SHĀFIʿĪ, AL- (AH 150–208/767–820 CE), more fully Muḥammad ibn Idrīs, was the founder of a school of law and the author of several works of Islamic law (sharīʿah). Perhaps more important, he wrote the first treatise of jurisprudence in Islam, in which he discussed the nature and sources of law and developed a legal methodology for the systematic study of the sharīʿah.

Al-Shāfiʿī flourished in the early Abbasid period, a time of consolidation for the Islamic empire. Even before the Abbasid dynasty had been established, Muslim jurists were grappling with legal problems resulting from the rapid expansion of the empire and the absorption of new elements of law and local tradition. As a consequence, the Islamic community abounded in legal doctrines, and several schools of law had emerged in...