The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

al-Shafi‘i, Muhammad b. Idris (767–820)

Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi‘i is important for the large corpus of early legal texts preserved in his name, for central contributions to early Islamic legal theory, and as the namesake of the Shafi‘i school of legal thought (madhhab). He is not known as a political theorist, but his placement of hadiths (traditions from the Prophet, the main source of Islamic law together with the Qur’an) at the center of the law’s structure contributed to the process by which scholarly authority supplanted that of the caliphs. Scholarly control over the study, transmission, and elaboration of the sources of Islamic law—especially the hadith—allowed scholars to become the exclusive discoverers and formulators of that law and to attribute its authority to God and the Prophet.

Indirect glimpses of Shafi‘i’s political views occasionally surface in his writings. In his Risala (a work on legal theory) he justifies juristic reliance on the khabar al-wāḥid (a hadith report transmitted by only one person in Muhammad’s generation) by analogizing from the fact that the earliest Muslims delegated political authority to individuals, and he names, presumably with approval, the caliphs Abu Bakr, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, and ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan. Some of his views on positive law place constitutional limits on caliphal authority (e.g., in dealing with rebels), but they are well within the mainstream of proto-Sunni legal thought.

The tradition preserves hints of an inclination toward Shi‘ism. In the chapter on Muslim rebels (ahl al-baghy) of his Kitab al-Umm (his main work on positive law), Shafi‘i cites a tradition favoring lenient treatment, the isnād (chain of transmitters), which consists of three Shi‘i imams: Ja‘far al-Sadiq, Muhammad al-Baqir, and ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin. The tradition itself has Marwan b. al-Hakam (Umayyad caliph, r. 684–85) praise another Shi‘i imam, Husayn b. ‘Ali. Mild sympathy for Shi‘i political aspirations would be consistent with the views of other early heroes of Sunnism, such as the Medinan jurist Malik b. Anas (d. 795), Shafi‘i’s most important teacher (in terms of both fame and frequency of citation in Shafi‘i’s works) and namesake of another of the four Sunni madhhabs.

Like most other aspects of his life, details of Shafi‘i’s contacts with the holders of power remain murky. According to some traditions, he traveled to Yemen, possibly assisting a local judge, but other traditions portray him as traveling there for study or even for pro-Shi‘i agitation. A state connection is possible, since he seems to have discussed the taxation of non-Muslim communities while there. One cluster of narratives portrays him in Baghdad displaying his wit before the caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), but this may be a literary topos. He does seem to have traveled to Egypt in the company of the Abbasid governor’s son in 814, but evidently this contact did not avail him, and he was compelled to rely on the generosity of a colleague when he settled in Egypt shortly thereafter. While in Egypt, Shafi‘i seems to have been active in local politics in regard to the appointment of local officials. The student who became the primary transmitter of Shafi‘is writings, Rabi‘ b. Sulayman al-Muradi (d. 884), was employed by the state as a prayer caller (muezzin). After Shafi‘i’s death, during the continuing prosecution of the Mu‘tazili-inspired inquisition (miḥna) under the caliph Wathiq (r. 842–47), it is reported that his students were barred from the congregational mosque in Old Cairo (Fustat). However, in a typical portrait of a proto-Sunni religious figure, Shafi‘i’s earliest biographer, the hadith scholar Ibn Abi Hatim al-Razi (d. 938), emphasizes neither political views nor political (or any other of his worldly) entanglements, concentrating instead on piety and commitment to Prophetic tradition as a source of law.