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Four Schools / Fiqh
A school deeply attentive to transmitted texts while giving considered space to qiyās and juristic reasoning.
Founder
ʾAbū Ḥanīfah an-Nuʿmān ibn Thābit
Central Focus
Its central legal concern, hierarchy of sources, and the Ḥanafī use of qiyās, ʾistiḥsān, and the inherited fiqh of the Companions and Tābiʿīn.
Ḥanafiyyah
From the Kūfan teaching circle to codification, imperial expansion, and the later relied-upon canon of the school.
The history of al-Madhab al-Ḥanafī begins with the day al-ʾImām ʾAbū Ḥanīfah رحمه الله took his seat for teaching and legal responsa after the passing of his Shaykh, Ḥammād ibn ʾAbī Sulaymān, in 120 AH, though the roots of the school extend to the transmitted Fiqh of the Ṣaḥābah of Kūfah long before that. Unlike the other three great Madhāhib, the Ḥanafī school did not emerge from a foundational text authored by its founder. Al-ʾImām ʾAbū Ḥanīfah رحمه الله did not himself author a book in Fiqh, as the systematic writing down of legal opinions was not yet common in his time, and the companions of the ʾImām transmitted his Fiqh and gathered the opinions he would mention in his teaching circle1.
The founding of the Madhab was itself a unique event in the history of Islamic jurisprudence. Before turning his full attention to Fiqh, al-ʾImām ʾAbū Ḥanīfah رحمه الله had already distinguished himself as the foremost debater of his age against the theological deviants, travelling to Baṣrah over twenty times to debate the Qadariyyah, the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and the Khawārij. When he finally devoted himself entirely to the derivation and teaching of Fiqh, he brought to that science the same precision and rigour he had applied to theology, establishing a council of approximately forty scholars who would debate each legal question until the ruling became clear. The first among his students to begin documenting his Fiqh was al-ʾImām ʾAbū Yūsuf رحمه الله2, who authored in ʾUṣūl and dictated works. But the scholar most responsible for the written codification of the school was al-ʾImām Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ash-Shaybānī رحمه الله3, whose six books of Ẓāhir al-Riwāyah became the foundational corpus upon which the entire subsequent Ḥanafī tradition rested. These six books are al-Mabsūṭ, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr, al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr, al-Siyar al-Ṣaghīr, al-Siyar al-Kabīr, and al-Ziyādāt. They were named Ẓāhir al-Riwāyah because they were narrated from Muḥammad through trustworthy chains and thus reached the level of tawātur or shuhra from him4.
Al-ʾImām al-Kawtharī رحمه الله summarised the extraordinary significance of these books:
"The history of Fiqh bears witness that the books authored in the Madhāhib of the followed ʾImāms such as al-Mudawwanah, al-Ḥujjah, and al-ʾUmm were only authored in light of the books of the great ʾImām Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ash-Shaybānī."
╾ Introduction to Naṣbu-r-Rāyah (1/68) ╼
The fourth great student of this stage was al-Ḥasan ibn Ziyād al-Luʾluʾī رحمه الله (d. 204 AH), who authored al-Mujarrad, whose status in the Madhab equalled the books of the two companions, the Ṣāḥibayn. His death marks the end of the stage of emergence and formation.
This stage extends from the death of al-Luʾluʾī to the death of al-ʾImām ʿAbdullāh ibn ʾAḥmad al-Nasafī رحمه الله (d. 710 AH), the last Mujtahid of the Madhab. In this era the marjaʿ in cases of disagreement within the school was settled: the opinion of the ʾImām is preferred if it is supported by one of the two Ṣāḥibayn; if the two Ṣāḥibayn agree in opposition to the ʾImām in a matter open to Ijtihād, their opinion is preferred, particularly in matters affected by the changing conditions of people and time5.
