This content explores the life, significance, and legacy of Imam Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence, highlighting his intellectual independence, integrity, and the unique development of early Islamic civilization.
hello everyone and welcome to blogging
theology uh today I'm delighted to talk
to Sheikh Hamza karamali you're most
welcome again sir thank you for having
me again Paul it's a pleasure to be with
you a pleasure to have you now those who
don't know Hamza is the founder of the
Sierra education where he trains parents
teachers and Scholars in high schools
weekend religious schools and a variety
of other educational institutions how to
show their students why Islam is true
he's developed a textbook an online
teachers portal and is on a mission to
train 10 000 teachers and I link to his
work in the description below
Hamza will be speaking today about Abu
halifa who was a Muslim Theologian
jurist uh who became the eponymous
founder of the hanafi school of Sunni
jurisprudence which has remained the
most widely practiced uh school of law
in the Muslim world and it's reported
actually that he personally met at a
number of the sahaba these the actual
Companions of the Prophet uh including
anas IBN Malik so he's an incredibly
early and significant figure in Muslim
history and he's famous for authoring
this book The the guitar of Imam Abu
hanifa obviously this is the English
translator huge great big wedge a brick
of a book and it is actually the first
book of Islam after the time of the
companions so it's a really important
one it's basically full of Hadith and
it's uh I've been reading it earlier on
again and it's really interesting
actually even today
um so um Sheikh Hamza could you perhaps
uh who was Imam Abu hanifa and why is he
so important
so as you said the reason why he's
normally held to be important is because
he's the founder of one of the four
schools of Sunni Islamic law or Jewish
Prudence he but I think there's another
reason and that reason is why he's one
of my favorite Scholars
um and that reason is that he was a
publicly revered scholar
um people respected him people looked up
to him and he commanded
um public opinion to such a degree that
um caliphs sought out his approval
um he refused to give it to them he was
uh he was a person of Integrity
um and he was an independent scholar he
didn't have any outside influence and he
took a number of dangerous public stands
during his lifetime and because of that
he won the love of the Muslim masses and
I think that that these events that took
place around him they capture something
that's very surprising but very special
about early Islamic civilization that we
should know about much more
wow and it wasn't an Arab was he well I
mean people I must have been an Arab but
he wasn't
that's right he wasn't and
um he actually most Scholars um before
his time just shortly before his time
um they weren't Arab and that comes as a
surprise to have this I have the snipper
it's a famous um conversation that took
place between one of the caliphs and one
of the scholars of the time
um and uh
no caliph was uh the Muslim rulers he
wasn't just like like the pope like a
spiritual figurehead type yeah it was an
actual rule it had political and
military power so to speak uh to him was
really important it wasn't just some
kind of figurehead yeah and this
difference between a caliph and a pope
is I think it's something that's really
important that will come out in um in
today's uh in today's conversation so uh
so there's a one of the uh
lives there was a scholar who came to
him his name was he said he asked him he
said oh and so so the scholars they used
to be in the courts of the caliphs
um there was positive to it there's a
negative to it
um we're going to look at the positive
and the reason why that happened it
comes out in the story of Abu hanifa
we'll get that in a second but the
important thing here is that he asked he
says Oh I thought do you know do you
have any knowledge of the of the leading
Scholars of the Muslim
centers the Muslim cities at this time
so that you had you had there was Medina
there was matka there was Damascus
um there was goofa there's all of these
other all of these cities and each City
had a prominent scholar who was
most respected by the people in that
City so he said yes um I do so he said
who is the leading scholar the leading
fatih of the people of Medina he said
the freed slave of IBN Abdullah is the
son of
and so he had a I mean I'd like to say
quote unquote slave because I think one
of the things that that comes out from
here is that as an institution slavery
was very different in this time than
what we're used to hearing so uh so he's
there's nothing he's one of the teachers
main teachers of Imam Malik and he was
captured in a war and he served uh the
the son of um he became Muslim he was
freed and he became the leading
religious authority of the city of
Medina and he wasn't and so so he says
