Dawud al-Zahiri

Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī ibn Khalaf al-Ẓāhirī was a Persian Sunnī Muslim scholar, jurist, and theologian during the Islamic Golden Age, specialized in the study of Islamic law (sharīʿa) and the fields of hermeneutics, biographical evaluation, and historiography of early Islam. He was the eponymous founder of the Ẓāhirī school of thought (madhhab), the fifth school of thought in Sunnī Islam, characterized by its strict adherence to literalism and reliance on the outward (ẓāhir) meaning of expressions in the Quran and ḥadīth literature; the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the first generation of Muhammad's closest companions (ṣaḥāba), for sources of Islamic law (sharīʿa); and rejection of analogical deduction (qiyās) and societal custom or knowledge (urf), used by other schools of Islamic jurisprudence. He was a celebrated, if not controversial, figure during his time, being referred to in Islamic historiographical texts as "the scholar of the era."