Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
I was hoping you could email something or help me find a book explaining how all the imams shabani yusuf etc…. within the school came about and who were their teachers and a little on their life also who were the teachers of imam Abu Hanifa and how the books of the madhab hidaya, nurul ida etc were complied and when the books were closed within the madhab i.e. when they finished discussing about fasting pray zakat, hajj.
lastly he mentioned in these cd’s 17 principles the madhab was based on 17 principles he narrates a story about an blind imam in a mosque who recited these who was he and can you email me the the principles
Walaikum assalam,
1. There is a good translation by Sr. Ayesha Bewley of Imam Muhammad Abu Zahra’s work on the lives of the four imams. This should be available through any good online Islamic bookstore. There are also a few good, relevant works available throughhttp://www.alrashad.com, which is run by Sayyidi Shaykh Abdurrahman ibn Yusuf, a brilliant young Hanafi scholar based in California.
2. What the shaykh must have mentioned is the 17 general principles of fiqh compiled by some early Hanafi imam. These are less organized or systematic than later compilations, such as those mentioned in al-Majalla, the Ottoman commercial law code derived from Hanafi fiqh.
Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani