ŠAFITTA, RITE. - 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, b. at Gaza in Palestine in 767, who lived in 'Irāq and in Egypt, d. there in 820 A.D.
Characteristic 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 place to personal judgment (ra'j), of the Ḥanafite system. The use of ra'j or personal criterion, applicable especially in analogical deduction (qījās), is in fact admitted and practiced by Šāfi'ism, though to a lesser extent than by Ḥanafism, whose followers are par excellence ahl ar-ra'j (followers of the individual criterion) as opposed to the 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 in those of his more or less direct disciples, such as al-Muzanī, al-Ḥumajdī, Ibn Ḥanbal himself, Abū Ṭawr, etc. The principal centers of diffusion were Baghdad and Cairo, where the master taught, and from which the system conquered a good part of the Muslim world in the early Middle Ages. At present the largest bloc of followers of the Šāfi'ite school is among the Muslims of Indonesia (ca. 50 million); it also dominates in Lower Egypt, in East Africa (except Eritrea), in Palestine, in western and southern Arabia, in the coastal zones of India. In total, it may be considered second in number of followers among the four Muslim rites, with ca. 75 million adherents as against 110 million Ḥanafites. In the past, Šāfi'ism moreover dominated in countries from which it has currently been dislodged, as in Turkey (overcome in the 16th century by Ḥanafism) and in Persia (which passed in the same period to the Šī'ite heresy).