DUSHANBE, October 5, 2009, Asia-Plus — An international symposium entitled “The Heritage of Imam Azam and Its Significance in the Inter-Civilization Dialogue” has opened in Dushanbe today morning.
Some 500 researchers from 50 countries of the world are taking part at the conference, dedicated to the 1310th birth anniversary of Abu Hanifa. It is held in Dushanbe on October 5-6.
The conference participants include known Muslim clerics and religious leaders and specialists in Islam, from Central Asia’s states, Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey as well as from a number of the European countries, Japan and the United States.
Thus, among them, ex-presidents of Afghanistan Sibghatullah Mojaddedi and Burhanuddin Rabbani, as well as Dr. Ahmed Omar Hashim, Chancellor of Al-Azhar University, Dr. Vitaly Naumkin, Director of the Center for Arab Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Sheikh Mohammad Ishaq Madani, Iran President’s Adviser on Sunni Affairs. Marat Murtazin, Chancellor of the Islamic University in Moscow, etc.
Numan Ibn Thabit ibn Zuta ibn Marzuban, known as Abu Hanifa, (699-767) was founder of the Sunni Hanafi school of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). Acclaimed as Al-Imam al-Azam, or Al-Adham (the Great Imam), he was better known by his kunya Abu Hanifa.
The Hanafi school is one of the four schools of law or jurisprudence within Sunni Islam (The other three schools of thought are Shafi’I, Maliki, and Hanbali). Among the four established Sunni schools of legal thought in Islam, the Hanafi school is the oldest. It has a reputation for putting greater emphasis on the role of reason and being slightly more liberal than the other three schools. The Hanafi school also has the most followers among the four major Sunni schools.
