his time, he would never need to seek an official office paid by the authorities to support himself^[22]. Biographical tradition reports that he was first attracted, in his early youth, by debates in speculative theology (kalâm), before turning away from them, disappointed by the sterility of these controversies, to devote himself entirely to positive law (fiqh)^[23].

It was in this context that he met Hammâd ibn Abî Sulaymân (d. 120 AH/738), then the highest legal authority in Kufa, and became his assiduous disciple for about eighteen years, until the latter's death^[24]. Hammâd's intellectual chain of transmission goes back, through Ibrâhîm al-Nakha'î and 'Alqama ibn Qays, to 'Abd Allâh ibn Mas'ûd, one of the first Companions of the Prophet and one of the principal legal and exegetical authorities of the founding generation — which gives the teaching received by Abu Hanifa a genealogical legitimacy comparable to that claimed, in Medina, by the "golden chain" of Malik ibn Anas^[25]. On Hammâd's death, in 120 of the Hijra, his disciples gathered to appoint his successor at the head of the study circle; Abu Hanifa was chosen, becoming in turn the legal reference of Kufa^[26].

Other teachers, and a disputed meeting with Ja'far al-Sâdiq

Beyond Hammâd, biographical tradition attributes to him a considerable number of other teachers, among them 'Atâ' ibn Abî Rabâh (d. c. 733), the great authority of Mecca, and, according to some chains, Muhammad al-Bâqir, the fifth Twelver Shiite imam^[27]. One point remains hotly debated between Sunni and Shiite traditions: the exact nature of the relationship between Abu Hanifa and Ja'far al-Sâdiq, the sixth Twelver Shiite imam and a contemporary three years his junior. The late Shiite tradition — not corroborated by the primary sources — lends him an adage that has remained famous in that milieu: "Without these two years, Nu'mân ibn Thâbit would have perished", presented as an admission of intellectual debt to Ja'far al-Sâdiq^[28]. The majority Sunni tradition, without denying all contact — Abu Hanifa did hand down a few traditions from Ja'far al-Sâdiq — judges it exaggerated to speak of a formal teacher-disciple relationship, recalling that Abu Hanifa, passing through Medina on pilgrimage, benefited above all from the teaching of Muhammad al-Bâqir, Ja'far's father^[29]. This debate, whose confessional stakes are manifest on both sides, in any case permits no firm conclusion about an exclusive doctrinal filiation between the future founder of the Hanafi school and the Shiite imamate.

A hierarchy of the sources of law

Having become in turn the master of a study circle in Kufa, Abu Hanifa developed a legal method resting on an explicit hierarchy of sources: the Qur'an comes first; followed by the authentic traditions of the Prophet (hadîth); then the consensus of the community (ijmâ'); then analogical reasoning (qiyâs), which extends an already established principle to a new case; then juristic preference (istihsân), which authorizes the jurist to depart from the strict conclusions of analogy when a higher interest or manifest equity commands it; and finally local custom ('urf), where nothing in the preceding sources contradicts it^[30].

This method earned Abu Hanifa and his school the name of Ahl al-Ra'y, "the partisans of reasoning" or "of personal judgment", in contrast to the school known as Ahl al-Hadîth, more widespread in the Hejaz and represented notably, a generation later, by Malik ibn Anas in Medina, which privileged as wide an accumulation as possible of prophetic traditions before resorting to personal reasoning^[31]. It would nevertheless be inaccurate to oppose the two schools as if one ignored hadith and the other reasoning: Abu Hanifa himself handed down prophetic traditions and held them to be the second source of law after the Qur'an; the difference lies rather in the degree of rigour required before admitting an isolated hadith as the foundation of a rule, and in the room left, where texts are ambiguous or silent, to analogical reasoning and the juristic preference of the trained jurist^[32].

The study circle and the collegial method

Abu Hanifa's teaching did not take the form of a univocal magisterial exposition, but of genuine collective work: legal questions were debated within a circle of advanced disciples, in sessions of reasoned discussion (munâzarât) where each position had to be defended by its reasons before being retained or set aside^[33]. This method explains, according to historians of Islamic law, why the later Hanafi school presents such a wealth of alternative solutions on a single case: the legal corpus finally handed down is not only the personal work of Abu Hanifa, but the fruit of collegial work carried out over several decades in his Kufan circle^[34].

