Early Islam in Medina

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Early Islam in Medina
Mālik and His Muwaṭṭa’

Yasin Dutton
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 Contents

List of tables vi
A note on the text vii

Introduction 1
1 The man and his family 9
2 His teachers 15
3 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 39
4 The ʿamal of the people of Medina 63
5 Controversies, ancient and modern 79
Conclusion 117

Glossary 119
Notes 123
Bibliography 135
Index 141
 Tables

1 Mālik’s Main Teachers 16

2 Differences between the Transmissions in the Book of Zakāt 51
3 Differences between the Transmissions in the Book of Fasting 56
 A note on the text

For the sake of brevity and in order not to overburden the text, I have aimed
to minimize references where the material is commonly available in multiple
sources and not subject to dispute. (This is especially the case with the more
biographical material in Chapter 1.) I have, however, relied heavily on two
works in particular which I do reference where appropriate within the text.
These are Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s Kitāb al-Tamhīd (especially in Chapter 2) and
Qadi ʿIyāḍ’s Tartīb al-Madārik (especially in Chapter 4). This is no accident.
Both authors were giants in their field, and, as far as their knowledge is
concerned, it would be decidedly perverse to try to reinvent the wheel. I have
therefore accorded them a high degree of trust in what they have transmitted.
As is the practice in books relating to the early Islamic period, dates are
given in both the traditional Hijrī dating (which is how they are found in the
sources) and also in their equivalent Common Era form. However, although
I have tried to exercise common sense when converting from one to the other,
the mismatch between a year in the Hijrī lunar calendar and a year in the
Common Era solar calendar means that an exact equivalent is not always
identifiable; and where, for example, a number of options are given for a
person’s date of death in Hijrī terms, it has seemed too pedantic to give ‘double’
options for all possible dates in Common Era terms. It should therefore be
remembered that, although I have aimed at accuracy in every instance, it may
not have always been attained. In short, dates in general should be treated with
a certain amount of caution.
Several key Arabic terms are used throughout the text in a transliterated
form. These are explained at their first usage and also listed in the Glossary.
Honorific titles such as ‘Qadi’ and ‘Imam’ have been Anglicized and used in
front of names which are commonly referred to with those titles. Where there
is uncertainty about the spelling or identification of a name, this is indicated
by a question mark in brackets.
The reader should also be aware at the outset that this text is not a biography
of Mālik, although it does contain significant biographical material about him.
viii A Note on the Text

Nor is it a history of the Mālikī school, or of any of the other schools, although
it does contain significant reference to their historical development. In
particular, it should be noted that the general purview is one of a pre-madhhab
(school of law) time before the development of any distinction between ‘Sunnī’
and ‘Shīʿī’ schools of law.
All translations from classical Arabic texts are my own.
 Introduction

This book follows on from two particular works of mine on the subject. In
the first, The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur’an, the Muwaṭṭaʾ and Madinan
ʿAmal (1999), I aimed to provide a more nuanced understanding of the bases of
Islamic law whereby the Qur’an is seen as the stimulus of a legal activity which
is initially expressed through the non-textual sources of sunna (‘normative
practice’, especially of the Prophet) and ʿamal (‘practice’, especially the Practice
of the People of Medina), rather than the textual source of ḥadīth (‘reports’)
as is usually assumed. These themes were continued in Original Islam: Mālik
and the Madhhab of Madina (2007), where the aim was to negotiate medieval
discussions of the same to a modern readership. In the present work, Early
Islam in Medina: Mālik and his Muwaṭṭaʾ, we go beyond the first two, filling
in certain gaps and expanding certain arguments, in order to arrive at a better
understanding of the early period of Islam and its subsequent development.
One might ask, what is the importance of Mālik and his Muwaṭṭaʾ? An
initial answer might be that Mālik is one of the founders – if we can accept that
term – of one of the four, still existing, main Sunni schools of Islamic law – that
of the Mālikīs. (The other three are the Ḥanafīs, the Shāfiʿīs, and the Ḥanbalīs,
although historically there were others; there are of course other schools
among the Shīʿa.) One might also say that Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ is effectively the
first complete formulation of Islamic law – complete in the sense of providing
some coverage of all the main topics. Or one might say that it is one of the
earliest extensive collections of Prophetic ḥadīth and thus is significant in a
textual history sense.
It is all these things, but in a sense its importance lies beyond all of these
considerations. It presents what is possibly our earliest picture of a fully
functioning Muslim society, not in its sociological sense – although there is
some reference to that – but as a portrait of the prime legal parameters within
2 Early Islam in Medina

