ʿAmr ibn Sawwād said, “Al-Shāfiʿī was the most generous of people with gold, silver, and food.”

He also told me that al-Shāfiʿī once said, “I have been reduced to bankruptcy three times in my life. I sold everything, great and small—even the jewelry of my daughter and my wife—yet I never pawned anything.” (1)

Al-Rabīʿ reported: “A man took hold of al-Shāfiʿī’s stirrup, so he said to me, ‘Give him four dinars and apologize to him for me.’” (2)

Saʿīd ibn Aḥmad al-Lakhmī of Egypt said: I heard al-Muzanī relate, “I was with al-Shāfiʿī one day when we went out to al-Akwām (3). He passed by a target where a man was shooting with an Arab bow. Al-Shāfiʿī stopped to watch; the archer was skilled and his arrows hit the mark. Al-Shāfiʿī said, ‘Well done,’ invoked blessing upon him, and then said, ‘Give him three dinars and convey my apologies to him.’” (4)

Al-Rabīʿ also said: “Al-Shāfiʿī was passing by the cobblers’ market when his whip fell. A young boy sprang forward, wiped it with his sleeve, and handed it to him, so he gave the boy seven dinars.” (5)

Al-Rabīʿ added: “When I married, al-Shāfiʿī asked me, ‘How much did you set as her dowry?’ I replied, ‘Thirty dinars, and I have already paid six of them.’ He thereupon gave me the remaining twenty-four dinars.” (6)