The controversy with the traditionists

This primacy given to reasoning, while securing Abu Hanifa immense authority in positive law, also earned him, in his lifetime and after his death, a lasting controversy with the great masters of hadith. Three of the greatest traditionist authorities of Sunni Islam — al-Bukhârî, al-Shâfi'î himself before qualifying his judgment, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal — count among his best-known detractors on the specific ground of reliability as a hadith transmitter^[35][36]. Al-Bukhârî never cites Abu Hanifa as a direct source in his canonical collection, the Sahîh, and elsewhere calls him merely a "Kûfî", a designation neutral in appearance but perceived by later tradition — according to a late interpretation, reported by the source cited in the note and with no direct primary grounding — as a mark of distrust^[37]. Another traditionist, Ibn Abî Shayba (d. 235 AH/849), even devotes, in his great collection the Musannaf, an entire chapter to the "Refutation of Abu Hanifa", listing therein, according to the count — not verified here against the critical edition — of the online survey cited in the note, one hundred and twenty-five cases where the Kufan jurist is said to have departed from an authenticated hadith in favour of his own reasoning^[38].

"In jurisprudence, men depend on Abu Hanifa." — al-Shâfi'î, quoted in the academic Encyclopedia.com article devoted to Abu Hanifa^[39]

This same controversy nourished, in some traditionist circles, the graver accusation of attachment to Murji'ism — a theological movement judged heterodox by part of the early Sunni tradition for its position deemed too lenient on the relationship between faith and works. Abu Hanifa's defenders reply that this accusation confuses two very different forms of "Murji'ism": the one, effectively rejected by classical Sunnism, which claims that works have no bearing on faith; and the far more moderate one attributed to Abu Hanifa, which confines itself to hoping for the salvation of the gravely sinning Muslim rather than declaring him outright excluded from the community of believers — a position that opposes him only to the Kharijites and the Mu'tazilites, not to later Sunni orthodoxy^[40].

"The criticism levelled against Abu Hanifa as a transmitter, on the grounds of his irjâ', is inadmissible." — Muhammad 'Abd al-Hayy al-Lucknawî, quoted in a classical defence of the Hanafi school against the accusation of Murji'ism^[41]

This controversy, which must be guarded against caricature as a simple prosecution case, must also be received in its context: Abu Hanifa himself left no work written in his own hand in which to consult directly his exact method of handling hadiths; it is through the teaching gathered by his disciples, in particular Abû Yûsuf and Muhammad al-Shaybânî, that it was reconstructed and sometimes hardened afterwards by his adversaries as by his defenders^[42]. The jurist and theologian Muhammad Zâhid al-Kawtharî, in the 20th century, devoted several works to answering Ibn Abî Shayba's accusations point by point, judging his critical method itself questionable on methodological grounds^[43].

Refusal to serve the governor Ibn Hubayra

Abu Hanifa's first great clash with political power came under the waning Umayyad caliphate. Yazîd ibn 'Umar ibn Hubayra, governor of Iraq on behalf of the last Umayyad caliph Marwân II, sought to attach Abu Hanifa to himself by offering him the office of judge of Kufa or, in other versions, responsibility for the public treasury, intending to have every official document authenticated by his seal^[44]. Abu Hanifa refused. The furious governor swore to have him flogged if he persisted in his refusal — which he had carried out: the accounts, all from late tradition and not corroborated by the primary sources, vary on the exact extent of the punishment, between twenty and thirty strokes according to some versions, and up to one hundred and ten strokes spread over eleven days according to others — figures to be received with caution —, but agree on its severity, to the point that Abu Hanifa's head is said to have swollen from it and his breathing to have been affected^[45]. Despite this punishment, Abu Hanifa did not yield: the governor, unable to bend his resolve, ended by releasing him without having obtained his consent^[46].

This episode is set around 130 of the Hijra (747-748), at the very end of Umayyad rule, in a period of open crisis of the empire: Abu Hanifa, once freed, took refuge in Mecca, out of reach of the governor of Iraq, and returned only after the fall of the Umayyads, completed by the Abbasid revolution of 132 AH (750)^[47].

Al-Mansur's demand

The new Abbasid regime showed itself no more respectful of his independence. The caliph Abû Ja'far al-Mansûr, eager to have a leading supreme judge (qâdî al-qudât) to unify and legitimize the judicial administration of the young empire, turned in turn to Abu Hanifa, whose intellectual authority was henceforth unchallenged throughout Iraq^[48]. Abu Hanifa evaded him, explaining that he did not judge himself fit for this office: in a phrase that has remained famous in biographical tradition, he is said to have answered the caliph, with a biting irony aimed as much at power as at his own displayed humility, that if he was lying in claiming to be unworthy of the post, then that alone was precisely enough to demonstrate that such a liar could not be appointed supreme judge^[49].