which that society lived, that is, the parameters of Islam. Most importantly,
it shows us an Islam that manifested primarily as action, rather than the
written word.
The context of this book is the context of contemporary Euro-American
scholarship on Islamic studies, particularly regarding the origins of Islamic
law. For most of the twentieth century, the field seems to have been dominated
by two figures, Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht. (It is significant that
both Goldziher and Schacht were the authors of the articles on ‘Fiḳh’ (= fiqh;
loosely, ‘Islamic law and jurisprudence’) in the first and second editions,
respectively, of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.) Goldziher, in his very influential
Muhammedanische Studien (1889–90), propounded his view that the whole
genre of ḥadīth was not to be trusted, while Schacht, in his equally, if not more,
influential Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950), reinforced and
extended this scepticism to include Islamic law (see further Chapter 5). Since
that time, the general trend – although not without counter-voices – seems to
have been to affirm this dominance of the field. David Powers, for example,
in his Studies in Qur’an and Ḥadīth (1986), while noting the reservations of
scholars such as Coulson and Azami in particular, and his own identification
of certain ‘fundamental weaknesses’ in Schacht’s work, nevertheless refers to
it as ‘the benchmark of all modern studies on this subject’.1 In a similar vein,
Norman Calder, in his Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (1993), claims
that ‘Schacht’s depiction of the stages through which Islamic law has developed,
though frequently challenged, has never been seriously undermined’.2 Shortly
afterwards, Christopher Melchert, in his Formation of the Sunni Schools of
Law (1997), wrote that Schacht

knew the legal sources better than any predecessor among Western scholars,
and his work on Islamic law … marks the greatest advance since Goldziher’s.
Much remains to be done, but for the early period it will be done on the basis
of Schacht.3

Perhaps. But in that case all who try to do so will have to undo Schacht’s
understanding of ‘the ancient schools’, including the Medinan school that
Mālik was presenting, and representing, in his Muwaṭṭaʾ. For Schacht, in
highlighting al-Shāfiʿī’s role in championing Prophetic ḥadīth as the gateway
to the sunna effectively denied the role of the Prophet in the sunna as it was
 Introduction 3

understood by the ‘ancient’ schools, especially the ancient school of Medina,

and only allowed the two, that is, the Prophet and the sunna, to be united via
al-Shāfiʿī’s insistence on correctly attributed ‘Prophetic’ ḥadīth. But this was
effectively to throw out the baby with the bath-water.
Since Schacht’s time, scholars working on this area have been increasingly
categorized into two opposing groups, referred to by Herbert Berg in particular
as the ‘skeptics’ and the ‘sanguines’.4 The ‘skeptics’ are sceptical about whether
one can accept anything on the basis of ḥadīth, whereas the ‘sanguines’ are
at least open to the possibility that the ḥadīth contains a reasonable kernel
of truth about the early history of Islam. This is not the place to go into these
debates in depth. An admirable survey has been published recently by Mariam
Sheibani, Amir Toft and Ahmed El Shamsy, which gives easy entry into the
whole issue.5
Fortunately, we are not dependent solely on the ḥadīth record for our
knowledge of the early period. In a field where even the dating of early Islam
is sometimes doubted, Alan Jones’s article on the papyrus PERF 558 indicates
that Hijrī dating is, or at least can be, accurate: a cross-referenced date using
both Greek and Arabic (Hijrī) dating indicates a ‘Year 22’ in Hijrī terms, thus
clearly implying that something happened twenty-two years earlier, namely,
the beginning of a new era that began with the Hijra.6 The same considerations
apply to epigraphic material found recently in Saudi Arabia, which yields dates
such as 23, 24 (referred to as ‘the time when ʿUmar died’) and 91 AH,7 as well
as referring overtly to at least one of the teachers of Mālik, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Ḥarmala (for whom, see further Chapter 2). Other physical evidence that could
be adduced for the history of early Islam includes not only early fragments
of the Qur’an – rarely dated, but often roughly dateable on palaeographical
grounds – but also physical ruins, such as those of the fortress of Kaʿb ibn
al-Ashraf, or the uṭum (walled household) of the Banī Wāqif, or the house of
ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr, all of which (and others) are visible in Medina to this day.
But even if we took the sceptic view, it would be counter-intuitive to throw
out everything. What then, can one, or should one, retain? This is where the
Muwatta’ helps, because in it we have an indisputably early text with very
strong textual credentials (see further Chapter 3). But it is, of course, not only a
book of ḥadīth – and let us allow ourselves the description ‘authentic ḥadīth’ –
but also a book that talks about the actual practice of a certain people, that is,
4 Early Islam in Medina

the Practice of the People of Medina, which is understood to be based on the

practice of the Prophet and his Companions, and those following them in the
succeeding generations, up to and including the time of Mālik.

