Abu Hanifa

Abu Hanifa, born around 699 in Kufa and who died in 767 in Baghdad, was a Muslim scholar, jurist and theologian who founded the Hanafi school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, the school that remains the most widely followed of the four Sunni schools of law today, followed by roughly forty five percent of Muslims. He was known for favoring reason in jurisprudential and theological rulings, and he pioneered the formal use of analogical reasoning, called qiyas, alongside juristic discretion, called istihsan, as tools for deriving legal rulings from scripture and precedent. His school of law came to predominate across Central Asia, South Asia, Turkey, parts of the Arab world, the Balkans and Russia, and he was honored with titles including al-Imam al-Azam, the Greatest Imam, and Shaykh al-Islam.