Dawud al-Zahiri

Dawud ibn Ali ibn Khalaf al-Zahiri, who lived from about 815 to 883 or 884, was a Persian Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist and theologian who founded the Zahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence, described by later tradition as the fifth school of thought in Sunni Islam. The Zahiri approach called for strict adherence to the literal, outward meaning of the Quran and hadith, rejecting both analogical reasoning and societal custom as sources of law and accepting only the consensus of the first generation of Muhammad's companions as an additional legal authority. He was a celebrated, if controversial, figure in his own time, referred to in Islamic sources as the scholar of the era.