A further note on Euro-American sources

With three notable exceptions, the whole tenor of recent ‘Western’ scholarship
has been very critical, and often ignorant, of traditional Muslim sources and
scholarship on Mālik and/or things Mālikī. The first of these three exceptions is
Umar Abd-Allah Wymann-Landgraf ’s Mālik and Medina (2013). The original
PhD thesis behind his book, ‘Malik’s Concept of ʿAmal in the Light of Mālikī
Legal Theory’ (1978), is an excellent and extremely useful study of Mālik and
his method, and underwrote much of what I said in my first book. The printed
version seems to emphasize ‘dissent’, that is, khilāf/ikhtilāf, or differences of
opinion, whereas it would seem closer to the mark to say, as others have said,
that, in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik is emphasizing agreement rather than dissent.8
The second exception is Ahmed El Shamsy’s The Canonization of Islamic
Law (2013), whose earlier chapters masterfully summarize Mālik’s attitude to
the Medinan tradition of his day and present Mālik and his Muwaṭṭaʾ as the
precursor – by way of contrast – to the new ‘textual’, that is, post-canonization,
way of thought championed by al-Shāfiʿī. Among many points of note in El
Shamsy’s book, and perhaps the most relevant to our study, is his observation
regarding the key link in Mālik’s time between the scholars of the community
and the political powers of the day, or what we might call amirate.9
The third of the three exceptions is the new translation of the Muwaṭṭaʾ
by Mohammed Fadel and Connell Monette, published by Harvard University
Press on behalf of the Moroccans.10 This is prefaced by an excellent introduction
which gives an overview of the book’s importance, highlighting the key issues
of the authenticity of the material and the authority represented by it.
In the present work, I am not overly concerned with either ‘dissent’ or
‘canonization’, as in the first two of the above three exceptions (nor am
I presenting a new translation). Rather, the focus is on a pre-canonical
landscape and a pre-madhhab (‘school of law’) Islam, where the
dominant manifestation of the dīn (‘religion’, but with the broader sense
 Introduction 5

of ‘life-transaction’) was in ʿamal, ‘action’, in the context of amirate. Mālik

notes, for instance, that his frequently used expression al-amru ʿindanā (‘the
position with us’) refers to ‘what the people here have acted upon, and has
become the basis for judgements [i.e. of the judiciary], and is known by both
the learned and the ignorant’.11 This context of amirate is further emphasized
by various judgements in the Muwaṭṭaʾ. With regard to zakāt (the obligatory
alms-tax and the third of the Five Pillars of Islam), for example, Mālik notes
that the decision about who to give zakāt to lies with the governor (wālī),
who may decide which category among the eight categories mentioned in
the Qur’an (in Q.9:60) should be given preference in any one year, as it is
also up to the leader (imām) to decide how much government officials
collecting zakāt (al-ʿāmilīna ʿalayhā) should get for their services.12 The
interplay between scholars and political authorities is also highlighted by
numerous judgements recorded by Mālik involving the caliphs and/or their
governors.13 For example, Mālik records how Zayd ibn Thābit and another
of the Companions went to Marwān, the then governor of Medina, and said,
‘Are you permitting usury?’ to which Marwān replied, ‘I seek refuge in Allah!
And how is that?’ The man replied, ‘People are reselling the chits (ṣukūk) that
they get for the foodstuffs at the market of al-Jār [on the Red Sea coast, not
far from Medina], before taking possession of the food.’ So Marwān sent out
the guard (al-ḥaras) to collect (these chits) from people and give them back to
their original owners.14 It should be noted that this is not just about usury and
its Qur’anic condemnation (Q.2:279) but also the judgement of the Prophet
forbidding people from reselling foodstuffs before they had taken possession
of them.15 In other words, it is a defence of both Qur’an and sunna, in the
context of amirate. Nor should we ignore the general point mentioned above
that many of the judgements recorded by Mālik refer to ‘what the people have
acted upon, and has become the basis for judgements, and is known by both
the learned and the ignorant’; in other words, they are judgements that have
what one might call ‘governmental’ backing.
Of other recent work which has included significant reference to Mālik
and his Muwaṭṭaʾ, one might feel obliged to mention Calder’s Studies in Early
Muslim Jurisprudence (1993). But, despite certain supporters, Calder’s work
has not stood the test of time and has generally been criticized beyond repair.16
Brief mention should be made, however, of Jonathan Brockopp, who, more than
6 Early Islam in Medina

most, has worked extensively on early ‘Mālikī’ texts. In an article published in

2002, Brockopp cites the following from the preface of the Mukhtaṣar of Abū
Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī (using Brockopp’s translation, unedited):

Some claim that the people of Medina are lost, that they make legal
pronouncements without foundation and they make no sense in their rulings
and their legal statements But anyone whose statement depends on a verse
from the Book of God which has been passed down, or a Sunnah [of] the
Prophet of God, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, which is followed,
or [a report] transmitted on the authority of the Imāms of the Muslims, or
an account of the [companions] of the Prophet of God, upon him be [peace,
is indebted] to [those whom] God [has filled] with His knowledge.
God chose [the people of Medina] for His Prophet to make them his helpers
and He said to them: ‘Take counsel with them in the affair.’ And he gave
them, and no other, through [the Prophet] a distinction and a knowledge
which He has not given to others. In their homes was the revelation and
from them arises the interpretation, and from them come the Imāms who
should be emulated. And they are God’s proof of His creation up to the
day of judgement. The truth [of God] has no record [of application] except
among them and for them. Medina is the place [to which the Prophet and
his companions] emigrated and the highpoint of their community. Their
influences were upon it and their rulings were made in it.
…
There have come down [to us] from the Prophet of God – God’s blessings
and peace be upon him – two or three conflicting reports about the same
matter which cannot all be observed at the same time. In this case the people
of Medina act according to only one of the three reports and argue for it [in
the following way]: Surely this one is according to the custom (ʿamal) of the
Imāms of the Muslims who followed it and arranged their actions according
to it. It became the generally accepted custom among them.
The People of Medina say: this is how we found the custom of our area.
[They argue that] their words in this regard are more trustworthy than a
story related from one person to another (qawlahum hādhā aqwā min
ḥikāyati wāḥidin ʿan wāḥid).17

