Al-Sha’bi has been appointed among the first jurists of leading Islamic law, including ʽAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʽani and Ibn Abi Shaybah.
Accounts attributed to him primarily concern themselves with conquests in eastern provinces of the caliphate, and one deals with the chronology of the life of Muhammad.
[7] However, the branch of Banū Hassān ibn ʿAmr which al-Shaʿbī belonged had already joined the tribe of Banu Hamdān in Yemen before al-Sha'bi born.
[15] Later, Al-Sha'bi later gained huge reputation that caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan entrusted him with the education of his children.
He marched within the ranks of Quran memorizers under Ibn al-Ash'ath against al-Hajjaj and also attended the Battle of Deir al-Jamajim.
When he learned that al-Hajjaj promised amnesty for those who joined the army of Qutayba ibn Muslim in Khorasan province, al-Sha'bi traveled east on a donkey.
[21] At some point of his lifetime, there were emergence of four political-religious extreme movements; consisted of Qadariyah, Murji'ah, Kharijites, and Shiite.
One report states that al-Sha'bī left the mosque in resignation after the arrivals of new scholars in Kufa, such as Hammād ibn Abī Sulaimān, the teacher of Abū Hanīfa,[23] or al-Hakam ibn ʿUtba (d. 733)[24] According to one of his students named ʿAlī al-Ghudānī, Al-Sha'bi has met with more than 500 Companions of the Prophet during his lifetime.
[26] Al-Sha'bi was of the leading Muslim chronicler who focused on narratives on the Islamic history discipline of Maghazi (expeditions and conquests).
[30] Makhūl ibn Abī Muslim al-Shamī, another Tabi'un contemporary and prominent Hadith scholar, has praised al-Sha'bi for his jurisprudensic expertise,[31] and his knowledge of sunnah.
In particular, the notable fatwa produced by al-Sha'bi was the Fiqh ruling of the inheritance regarding intersex (Hermaphrodite) person, or Khunta Al-Mushkal; which in Islamic jurisprudence means his or her physical (genital organs) and sexual characteristics (beard, voice, or menstruation) cannot be determined; hence the jurisprudensic consequence of this fatwa ruled that a hermaphrodite person has the rights of the half portion of each male and female inheritage portion from his or her parents.
[38] Ibn Qudamah has recorded the Hanbali school of though also takes this rulings of Al-Sha'bi that if a questioned hermaphrodite still not reaching puberty when the inheritance from the parents is about to be shared.