İmam-ı Azam Ebu Hanife’nin Yöntemi Üzerine / On the Method of The Biggest İmam Abu Khanifa

Religious faith is based on divine revelation. Reason is the means to understand and put the knowledge transmitted through revelation into practice. Understanding of the revelation based on reason and applying it to the practical life has led to the emergence of different schools of thought and sects. Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school, developed an original decision-making method regarding the mat-ters about which there were no clear provision in the Qur'an and Sunnah. In order to use this method, which is called “Amendment” (istihsan), there should not be a consensus decision (İcma) previously taken by the majority of Muslims. Compari-son is a method of reaching a conclusion by comparing a matter which has no pre-vious judgment on it to a matter which has a previous judgement on it. But while Comparision works according to the rules of abstract inference, it may not always be a decision that embraces the highest good in favor of people. For this reason, Amendment (istihsan) method claims to be a final decision-making process that inc-ludes the highest good by eliminating the difficulty which cannot be overcome by the Comparative method. Hence, Amendment method is an all-inclusive approach that emphasizes “humane situations” that lie beyond the rules of inference. This “all-inclusive” approach takes the conditions of time, the subjective situation of the individual, the social, political and economic situations in which the society is in-volved into account while deciding on a matter. This is because it is a peopleoriented approach that aims to maximize justice and equity while deciding on a matter. In this study, this special problem-solving method of Abu Hanifa will be discussed.