SHAFI'IYAH

also called Madhhab Shafi'i, English Shafiites in Islam, one of the four Sunni schools of religious law, derived from the teachings of Abu 'Abd Allah ash-Shafi'i (767820). This legal school (madhhab) stabilized the bases of Islamic legal theory, admitting the validity of both divine will and human speculation. Rejecting provincial dependence on the living sunnah (traditional community practice) as the source of precedent, the Shafiites argued for the unquestioning acceptance of Hadith (traditions concerning the life and utterances of the Prophet) as the major basis for legal and religious judgments and the use of qiyas (analogical reasoning) when no clear directives could be found in the Qur'an or Hadith. Ijma' (consensus of scholars) was accepted but not stressed. The Shafi'i school predominates in eastern Africa, parts of Arabia, and Indonesia.