Abu Hanifa
Abu Hanifa[a] (Arabic: أَبُو حَنِيفَة, romanized: Abū Ḥanīfa; September 699–767)[5] was a Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, ascetic,[3] and eponym of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence, which remains the most widely practiced to this day.
[6][7] Born to a Muslim family in Kufa,[3] Abu Hanifa traveled to the Hejaz region of Arabia in his youth, where he studied in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
[15][16][17] His grandfather, Zuta, may have been captured by Muslim troops in Kabul and sold as a slave in Kufa, where he was purchased and freed by an Arab tribesman of the Taym Allah, a branch of the Banu Bakr.
When Hammad died, Abu Hanifa succeeded him as the principal authority on Islamic law in Kufa and the chief representative of the Kufan school of jurisprudence.
[18] Abu Hanifa gradually gained influence as an authority on legal questions, founding a moderate rationalist school of Islamic jurisprudence that was named after him.
[23] His fellow prisoner and founder of Karaite Judaism, Anan ben David, was said to have received life-saving counsel from Abu Hanifa.
The structures of the tombs of Abu Hanifa and Abdul Qadir Gilani were destroyed by Shah Ismail of the Safavid Empire in 1508.
[27] The development of analogical reason and the scope and boundaries by which it may be used was recognized by the majority of Muslim jurists, but its establishment as a legal tool was the result of the Hanafi school.
While it was likely used by some of his teachers, Abu Hanifa is regarded by modern scholarship as the first to formally adopt and institute analogical reason as a part of Islamic law.
The Hanafi school of law based many of its rulings on the prophetic tradition as transmitted by those first generation Muslims residing in Iraq.
Ali and Abdullah, son of Masud helped form much of the base of the school, as well as other personalities from the direct relatives (or ahl al-bayt) of Muḥammad from whom Abu Hanifa had studied such as Muhammad al-Baqir.
Many jurists and historians had reportedly lived in Kufa, including one of Abu Hanifa's main teachers, Hammad ibn Abi Sulayman.
[35][36] He received the honorific title al-Imam al-A'zam ("the highly venerated Imām")[37] and his tomb, surmounted by a dome erected by admirers in 1066 is still a shrine for pilgrims.
[46][47] Others take the view that Abu Hanifa only saw around half a dozen companions, possibly at a young age, and did not directly narrate hadith from them.
The author of al-Khairat al-Hisan collected information from books of biographies and cited the names of Muslims of the first generation from whom it was reported that the Abu Hanifa had transmitted hadith.
"[52] His student Abu Yusuf described him as "well-formed, from the best of people in appearance, most eloquent in speech, sweetest in tone, and clearest in expressing his thoughts.
"[52] His son Hammad described him as "very handsome, dark-skinned, having good posture, wearing much cologne, tall, not speaking except in reply to someone else, and not involving himself in what did not concern him.
"[56] However, in another hadith, Abu Hanifa said: "I met with Zayd (Ja'far's uncle) and I never saw in his generation a person more knowledgeable, as quick a thinker, or more eloquent than he was.
"[57] Imam Abu Hanifa was quoted as saying that Jahm ibn Safwan (d. 128/745) went so far in his denial of anthropomorphism (Tashbih) as to declare that 'God is not something (Allah laysa bi shay')'.
