Shafi'i

The school of al-Shafi'i, known for tight textual method and a systematic theory of sources.

Also written · Shafi · Shafii · Shafiee · Shafie · Safii · Syafii · Shafiiyyah · Imam Shafi'i · al-Shafii · Shafii madhhab · Shafi'i school · Shafiite

The meaning

What Shafi'i means in Islam

Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i died in 204 AH and wrote the Risalah, the first surviving work of usul al-fiqh. His school prevails in Egypt, East Africa, Yemen, Kurdistan and much of Southeast Asia. It leans on hadith more readily than the Hanafis do, and it rejects istihsan as a source in its own right, holding that preference without evidence is lawmaking.

Evidence · Editorial · Our own summary, drawn from the sources named

Read beside it

Rooms that name it

A three verse chapter swears by time itselfA Light · Surah al-Asr, three verses
Surah Al-AsrSurah 103 · The Declining Day

Words that sit beside it

MadhhabA school of law: a settled method of deriving rulings, carried by generations of scholars.مَذْهَب
Usul al-FiqhThe science of how rulings are derived: which sources count, and how they are read.أُصولُ الفِقْه
IstihsanJuristic preference: setting aside a strict analogy for a stronger reason of fairness or need.اِسْتِحْسان
QiyasAnalogy: extending a known ruling to a new case that shares the same underlying reason.قِياس