Imam Muhammad Shafi’i

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Shafi’i, founder of the Shafi’i school of Islamic law; (767 – 820). He belonged to the tribe of Quraysh and was a Hashimi, thus remotely connected with the Prophet. He acquired a thorough knowledge of the old Arab poets, knew the “Muwatta of Mlik Ibn Anas by heart, and remained with him in Medina till the latter’s death in 796. In yemen he was involved in Alid (the descendents of Imam Ali) intrigues and was imprisoned in Raqqa (town in Syria) by the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid in 803. After his release he became ####intimate with the celebrated Hanafi Muhammad Sheybani, went via Harran and Syria to Egypt and in 810 to Baghdad where he set up successfully as a teacher. In 814 he returned to Egypt. Saladin (the great Ayyubid ruler) had a great madrasa built in his honour at the foot of the Muqattam Hills in Fustat. Shafi’i may be described as an electric who acted as an intermediary between the independent legal investigation and the traditionalism of his time. He is regarded as the founder of the “Principles of Jurisprudence”, laid down in his Treatise. Unlike the Hanafites (Sunni sect) he sought to lay down the rules for reasoning by analogy and rejected human interpretation. The main centre of his teachings was Cairo and Baghdad and gradually his religion was spread by his students throughout the Islamic countries, especially Syria, Khorasan and Transoxiana. Today Shafi’ites exists in lower Egypt, East and South Africa, West and South Arabia, Indonesia, some parts of Palestine and Central Asia especially Kurdistan. The most famous Shafi’i scholars are as follows:
- Nesaee
- Abul Hasan Ash’ari
- Abu Is’haq Shirazi
- Imam al-Haramayn
- Abu Hamed Ghazali
- Imam Rafe’i

Works:
1- Purification
2- Feasts’ prayer
3- The great ceremonies (Mnasek al-Kabir)
4- Evidences
5- The Modern Treatise
6- The different traditions (Prophetic Hadiths)
7- On importance of Friday
8- Eclipse of the sun’s prayer (the prayer which is said by Muslims in cases of eclipse of the sun and moon)
9- Traditions
10- Shafi’i Position, etc.

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