Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān ibn Thābit (c. 80–150 AH / 699–767 CE) was a jurist and theologian of Kūfa whose teaching crystallised into the Ḥanafī madhhab, the first of the four canonical Sunnī schools of fiqh and today the most numerically dominant, prevailing across South Asia, Central Asia, Turkey, the Levant and the former Ottoman lands. Of Persian descent and a silk merchant by trade, he studied under Ḥammād ibn Abī Sulaymān and traced his juristic lineage through Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī back to the Companion ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd, the foundational authority of the Kūfan ahl al-raʾy (people of reasoned opinion). He is honoured by the epithet al-Imām al-Aʿẓam (the Greatest Imam). He never authored a comprehensive law book himself; his doctrine survives through the Ẓāhir al-riwāya works of his disciples, principally Abū Yūsuf (the first Qāḍī al-Quḍāt under the ʿAbbāsids) and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī, whose compilations such as al-Mabsūṭ (al-Aṣl) and al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr transmit the school.
Abū Ḥanīfa's method is distinguished by its rationalist temper. He drew on the four agreed sources — Qurʾān, Sunna, ijmāʿ (consensus) and qiyās (analogical deduction) — but is especially associated with istiḥsān (juristic preference), the discretionary departure from a strict analogy where it produces hardship or contradicts a stronger textual or customary consideration. He also accorded weight to ʿurf (local custom). Because he transmitted relatively few prophetic traditions and emphasised systematic reasoning, the rival ahl al-ḥadīth of the Ḥijāz criticised his liberal use of raʾy; his school nonetheless became prized for its supple, casuistic engagement with novel commercial and administrative questions. He worked largely through hypothetical problem-solving (taqdīr), anticipating cases before they arose. In theology he is linked to the early Māturīdī-adjacent creed, and the catechism al-Fiqh al-Akbar is attributed to him.
His independence carried a political cost: he reportedly declined judicial office under both the Umayyads and the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr, sympathised with the ʿAlid revolts, and died in prison in Baghdad in 767 CE, where his shrine in the Aʿẓamiyya quarter remains. The Ḥanafī school's later ascendancy owed much to Abū Yūsuf's appointment as chief justice under Hārūn al-Rashīd, which made it the de facto law of the ʿAbbāsid state, and subsequently of the Ottoman Empire and the Mughals — the Fatāwā-i ʿĀlamgīrī commissioned by Awrangzeb being a monumental Ḥanafī digest. In 2026 Ḥanafī fiqh remains the basis of personal-status law for most Muslims in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
For the CSS Islamic Studies paper, Abū Ḥanīfa is examined within the topic of the development of fiqh and the four schools. Typical questions ask candidates to outline his biography and methodology, distinguish ahl al-raʾy from ahl al-ḥadīth, define istiḥsān with the Qurʾānic/Sunnaic sources he relied upon, and explain the school's spread through Abū Yūsuf and al-Shaybānī. Answers should name his two principal students and contrast the Ḥanafī approach with the Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools.
Example
In 1667 the Mughal emperor Awrangzeb ʿĀlamgīr commissioned a panel of jurists to compile the Fatāwā-i ʿĀlamgīrī, codifying Abū Ḥanīfa's Ḥanafī doctrine as the imperial law of the Mughal state.
Frequently asked questions
He belonged to the Kūfan tradition that relied on systematic reasoning, analogy (qiyās) and juristic preference (istiḥsān) when texts were silent. Because he transmitted comparatively few ḥadīth and reasoned from principles, the Ḥijāzī ahl al-ḥadīth criticised his liberal use of raʾy.