Too poor for paper, he wrote lessons on bones and reshaped Islamic law
As a boy in Mecca, al-Shafi'i reportedly scratched his lessons onto shoulder-bones because his mother could not buy paper. He grew up to write al-Risala, among the earliest books on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, and gave his name to one of the four Sunni legal schools.
Born in Gaza near Ashkelon around 767, he belonged to the Banu Muttalib, a Qurayshi clan closely related to Muhammad's own Banu Hashim. Noble descent did not bring money. After his father died, his mother took the two-year-old to Mecca, where relatives could help. Tradition says he had memorised the Qur'an by seven, knew Malik ibn Anas's Muwatta by heart at ten, and was allowed to issue rulings at fifteen. He also loved poetry and archery, pursuits of the Arab tribal elite.
In Medina he studied for years under Malik himself and always called him the Teacher, even after disagreeing with him. Around thirty he became Abbasid governor of Najran in Yemen, but factional rivalry caught up with him. In 803 he was hauled in chains to Harun al-Rashid at Raqqa, accused of helping an Alid revolt. Fellow suspects were executed; his own eloquence, or perhaps the intervention of the Hanafi jurist al-Shaybani, won his release, and he seems to have abandoned government service for good.
Studying with al-Shaybani in Baghdad produced what became known as his old school. He lectured at the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, where Ahmad ibn Hanbal, later founder of the Hanbali school, heard him, and he turned down a judgeship from the caliph al-Ma'mun. His greatest influence came after 814 in Egypt. Dictating to disciples who read his words back for correction, he revised his doctrine into a new school and produced the surviving version of the Risala and most of Kitab al-Umm.
His core move was to rank the sources of law, placing Muhammad's sayings and actions beside the Qur'an as revealed authority. The scholar John Burton credits him with making fiqh central to the religion itself. Early biographies are thick with legend, and even his death is uncertain: one story blames an attack by followers of a rival named Fityan, which Ibn Hajar doubted, while chronic illness also weakened him. He died in Fustat in January 820, aged 54.
Source: Al-Shafi'i