here the the caliph says
um he didn't he didn't ask but it's
obvious he's not in Arab and the Arabs
they came to him they sat at his feet
they learned from him
um then he said what about of Makkah and
then he said that there's another
another Scholar's name is he said is he
an Arab or is he a maula mola is
normally a freed slave could have a
slightly different relationship as well
so he said he's a mola he's a not
normally a freed slave he said what
about the people of Yemen and he
mentioned somebody called babus and he
asked him again is he Arabian or is he a
mola he said he's a moda he said what
about the people of yamama this is like
he said what about the people of
Damascus he said macro said is he is he
a mola
non-arabian former slave or an Arabian
he said he's a moda he said what about
the people of
um Iraq in between in the Tigers and the
Euphrates Mesopotamia he said he said is
he in Arabian he said he's a he's a moda
he said what about the people of Persia
you mentioned somebody else who's also a
mola when he asked about him he said
what about the people of Basra he said
Hassan and famous he's also amoda and uh
yeah he's a ton of slaves of the wives
of the Prophet saws
and uh and then he said what about the
people of kufa who we're going to look
at today and he mentioned that their
their main scholar is Ibrahim who is in
the chain of teachers of Abu hanifa and
he asked him is he um amola or or an
Arabian said no he's he's an Arabian so
he said I thought that you would that
there wouldn't be any Arabians left so
uh so what happened was that the in this
um some recent writers
um they've they've uh they've described
this phenomenon in a very nice way they
said that the the prophet and his
companions they weren't people of civilization
civilization
they were Bedouins and came from a predominantly
predominantly
illiterate Society but the prophet saws
taught them and they made civilization
they made they made a civilization it
was very literate
um but the but what through these
through this through the interaction
that happened between the Arabians and
the Persians in particular image as a Persian
Persian
um they they came into the Muslim lands
they studied with the Companions and
because they are a literate so these
these quote unquote slaves many of them
they were highly learned educated people
and so when they when they became when
they became Muslim this way of analytic thinking
thinking
um and uh systematic organization
definitions analysis which they're used
to it it
came into into the Muslim world and um
many of the Islamic Sciences the leading
Scholars are all for this reason they're
not they weren't they weren't Arabian
they weren't Arabs see but wait the
founder of Arabic you know he's a
Persian he learned uh it wasn't his uh
native tongue he is famous he went to a
he wanted to study Hadith and um so he
went and he recited a Hadith and he made
a he made a mistake in a in a vowel and
seems like the teacher was maybe a
little bit bad tempered so he got upset
at him and as he said he made a
grammatical mistake in the in the Hadith
of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam
so he swore an oath he said I'm going to
learn a science because of which nobody
will ever say I made a grammatical
mistake again wow and he became sibo is
like he's really big in Arabic grammar
and grammar in general there's no
grammar anywhere in the world Listen to
the first people who invent grammar so
so to come back to the question yes um
Abu hanifa was not in Arab and he was
actually as a Persian from what was
today Iran obviously yeah he was uh in
the so the Persians Persian civilization
it was a um it was one of the
superpowers of the time again it stopped
came it came to an abrupt end
um because of the Muslims it came to an
end at a time with the companions so the
Persians they their lands were far
beyond Iran and Persian
um influential people they were in the
neighboring land so he was actually he
was from a city he's from Kabul present
presentation so that's where his uh his
but he's Persian and his uh grandfather
and father
Persian and they came and they settled
in a city called goofa kufa was built
um in the time of uh Omar and it was uh
built out of nothing so it was just
after the Muslims had won the Battle of
padeshia they taken testifan and the
Persian Empire basically came there was
a capital so because Persia was so far
away and the Muslim armies they departed
from Medina they needed a base that was
closer to uh to Persia so he uh they
looked around the the companions didn't
like to swim as they were scared of
water so so there you had these tigers
and Euphrates so he uh so that he tried
to keep them on this side of the uh of
the water but close as close as possible
to uh to to Persia and Mesopotamia
so they chose this place kufa and they
made a city initially it was tents then
grew into a permanent settlement and he
wanted said normal he wanted to keep the
these Arabian armies away from the
