Creeds & Confessions

Al-Fiqh al-Akbar

Sunni Islam (Hanafi)

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Al-Fiqh al-Akbar." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/creeds-confessions/al-fiqh-al-akbar.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Al-Fiqh al-Akbar. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/creeds-confessions/al-fiqh-al-akbar

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-al-fiqh-al-akbar,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Al-Fiqh al-Akbar},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/creeds-confessions/al-fiqh-al-akbar},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

An early Sunni creed transmitted under the name of Abu Hanifa, who died in 767, treating the divine attributes, faith and works, predestination and the status of the grave sinner. The attribution is disputed: more than one text circulates under the title, the versions differ in what they address, and scholars have argued both that a core goes back to Abu Hanifa's circle and that the surviving recensions are later. It matters as the point where Islam begins to write creeds at all, as an answer to the Kharijite and Murjiite arguments about who counts as a believer, and it remains a school text in Hanafi teaching.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Period

from 767 1

Traditional Hanafi scholarship attributes this creed to Abu Hanifa within his own lifetime, ending at his death in 767. Source critical scholarship notes that before the fourteenth century the same title referred to a different text, by Abu Muti al-Balkhi, who died in 814, and that the attribution to Abu Hanifa was popularized later by the jurist al-Bukhari, who died in 1329. No scholarly consensus fixes a single composition date; 767 is recorded here as the traditional attribution's own boundary, not as a settled year.

Attributed Author / Compiler

Transmitted under the name of Abu Hanifa, who died in 767, founder of the Hanafi school, though more than one text circulates under this title and the surviving recensions differ in what they address. W. Montgomery Watt's Islamic Creeds: A Selection (Edinburgh University Press, 1994) surveys the scholarship on both sides: some hold a core of the material to descend from Abu Hanifa's own circle, others that the surviving recensions took shape considerably later, and Watt records the dispute as unresolved rather than deciding it. 2

W. Montgomery Watt's Islamic Creeds: A Selection (Edinburgh University Press, 1994) surveyed the scholarship on the transmission of this creed under the name of Abu Hanifa, founder of the Hanafi school, who died in 767, examining the fact that more than one text circulates under the title and that the surviving recensions differ in what they address. Weighing the case that a core of the material descends from Abu Hanifa's own circle against the case that the surviving recensions took shape considerably later, Watt records the dispute as unresolved rather than deciding between the two positions.

Status

Standing as a Standard

A school text in Hanafi teaching and an early landmark in the writing of Islamic creeds. Its authority rests on the chain that transmits it rather than on any council or recorded consensus. 1

Origins

Form of the Confession

A short sequence of affirmations and denials, cast in some recensions as answers to a questioner. 2

Controversy

Point in Dispute

Faith and works: whether acts belong to faith or follow from it, and whether faith increases and decreases. The text treats faith as assent and confession, and declines to unchurch the sinner. 2

Learn More

A Name, a Text and a Doubt

Al-Fiqh al-Akbar, the greater understanding, is one of the earliest documents that can reasonably be called an Islamic creed, and almost everything about it is disputed. It is transmitted under the name of Abu Hanifa, the jurist who died in 767 and gave his name to one of the four Sunni legal schools. More than one text circulates under the title, the recensions differ in length and in what they treat, and scholars have distinguished them by number to keep them apart.

The arguments run both ways and neither has won. On one side, the doctrinal positions in the shorter text fit what is known of Abu Hanifa's circle and of the questions live in Iraq in his lifetime, so a core going back to him or to his students is plausible. On the other, the developed vocabulary of the longer recensions belongs to later theology, and the transmission chains are not strong enough to carry the weight placed on them. The atlas marks the attribution as debated because that is the honest state of the question, not because a decision is pending.

What is not in doubt is that the text was received as Abu Hanifa's and taught as such for centuries. In a tradition where a creed's standing depends on the chain that carries it, being believed to be by Abu Hanifa was itself the source of its authority, whoever actually wrote the sentences.

Where Islamic Creed Writing Begins

This text marks a beginning: the point at which Muslims start writing down what must be believed, as distinct from what must be done. Islamic scholarship had begun with law, with the transmission of reports and the derivation of rules, and the questions that produce creeds arrived as by-products of political catastrophe rather than of speculation.

Three of them are visible here. Is a Muslim who sins gravely still a Muslim, which the civil wars had made urgent. Does faith increase and decrease, or is it a single assent that a person either has or lacks. And what may be said about the attributes of God that scripture ascribes to him, the hand, the face, the throne, without either denying the words or making God a body. The text answers the first by keeping the sinner inside the community, the second by treating faith as assent and confession, and the third by affirming the attributes while refusing to describe their manner.

That third move, affirming without asking how, becomes the standard Sunni posture and is repeated almost word for word in later creeds including al-Tahawi's. Reading this text beside those later ones shows a tradition working out its vocabulary in public over two centuries, with the same questions recurring because no council ever closed them.

Cross-Tradition Connections