"If I am lying, then my statement is doubly correct. How can you appoint a liar to the exalted post of qadi?" — Reply attributed to Abu Hanifa to Caliph al-Mansûr, reported in Sunni biographical tradition^[50]

Furious at this repeated refusal, al-Mansûr had Abu Hanifa arrested and imprisoned in Baghdad^[51]. Even incarcerated, the jurist continued, according to tradition, to teach those of his disciples authorized to visit him^[52]. On the exact cause of his death, the sources hesitate: some evoke simple exhaustion linked to the conditions of detention, others report that Abu Hanifa is said to have issued a fatwa legitimizing armed revolt against al-Mansûr, which is said to have led the latter to have him poisoned in prison^[53]. He died on 15 Rajab 150 of the Hijra, i.e. according to the sources 15 August 767 of the Christian era, at about seventy years of age^[54].

Funerals repeated six times

The scale of the popular mourning that followed his death gives the measure of the moral authority Abu Hanifa had acquired, including among those who contested certain aspects of his legal method. Late tradition — not corroborated by the primary sources — reports that a crowd of more than fifty thousand people pressed forward for his funeral, in numbers so considerable that the funeral prayer had to be repeated six times before all the faithful present could take part in it: these figures, impressive as they are, belong to pious memory rather than established history^[55]. This affluence, impressive as it was on the popular level, did not put an end to the scholarly controversy over his legal and theological work, which continued in traditionist circles long after his death — a sign that popular esteem and the critical rigour of hadith specialists already obeyed, at that time, distinct logics.

A creed treatise attributed to Abu Hanifa

Beyond his legal method, Abu Hanifa left a lasting theological imprint through several short creed treatises ('aqîda) attributed to him, the most studied in the Muslim world being Al-Fiqh al-Akbar ("the Great Understanding"), alongside briefer texts such as Al-Fiqh al-Absat, the Risâla addressed to 'Uthmân al-Battî and the Kitâb al-Wasiyya^[56]. The complete authenticity of these texts in their present form remains debated among specialists — the Islamicist Arent Jan Wensinck places some passages in a period later than Abu Hanifa himself, while recognizing that they extend an earlier doctrinal core —, but their doctrinal content remained, for centuries, a central reference of Sunni theology, in particular in the Maturidi school which claims direct descent from it^[57].

The text's central doctrinal positions

Al-Fiqh al-Akbar defends, on the divine attributes, a position of interpretive restraint that became classical in later Sunnism: the attributes of the Qur'an (the Hand of God, His Throne, His Face) must be affirmed without emptying them of their meaning and yet without inquiring into their "how" (bilâ kayf), a formula that would become one of the markers of classical Sunni orthodoxy against both the excesses of literal anthropomorphism and of rationalist negation^[58].

"His hand is an attribute, of unknowable modality, in the same way that His anger and pleasure are two attributes of unknowable modality." — Al-Fiqh al-Akbar, treatise attributed to Abu Hanifa^[59]

On the status of the Qur'an, the text affirms the uncreated character of the eternal divine speech (kalâm nafsî), distinct from the created verbal and graphic forms that carry it (kalâm lafzî) — a question that would become, a generation later, one of the major stakes of the great theological crisis of the mihna under the Abbasid caliphs^[60].

"The Qur'an is the Word of Almighty God [...]. Our uttering of the Qur'an is created, and our recitation of the Qur'an is created, but the Qur'an itself is uncreated." — Al-Fiqh al-Akbar, treatise attributed to Abu Hanifa^[61]

On the question of faith and works, the text maintains that the believer who commits a grave sin does not thereby leave Islam — a position that opposes it head-on to the Kharijites, quick to excommunicate (takfîr) the sinner, and to the Mu'tazilites, who placed the grave sinner in an "intermediate position"^[62].

"We do not proclaim any Muslim an unbeliever on account of any sin, however great, unless it be that he regards his sin as permissible. Nor does he forfeit the name of belief; we continue to call him a believer in essence." — Al-Fiqh al-Akbar, treatise attributed to Abu Hanifa^[63]

It is precisely this last position, moderate in intent but formulated in terms close to those of the historical Murji'ites, that would earn Abu Hanifa the accusation of Murji'ism discussed above.

