sentences:  Shafi'i's treatise received its name owing to a traditional, though unverified, story that Shafi'i composed the work in response to a request from a leading traditionist in Basra, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Mahdī; the story goes that Ibn Mahdī wanted Shafi'i to explain the legal significance of the Quran and the sunna, and the "Risāla" was Shafi'i's response.In this work, al-Shafi'i is said to have outlined four sources of Islamic law, though this division based on four has been attributed to later commentators on the work rather than to Shafi'i himself.Al-Shafi'i is said he revised and re-read Al-Risala four hundred times.