imaginary hadith

The foundations of the jurisprudential schools of thought converge in one package. The deductive foundation of what we know today as the Hanafi school of thought, its stance on the main books of Sunni hadith, and its approach to prophetic hadith do not fundamentally differ from other Sunni schools of thought, such as the Shafi'i or Hanbali schools. However, a careful examination of ancient documents and evidence reveals differences between the approach of Imam Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school, and the prevalent and dominant narrative of how hadith are dealt with in the Hanafi school and other schools. Therefore, it seems that in the history of ideas, we face "two Abu Hanifas": the first is "Abu Hanifa" in the works of the ancients, and the second is "the imagined Abu Hanifa" in the works of later scholars.