Early HanafTs
Formed in the 8th century, the Hanafi school quickly became the largest legal school in terms of adherents, and it remains so to this day. The Hanafi school boasted a pantheon of famously diverse scholars, and though some early Hana- fis believed that law was of the utmost importance, most thought that laws did not embody justice and morality, and had little or nothing to do with salvation.
These Hanafi scholars nevertheless deeply revered law as an avenue of study and as a social good.In the 10th century, the Hanafi school developed rival factions with major offshoots promoting different conceptions of law.[27] Up until that point, though, Ha- nafis were largely agreed about the role of law in Islamic piety and daily practice. Their beliefs are thought to have stemmed directly from the patriarch of the Hanafi school, Abu Hanifa (d. 150/767). His ideas are captured in a couple of treatises likely written by his own hand,[28] but most of his thoughts reach us by way of his students and admirers. Giants of the early Hanafi school, like Muhammad al-Shaybani (d. 189/805), Abu Muti' al-Balkhi (d. 199/814), Abu Mansur al- Maturidi (d. 333/944), and Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi (d. 373/983) provide us with a clear and uniform idea of Abu Hanifa’s thinking. The sense they give is that, for Abu Hanifa and the early Hanafis, law was considered tremendously important to personal practice and social success, yet largely separate from justice and salvation.
This early Hanafi conception of law was itself embedded in a sophisticated theology. By examining this theological system, we will be able to understand the place of law amongst early Hanafis, and its relation to justice and salvation. There are three main theological issues that we will need to examine to fully appreciate the Hanafi approach to law, and they are: 1) God’s rationality; 2) God’s speech; and 3) the relationship between faith and actions. We will examine each, and together they will give us an idea of just how different the early Hanaf i conception of Islamic legal justice was from the currently dominant presumptions about Islamic law recounted above.