Brockopp curiously takes this as evidence that there was no reliance on

Qur’an or sunna, and that Abū Muṣʿab’s preface is ‘proof that the text was
regarded as a threat to the authority of Prophet and Qur’an’, and also says
 Introduction 7

that Abū Muṣʿab saw his work ‘as different from texts ultimately based on
Qur’an and ḥadīth’.18 First, this passage is so close to Malik’s understanding
of the position of the people of Medina (see further Chapter 4), and this
understanding is so clearly based on Qur’an and sunna – with sunna not
to be understood specifically as ḥadīth, of course, but definitely based on
the authority of Prophet – that it is difficult to see what Brockopp is trying
to suggest. One need only think of the chapters on business transactions
(buyūʿ) and qirāḍ (a type of commenda partnership) in the Muwaṭṭaʾ to see
how much they are based on Qur’an and sunna. Again and again in these
chapters, Mālik is concerned to uphold the prohibitions against usury and/
or uncertainty (gharar) in business transactions. With regard to the first,
we note the Qur’anic injunction ‘O you who believe, give up any remaining
usury, if you are believers. If you do not, then be warned of a war from Allah
and His messenger’ (Q.2:278–9). Mālik says, quite unambiguously, referring
to the same section in Sūrat al-Baqara: ‘As for usury, it is always rejected, and
neither a little or a lot of it is permitted … [This is] because Allah, the Blessed
and Exalted, says in His Book “and if you repent, then you are entitled to
your capital, without wronging or being wronged (Q.2:279).” ’19 This concern
is backed up by frequent references to usury throughout the two chapters,
including a statement recorded from ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd to the effect that
no one making a loan should stipulate any increase in return, even if only ‘a
handful of fodder (qabḍa min ʿalaf )’.20
As for gharar, Mālik records a ḥadīth expressly prohibiting it,21 as well as
other ḥadīths prohibiting related practices such as muzābana (exchanging
a specific amount of a harvested crop for an unspecific amount of the same
crop before harvesting e.g. dried dates for fresh dates still on the palm) and
muḥāqala (leasing land in exchange for fresh wheat);22 or mulāmasa (sales by
touching e.g. a piece of cloth without examining it) and munābadha (sales by
tossing an item between two people, without either examining the item).23 As
is the case with usury, there are frequent references to gharar throughout the
chapter on business transactions.
It is true of course that Abū Muṣʿab’s Mukhtaṣar is not the same as Mālik’s
Muwaṭṭaʾ, but the theoretical standpoint outlined in Abū Muṣʿab’s introduction
is immediately recognizable as very similar, to say the least, to Mālik’s position
as outlined, for example, by Qadi ʿIyāḍ in his Madārik (see further Chapter 4).
8 Early Islam in Medina

It is also clear from what we have mentioned above that the prohibitions against
usury and gharar, both very evident in the Book of Sales (Kitāb al-Buyūʿ) in
particular, are very much based on Qur’an and sunna, despite Brockopp’s
assertion to the contrary.
It is in this context that we present Early Islam in Medina: Mālik and His
Muwaṭṭaʾ as, hopefully, a counterpoint to some of the sceptical voices and a
finer tuning of some of the more sanguine ones, and as an emphatic reminder
that Islam is based on actions rather than words, as in Mālik’s report that
al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad (the grandson of the first Caliph Abū Bakr) used to
say, ‘I remember a time when people were not impressed by words,’ to which
Mālik adds the comment that the reference is to action (al-ʿamal), and that it
is a person’s actions that are looked at, not his words.24
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 forms a short introduction
to Mālik’s life and times and his status as the ‘scholar of Medina’. Chapter 2
considers the main teachers of Mālik, with a view to outlining the intellectual
and human environment in which he received his learning, and also fleshing
out the otherwise often ignored names of some of the key figures in the isnāds
(chains of authority) of the ḥadīths. Chapter 3 considers some of his main
students, as represented by some of the main transmitters of the Muwaṭṭaʾ
from Mālik, as it also considers their different transmissions as an accurate
preservation of his teachings – and the teachings of his teachers – to be
passed down to later generations. Going beyond this primarily textual focus,
Chapter 4 concentrates on the key concept of the practice (ʿamal) of the people
of Medina and how this not only forms the backbone of Mālik’s teachings but
also preserves a distinctively non-textual way of viewing these teachings which
contrasts with the more standard textual understanding, and transmission,
of the same. Chapter 5 presents some of the conflicts that have arisen –
both in ancient and modern times – around this different understanding of
the practice of the early Muslim community, and, by extension, a different
understanding of what constitutes the sunna, or normative practice, of the
Prophet, and what should thus be followed by the Muslim community. A short
conclusion summarizes the main thrust of the work.
 1

