SAFII'ITA, RITE. — One of the four great schools, or rites, or juridical systems of orthodox Islam, founded in the 9th century by the imam MUḤAMMAD IBN IDRĪS AS-SAFFĪ, born in Gaza in Palestine in 767, who lived in Iraq and Egypt and died there in 820 A.D.
A characteristic of his system is an intermediate or eclectic position between the positive and traditionalistic attitude of the Mālikite system, later exacerbated by the Ḥanbalite school, and the independent method, making wide use of personal judgment (ra') of the Ḥanafite system. The use of ra' or personal criterion, applicable above all in analogical deduction (qiyās), is indeed admitted and practiced by the Shāfi'ite school, though to a lesser extent than by the Ḥanafites, whose followers are pre-eminently ahl ar-ra'y (adherents of individual judgment) as opposed to the ahl al-ḥadīth (Mālikites and Ḥanbalites). The doctrines of as-Sāfi'ī are known from his original writings, preserved in the collection of the Kitāb al-umm, and in those of his more or less direct disciples, such as al-Muzanī, al-Ḥumaydī, Ibn Ḥanbal himself, Abū Tawr, etc. The main centers of diffusion were Baghdad and Cairo, where the master taught and from which the system conquered in the early Middle Ages a large part of the Muslim world. At present the largest block of followers of the Shāfi'ite school is among the Muslims of Indonesia (about 50 million); it also dominates in Lower Egypt, in East Africa (except Eritrea), in Palestine, in western and southern Arabia, and in the coastal regions of India. In all, it may be considered to occupy second place in number of adherents among the four Muslim rites, with about 75 million followers as against 110 million Ḥanafites. In the past, Shāfi'ism also dominated in countries from which it has since been ousted, such as Turkey (supplanted in the 16th century by Ḥanafism) and Persia (which passed in the same period to the Shī'ite heresy).