Abu Nuʿaym relates: Ibn al-Muqriʾ narrated to us, “I heard Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Marwazi say, from ʿUmar ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, from his father, ‘I heard al-Shafiʿi say:

“While I was travelling in search of knowledge I entered Yemen. I was told that in that land there lived a person whose body from the waist down was that of a woman, whereas from the waist up it divided into two separate trunks, with four arms, two heads and two faces. I wished to look at her, but I did not deem it lawful until I had formally sought her father’s permission to marry her. When I entered, I found her exactly as I had been told. I still recall the two of them quarrelling, slapping one another, then reconciling and eating together.

“After that I left her and stayed away from that town—he (ʿUmar) thinks he said for two years—then I returned. I was informed, ‘May Allah grant you solace; the single body has died.’ They tied it from below with a rope, left it until it withered, then cut it off and buried it.’

Al-Shafiʿi added, ‘I still remember that single body moving to and fro in the marketplace—or something close to that.’” (1)

This is an astonishing, repudiated tale, and there are unknown narrators in its chain of transmission.

Al-Shafiʿi also said, “Nothing has reduced the price of black slaves except the weakness of their intellects; as for the colour, it is merely one among other colours.” (2)

Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Asbahani reported: al-Rabiʿ told us, “Al-Shafiʿi used to complete sixty full recitations of the Quran during Ramadan.” (6)