Muhammad al-Shaybani

Muhammad al-Shaybani, who lived from 749 or 750 to 805, was an Arab Muslim jurist and legal theorist, one of the foremost students of Abu Hanifa, instrumental in preserving, systematizing and transmitting Hanafi legal doctrine. He also studied under Malik ibn Anas in Medina, which let him engage directly with differing legal methodologies and contributed to early comparative Islamic law. Modern scholars regard him as a foundational figure in the development of Islamic international law, particularly through his writing on siyar, the branch of Islamic law addressing relations between Muslim and non-Muslim polities, including warfare, treaties and diplomacy; his surviving legal writings are among the earliest systematic works of Islamic law and form a cornerstone of the classical Hanafi tradition. He died in 805 at Rey, in present-day Iran, on the same day as the grammarian al-Kisai.