The literary output of this era took three forms. The first was the Mukhtaṣarāt, abridgements focusing on identifying the relied upon opinion, the most important being Mukhtaṣar al-Ṭaḥāwī6, Mukhtaṣar al-Qudūrī known simply as al-Kitāb, al-Kāfī by al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd, Bidāyatu-l-Mubtadī by al-Marghīnānī, al-Mukhtār by al-Mawṣilī, Kanz al-Daqāʾiq by al-Nasafī, and Wiqāyatu-r-Riwāyah by Ṣadru-sh-Sharīʿah. The second form was the Shurūḥ, commentaries providing evidences and elaboration, the most celebrated of which was al-Hidāyah by al-Marghīnānī رحمه الله (d. 593 AH)7, a commentary upon his own Bidāyah combining Matn al-Qudūrī and al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr of al-Shaybānī. Most of what is in al-Hidāyah consists of establishing foundations and providing evidences for rulings through both rational and transmitted proofs, and of it the scholars said:
"The book of al-Hidāyah guides to the Hudā, to its memoriser and clarifies the blindness. So adhere to it and memorise it O possessor of Ḥujjah, for whoever attains it has attained the furthest desire."
Tashkubrī Zādah remarked that despite the efforts of generations of scholars in explaining it, its subtleties had not been exhausted and hidden treasures remained in its depths. The third form was the Fatāwā and Wāqiʿāt, responsa to newly emerging legal questions, among the most important being Fatāwā Qāḍīkhān8, whose author's Taṣḥīḥ is prioritised over that of others in the Madhab.
The spread of the Madhab in this period was significantly accelerated by the appointment of al-ʾImām ʾAbū Yūsuf رحمه الله as Chief Justice under Hārūn al-Rashīd, the first time such a position had existed in the Islamic world. He appointed judges across ʿIrāq, Khurāsān, ash-Shām, and Egypt from among his own companions and those affiliated with the Madhab, such that the common people of those regions came to follow the rulings and fatāwā of the Ḥanafī school by virtue of the judiciary alone. As ʾIbn Ḥazm noted:
"Two Madhāhib spread at the beginning of their authority with the presidency and sultanate: the Ḥanafī in the Mashriq, and the Mālikī in al-ʾAndalus."
By the beginning of the eighth century AH, al-Madhab al-Ḥanafī had stabilised as a fully codified school, and the scholarly effort of the subsequent generations revolved around the careful determination of the Muʿtamad within the existing corpus. The first cycle of this stage produced works supporting the Madhab with evidential chains, most notably Naṣbu-r-Rāyah by al-Zaylaʿī رحمه الله9, alongside new canonical Mutūn, among them Multaqā-l-ʾAbḥur by al-Ḥalabī, Tanwīru-l-ʾAbṣār by al-Timirtāshī, and Nūru-l-ʾĪḍāḥ by al-Shurunbulālī رحمه الله10.
This was followed by the wave of Shurūḥ, Ḥawāshī, and Taʿlīqāt upon the great works of the preceding period, culminating in the most comprehensive work of Ḥanafī jurisprudence produced in the later period, the Ḥāshiyah of al-ʾImām Muḥammad Amīn ibn ʿĀbidīn رحمه الله (d. 1252 AH)11, titled Radd al-Muḥtār ʿalā-d-Durri-l-Mukhtār, in which he established the criteria for knowing the Muʿtamad opinion in the Madhab and clarified the authorised views across every chapter of the law. This work is what is relied upon for fatwā among the Ḥanafīyyah in the present age, and its author is counted as the seal of the Muḥaqqiqīn of the school.
This stage also witnessed two landmark official attempts to codify Ḥanafī Fiqh in an accessible form. The first was al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyyah (al-ʿĀlamgīriyyah), produced by order of the Mughal Sultan ʿĀlamgīr by a group of over forty senior scholars of India, the first official attempt to consolidate the Rājiḥ opinions of the Madhab in one reference12. The second was the Majallatu-l-ʾAḥkāmi-l-ʿAdliyyah, produced under the Ottoman state and representing the first codification of Islamic commercial and judicial law in modern legal form, the second official attempt to present Ḥanafī Fiqh in a form accessible to rulers and judges across a vast empire13.