Between two theological extremes

Posterity retains from Abu Hanifa a constant effort to hold a middle position between two excesses he explicitly combated: on one side, the negation of the divine attributes carried by theologians such as Jahm ibn Safwân, which in his view emptied the Qur'anic discourse on God of all real content; on the other, the literal comparison of God to His creatures defended by an exegete such as Muqâtil ibn Sulaymân^[64]. This double polemic, conducted on theological ground with the same method of rigorous distinction he applied to law, structures a significant part of the doctrinal heritage handed down to the Maturidi school, which explicitly claims him as its spiritual founder in theology as much as in law.

Abu Yusuf, supreme judge and author of the first treatise on public finance

Abu Hanifa himself wrote no great systematic legal treatise; it was through the pen of his disciples that his teaching was fixed and spread^[65]. The first of them, Ya'qûb ibn Ibrâhîm, known as Abû Yûsuf (729-798), took a decisive step in the institutional recognition of the Hanafi school by becoming, under the caliph Hâroun al-Rashîd, the first holder of the office of supreme judge of the Abbasid empire (qâdî al-qudât) — precisely the office Abu Hanifa himself had refused under two successive regimes^[66]. At the caliph's request, Abû Yûsuf composed the Kitâb al-Kharâj, the first great systematic treatise on public finance and taxation in Islam, in which he sets out the principles of just taxation, the reciprocal duties of sovereign and taxpayers, and the prevention of fiscal oppression, drawing on the administrative registers and state archives to which his office gave him access^[67].

Muhammad al-Shaybânî and the transmission to al-Shâfi'î

The second great disciple, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybânî (749-805), the most prolific of Abu Hanifa's continuators, in turn wrote a series of works that would become the classical reference of the school, including the Kitâb al-Asl and the Kitâb al-Hujja^[68]. Al-Shaybânî counted, among his own students in Baghdad, a young jurist from Gaza, Muhammad ibn Idrîs al-Shâfi'î, who would study several years under his direction before founding, in turn, the Shafi'i school — third of the four great Sunni schools in chronological order, which would borrow from the Hanafi method part of its systematic rigour while departing from it on the respective places granted to reasoning and to prophetic tradition^[69]. A third leading disciple, Zufar ibn al-Hudhayl (d. 775), pushed the systematic use of analogy further still than his fellow disciples, giving birth to a particularly rationalist current within the Hanafi school itself^[70].

The four great Sunni schools at a glance

The following table places the Hanafi school among the four great Sunni schools of law, three of which were founded, a generation apart each, by a master and his own student.

A spread favoured by the great Muslim empires

The geographical spread of the Hanafi school owes much to a series of successive political favours that distinguish it from the three other great Sunni schools. Under the Abbasids, the preference given to Hanafi judges in official appointments favoured its propagation from Baghdad to Egypt and Central Asia from the early 9th century^[71]. Under the Seljuks, in the 11th and 12th centuries, it won Syria, Anatolia and Persia^[72]. Under the Ottoman Empire, it became the official legal school of the state, with a vast network of Hanafi madrasas and a late codification, the Majalla (1869-1877), which transposed much of the classical Hanafi corpus into modern civil law^[73]. Under the Mughals, finally, it took lasting root in the Indian subcontinent, where Emperor Aurangzeb had the great collection of fatwas al-Fatâwâ al-'Âlamgîriyya compiled between 1664 and 1672^[74].

The result of this centuries-long spread is today the most widely followed Sunni school of law in the world: it dominates in Turkey, in the Balkans (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo), throughout post-Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan), in the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Burma among the Rohingya) and in Afghanistan, with significant communities in China (Uyghur minority), Iran (Baloch minority) and East Africa^[75].

A burial place repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt

Abu Hanifa was buried, after his death in prison, in the cemetery of the district that would later take his name, al-A'zamiyya — literally "the district of the very great [imam]", in reference to his honorific title al-Imâm al-A'zam^[76]. A first mosque was built there in 375 AH (985-986) under the Buyid dynasty, then a true mausoleum was raised above the tomb itself in 459 AH (1066-1067), on the initiative of the Seljuk vizier Abû Sa'd al-Khwârizmî^[77].

