Shāfiʿiyyah

In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Al-Madhab ash-Shāfiʿī is one of the four recognised and transmitted schools of ʾAhlu-s-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah in Islamic jurisprudence, founded by al-ʾImām Muḥammad ʾIbn ʾIdrīs ash-Shāfiʿī رضي الله عنه (150–204 AH), a descendant of the Banū-l-Muṭṭalib and thus from the Quraysh. It is the only one of the four great Madhāhib whose founder authored foundational works in both ʾUṣūl al-Fiqh (the principles of jurisprudence) and Furūʿ al-Fiqh (its applied rulings) with his own hand, and the only Madhab in which the founder himself developed and then entirely revised a distinct legal school within his own lifetime, namely the Qawl al-Qadīm (the earlier position, formed in ʿIrāq) and the Qawl al-Jadīd (the later position, formed in Egypt, and the one upon which the Madhab is principally transmitted).

It is a special favour of Allāh ﷻ that He placed al-Madhab ash-Shāfiʿī as the Madhab of a man who was simultaneously the Mujaddid of the second century by near-unanimous scholarly consensus, the only ʾImām from the four who was Qurayshī and more specifically from ʾAhl al-Bayt through the Banū-l-Muṭṭalib¹, and the one of whom al-ʾImām ʾAḥmad ʾIbn Ḥanbal رضي الله عنه said:

"When I am asked about a matter in which I know of no narration, I answer with the opinion of ash-Shāfiʿī, for indeed he is a scholar from the Quraysh, and it has been related from the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ that 'A scholar from the Quraysh shall fill the earth with knowledge.'"

╾ Madkhal ʾilā-s-Sunan al-Kubrā (1/25) ╼

Historically, al-Madhab ash-Shāfiʿī has represented the dominant school of jurisprudence across much of the Islamic world for the greater part of its history, including in al-Ḥijāz, Egypt, ash-Shām, Persia, Khurāsān, Transoxiana, Yemen, East Africa, the Kurdish lands, and Southeast Asia. It has been the Madhab of the majority of scholars for most of Islamic history, a point attested to by al-ʾImām Jamālu-d-Dīn al-ʾIsnawī (d. 772 AH), and remains today the most widely followed school across ʾIndonesia, Malaysia, al-Ḥijāz, and significant portions of East Africa, Yemen, and ash-Shām.