Narrations on Zakat, Fasting, and Pilgrimage

The Musnad Abu Hanifa contains narrations on each of the five pillars of Islam, and the sections on zakah, fasting, and pilgrimage reveal the connection between Abu Hanifa's transmitted hadiths and the juristic positions for which the Hanafi school is known. On zakah, Abu Hanifa transmitted narrations establishing the nisab thresholds and rates of zakah on different forms of wealth. A narration transmitted through his chain on the zakah of trade goods establishes that merchandise held for sale is subject to zakah based on its monetary value at the year's end, a position the Hanafi school takes against those who argue that only gold and silver bear an inherent zakah obligation while trade goods do so only by analogy.

The narrations on fasting preserved in the musnad include a tradition on the intention for Ramadan fasting and the prophetic hadith on moon sighting: 'Fast at its sighting and break the fast at its sighting; if it is obscured, then complete thirty days of Sha'ban.' Abu Hanifa transmitted this narration with a chain through Hammad ibn Abi Sulayman, and it grounds the Hanafi ruling that Ramadan begins with the confirmed sighting of the new moon or the completion of thirty days of the preceding month. The musnad also preserves Abu Hanifa's transmission of narrations on the kaffara for breaking the Ramadan fast deliberately, with the chain providing the basis for the Hanafi ruling that the expiation is due for breaking the fast through eating, drinking, or intercourse, all three constituting the same legal category of deliberate fast-breaking.

Abu Hanifa's pilgrimage narrations in the musnad include traditions on the talbiyah, the actions of the Hajj, and the rulings on errors made during Hajj that require expiation through a sacrifice (dam). A particularly important narration for Hanafi Hajj law is transmitted on the authority of Ibn Abbas, through Abu Hanifa's chain, concerning the obligation of the tawaf al-ziyarah (the major circumambulation) as a pillar of Hajj: 'Whoever performs the tawaf of the House has completed his Hajj.' The Hanafi school uses narrations of this type to support their position that the tawaf al-ziyarah is the only indispensable element alongside the standing at Arafah, with other acts classified as obligatory (wajib) rather than pillars.

The relationship between Abu Hanifa's hadith transmission and his Hajj rulings is particularly instructive because the Hajj is an area where the Hanafi school is sometimes said to have relied on Kufan traditions differing from Medinan practice. The musnad narrations show that Abu Hanifa did transmit Hajj hadiths with chains, and that his rulings follow from those narrations. Where his narrations diverge from the practice established by the Medinan scholars, this reflects in part the Kufan transmission traditions that Abu Hanifa inherited from his teachers who had themselves learned from companions present at the Prophet's final Hajj. The Musnad Abu Hanifa thus serves as primary evidence that the Hanafi school's Hajj rulings, like its other positions, rest on transmitted prophetic guidance rather than pure rational deduction.