The Hereafter and Divine Decree

Al-Fiqh al-Akbar concludes its doctrinal outline with a series of articles concerning the realities of the afterlife and the Islamic doctrine of divine decree. On eschatology, Abu Hanifa affirms the resurrection of the body as a literal, physical reality. The bodies of the dead will be restored and reunited with their souls on the Day of Judgment. This affirmation responds to those in the ancient world who dismissed bodily resurrection as philosophically absurd, and Abu Hanifa, in keeping with the Quranic insistence on this point, treats it as among the most certain truths of revelation. The resurrection is followed by the gathering, the reckoning, and the distribution of the books of deeds.

The text affirms the reality of the Bridge (sirat) stretched over Hellfire, over which all people must pass. The righteous will cross it with ease while the wicked will fall. The Balance (mizan) on which deeds are weighed is also affirmed as a real physical reality on the Day of Judgment. These eschatological realities, mentioned in the Quran and elaborated in the hadith literature, are to be taken at face value. Abu Hanifa's text does not attempt to rationalize or allegorize them. Paradise and Hellfire already exist, he affirms, and they are real places with real qualities. The inhabitants of Paradise will dwell there eternally, and the people of Hell will receive their punishment, with the believers among the sinners eventually being brought out through divine mercy or prophetic intercession.

On the doctrine of divine decree (qadar), Abu Hanifa's position is that everything that occurs in the universe, whether good or evil, benefit or harm, happens by the will, knowledge, decree, and decision of Allah. Nothing occurs outside of His knowledge and will. At the same time, human beings possess real agency and choice. They perform actions that are genuinely their own and for which they bear moral responsibility. This is not a contradiction in Abu Hanifa's framework: divine decree encompasses human choice without negating it. The Imam opposed both the Qadariyyah, who denied divine foreknowledge of human acts, and the Jabriyyah, who denied any real human agency. The middle path of Ahl al-Sunnah holds both divine sovereignty and human responsibility simultaneously.

The closing articles of Al-Fiqh al-Akbar affirm the intercession of the Prophet Muhammad on behalf of the sinners of his community. This intercession (shafa'a) is established by numerous hadith reports and is a source of hope for believers who fear that their sins may outweigh their good deeds. Abu Hanifa insists that the Prophet's intercession is real and will occur by divine permission on the Day of Judgment. The Mu'tazilites rejected this doctrine because they held that divine justice required the perpetual punishment of unrepentant sinners, but Abu Hanifa and Ahl al-Sunnah affirm that divine mercy, channeled through the Prophet's intercession, will save many who would otherwise be condemned. This note of hope brings Al-Fiqh al-Akbar to a fitting close, balancing the severity of divine judgment with the breadth of divine mercy.