Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: did abu hanifa use hadiths in his epistemology — December 20, 2025 | Ali Shukri Amin

I think you're conflating the criticism of Abu Hanifa's juristic approach (even within the Hijazi fuqaha there was vehement disagreement and reproach) with the theological criticisms of Abu Hanifa. There were other fuqaha and schools of fiqh that were similar and ultimately subsumed by the Hanafi madh'hab, Abu Hanifa himself not originating many of the ideas of his eponymous madh'hab.

The early Sunni criticisms never accuse Abu Hanifa of wholesale rejection of hadith. They accuse him of utilizing ra'y as opposed to hadith with the subtext that he was just ignorant of hadith. If the accusation was that he did not use hadith at all, that would have been more damning and widely circulated.

If we take Shaybani's Muwatta as accurate, and I see no reason not to, then we see Shaybani reliably narrating from Malik when compared with the other recensions of Muwatta. We therefore have no reason to assume he is fabricating the hadith and fiqh views of Abu Hanifa when we can independently verify the accuracy of his reports of Malik's fiqh.

While the hadith canonization project was parallel with the development of these madhahib, the idea that Abu Hanifa discounted hadith entirely or did not rely on them is unfounded. His opponents would have seized on this to discredit him.

The confusion here seems to be that Abu Hanifa was associated with the murji'ah and some of his theological views were adopted by the Mu'tazilah (who were primarily Hanafi). Abu Hanifa was PRIMARILY maligned by Ahmad bin Hanbal, his contemporaries, and students on theological grounds - not legal ones. There were other respected legal thinkers who had overlaps with Abu Hanifa but different creedal beliefs and they were not maligned like Abu Hanifa.

You would also assume that at least some students of Abu Hanifa or claimants to his madh'hab would take a Quran only approach if he did. Yet even the hardline Mutazilah relied on some ahadith for fiqh.