The Imam Who Could Have Been a Poet
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Welcome. Most people know Imam al-Shafi’i as one of the four great imams of law, the man whose school of fiqh is followed today from Egypt to Indonesia. Fewer people know that he was also a poet. And his poems are still quoted, on walls, in sermons, and in the margins of student notebooks, more than twelve hundred years later.
He was born in Gaza, in Palestine, in the year one hundred and fifty, the very year that Imam Abu Hanifa died. His father died when he was small, and his mother, who was poor, took him to Makkah, so that he would not lose his lineage. He memorised the Qur’an as a young boy, lived for years among the desert Arabs to learn pure Arabic and its poetry, and then travelled to Madinah to study with Imam Malik.
He could have become a great poet. One of the verses attributed to him says, if it were not that poetry lowers the standing of scholars, I would be a greater poet today than Labid. Labid was one of the most famous poets of the Arabs.
So al-Shafi’i chose knowledge. But he kept a few verses, short, sharp, and full of wisdom. One note before we begin: the Diwan we have today was collected long after his death, and scholars say that not every verse in it can be proven to be his. So we will say, verses attributed to him. What we will listen to are not long love poems, but lessons for living, each one small enough to carry in your pocket.
