The Qayrawānī scholar Asad b. al-Furāt (d. 213/828) is regarded as an authentic Mālikī jurist at the origin of one of the first compilations of the teachings of the Egyptian disciples of Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/705): al-Asadiyya. Rather, the manuscripts in the Kairouan-Raqqāda collection mentioning his name suggest that he served as a cornerstone of the ḥanafī networks in Ifrīqiya. We show in this article that Asad b. al-Furāt played a key role in the transmission in Kairouan of the Kitāb al-aṣl of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Šaybānī (d. 189/805), one of the main disciples of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767). Through an analysis combining a palaeographic approach and the study of texts and paratexts preserved in the Qayrawānī manuscripts of the Kitāb al-aṣl, we emphasise that: 1. the establishment of the written form of ḥanafī teachings was undertaken in Kairouan in the 3rd/9th century and continued until the 4th/10th century; 2. persistent ḥanafī circles were formed around the transmission of these texts in Ifrīqiya; 3. the Kitāb al-aṣl was already in the first part of the 3rd/9th a fixed text, taught in Kairouan, and which influenced the construction of Mālikī and Ismāʿīliī legal doctrines.