ŠAFITTA, RITO. — One of the four great schools, or rites or juridical systems, of orthodox Islam, founded in the 9th century by the imām Muḥammad ibn Idrīs aš-Šāfi'i, born at Gaza in Palestine in 767, who lived in 'Irāq and Egypt and died there in 820 A.D.
The characteristic feature of his system is an intermediate or eclectic position between the positive and traditionalist attitude of the mālikite system, later exacerbated by ḥanbalism, and the independent method, which gives a large role to personal judgment (ra'j), of the hanafite system. The use of ra'j, or personal criterion, applicable above all in analogical deduction (qījās), is in fact admitted and practised by šāfi'ism, although to a lesser extent than by hanafism, whose adherents are pre-eminently ahl ar-ra'j (followers of individual judgment), as opposed to ahl al-ḥadīf (mālikites and ḥanbalites). The doctrines of aš-Šāfi'i are known from his original writings, preserved in the collection of the Kitāb al-umm, and from those of his more or less direct disciples, such as al-Muzanī, al-Ḥumajdī, Ibn Ḥanbal himself, Abū Ṭawr, etc. The principal centres of diffusion were Baghdad and Cairo, where the master taught and from which the system conquered a considerable part of the Muslim world during the High Middle Ages. At present, the largest bloc of followers of the šāfi'ite school is among the Muslims of Indonesia (approximately 50 million); it also predominates in Lower Egypt, East Africa (except Eritrea), Palestine, western and southern Arabia, and the coastal regions of India. Overall, it may be considered second in number of adherents among the four Muslim rites, with approximately 75 million followers, compared with 110 million hanafites. In the past, šāfi'ism also predominated in countries from which it has since been displaced, such as Turkey (overcome in the 16th century by hanafism) and Persia (which passed in the same period to the šī'ite heresy).