The political history of the Madhab's dominance was not without turbulence. In Ifrīqiyyah, the Ḥanafī Madhab had spread through the efforts of Asad ibn al-Furāt who had studied with al-ʾImām Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, until al-Muʿizz ibn Bādīs compelled its inhabitants to follow the Mālikī school, which remains dominant there to this day. In Egypt, the school had been present since the first Ḥanafī judge, Ismāʿīl ibn al-Yasaʿ, was appointed under al-Mahdī in 146 AH, though the judiciary alternated between the three main schools under the ʿAbbāsids and was suppressed under the Fāṭimids until the restoration of Sunnī jurisprudence under the ʿAyyūbids14. The spread of the Madhab was also severely disrupted by the Mongol invasions, which forced the Ḥanafī jurists and their families who survived to migrate to ash-Shām, Aleppo, Egypt, and Anatolia. As al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd narrated from Shaykh Maḥmūd ibn Sulaymān al-Kafawī:
"Allāh destined the coming of Genghis Khan who chose war and murdered people, destroyed knowledge and countries. This resulted in the immigration of Ḥanafī jurists and their families who survived this injustice to Damascus, Aleppo, Egypt, and Anatolia. This led to the flourishing of Ḥanafī knowledge in these provinces."
╾ al-Nāfiʿ al-Kabīr, quoted in We're Not in Kufa Anymore, Dr. Samy Ayoub (p. 25) ╼
It was through the Ottoman institutional establishment that al-Madhab al-Ḥanafī achieved its most durable and far reaching dominance, its position as the official judicial school of the empire for six centuries entrenching it across Anatolia, the Balkans, ash-Shām, Egypt, and the Ḥijāz in a manner that has shaped the Fiqhī identity of those regions to the present day.
This is among the most frequently cited characteristics of al-ʾImām ʾAbū Ḥanīfah in the biographical literature, and it stands in direct contrast to al-ʾImām ash-Shāfiʿī رضي الله عنه, who authored both the ʾUṣūl and the Furūʿ of his Madhab with his own hand. It is one of the primary reasons the Ḥanafī Madhab's codification relied so heavily upon the efforts of the students of the ʾImām. ↩
Al-ʾImām ʾAbū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn ʾIbrāhīm al-ʾAnṣārī al-Kūfī رحمه الله (d. 182 AH) was the foremost student of al-ʾImām ʾAbū Ḥanīfah and the first Chief Justice (Qāḍī al-Quḍāt) in Islamic history, appointed by Hārūn al-Rashīd. His appointment gave the Ḥanafī Madhab an institutional reach across the entire ʿAbbāsid empire that no other school enjoyed in that era. ↩
Al-ʾImām Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ash-Shaybānī رحمه الله (d. 189 AH) studied under both al-ʾImām ʾAbū Ḥanīfah and al-ʾImām ʾAbū Yūsuf, and later under al-ʾImām Mālik ibn ʾAnas in Madīnah. Al-ʾImām ash-Shāfiʿī رضي الله عنه studied under him in Baghdād and described him as more learned than Mālik. His books became the connective tissue of codification in all the Madhāhib, in the words of al-Kawtharī. ↩
Al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd رحمه الله (d. 334 AH) compiled the six books of Ẓāhir al-Riwāyah into a single work titled al-Kāfī, which al-Sarakhsī رحمه الله (d. 483 AH) then expanded into his encyclopaedic al-Mabsūṭ in thirty volumes, one of the most relied upon works in the Ḥanafī tradition. ↩
This principle, that the opinion of the two Ṣāḥibayn is preferred over that of the ʾImām in matters of commerce and transactions due to changing circumstances, is among the most important practical rules of the Madhab and is documented in Rasm al-Muftī of Qāsim ibn Quṭlūbughā and in the introduction to Radd al-Muḥtār of ʾIbn ʿĀbidīn. ↩