The man and his family

Mālik is known by the honorific title of Imām Dār al-Hijra, or ‘the Imam of
the Abode of Emigration’. This ‘Abode of Emigration’ is the city of Medina
in western Arabia, to which the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions
emigrated after being forced to leave Mecca in the early days of the nascent
Muslim community. ‘Imam’ is a title of respect which means, literally, ‘one who
goes in front, one who leads the way’. This can be either in the sense of a political
leader, or someone leading others in the prayer, or – as in our present context –
one who is above, or in front of, others in the excellence of his knowledge.
Mālik is also known as the ‘scholar (ʿālim) of Medina’, referring to the well-
known ḥadīth in which the Prophet said, ‘The time is nigh when people will
beat the livers of their camels [i.e. urge them on] in search of knowledge, but
they will not find anyone more knowledgeable than the scholar of Medina’
(this is related by, amongst others, Aḥmad in his Musnad and al-Tirmidhī in
his Ṣaḥīḥ).1 Imam Mālik was thus the religious leader and expert in Medina in
his time, having inherited knowledge of the principles and precepts of Islam in
the very place where those principles and precepts had been first formulated
and acted upon by the first community of Muslims, both during the lifetime of
the Prophet and in the first hundred years or so after his death.
Mālik (d. 179/795) is one of the Four Imams associated with the four main
Sunni schools of law (madhhabs) recognized as authoritative by Muslims up
until this day. These four schools are as follows: the Mālikīs, named after our
imam; the Ḥanafīs, named after Imam Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767); the Shāfiʿīs,
named after Imam al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820); and the Ḥanbalīs, named after
Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). The Mālikī school, or madhhab, is
particularly dominant today in North and West Africa, although it is still
represented to a lesser degree in Egypt, the Sudan and parts of Arabia. Formerly,
it was also widespread in Iraq and some areas further east, but for various
10 Early Islam in Medina

reasons it began to decline there until, by the end of the fifth/eleventh century,
it effectively no longer had an active presence in the east of the Muslim world.
In the present day, we note several newly established outliers of this madhhab
in Europe (particularly France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and
the UK), but also in South Africa, South-East Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia)
and the Americas (Mexico and the United States).

Mālik’s birth

As is usual with the birthdates of individuals in the early Islamic period, when
recording such events was of little importance, there is uncertainty as to the
exact date of Mālik’s birth. The dominant opinion, however, is that he was
born either in the year 93/711 or during the caliphate of Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd
al-Malik (r. 96–99/715–17) of the Umayyad dynasty.2 There is also uncertainty
about his place of birth: many sources suggest that he was born in Medina, but
some specify that he was born in Dhū l-Marwa, a village lying some eight mail-
stages – approximately 100 miles – to the north of Medina in the Wādī l-Qurā
region.3 However, this was considered an outlying district of Medina, since it
was under Medinan political control, and so the general attribution to Medina
remains valid.

Mālik’s family

Mālik’s full name, using the style of our sources, is Mālik ibn (‘son of ’) Anas ibn
Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir al-Aṣbaḥī. ‘Al-Aṣbaḥī’ refers to the Yemeni tribe of Dhū
Aṣbaḥ, highlighting that Mālik’s ancestors were originally from the Yemen. We
are told that it was either his great-grandfather, Abū ʿĀmir, or his grandfather,
Mālik, who moved north to Medina, becoming affiliated by invitation to the
Qurayshi clan of the Banī Taym ibn Murra. We do not hear much about his
mother’s side of the family, except that his mother’s name was al-ʿĀliya bint
(‘daughter of ’) Shurayk ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Shurayk al-Azdiyya, this
last adjective indicating that she was from the tribe of Azd. Our sources tell
 The Man and His Family 11

us – not without a degree of pride – that Mālik was therefore of pure Arab
ancestry on both his father’s and his mother’s side.
Mālik’s great-grandfather, Abū ʿĀmir, is said to have been a Companion,
although there is doubt about this as a number of key works listing the
Companions do not mention him.4 The sources note, however, that he was
one of those who related ḥadīth from the third caliph, ʿUthmān, and he
would therefore have been one of the older Successors, even if he was not
a Companion. (Companions are those who met the Prophet, even if only
briefly, and believed in him; Successors are Muslims who met one of the
Companions, even if only briefly.) This connection with ʿUthmān is more
apparent with Mālik’s grandfather, Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir, who was one of
the older Successors and a respected man of learning in Medina: not only
did he relate ḥadīth from ʿUthmān (and from other Companions as well),
but he was also involved in writing out copies of the Qur’an following
ʿUthmān’s decision to unify the Muslims on one written form of the text.
The connection is further emphasized by reports that he was involved in
the conquest of North Africa under the direct orders of ʿUthmān, and that,
on ʿUthmān’s death, he was one of the four people who carried the body to
the grave.5 Some ḥadīths from him are included by Mālik in his book the
Muwaṭṭaʾ (see further Chapter 2).
Mālik’s grandfather, Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir, had four male children: Anas, the
eldest (and the father of our Mālik), Uways, Nāfiʿ (known as Abū Suhayl) and
al-Rabīʿ. Of these four, Nāfiʿ Abū Suhayl is particularly noted for his knowledge
of ḥadīth, and Mālik includes a number of reports from him in the Muwaṭṭaʾ,
including nearly all the above-mentioned ḥadīths narrated from Nāfiʿ’s father,
Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir. Both al-Rabīʿ and Anas, the father of our Mālik, also
appear in the sources as transmitters of ḥadīth, but only very infrequently.
In short, Mālik was born into a family whose forebears had settled in Medina
in time to experience the full flourishing of the early Muslim community there,
especially under the first years of ʿUthmān’s caliphate before civil strife set in.
Furthermore, although he was born two generations after ʿUthmān, he had
direct access not only to the memories and experiences of his own family but
also to the memories and experiences of those around him, and especially – as
one interested in learning – to those of the men of knowledge in his native city.
12 Early Islam in Medina