This funerary complex underwent, over the centuries, several destructions linked to the confessional and political conflicts that crossed Iraq: the Safavid invasion of Baghdad in 914 AH (1508) led to its destruction, in a context of open rivalry between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the Shiite Safavid Empire^[78]. The Ottoman reconquest of Baghdad, in 941 AH (1534), under Suleiman the Magnificent, allowed its reconstruction, with the addition of a minaret, a prayer hall and a restored dome; a new campaign of works, under Sultan Murad IV after the recapture of Baghdad in 1638, endowed the mausoleum with a richly decorated dome^[79]. The complex was again thoroughly renovated between 1959 and 1964, with the addition of an alabaster facing and a distinctive clock tower completed in 1961^[80]. More recently, the Battle of Baghdad of April 2003 damaged part of the domes and the clock tower, repaired in 2004 by the faithful and the local Sunni foundation; the site was hit again, without major structural damage, by rocket fire in 2006^[81]. Still active today, the Abu Hanifa Mosque can accommodate up to five thousand worshippers^[82].

The founder of the largest Sunni school of law

Beyond the controversy that surrounded his method in his lifetime, Abu Hanifa's posterity far exceeds, in institutional scale, that of any other classical Muslim jurist: his school, carried by the successive great empires of Islamic history, has become the legal frame of reference for about 45% of the world's Muslims today^[83]. This institutional success owes as much to favourable political factors — the repeated choice, over several centuries, of Hanafi judges and dynasties — as to the intrinsic flexibility of a method which, by giving reasoning by analogy and juristic preference their due where texts are silent, proved particularly adaptable to the diversity of societies encountered by Muslim expansion, from Anatolia to Bengal.

A Sunni model of independence from temporal power

On the biographical level, the most striking element of Abu Hanifa's journey remains the constancy of his refusal to hold official office, even under direct physical coercion, and that under two successive and opposing dynasties: flogged by an Umayyad governor, then imprisoned until death by an Abbasid caliph, he embodies, even more radically than Malik ibn Anas — himself also flogged for his independence from power —, the figure of the religious scholar who prefers prison to compromising his intellectual independence with political power.

A Catholic view on reasoning and authority

Abu Hanifa's case invites, from the standpoint of a Catholic encyclopedia, a reflection distinct from that raised by the case of Malik ibn Anas. Where Malik grounded part of normative authority in the living custom of a place, Abu Hanifa grounds it in the exercise of qualified personal reasoning (ra'y, qiyâs, istihsân): an individual jurist, trained and recognized by his peers, deduces new rules from the revealed texts when these remain silent. The Catholic Church likewise recognizes a real and legitimate place for human reason in understanding revealed law — this is the whole object of moral theology and reflection on natural law, of which Saint Thomas Aquinas would give the most systematic elaboration^[84]. The Second Vatican Council moreover invites Catholics to esteem, in Muslims, their adoration of the one God, living and subsisting, merciful and almighty, creator of heaven and earth^[85].

But Abu Hanifa's very method illuminates, by contrast, what radically distinguishes Catholic doctrinal authority from that presupposed by classical Muslim law. In the Hanafi tradition as in Sunni law as a whole, no single permanent instance is charged with deciding, irrevocably, between the competing reasonings of qualified jurists: the plurality of schools, equally legitimate, remains the rule, each able to propose its own reasoned reading of the revealed text. The Catholic Church, conversely, holds that human theological reasoning, however rigorous, cannot by itself decide in the last resort questions touching the deposit of faith: this function belongs to the living Magisterium, exercised in continuity with the Apostles, whom the Holy Spirit assists so that it does not go astray on points defined as belonging to Revelation^[86]. Reason has, in this conception, an authentic and necessary place — but it is exercised in service of a received deposit authentically interpreted by a living authority, not as the ultimate deciding instance between equally qualified jurists equally entitled to diverge. Readers wishing to deepen the doctrinal question of Islam and the Catholic position on it will find a complete treatment in the Islam and the Catholic response dossier.

• Muhammad (c. 570-632) — the founder of Islam, whose teaching structures Abu Hanifa's entire legal method
• Malik ibn Anas (711-795) — the founder, in Medina, of the Maliki school, a younger contemporary of Abu Hanifa
• Al-Shafi'i (767-820) — student of Muhammad al-Shaybânî, disciple of Abu Hanifa, who became founder of the Shafi'i school
• Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855) — student of al-Shâfi'î and founder of the Hanbali school
• Aisha bint Abi Bakr — one of the great hadith sources used or discussed by the first Kufan and Medinan jurists
• Islam and the Catholic response — the overall doctrinal dossier on Islam and the Church's position