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partisanship became prevalent and
fiqh
was debated by partisans. There were debates in people’s houses and
in mosques about these matters so that whole days were spent in debates and arguments about
madhhab
. Each
was a supporter of his Imam and partisan on his behalf. It is in this time that most of the biographies of the
Imams were written, usually with excessive praise of the particular Imam in question and attacking the others.
The conflict was extremely severe between the Hanafis and the Shafi‘is. That is why these two Imams became
targets for bitter attacks, given the extreme partisanship of their supporters.
Abu Hanifa, of course, was a target because of the great number of
fatwas
he gave based on opinion which
led people to attack his knowledge of
hadiths
, his scrupulousness, the quality of his
fatwas
and other things
which were connected to his school regarding deduction and extrapolation. The fanatics attacked him for all
those things and some exceeded the bounds to such an extent that some Shafi‘is objected to it and saw such
attacks as tantamount to sin and improper conduct. Some of those people were fair towards Abu Hanifa and
recorded his virtues and refuted what the extreme Shafi‘is said. Thus we note that as-Suyuti, a Shafi‘i, wrote a
treatise on the virtues of Imam Abu Hanifa. We further see that Ibn Hajar al-Haytami al-Makki, also a Shafi‘i,
wrote a treatise entitled
al-Khayrat al-Hisan
on the virtues of Imam Abu Hanifa. Ash-Sha‘rani also mentions
and defends Abu Hanifa.
A researcher does not find it easy to deal with Abu Hanifa because of the confusion of reports concerning
him, which are like heaps in which jewels are mixed with mud, so that it is difficult to sift through them and
find the true jewels in the midst of the muck. It requires a great deal of scrutiny and sifting.
It is the same with his opinions, where we also find the path difficult to follow because there is no book
transmitted from Abu Hanifa in which he recorded his opinions or his principles. We only find opinions
transmitted from him through his students, especially the books of Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad
ash-Shaybani which transmitted his opinions with those of his companions and those of some of the Iraqis
contemporary with him, like Ibn Shibrama, Ibn Abi Layla and ‘Uthman al-Batti. But if we rely totally on what
his two main students said, we will still not have a complete picture. There are many gaps which must be
filled because their books certainly do not report all of the views of Abu Hanifa and so we must examine other
sources as well. All of this requires precise investigation and research.
Another drawback is that the fundamental principles and methods of deduction used by Abu Hanifa are not
recorded either and we cannot know them in detail from what is transmitted from him or from his students or
other people. Those principles which are recorded are deduced from the body of the secondary judgements he
made and how they are connected. There are various sources which do this, among which are the treatise of
Abu’l-Hasan al-Karkhi, the treatise of ad-Dabusi and the letter of al-Bazdawi. But the methods recorded are
not transmitted from the Imam or his companions: they are only deduced from the Imams who formulated the
Hanafi school. Thus it is not easy to uncover the sources of the school.
Another deficiency encountered when studying Abu Hanifa is that we do not find anything transmitted
from him other than his legal opinions. As for his views on dogma and on the imamate, we do not find
anything about them in the books of his companions. Some views on dogma are reported from him in certain
books ascribed to him, including the book entitled
al-Fiqh al-Akbar
, a small treatise on which many
commentaries have been written, and the
Treatise of the Scholar and Student
. There is also his letter to
‘Uthman al-Batti.
But we do not, for instance, find any opinion about the imamate recorded by his pen or by dictation or
transmitted by any of his companions. His life and the events and trials which occurred during it, however, do
inform us about a specific political position. His biography affirms his firm connection to Imam Zayd ibn
‘Ali, Zayn al-‘Abidin, and other Shi‘ite Imams, and the statements of his companions indicate that his
inclination, as was true of the Persians as a whole, was with the descendants of ‘Ali and that his trial occurred
because of this leaning. Nevertheless, there is no suggestion of this in any of the books ascribed to him or in
any of the reports transmitted from him. There is no doubt that his opinion about the imamate was mentioned
in his circle at times and that he differed from the Abbasids.
But his companions, especially Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ash-Shaybani, were firmly attached to the
Abbasids and both acted as
qadis
for them. They did not record the opinions of their shaykh regarding the
Abbasid government and diminishing its authority. That is the reason why many of his opinions are lost in the
past and can only be rediscovered with great difficulty.
These are gaps which the historian must strive to fill and they illustrate the difficulty involved in studying
him. Moreover, the school of Abu Hanifa is found both in the East and the West and has been subject to the
disparate customs of different regions. It became the official school for a long time under the Abbasids, and
when the Ottomans took on the position of khalif they also made it their official
madhhab
and so it became
the
madhhab
of the khalifate. It was the official school in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and other places, and its
influence extended as far as India and it also became the school of the Muslims in China. The scholars in all
these different regions had their own deductions and so there are many differing opinions on questions within
the Hanafi
madhhab
.
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