Editing Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi’i (section)

==Shafi’i School==
One of Shafi’i’s greatest accomplishments was to systematize analogical reasoning. According to Shafi’i, the jurisprudent looks for a strictly defined condition common to known and unknown cases, concerning which there is a certain ruling from elsewhere in Quran or hadith. So, for example, the Quran expressly forbids grape wine; the reason (''ma’na'' in Shafi’i’s exposition, ''‘illa'' in the later tradition of ''usul al-fiqh'') is that it intoxicates (not, say, that it is red or imported from Byzantine territory); date wine also intoxicates; therefore, date wine also is forbidden.

Later writers in the Shafi’i tradition argued expressly that the law had basically four sources, meaning four sorts of evidence by which the jurisprudent discerned God’s will: Quran, hadith, consensus, and analogy. However, Lowry has shown that the ''Risala'' itself ultimately recognizes only two sources, Quran and hadith. For Shafi’i, analogy is just a means toward understanding the application of Quran and hadith. His concept of consensus is fairly undeveloped. However, as made explicit by later tradition, consensus does not invent new ordinances but rather rests on data from the Quran and hadith lost to later generations but known to the Companions of the Prophet, who could scarcely have agreed unanimously without the hardest evidence.