Shafi'i School

Al-Nawawi (1233-1277) was a Shafi'i jurist and hadith scholar of Damascus who died at forty-four having written some of the most widely used books in Sunni Islam, including Riyad al-Salihin, the Forty Hadith, and the standard Shafi'i legal manual.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (1445-1505 CE) was an Egyptian scholar of the late Mamluk period and the most prolific author in Islamic literature. His Al-Itqan remains the standard classical survey of the Qur'anic sciences, and his Tadrib al-Rawi a principal manual of hadith method.

Ibn Kathir (c. 1300-1373) was a Shafi'i scholar of Mamluk Damascus whose commentary on the Quran and universal history became two of the most widely read works in Sunni Islam. He studied under al-Mizzi, al-Dhahabi and Ibn Taymiyya.

Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (767–820 CE) founded the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence and was the architect of Islamic legal theory. His Al-Risala established the first systematic framework for deriving law from its sources, resolving a crisis of conflicting legal opinions.

Islam reached Southeast Asia through Indian Ocean trade from the thirteenth century, spreading via Muslim merchants, Sufi teachers, and converting rulers. Today the region holds the world's largest Muslim population, with Indonesia home to more Muslims than any Arab country.

The madhabs, the schools of Islamic law that developed methods for deriving rulings from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Four Sunni schools and the Shi'a traditions have guided Muslim practice for over a millennium; they are schools of method, not sects.