Muhammad al-Shaybani

Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani was one of the architects of the Hanafi school, one of the four surviving Sunni schools of Islamic law (madhhabs). He is traditionally said to have been born at Wasit in Iraq around 132 AH (749-750 CE) and raised in nearby Kufa, the home of the legal circle founded by Abu Hanifa. Reports hold that he studied briefly with Abu Hanifa before that master's death and then completed his training under Abu Hanifa's senior pupil, Abu Yusuf. He is also said to have traveled to Medina to study with Malik ibn Anas, transmitting Malik's hadith collection, the Muwatta.

His lasting importance lies in writing things down. Working in Baghdad, the Abbasid capital, he composed six books later called the zahir al-riwaya ("manifest narrations") — the texts through which the Hanafi school is most reliably transmitted. Among them is the Kitab al-Siyar al-Kabir, a pioneering treatise on what later scholars call siyar, the rules governing war, peace, diplomacy, and the treatment of non-Muslims; it is often described as a foundation of Islamic international law.

Under the caliph Harun al-Rashid he served as a judge (qadi), reportedly at Raqqa, before being dismissed and later reinstated. Tradition relates that he accompanied the caliph eastward and died at Rayy, near present-day Tehran, around 189 AH (804-805 CE) — by a much-repeated report, on the same day as the grammarian al-Kisa'i. Among his own students was al-Shafi'i, who founded a rival school yet kept deep respect for his teacher.