His early life

We know little about Mālik’s early life. The few reports we have suggest that he
began studying early – probably in his early teens or earlier. One report, for
example, tells of his mother dressing him up in the ‘clothes of learning’ and
sending him to study under Rabīʿa, one of the main scholars of Medina at that
time and possibly, by virtue of this report, Mālik’s first teacher (for Rabīʿa, see
further, Chapter 2). The report suggests that Mālik was young enough to have
his mother help him get ready to go out and begin to study, although exactly
what age he was we cannot say. Whatever his age, it seems that he quickly
amassed a solid body of knowledge such that he himself was able to teach it in
the mosque in Medina while still in his early twenties – ‘in the lifetime of Nāfiʿ’,
as our sources put it.6 (Nāfiʿ the mawla of Ibn ‘Umar, and one of Mālik’s main
teachers [see further Chapter 2], died c. 117/735, when Mālik – assuming a
birthdate of 93 AH – would have been 23 or 24 years of age.)

His children

We do not hear much about Mālik’s own family life. The sources mention three
sons, Yaḥyā, Muḥammad and Ḥammād, and Yaḥyā is listed as one of those
who related the Muwaṭṭaʾ from Mālik. So, too, is a daughter named Fāṭima,
who also seems to have been well versed in her father’s teaching: the story is
told of her standing behind the door while a student was reading out a text to
her father; when he made a mistake, she tapped on the door to alert her father
to the error that, it seems, had gone unnoticed.7

His death

Mālik died in 179/795, in Medina, where he is buried in the graveyard of

al-Baqīʿ, which lies just to the east of the main mosque. Ibn Jubayr, in his Riḥla,
mentions that the Imam’s grave had a small dome over it when he visited it in
the year 580/1184.8 This, and similar domes, remained until they were razed
to the ground by the Wahhābīs in 1221/1806. They were then reconstructed in
 The Man and His Family 13

the later Ottoman period, when Mālik’s was one of the few graves that had a
white dome over it as a mark of distinction, as was also the case with the graves
of the Prophet’s family, and of the caliph ʿUthmān, and several early martyrs.
His grave lies next to that of Imam Nāfiʿ, the main Qur’an reciter of Medina in
Mālik’s later life.9 With the entry of the Wahhābīs into the Ḥijāz a second time
in 1924, and then into Medina in 1925, these domes were again demolished.10
Now all that remains are a few stones marking these graves, including Mālik’s,
as a mute testimony to the excellence of those buried there.
14
 2

His teachers

We have seen how Mālik was known as the scholar, or man of knowledge,
of Medina. This knowledge, of course, was dependent on others before him.
Following the practice of traditional biographers – but without intending a
biography – we first consider the people from whom he gained this knowledge
and then consider what this knowledge was.
Mālik had many teachers. The Muwaṭṭaʾ alone contains reports transmitted
by him from well over ninety shaykhs, and other teachers of his are represented
in other sources.
An excellent idea of these teachers can be obtained from the book al-Tamhīd
written by the Andalusian scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (368–463/978–1070). In
this book, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr presents in alphabetical order all the scholars from
whom Mālik relates Prophetic ḥadīth in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, as well as providing a
commentary on each of these ḥadīths. (By ‘Prophetic’, we mean those ḥadīths
that are related from the Prophet rather than what might be otherwise simply
Companion or Successor ḥadīths which only go back to a Companion or
Successor.) All in all he includes 791 ḥadīths from 98 shaykhs, ranging from
those from whom Mālik relates many ḥadīths to those from whom he only
relates one or two. (It should be borne in mind that we are talking here only
about ḥadīths with either a full or partial chain of authority (isnād) back to
the Prophet; other Prophetic ḥadīths without any isnād i.e. what are known
as balaghāt ḥadīths are not included in these figures.) Of these ninety-eight
shaykhs, fifteen are each the source of ten or more Prophetic ḥadīths in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, as in Table 1 (based on Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s figures).
These fifteen shaykhs are thus the source of nearly three-quarters (74%) of
this total number of ḥadīths, with the other 26 per cent being related from the
remaining eighty-three shaykhs. From this it is clear that, while transmitting
16 Early Islam in Medina

Table 1 Mālik’s Main Teachers

Name of shaykh No. of ḥadīths in the Muw.

