Praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, and peace and blessings be upon our master Muhammad

The fundamental principles on which Abu Hanifa based his 
fiqh
 
 
Abu Hanifa subjected questions to extensive ramification and close study, which inevitably led to 
hypothesising situations which had not occurred but which might occur, in order to clarify what their rulings 
would be. The books of ash-Shaybani are full of secondary questions transmitted from him. If we study them 
and analyse them in detail, we see that they must have been based on particular principles and that there must 
have been a basis for the rules of deduction used to extrapolate the rulings derived. History does not provide 
us with an exposition of these rules in detail connected to Abu Hanifa himself. However, there is no doubt that 
there are rules which Abu Hanifa used as a basis for his deductions and extrapolation. 
We find such principles detailed in the books of the later people who forward them as the principles of 
deduction used in the Hanafi school and mention the differences between the Imams of that school on these 
principles and state: “This principle is the opinion of Abu Hanifa and that is the opinion of his companions 
and that is the opinion of all of them,” and so forth. 
Since the principles normally mentioned by writers are deduced by later writers and not mentioned by the 
Imams or their students, three points must be made. 
• No detailed principles for the rulings of Abu Hanifa were related from him, although he must have had 
principles which he used in his reasoning, even if he did not write them down, just as he did not write 
down secondary rulings. 
• The scholars who deduced the recorded principles, like al-Bazdawi and others, used to look for them in 
the statements of the Imams and the secondary rulings transmitted from them when they ascribed the 
principles to them. There are two categories: those ascribed to the Imam as the principles which they 
observed in deduction and the opinions of the 
fuqaha’
of the Hanafi school. 
• Although detailed rules are not transmitted from Abu Hanifa for deduction, general rules for deduction 
are reported.