controverted when proved inequitable. He recognized the authority of customs and usages, but exercised and inculcated independence of judgment to such an extent that he and his followers were called “upholders of private judgment” (ahl al-ra’y) by the followers of other schools.
The second famous jurist, Mālik ibn Anas, was born in Madīnah in 93 A.H. (713 A.D.); he worked and died there at the age of eighty-two. He limited himself almost entirely to the ḥadīth which he found in Madīnah, relating more especially to the practice which prevailed there, and his system of jurisprudence is based entirely on the Ḥadīth and practices of the people of Madīnah. He was scrupulously careful in giving judgment, and whenever he had the least doubt as to the correctness of his decision, he would say: “I do not know.” His book, Muwaṭṭā, though a comparatively small collection of Ḥadīth, and limited only to the ḥadīth and practices of the people of Madīnah, is the first work of its kind, and one of the most authoritative.
The third jurist, Abū Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfi‘ī, was born in Palestine in the year 150 A.H. (767 A.D.). He passed his youth at Makkah, but he worked for the most part in Egypt, where he died in 204 A.H. In his day he was unrivalled for his knowledge of the Holy Qur’ān, and took immense pains in studying the Ḥadīth, travelling from place to place in search of information. He was intimately acquainted with the Ḥanafī and the Mālikī schools of thought, but that which he himself founded was based largely on Ḥadīth, as distinguished from the Ḥanafī system which was founded on the Holy Qur’ān and made very little use of Ḥadīth. Over the Mālikī system, which is also based on Ḥadīth, it had this advantage that the Ḥadīth made use of by Shāfi‘ī was more extensive, and was collected from different centres, while Mālik contented himself only with what he found at Madīnah.