“My knowledge is with me wherever I head, and it serves me; my heart is its vessel, not the belly of a chest.”

Al-Mawardi quotes these lines as al-Shafi‘i’s on the authority of his student al-Rabi‘, in a passage on knowledge that is understood rather than merely carried. The authorship is not settled: Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr gives a version as the work of Mansur al-Faqih, and the Diwan compiled under al-Shafi‘i’s name has a different reading. The next line makes the point in every version: if I am at home, my knowledge is at home with me; if I am in the market, it is in the market.