soning because it was too arbitrary. Indeed, some
rationalists wanted to bypass the hadith altogether.
Instead, al-Shafii argued that all law should be
derived from revelation, especially the qUran and
the sUnna of Muhammad, as witnessed by the
hadith. Rather than completely reject independent
legal reasoning, he allowed for the use of analogical
reasoning (qiyas), but subordinated it to revela-
tion. It could be conducted only when it was based
on the literal meaning of the Quran and hadith.
This provided jurists some flexibility in apply-
ing legal precedents based on revelation to new
situations. For example, while the Quran explicitly
forbids the consumption of grape wine (khamr),
the ban on other alcoholic beverages, such as other
kinds of wine and hard liquor, was legitimized by
arguing on the basis of an analogy that, like grape
wine, they have an intoxicating effect. Al-Shafii’s
legal theory contributed significantly to the devel-
opment of Islamic jurisprudence, which remains in
effect today for many Muslims.
See also ijtihad; shaFii legal school; sharia.
Further reading: Norman Calder, Studies in Early
Muslim Jurisprudence (New York: Clarendon Press,
1993); Wael B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theo-
ries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafii, Islamic Jurisprudence:
Shafii’s Risala. Translated by Majid Khadduri (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961).
Shafii Legal School
Of the four main Sunni legal schools (sing. madh-
hab), one of the largest and most widespread, after
that of the Hanafis, is the Shafii Legal School. It
dates to the ninth century and bears the name of
its founder, mUhammad ibn idris al-shaFii (767–
820). Drawing on al-Shafii’s concept of the four
“roots” of Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh),
this school emphasizes the priority of revelation
based on the Quran and hadith over local cus-
tom and human reasoning. It was also a strong
proponent of ashari school of theology against
Mutazili rationalist theology.
It began with al-Shafii and his circle of students
in Fustat, Egypt, but the tradition first became sys-
tematized as a school in baghdad after al-Shafii’s
death. The founding theorist of the Shafii School
there was Ibn Surayj (d. 918), a prominent jurist
from Shiraz, Iran, who had become interested
in al-Shafii’s ideas via students of the Egyptian
scholar Ibrahim Muzani (d. 877), who had stud-
ied under al-Shafii. Although the school had early
branches as far west as andalUsia, it flourished
mainly in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Mecca and Medina,
Yemen, and Iran during the medieval period. Its
major rival in these lands was the hanaFi legal
school. In Khurasan (northeastern Iran), Shafii-
Hanafi rivalry became very intense, but in most
regions, the legal schools generally agreed to coex-
ist and agree to disagree. In some places the Sunni
schools actually shared the same madrasa, where
each had its own wing for teachers and students.
Examples include the mosque-madrasa complexes
of al-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1285–1341) and Sultan
Hasan (1347–61) in cairo. The Shafii School also
had a prayer station next to the kaaba in Mecca,
alongside those of the other Sunni schools, but all
were destroyed when the Saudis gained control of
Mecca in the early 20th century. Among the most
famous members of the Shafii School were the
scholars and mystics such as Abu al-Qasim Abd al-
Karim al-Qushayri (d. 1074), Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi
(d. 1083), abU hamid al-ghazali (d. 1111), and
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209).
Turkish rulers such as the Seljuks of Iran and
Iraq (1038–1194), the Seljuks of Anatolia (1077–
1307), and the Ottomans (1281–1922) favored
the Hanafi School, pushing the Shafiis out to the
outer limits of Islamdom. As a consequence of this
gradual process, the Shafii School now prevails in
East Africa, parts of Yemen, South India, indonesia,
and malaysia. Many Shafiis, however, still travel to
Egypt to study Shafii law at al-azhar University in
Cairo, not far from where Imam al-Shafii is buried.
See also sharia.Further reading: Richard W. Bulliet, Islam: The View
from the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press,Shafii Legal School 617 J