Imam Abu Hanifa - His Life, Opinions and Fiqh

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.