The Hanafi Legal Theory: Some Significant Issues

Abstract

Hanafi School has a comprehensive and internally coherent legal theory the most important characteristic of which is the use of the general principles of law. The School also developed a system of ‘precedents’ and, for that purpose, the grading of jurists and manuals of law which help in resolving analytical inconsistencies and resultant in a smooth functioning of the system. The jurists of the School have occasionally differed, but the disagreement has always remained at the level of ‘interpretation of facts’ and not at the level of ‘legislative presumptions’ of the School. It is these latter principles – the legislative presumptions – which determine the core legal theory of the School and give it a peculiar flavor.