Over 1,200 years pass since death of Imam al-Shafi'i

By Aydogan Kalabalik

TRIPOLI (AA) - On the 1,201st year since having died, the founder of one of the major schools of Islamic law is still followed across the Muslim world.

Founded by Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i, the Shafi’i school is one of the four major orthodox legal schools of Sunni Islam, known as Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaah, along with the Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of thought.

Th founder of the Hanbali school, Ahmad ibn Hanbal was himself a student of Imam al-Shafi'i.

Commonly known as Shafi'i, he was born in Gaza city in the year 767 and died in the Cairo, Egypt on Jan. 20, 820.

The mausoleum of Shafi'i, which is currently under restoration, is located in Cairo.

Commonly known as Imam al-Shafi'i, he belonged to the same tribe as the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, the Qurayshi.

Al-Shafi'i changed some of his ideas on jurisprudence when he arrived in Egypt, Ramadan Abdurrazik, a professor at the department of Islamic law at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, told Anadolu Agency.

"He taught people the method of Islamic fiqh [jurisprudence] and that the understanding of fiqh can be reinterpreted according to facts," Abdurrazik said.

*Writing by Zehra Nur Duz in Ankara