Al-ʾImām al-Ṭaḥāwī رحمه الله (d. 321 AH) is best known for his ʿAqīdah, which he described as the creed of ʾAhlu-s-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah according to the school of the jurists of the religion: ʾAbū Ḥanīfah, ʾAbū Yūsuf, and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan. His Mukhtaṣar in Fiqh was among the earliest abridgements of Ḥanafī law and received commentaries from al-Jaṣṣāṣ and others. ↩
Al-ʾImām ʿAlī ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Marghīnānī رحمه الله (d. 593 AH) was among the foremost Ḥanafī jurists of his age. His al-Hidāyah became so central to the Madhab that it received commentaries from scholars who cannot be counted, and was described by Tashkubrī Zādah as a work whose subtleties have not been exhausted despite generations of scholarly effort. ↩
Al-ʾImām Ḥasan ibn Manṣūr al-Ūzjandī, known as Qāḍīkhān رحمه الله (d. 592 AH), was among the foremost Ḥanafī jurists of his age. His al-Fatāwā al-Khāniyyah is one of the greatest works of Ḥanafī responsa literature, and his Taṣḥīḥ is explicitly prioritised over that of other scholars in the later literature of the Madhab. ↩
Al-ʾImām Jamāl al-Dīn al-Zaylaʿī رحمه الله (d. 762 AH) was among the foremost Ḥanafī scholars of his age in Egypt. His Naṣbu-r-Rāyah li-ʾAḥādīthi-l-Hidāyah is one of the most important works of Ḥadīth documentation in the service of Ḥanafī Fiqh, providing the evidential chains for the rulings of al-Hidāyah in exhaustive detail. ↩
Al-ʾImām Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmār al-Shurunbulālī رحمه الله (d. 1069 AH) was among the foremost Ḥanafī scholars of Egypt in the eleventh century AH. His Nūru-l-ʾĪḍāḥ remains one of the most widely taught introductory texts in Ḥanafī Fiqh to this day, and his longer commentary upon it, Marāqi-l-Falāḥ, is among the relied upon works of the school in matters of worship. ↩
Al-ʾImām Muḥammad Amīn ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿĀbidīn رحمه الله (b. 1198 – d. 1252 AH) was Amīn al-Fatwā in Damascus and the foremost Ḥanafī authority of the thirteenth century AH. His Radd al-Muḥtār ʿalā-d-Durri-l-Mukhtār runs to eight volumes and remains the primary reference for Ḥanafī fatwā in the present age. He is counted as the seal of the Muḥaqqiqīn of the school. ↩
Al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyyah, also known as al-Fatāwā al-ʿĀlamgīriyyah, was produced by order of the Mughal Sultan Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿĀlamgīr (d. 1118 AH) by a group of over forty senior scholars of India, among them al-Shaykh Niẓām al-Dīn al-Burhānfūrī. It was the first official attempt to consolidate the Rājiḥ opinions of the Madhab in one reference and remains a primary source for Ḥanafī fatwā in the Indian Subcontinent. ↩
The Majallatu-l-ʾAḥkāmi-l-ʿAdliyyah was produced under the Ottoman state in the latter half of the nineteenth century CE and represented the first codification of Islamic commercial and judicial law in the form of a modern legal code. It drew exclusively from Ḥanafī Fiqh in the areas of transactions and adjudication and was used by Ottoman courts until the dissolution of the empire. ↩
The suppression of Sunnī Madhāhib under the Fāṭimid dynasty, which promoted the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī school in Egypt, and the subsequent restoration of Sunnī jurisprudence under Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʾAyyūbī رحمه الله (d. 589 AH), is documented by al-Qalqashandī in Ṣubḥu-l-ʾAʿshā and by the historians of the Fāṭimid and ʾAyyūbid periods. ↩