Ebu Hanifa’s (d. 150/767) Life and His Ascetic Understanding

Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi Sect, is considered to be one of the most important intellectuals of Islamic history of thought and science. He was named as 'Imam-i Azam', which means the greatest imam, to point out the degree of his knowledge and intelligence. He prepared the ground for the formation of the Ahl-i Sunnah with his vision and thoughts and raised many famous sufis and students with his spiritual experience and ascetic understanding. Abu Hanifa, who embraced the Qur'anic and sunnah-based religion concept, struggled intensely with the views and thoughts he considered as bid'ats. The existing works on Abu Hanife, focused more on his views and thoughts in Islamic theology and juridical subjects but his personal and spiritual life are not sufficiently studied. The purpose of this study is to examine some aspects of his personality and his spiritual life. Abu Hanifa reached a great position in choosing a “zuhd” (ascetic), “vera” (pious) and hereafter life, and became one of the most popular names of evliyaullah. Abu Hanifa, who lived in the ascetic period of Sufism, influenced very important Sufis with his personality and spiritual life. Moreover, he contributed Sufism to become an independent field of science through his students. Despite being rich and wealthy, he has preferred a life that has never tended to the world and preferred an ascetic one. He devoted his life to science and worship, and he always kept away from the administrative tasks that were offered to him. There are some books that are attributed to Abu Hanifa and one of them is al-Vasiyye. There are some approaches on the personality and spiritual life of Abu Hanifa in al-vasiyye. This study attempts to reveal the ascetic life of Abu Hanifa based on al-Vasiyye and some other main sources of history and bibliography