Shafi'i school

The '''Shafi'i school''' () is one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, belonging to the Ahl al-Hadith tradition. It is named after the Muslim scholar, jurist, and traditionist al-Shafi'i (), also known as "the father of Muslim jurisprudence", in the early 9th century. One who subscribes to the Shafi'i school is called a Shafi'i (, or ).

The other three schools of Sunnī jurisprudence are Ḥanafī, Mālikī and Ḥanbalī. Like the other schools of fiqh, Shafii recognize the First Four Caliphs as the Islamic prophet Muhammad's rightful successors and relies on the Qurʾān and the "sound" books of Ḥadīths as primary sources of law. The Shafi'i school affirms the authority of both divine law-giving (the Qurʾān and the Sunnah) and human speculation regarding the Law. Where passages of Qurʾān and/or the Ḥadīths are ambiguous, the school seeks guidance of Qiyās (analogical reasoning). The Ijmā' (consensus of scholars or of the community) was "accepted but not stressed". The school rejected the dependence on local traditions as the source of legal precedent and rebuffed the Ahl al-Ra'y (personal opinion) and the Istiḥsān (juristic discretion).

The Shafi'i school is followed by more than 350 million people, comprising around 17.5% of the Muslim population worldwide. As such, it is the third-largest Sunni school and is followed predominantly in Lower Egypt, the Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia and among the Kurdish Muslim population throughout Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Shafii school was widely followed in the Middle East until the rise of the Ottomans and the Safavids. Traders and merchants helped to spread Shafii Islam across the Indian Ocean, as far as Southeast Asia. Provided by Wikipedia