Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafiʿi (767-820) was one of Islam's foundational legal thinkers. Shafiʿi considered law vital to social and cosmic order: the key obligation of each Muslim was to obey God, and it was through knowing and following the law that human beings fulfilled this duty. Drawing on the most recent scholarship on Shafi'i's work as well as her own investigations of his life and writ…