Shāfiʿī, inIslam, one of the fourSunni schools of religious law, derived from the teachings ofMuḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (767–820). This legal school (madhhab) stabilized the bases of Islamic legal theory, affirming the authority of both divine law-giving and human speculation regarding the law. Rejecting provincial dependence on traditionalcommunity practice as the source of precedent, the Shāfiʿī jurists argued for the unquestioning acceptance of theHadith (traditions concerning the life and utterances of the Prophet Muhammad) as the major basis for legal and religious judgments and for the use of analogical reasoning (qiyās) when no clear directives could be found in theQurʾānor the Hadith. Theconsensus of scholars or of the community (ijmāʿ) was accepted but not stressed. The Shāfiʿī school predominates ineastern Africa, parts of Arabia, andIndonesia, as well as among the Kurds.