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

 
 
Abu Hanifa was a free man who wished for others’ freedom just as he desired it for himself. For that 
reason, he was very eager in his 
fiqh
to show respect for man’s independence in his dealings, as long as he 
was sane. So he did not allow anyone to become involved in the private dealings of a sane person. It was not 
up to the community, or the authorities who represented it, to involve themselves in people’s private affairs as 
long as a religious injunction had not been violated or other people’s rights breached. Although it is necessary 
for the authorities to become involved in preserving public order, a person is not to be compelled to live his 
private life in a particular manner nor is it stipulated how he must deal with his private property. 

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An example of this is seen in Abu Hanifa’s view of the authority of a sane adult woman regarding her 
marriage. He did not accord her guardian any authority over her and he is the only one of the four imams to 
take that position. We also find that he forbade declaration of legal incompetence in the case fools, heedless 
people and debtors and he also forbade any restriction whatsoever on the way a person disposed of his 
property except where the 
deen
was concerned. 
Concluding Note
 
 
The Hanafi school, discussed by scholars, on whose principles questions are extrapolated, is not simply the 
position held by Abu Hanifa alone. It consists of his positions and those of his companions. If you wish, you 
could say that it is the position of the school of Abu Hanifa in Kufa, and then after his death it was taken by 
his students, Abu Yusuf and ash-Shaybani, to Baghdad. 
That is why the Hanafi school was an amalgamation and did not purely reflect the positions of Abu Hanifa 
in the way that the positions of Malik are reflected in the Maliki school and those of ash-Shafi‘i in his school. 
There are several reasons which resulted in the Hanafi school comprising this fusion of the opinions of Abu 
Hanifa, his companions and the 
fuqaha’
in Iraq contemporary with him, like ‘Uthman al-Batti, Ibn Shibrama 
and Ibn Abi Layla. 
One reason for this was that Abu Hanifa’s statements are not transmitted in detail as distinct from the 
positions of others. The Iraqi position is transmitted as a corpus in which it is not easily possible to 
disentangle the various strands into the statements of each individual. 
Another reason is that, in his study of various problems, Abu Hanifa relied on the debate and discussion of 
those issues that took place among his students. Due to his immense scrupulousness, belief in the truth and 
respect for freedom of thought, he asked his students to follow the direction to which the evidence led. Abu 
Yusuf recorded the positions of Abu Hanifa along with his own views. Thus the positions presented are a 
composite. 
Abu Hanifa’s students were in fact independent 
mujtahids
in their own right. Each of them had his own 
opinion which might be similar or far from that of his shaykh, even if the methods they used were similar. If 
you read the books of the school of Abu Hanifa, you will often see a great difference in opinions because of 
this characteristic of his school. 
It was not only the companions of Abu Hanifa whose positions were mixed together. After them the views 
of other 
fuqaha’
were added to what had been transmitted from him and his companions. Some were Hanafis 
and some were not. All of this resulted in a lot of divergent views and choices, all of which was based on 
exact rules and clear principles. Thus what came to be Hanafi 
fiqh
represents the 
fiqh 
of Iraq rather than 
simply the views of Abu Hanifa.