Was al-Shafiʿi the Master Architect of Islamic Jurisprudence?

Abstract

During the last three or four decades, modern scholarship has increasingly come to recognize Muhammad Ibn Idris al-Shafiʿi (d. 820) as having played a most central role in the early development of Islamic jurisprudence. It was Joseph Schacht who, more than anyone else, demonstrated Shafiʿi's remarkable success in anchoring the entire edifice of the law not only in the Qurʾan, which by his time was taken for granted, but mainly, and more importantly, in the traditions of the Prophet. Shafiʿi's prominent status has been further bolstered by the fact that he was the first Muslim jurist ever to articulate his legal theory in writing, in what has commonly become known as al-Risāla .