مسعود بن عبدالله
علقمة
حامد
There is overwhelming evidence that Imam Abu Hanifa R.H met Anas R.A at the least. So he is a tabee.
Umar R.A sent Ibn Masood R.A to spread knowledge, and then later when Ali R.A visited Kufa, there were hundreds of students of knowledge. Seeing that he said “you have filled the city with the light of knowledge”
Alqamah became the prominent student of Ibn Masood R.A. to the extent that amongst the sahaba he used to give fatwa. The scholars have also mentioned that if Ibn Masood R.A. was not a sahabi, then we would have said that Alqamah is more knowledgeable and more of a faqih than Ibn Masood R.A.
Abu Hanifa gathered and codified Fiqh. The reason why these principles were used to codify fiqh is because
Abdullah Ibn Masood, Abdullah Ibn Umar and Abdullah Ibn Abbas are three sahaba who are known for their knowledge. Umar R.A was from the senior sahaba and he would call Abdullah Ibn Abbas to sit in his majlis when he was a young kid.
Rarely would you find that Abu Hanifa did his own ijtihad, but rather Most of the times he is just passing on the knowledge from his teachers.
Difference of opinion amongst the Ummah started from Sahaba R.A and this was because different people understood things differently.
Rasulullah S.A.W knew that amongst the Sahaba, there were differences and sahaba understood him differently. One famous example of this is mentioned in a hadith in Bukhari and Muslim that, The Prophet S.A.W said to a group of sahaba “Do not pray the Asr Salah except in Banu Qurayza”. So on the way, the Asr Salah time was expiring, so then one group of sahaba said that, what The Prophet S.A.W meant was that, for us to rush and hurry to Banu Qurayza to pray, and he did not mean that if Salah time was expiring then miss prayer. Thereafter this group of Sahaba prayed somewhere in the middle of their travel. However the other group of Sahaba understood by this statement that, the Prophet S.A.W told them to pray at