Death of Imam al-Shāfiʿī

Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī died in Fusṭāṭ at the end of Rajab 204, aged fifty-four. Quraysh-born, Makkah- and Madinah-trained under Mālik, tried for sedition and acquitted before hāRūn al-Rashīd, he arrived in Egypt in his final years and there rewrote his school from scratch — the "new" madhhab dictated in the Egyptian works.

His Risālah organised the sources of law — Qurʾān, sunnah, consensus, analogy — into a discipline; uṣūl al-fiqh as a science is conventionally dated from it. The school bearing his name became dominant from Egypt through the Ḥijāz to Southeast Asia.

Al-Dhahabī specifies the last night of Rajab; most sources are content with the month, and this entry records the month.