Abū Ḥanīfa

Abu Hanifa (Arabic: أَبُو حَنِيفَة, romanized: Abū Ḥanīfa; 5 September 699 – 18 June 767 CE) was a Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, and ascetic, and the founder and eponym of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence. The Hanafi school remains the most widely practised of the Sunni schools and is extensively followed and applied throughout the Muslim world, predominating in Central and South Asia, Turkey, Africa, the Balkans, Russia, and parts of the Arab world.

In his youth Abu Hanifa travelled to the Hejaz and studied in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and he later became established as a leading religious authority in Kufa. As a jurist and theologian, Abu Hanifa became particularly associated with the use of reason in both jurisprudential rulings and theology. He played an important role as a theoretical systematizer of technical legal thought and exercised considerable influence over his students in Kufa, especially Abu Yusuf, although he never held an official post as qadi. His school was distinguished from other schools of law by its use of qiyās (analogy), istiḥsān (juristic preference), and raʾy (personal judgement) to resolve new legal problems arising in the expanding Muslim world. He also emphasized the conception of an international Muslim community united by the Qurʾān and Sunnah while avoiding extremes.

After his death, his school continued to develop, and most of its adherents eventually also came to follow the Maturidi school of theology. Al-Dhahabi described him as "one of the geniuses of the sons of Adam" who "combined jurisprudence, worship, scrupulousness, and generosity". His two principal students, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani, subsequently became celebrated jurists in their own right.

Abu Hanifa maintained an independent position toward political authority. He suffered punishment and imprisonment under both the Umayyads and the Abbasids because of these independent views and his refusal to accept the official office of qadi in Kufa. He ultimately died in prison in Baghdad in 767 (AH 150).