1 Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī 131
2 Nāfiʿ, the mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar 80
3 Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī 77
4 Hishām ibn ʿUrwa 57
5 Abū l-Zinād 54
6 Zayd ibn Aslam 51
7 ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ḥazm 26
8 ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīnār 26
9 Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa 15
10 Sālim, Abū l-Nadr 15
11 Sumayy, the mawlā of Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd 13
al-Raḥmān
12 Rabīʿa ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 12
13 Suhayl al-Sammān 10
14 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim 10
15 al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 10
= 587
16–98 other shaykhs 204
TOTAL 791

from many individuals, a large proportion of Mālik’s material derives from a

small number of particularly important teachers.
In the sections that follow, we take a brief look at each of these fifteen shaykhs,
as well as a few others of particular interest, paying particular attention,
where appropriate, to what has been recorded from Mālik about them. Taken
together, they give an excellent idea of the intellectual environment in which
Mālik received his learning, and also of the strong ties, both intellectual and
familial, that existed between these men and many of the key Companions in
Medina.

1. Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī

As can be seen from the above table, by far the largest number of ḥadīths
related from any one shaykh in the Muwaṭṭaʾ are those related from Ibn Shihāb
al-Zuhrī.
 His Teachers 17

Ibn Shihāb was born around the year 51/671 and died (on his estate of Shaghb
and Badā in the north of the Ḥijāz) in the year 124/742. He was considered the
best of the scholars in Medina during the time of the Umayyad caliph Hishām
ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43). It is recorded that, of the people of the
generation before Ibn Shihāb, three scholars were particularly important: Saʿīd
ibn al-Musayyab, ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr and ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh. Saʿīd
ibn al-Musayyab was the one with the most knowledge of the judgements of
the Prophet and the first three caliphs after him, and the one with the most
knowledge of fiqh (loosely, ‘Islamic law and jurisprudence’) and the practices of
the Muslims handed down by the people; ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr was the one with
the most knowledge of ḥadīth; and if anyone wanted a spring of knowledge to
burst forth, he only had to ask ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh. Ibn Shihāb gathered
the knowledge of these three in addition to his own knowledge.1 Mālik said of
him, ‘I have only ever seen one person who was a scholar of both ḥadīth and
fiqh – Ibn Shihāb.’2 Ibn Shihāb was known for his prodigious memory as well as
the breadth and depth of his learning. It is related that Mālik once said,

Ibn Shihāb told us forty ḥadīths, and I was unsure about one of them. I waited
for him and, when he was leaving, I took hold of the reins of his mule and
asked him about the ḥadīth that I was unsure about. He said, ‘Didn’t I tell it
to you?’ I said, ‘Yes, but I am unsure about it.’ He said, ‘Transmission is not
what it used to be! Let go of the reins of my mule.’ So I let go of them, and
he went on his way.3

In another version, Ibn Shihāb replied, ‘I have never had to ask anyone to
repeat a ḥadīth!’4 In a report from Mālik’s contemporary, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī
Salama al-Mājishūn, Ibn Shihāb said,

I have never written down anything. I was put in charge of [the collection
of] zakāt and so I went to Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh [i.e. the grandson of the
caliph ʿUmar, who had a written document about zakāt], and he brought
out for me the document about zakāt and read it out to me and I memorized
it. I also went to Ibn Ḥazm [i.e. Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm, the grandson of the
Companion ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm, who had received a written document about
blood money from the Prophet] and he read out to me the document about
blood-money and I memorized it.5

(The contents of both documents are referred to in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.)6

18 Early Islam in Medina

It was during Ibn Shihāb’s lifetime – and, it could be argued, to a large

extent due to his activities – that there was a shift away from the earlier
practice of simply memorising ḥadīth (‘knowledge’) to one where it became
increasingly normal to write it down as well. We hear of him being initially
averse to writing down ḥadīth – ‘I never used to write anything down on
these slates!’ – but by the end of his life, at caliphal insistence, he not only
allowed it but also earned the accolade of being the first person to make
a comprehensive collection of ḥadīth.7 Indeed, it was this shift from the
purely oral transmission of ‘knowledge’ to parallel oral and written versions
that was to result, in the generation after Ibn Shihāb, in the production of
‘books’ such as Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ. (We return to the significance of this in
Chapter 3.)
Ibn Shihāb’s close association with various Umayyad governors and caliphs
has been the occasion of some criticism by certain scholars, both in his own
time and more recently on the presumption that association with rulers puts
a question mark over a scholar’s independence and integrity.8 However, at the
same time we should recognize that, in a fully functioning Muslim society,
scholars and governors need to be working in close tandem in order for Islamic
law to be put into practice. It is impossible, for example, to administer the
collection of zakāt – the Third Pillar of Islam – without the direct involvement
of the political authorities, since it is the political leader who is under Qur’anic
command to undertake this collection.9 At the same time, people of knowledge
are necessary in order to advise him and his appointees on the correct amounts
to be taken from the various categories of wealth on which zakāt is due. It is
therefore not surprising to hear, as above, of Ibn Shihāb being appointed as a
zakāt collector, since this, far from being the opprobrious act of ‘tax collection’,
as some modern scholars have supposed, is actually part of the necessary and
praiseworthy implementation of the law. Thus, while it is accepted that Ibn
Shihāb was associated with the Umayyad government in various capacities,
the judgement of his younger contemporary al-Awzāʿī (d. 157/774) seems to
reflect the correct balance: ‘Ibn Shihāb never ingratiated himself to any ruler
when going in to see him, and I never met anyone among the Successors
during the caliphate of Hishām [ibn ʿAbd al-Malik; r. 105–25/724–43] who
was more knowledgeable in fiqh than he was.’10
 His Teachers 19

