Al-Aqṭaʿ: his identity is unknown.
In The Merits of al-Shāfiʿī by al-Āburī (1) it is related: I heard al-Zubayr ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Hamadhānī say, “ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā informed us, ‘I heard al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān say:
“Al-Shāfiʿī was born on the very day Abū Ḥanīfah passed away—may Allah, Exalted is He, have mercy on them both (2).”’”
Al-Shāfiʿī also said, “I came to Mālik when I was thirteen years old”—so he stated, though it appears he was actually twenty-three—“I went to a cousin of mine who was the governor of Medina, and he spoke to Mālik on my behalf. Mālik said, ‘Look for someone who can read to you.’ I replied, ‘I will read myself.’ I then read to him, and on occasion he would say to me about something that had already passed, ‘Repeat it,’ so I would repeat it from memory, which seemed to please him. After that I asked him one legal question and he answered me, then another, whereupon he said, ‘You must want to become a qāḍī (judge) (3).’”
It is further narrated from al-Shāfiʿī: “I lived among the Arab tribes for twenty years, collecting their poetry and dialects, and I memorised the Quran; never did a single letter pass me except that I had….”
(1) Abu al-Hasan Muhammad b. al-Husayn b. Ibrahim al-Abri al-Sijistani (d. 363 AH/973 CE). Abur is a village within the district of Sijistan. Al-Subki, in his Tabaqat, 1/344, describes this book as extensive and arranged in seventy-four chapters.
(2) Manaqib al-Bayhaqi, 1/72; Manaqib al-Razi, p. 8. Tawali al-Ta’sis, p. 49, states: “There is no disagreement about his date of birth; they all agree that he was born in 150 AH, the year in which Abu Hanifa died—an indication that he would succeed him in his field. Some claimed he was born on the very day Abu Hanifa died, but this was rejected as unfounded. Yet al-Abri, in his Manaqib al-Shafi‘i, transmits with a sound chain from al-Rabi‘ b. Sulayman: ‘Al-Shafi‘i was born the day Abu Hanifa died.’ This wording is open to interpretation, for the term ‘day’ (yawm) is often used more loosely to mean ‘that general time period.’
(3) The report appears in al-Bayhaqi’s Manaqib al-Shafi‘i, 1/101, with the phrase: “You must be a judge (qadi).” See also: Abu Nu‘aym, Hilyat al-awliya’, 9/69; Tawali al-Ta’sis, p. 51; Adab al-Shafi‘i, pp. 27–28; Manaqib al-Razi, pp. 9–10; Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, al-Intiqa’, pp. 68–69; Ibn ‘Asakir, Tarikh Dimashq, 14/402.