government. His discontent could only have increased when he saw the oppression, imprisonment and torture
to which the family of the Prophet was subjected.
When the Abbasid state was established, Abu Hanifa hoped that it would be more merciful because of their
kinship to the family of ‘Ali and because it came to power after much severity and tribulation. Therefore he
offered his allegiance to as-Saffah willingly and was the spokesman for the
fuqaha’
as we have mentioned.
When, however, al-Mansur came to power and began to consolidate the state
with force and ruthless
determination, not gentleness and clemency, and he began to persecute the family of the Prophet, throwing
their old men into the dungeons and shedding the blood of the ‘Alawites without the pretext of war, he saw
the rule of al-Mansur as an extension of the oppression experienced under the Umayyads, even though the
names had changed.
Abu
Hanifa was born in Iraq, and there he grew up, lived and studied. At the end of the Umayyad and
beginning of the Abbasid periods, the cities of Iraq were teeming with different races: Persians, Greeks,
Indians and Arabs. Such a society is full of social upheaval since the various
elements interact and each
incident demands a ruling in the
Shari‘a
. Thus the milieu provided many issues which expanded the mind of
the
faqih
in the extrapolation of questions, theory, conception and analogy. In addition to this mixed social
environment, Iraq had another intellectual characteristic: it was the home of many different religions and
sects. It contained the moderate and extreme Shi‘ites, the Mu‘tazilites, the Jahmites,
the Qadariya, the
Murji’ites and others.
From ancient times, Iraq had been the locus of conflicting intellectual trends. Ibn Abi’l-Hadid said in his
commentary on the
Nahj al-Balagha
when discussing why the extreme Shi‘ite sects appeared in Iraq: “Part of
what produced such sects (the Rafidites) after the time of the Messenger of Allah was that they were from Iraq
and lived in Kufa. Iraq continued to produce schismatics and people with extraordinary religions and schools
É They existed in the time of Khusrau in the form of those founded by Mani, Daysan, Mazdak and others. The
Hijaz was not like this and the minds of the people of the Hijaz were not like their minds.”
Added to that intellectual diversity, there was another intellectual movement which began under the
Umayyads and continued and bore fruit under the Abbasids: the movement connected to Greek philosophy.
Ibn Khallikan said, “Khalid ibn Yazid ibn Mu‘awiya was one of the most knowledgeable men of Quraysh in
the sciences and discussed chemistry and medicine and knew these two sciences well. He had treatises which
indicate his knowledge and skill. He learned the craft from a monk called Maryanus the Greek and wrote three
treatises on it.”
This connection grew with the increase in translation of Greek, Persian and Hindi manuscripts in the
Abbasid era. All of this had an effect on Islamic thought and the effect varied according
to the strength of
intellect and religion of the one who learned this philosophy. Some people had proper thoughts and true faith
and so they controlled these ideas and benefited from them in their thinking and perceptions and intellectual
discipline. Others were not strong enough for it and so their minds became confused by it and hence they
deviated intellectually.
As well as that, there were
zindiqs
who openly espoused distorted views designed to corrupt the Muslim
Community and destroy Islam and undermine its people. Some of them wanted to oust Muslim rule and revive
ancient Persian rule as is seen in the case of al-Muqanna‘ who rebelled against the Abbasids in the reign of al-
Mahdi.
This intellectual upheaval took place in the religious sciences as well. It was also the period when scholars
began to rely more heavily on recording their knowledge in writing so that individual areas of knowledge
within the
deen
and Arabic began to take on a distinct form and scholars began to specialise in particular
fields. The Shi‘ite
fuqaha’
also recorded their views and, by the time of Abu Hanifa, the Shi‘ites and Zaydites
had known views.
It was also a time of argumentation and debate. The debates between the various groups tended to become
very heated and boisterous. Scholars also travelled to take part in these debates, as we see when Abu Hanifa
travelled to Basra to debate with the sects there. The people of Basra also travelled to Kufa for the same
purpose. The debates which took place in the Hijaz during the
hajj
enabled scholars
to meet and exchange
views.
Debates also involved a sort of partisanship for one’s own land. The people of Basra fanatically supported
their scholars and the people of Kufa supported theirs with equal fervour. This may be a contributory factor
for the intensity of argument between the people of the Hijaz and the people of Iraq. The disagreement
between scholars was intense and their criticism of one another sharp at times. Even with the
Tabi‘un
, when
their methods differed, their criticism of each other could sometimes become bitter. There was also great
disagreement regarding complicated problems which led to each person impugning his opponent’s integrity.
Abu Hanifa had a deep grasp of the spirit of his time and the reasoning of its scholars and he understood the
direction of their thinking while maintaining his own individual thought.
One of the issues that the
fuqaha’
of the time debated and over which
they had disputes about
methodology was the
fatwas
of the Companions and
Tabi‘un
. We will briefly mention the religious and
political sects because Abu Hanifa had to deal with them throughout the course of his life.
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