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Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ash-Shāfiʿī

Savant

A life dedicated to the Quran, the Sunnah and the search for truth Among the great figures in the history of fiqh, few scholars occupy a place as unique as Imam Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ash-Shāfiʿī. Jurist, hadith specialist, linguist, teacher and author, he was one of the most influential scholars of his time. His name is today associated with one of the four great Sunni legal schools, but to reduce his life to the sole founding of a madhhab would be to miss the point. Because the life of ash-Shāfiʿī is above all the story of a man who devoted his existence to the search for knowledge. Orphaned and from a modest background, he grew up without the material facilities that could have encouraged an intellectual career. However, from his childhood, he showed an exceptional thirst for knowledge. He memorized the Quran, became interested in the Arabic language, studied poetry, hadith and fiqh, traveled to meet the greatest scholars of his time and confronted different legal traditions. He was notably a student of Imam Mālik ibn Anas in Medina and studied with Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ash-Shaybānī, one of the main representatives of the Iraqi legal school. This encounter with different intellectual traditions played a major role in the formation of his thought. Ash-Shāfiʿī was not simply a transmitter of what he had learned. He sought to understand the foundations of legal reasoning and to establish a method for returning to the Quran and the Sunnah with rigor. But his legacy does not lie only in his books. Those who lived with him also reported his humility in the face of the truth, his generosity, his piety, his attachment to the Quran and his refusal to consider knowledge as a means of domination over others. 1. A Quraysh origin Its full name is: Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿUthmān ibn Shāfiʿ ibn as-Sāʾib ibn ʿUbayd ibn ʿAbd Yazīd ibn Hāshim ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf al-Qurashī al-Muṭṭalibī. It is thus attached to Quraysh and more precisely to Banū al-Muṭṭalib. His ancestor Shāfiʿ ibn as-Sāʾib belongs to the same lineage as ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the grandfather of the Prophet ﷺ. His membership in this noble lineage explains the name under which he became famous: ash-Shāfiʿī. His mother was from the Azd. Biographical sources report various details concerning his origins and the first years of his life, in particular concerning his exact place of birth. The most widely reported tradition places his birth in Gaza, Palestine, in the year 150 AH, or approximately 767 CE. This same year corresponds to the death of Imam Abū Ḥanīfa. His father, Idrīs, died when he was still very young. Ash-Shāfiʿī therefore grew up without a father, raised by his mother. This difficult childhood would have a profound impact on his career. 2. The poor child who chooses knowledge The family of ash-Shāfiʿī did not have great resources. His mother, however, quickly understood that her son had a special disposition for learning. She took him to Mecca when he was still a child, so that he could grow up among the Quraysh and receive a religious and linguistic education. It was in Mecca that his journey would truly begin. But his first talent was not necessarily fiqh. Stories say that he excelled in archery in particular. He would have reached a remarkable level, to the point of making nine out of ten shots, then ten out of ten. This detail may seem anecdotal. However, it reveals something of his character: when he undertook something, he devoted himself to it seriously. This disposition would then manifest itself in his relationship to knowledge. 3. The Quran, the Arabic language and memory At a very young age, ash-Shāfiʿī turned to learning the Quran. Sources report that he memorized the Quran at the age of seven. He studied in particular with Ismāʿīl ibn Qusṭanṭīn, who was one of the transmitters of Meccan recitation. But his interest was not limited to memorization. He understood very early that understanding the revealed text also required a deep mastery of the Arabic language. He therefore devoted himself to grammar, poetry, literature and the linguistic uses of the Arabs. He even spent many years with Arab tribes in order to perfect his Arabic and acquire direct knowledge of their language. This linguistic training would become one of the characteristics of his legal method. For him, understanding a text was not just about knowing the words. It was necessary to understand their meaning, their context, their use and the different possibilities offered by the language. It is in particular this mastery which then allowed him to work with precision on the texts of the Quran and the Sunnah. 4. The young student from Mecca Mecca was then an important center of knowledge. Ash-Shāfiʿī met several major scholars there. Among his teachers are: Muslim ibn Khālid al-Zanjī, mufti of Mecca; Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna; Dāwūd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿAṭṭār; Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Shāfiʿ; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Bakr al-Mulaykī; Saʿīd ibn Sālim; al-Fuḍayl ibn…