Guy Burak: The Second Formation of Islamic Law. The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The Hanafi school of law (maḏhab) is one of the four major schools of Sunni Islamic legal reasoning and repositories of positive law. It was built upon the teachings of Abu Hanifa (699–767 AD), a merchant who studied and taught in Iraq. The method of the school officially was adopted by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century and was codified in the Mecelle-i Ahkam-ı Adliyye, the Ottoman Civil Code. Hanafi jurisprudence remains the most influential school in the world today and is used in Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. To understand the significance of the Hanafi School, it is useful to gain an overview of the history and the major developments of the school in general. For this investigation the book that I have chosen is very helpful. The Second Formation of Islamic Law is the first book to deal exclusively with the forming and rise of the Hanafi School of Law, as the most significant school in both the Islamic and the Turkish History of Law from the 16th century.