Introduction

Al-Fiqh al-Akbar, attributed to Imam Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān ibn Thābit (80-150 AH / 699-767 CE), holds a foundational place in the history of Islamic theology as one of the earliest surviving systematic statements of Sunnī creed. Abū Ḥanīfa was born in Kūfah to a family of Persian descent and grew to become the foremost jurist of his age, the eponymous founder of the Ḥanafī school of law, and a vigorous defender of Sunnī orthodoxy against the Muʿtazilī, Khārijī, and Murjiʾī deviations that proliferated during the tumultuous early Abbasid period. The attribution of this text to Abū Ḥanīfa is accepted by the mainstream of the tradition, though scholars note that it exists in recensions transmitted through his students and may contain minor additions. Regardless of precise redactional history, the creed it articulates reflects the theological positions Abū Ḥanīfa defended throughout his life and transmitted in oral disputations, letters, and the broader circle of his teaching.

The subject matter of al-Fiqh al-Akbar encompasses the central questions of Islamic theology as they presented themselves to the second generation of Muslim scholars. The text addresses the divine attributes, affirming that Allāh is described by all the attributes mentioned in the Quran and Sunnah without likening Him to creation (tashbīh) and without stripping those attributes of real meaning (taʿṭīl). It treats the nature of the Quran as the speech of Allāh, the reality and scope of prophethood, the intercession of the Prophet on the Day of Judgment, the status of a believer who commits major sins (a question that bitterly divided early Muslim communities), and the obligation to follow the Companions. The style is concise and declarative, presenting positions rather than extended argumentation, which made it well suited for memorization and transmission as a foundational creedal text.

The scholarly reception of al-Fiqh al-Akbar across the centuries testifies to its enduring importance. It attracted commentaries from major scholars of the Ḥanafī and broader Sunnī tradition, the most celebrated being the commentary of Abū al-Muntahā al-Maghnīsāwī and the widely studied commentary attributed to Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1014 AH / 1605 CE), whose work brought the text to enormous prominence in the Ottoman and South Asian scholarly worlds. The text is significant not only within Ḥanafī circles but for the history of Sunnī theology more broadly, representing the pre-scholastic phase of creedal formulation before the sophisticated dialectical apparatus of later Ashʿarī and Māturīdī kalām was fully developed. Modern scholars studying the emergence of Sunnī identity regularly engage with al-Fiqh al-Akbar as primary evidence of how orthodoxy was articulated in Islam's formative centuries.

Readers approaching al-Fiqh al-Akbar should bear in mind its historical context as a polemical and pedagogical document aimed at defining the boundaries of correct belief during a period of intense theological controversy. Its brevity is deliberate: each affirmation is a stake planted against a specific error circulating in early Muslim society. Reading it alongside one of the classical commentaries is strongly recommended, as the commentators supply the implicit arguments, the names of the sects being countered, and the scriptural evidences that the base text assumes without stating. The text should be understood as representing the Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah in the sense recognized by the broad Sunnī scholarly tradition, encompassing the Atharī, Ashʿarī, and Māturīdī theological schools in their shared foundational commitments to the transcendence of Allāh, the truthfulness of the Prophet, and the authority of the Quran and Sunnah.