The Names and Attributes of Allah

Having established the principle of divine oneness, Imam Abu Hanifa turns to the specific attributes that Allah has revealed about Himself. Al-Fiqh al-Akbar enumerates the essential attributes: Knowledge (ilm), Power (qudra), Life (hayat), Will (irada), Hearing (sam'), Sight (basar), and Speech (kalam). These seven attributes came to be called the sifat al-ma'ani by later Hanafi and Ash'ari theologians, and the text of Abu Hanifa provided the basis for their systematic treatment in subsequent centuries. Each attribute is affirmed as real, eternal, and belonging to Allah's essence without being identical to it in any way that suggests composition or multiplicity in the divine being.

The attribute of Speech receives particular attention in the tradition surrounding Al-Fiqh al-Akbar. Abu Hanifa affirms that Allah speaks, and that His speech is an attribute of His essence, not something created. This directly opposes the Mu'tazilite school, which held that the Quran was created in time, arguing that eternal speech would constitute an eternal entity alongside Allah. For Abu Hanifa and the Sunni mainstream, this argument fails because the divine attributes are not independent entities: they are attributes of Allah, not things that exist separately from Him. The Quran as the speech of Allah is therefore uncreated, even though the letters and sounds through which it is transmitted among human beings come into existence in time.

The text also emphatically denies anthropomorphism. Abu Hanifa insists that Allah does not resemble any of His creation. When the Quran attributes to Allah a hand, a face, or other qualities that have creaturely counterparts, these must be accepted as real attributes of Allah without asking how they exist and without likening them to human hands or faces. This is the principle of affirmation without modality (ithbat bila kayf), which Abu Hanifa articulates with notable clarity. He teaches that whoever says 'I do not know whether my Lord is in the heavens or on the earth' has committed disbelief, because such a statement contradicts the plain Quranic text affirming Allah's elevation above His creation, yet one must not understand this elevation in a spatial or physical sense.

Abu Hanifa's treatment of the names and attributes in Al-Fiqh al-Akbar set the tone for Hanafi theological writing for centuries. The discipline of kalam, as developed by later scholars in the Maturidi school founded by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi of Samarqand, built upon these foundations while adding greater philosophical precision. The Maturidi school is recognized as one of the two main Sunni theological schools alongside the Ash'ari school, and both trace their creedal commitments back to the same foundational principles visible in Abu Hanifa's text: real affirmation of the divine attributes, denial of any resemblance to creation, and rejection of both excessive negation and crude literalism. The balance Abu Hanifa strikes here remains the standard reference for orthodox Hanafi theological reflection.