al- Shafi'i
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Ab Abd Allh Muammad ibn Idrs al- Shfi
(born , 767, Arabiadied Jan. 20, 820, Al-Fus, Egypt) Muslim legal scholar and founder of the Shfiiyyah school of law. A distant relative of Muhammad, he was brought up in poverty in Mecca and studied with Islamic scholars across Arabia and the Levant. His great contribution was the creation of a synthesis of Islamic legal thought that put into coherent form many familiar but unsystematized ideas. He dealt primarily with the identification of the sources of Islamic law and their application to contemporary events. His book, the Rislah ( 817), earned him the title father of Muslim jurisprudence.
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Shafi'i, al- (Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i), 767-820, Islamic jurist. Raised and educated in Mecca and Medina, he taught in Egypt and Baghdad. His teachings laid the groundwork for the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, one of four such schools. The Shafi'i school gives equal weight to the traditions (hadith) and the Koran, emphasizing the consensus (ijma) of the Islamic community as the most important secondary source of law. Al-Shafi'i wrote al-Risala, which is considered the foundation of Islamic jurisprudence.
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