al-Layth ibn Sa'd

Al-Layth ibn Sa'd (Abu al-Harith al-Fahmi) was the leading jurist (faqih) and traditionist (a transmitter of hadith, the reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) of Egypt in his generation. He was born in 94 AH / 713 CE in the village of Qalqashanda near Fustat, the early Muslim garrison-city beside present-day Cairo. He carried the tribal name al-Fahmi as a client (mawla) of the Arab tribe Fahm; the biographer al-Dhahabi reports a family tradition of Persian descent from Isfahan, which scholars note is not a settled fact.

He studied first under Egyptian teachers, then, by tradition around 113 AH, travelled to the Hijaz to learn from masters such as al-Zuhri and Ata' ibn Abi Rabah, before returning to Fustat to teach and issue legal opinions (fatwas). He became Egypt's chief mufti and, it is reported, declined the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur's offer to govern Egypt, preferring scholarship.

He is remembered for a respectful written exchange with the Medinan jurist Malik ibn Anas, recorded by later writers such as Ibn al-Qayyim, in which he questioned whether the "practice of the people of Medina" truly reflected consensus. Some later scholars transmit al-Shafi'i's remark that al-Layth was a finer jurist than Malik, though tradition adds that al-Layth's students did not preserve his teachings in writing. His own legal school therefore faded within a century, displaced by the Shafi'i school in Egypt. He died in Fustat in 175 AH / 791 CE.