Circa 699-767
Legal Scholar

The Hanafi School. Though Abu Yusuf (732-798) and Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Shaybani (750-804) also played major roles, Abu Hanifah is considered the founder of the Hanafi school of law. Bom in Kufah, Iraq, of non-Arabs who originated in Afghanistan, Abu Hanifah spent most of his life in his native city, traveling only to make a pilgrimage to Makkah in Arabia. Toward the end of his life, when the Abbasid dynasty came to power, he supported a revolt against the khalifah, was arrested, and sent in 763 to the brand-new capital, Baghdad, where he died after four and a half years in prison. Never holding a government office or a judgeship, Abu Hanifah represented the private cultivation the law in the center of the khilafah, Iraq, and specifically the tradition of the most urbane and sophisticated Iraqi city, Kufah, which had not yet been...