.(Imam) Ash-Shafi was in many ways Allah’s gift to Islamic jurisprudence. He not only defined the Sunnah ‘as the model behaviour of the Prophet’ but also carried the technical and legal thought of Islam ‘to a degree of competence and mastery which had not been achieved before and was hardly equalled and never surpassed after him” . From the introduction Ash Shafis Risalaha Basic Ideas