Persians because he didn't want them to
get used to luxury and lose their
um their ruggedness and but it grew into
uh it became very quickly it became an
economic Center
um administrative Center so that's why
um it overtook there were two centers in
the time of the companions there was the
religious Center in Medina but then kufa
it became the financial military
decision-making place that's why in the
time of the fourth kale if Ali he moved
the capital from Medina to kufa and uh
many companions they went there so Abu
halifa's father his name is sabet Abu
hanif his name is Norman his father's
name is Sabbath and when he when his
father as a child was taken to
and it said that he prayed for him and
he I made so kufa was full of Companions
and many many companions came there and
there was was full of learning and um
it's where there's two schools of Arabic
grammar they originated in kufa and
Basra which was close by uh so he was um
he was born there Abu hanifa was born in
the city of kufa
um to a uh influential wealthy and
influential Persian family they were
cloth Merchants
um and uh and yeah so that's where um
that he would have met at some point in
his life the reports were that he
actually met some of the companions
themselves these are actual people who
knew the prophet had seen the prophet
who died upon Islam they actually knew
them or met them at least at when he was
young so they they used to have the
scholars of Hadith they have conditions
for narrating Hadith and they differ so
if there's some hadiths that are
narrated by companions who are children
so Abdullah and Abbas
um there's a famous Hadith the prophet
saws had him sitting behind him on a
camel and uh he said to him oh little
boy I'm going to teach you some words to
remember them and you know be conscious
of Allah Allah Allah will take care of
you so uh the
um famous Hadith but the point here is
that he's a young boy and so there's
many Hadith that are narrated by
Companions and they heard them when they
were young children eight nine ten years
old and that's even Malik one of one of them
them
um but the and so they did that but in
the next in the succeeding Generations
when somebody would come and say that I
heard the prophet say this then in the
Next Generation the scholars of Hadith
they differed regarding how old
somebody needs to be in order for them
to be able to narrate because it's now
now it's an abstract thing in the lives
of the companions it's physical you
remember and it's the most important
person in existence but I believe just
some ordinary child he was an
exceptionally gifted uh and talented
person so he could what I've understood
uh and appreciated what was happening
when he met these eminent personages the
companions of the Prophet I'm just
saying it's not like just some random
child yeah a formidable mind
yeah so it was he he met he met some of
the companions towards the end of their
lives but he didn't he didn't narrate
Hadith from them for this reason because
the people of kufa they said you have to
be 20 years old uh in order for you you
have to hear something when you're 20
years old in order to be able to
um narrate it
to the Next Generation so in terms of
Hadith his his Hadith narrations come
from other from from uh people uh not
Companions and mostly from from not not
the followers but the next next
Generation but he met he met Companions
and I said Malik one of them as a child
that dates him also it dates him almost
the beginning of Islam basically uh yeah
the generation afterwards which is
incredibly early yeah very early yeah
he's the earliest of the four
schools then of uh Jewish Prudence uh
they typically didn't exist it wasn't
even the hanuki school uh early on so
this is before all the the Sunni
jurisprudence have been developed a soul
had happened it was simply extraordinary
individuals like
uh making their ruling doing their doing
their rulings and so on so this really
predates what we later understand as
they developed Sunni Islam exactly yep
that's right yep so [Music]
[Music]
um so how influential exactly was uh
Abel hanifa in his time I mean how much
of a leader was he
so um so he's uh
I think what used to happen and it still
happened to some degree but it used to
happen more
um is that if somebody is a religious
scholar and religion is important to the
lives of people around them then they
are naturally going to be in a position
of leadership because they're if they
say that you know just to take like an
extreme example if they were to say that
um nobody listened to the ruler okay um
didn't do that of course um but if they
were to say that then they would wield
influence people would listen to them
and they wouldn't listen to the caliph
because the caliph is not like the Pope
the caliph is not a
um he's not he's not he doesn't
represent the religion he his role they
had um
executive roles but the uh but the the
the law that they ruled by that law was
developed through a process of scholarly reasoning
