The Lost Branch of the Ḥanafī School of Law in North Africa

Although the spread of the Ḥanafī school of law in North Africa is generally attributed to the Ottoman Empire’s reign in that region from the sixteenth century onwards, historical sources have definitively shown that Ḥanafī law was already practised in the Maghrib region before the ninth century. At the same time, by the tenth or eleventh century, North Africa became the centre of the Mālikī school of law. This rapid transition from the Ḥanafī to the Mālikī tradition, and the complete disappearance of Ḥanafī doctrine from the region, is still something of an enigma. This contribution examines the birth and, especially, the decline of the North African branch of the Ḥanafī legal school. This will involve, in particular, examining the reasons for the shift from the “old” legal doctrine to the “new” one, the relations between Ḥanafī scholars and their counterparts from other theological and legal schools, and analysing the political and cultural circumstances that shaped legal and theological life in North Africa between the eighth and eleventh centuries.