Ibn Shihāb and the Seven (or Ten) Jurists of Medina

Ibn Shihāb was of the generation of the Younger Successors, that is, those
who had met Companions and thus come under the category of Successors,
but most of whose contacts were with the Older Successors. Of these Older
Successors, special mention should be made of the Seven – or, as Ibn ʿAbd
al-Barr allows, the Ten – Jurists of Medina. Lists of exactly who these seven, or
ten, were vary – nor should we expect exactitude when such lists of ‘seven’ or
‘ten’ are mentioned in our sources – but Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr mentions a report in
which the following nine names are specifically mentioned:

1. Saʿīd (ibn al-Musayyab)

2. Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (ibn ʿAwf)
3. al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad (ibn Abī Bakr)
4. Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh (ibn ʿUmar)
5. ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr
6. Sulaymān ibn Yasār
7. ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh (ibn ʿUtba ibn Masʿūd)
8. Qabīṣa ibn Dhuʾayb
9. Abān ibn ʿUthmān (ibn ʿAffān).

The tenth, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr explains, was missing from the handwritten
version of the report in question but is, in his opinion, either Khārija ibn Zayd
(ibn Thābit) or Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām.11
(Elsewhere, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr lists the Ten as Saʿīd, Abū Salama, ʿUrwa,
al-Qāsim, Sālim, Abū Bakr, ʿUbaydallāh, Sulaymān, Khārija and Qabīṣa, that
is, the above eleven names excluding Abān ibn ʿUthmān.)12
Abū l-Zinād (one of Mālik’s main teachers; see further below) was asked
who were the seven he was referring to when he said ‘The Seven told me’,
and he said, ‘Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām, al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, ʿUbaydallāh
ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUtba ibn Masʿūd, Khārija ibn Zayd ibn Thābit, and Sulaymān
ibn Yasār.’13 It is these seven that have become standardized as the Seven Jurists
of Medina.
Of the above-mentioned ten – or eleven – jurists, five feature as particularly
important sources for Ibn Shihāb’s ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ. These five are the
following:
20 Early Islam in Medina

(i) Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab (or ‘al-Musayyib’) (d. c. 94/713). Saʿīd was
considered the most knowledgeable of the scholars of Medina after the
deaths of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar (the caliph ʿUmar’s son) and Ibn ʿAbbās. He
was known as the ‘transmitter of ʿUmar’ because of his extensive knowledge
of the judgements and decisions of ʿUmar.14 Mālik said of him, emphasizing
Saʿīd’s knowledge of ʿUmar’s judgements, ‘I have heard that ʿAbdallāh ibn
ʿUmar would contact Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab to ask him certain things about
ʿUmar.’15 Mālik also said, ‘Ibn Shihāb’s fatwās and opinions were based on what
he learnt from Sālim [ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar] and Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab.’16
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits seventeen Prophetic ḥadīths from Ibn
al-Musayyab via Ibn Shihāb.
(ii) ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr (d. c. 94/713). ʿUrwa was the younger brother
of the famous Companion, and one-time caliph of the Ḥijāz, ʿAbdallāh ibn
al-Zubayr. ʿUrwa’s mother was Asmāʾ, the daughter of the first caliph Abū Bakr
and sister of ʿĀʾisha, the wife of the Prophet, and a large proportion of ʿUrwa’s
transmitted material comes through his maternal aunt ʿĀʾisha.
Whereas Saʿīd was considered to be the most knowledgeable of the Medinan
jurists with regard to the judgements of the Messenger and the first three caliphs
after him, ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr was considered to be the most knowledgeable
of them with regard to ḥadīth, that is, formal reports. Ibn Shihāb said that he
studied under Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab for nine years, considering no one else to
be a man of knowledge, but then afterwards spent time with ʿUrwa and found
him to be ‘an ocean that no amount of dipping into would muddy’.17
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits fifteen Prophetic ḥadīths from ʿUrwa via
Ibn Shihāb.
(iii) ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUtba ibn Masʿūd (d. c. 98/716).
ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh was a poet as well as a jurist. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr says
of him: ‘From the time of the Companions up until now there has been no
jurist, as far as I know, that was more gifted at poetry, nor any poet that had
a better knowledge of jurisprudence.’18 Ibn Shihāb said of him, ‘I never saw
anyone who spoke better Arabic than him.’19
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits eleven Prophetic ḥadīths from ʿUbaydallāh
ibn ʿAbdallāh via Ibn Shihāb.
(iv) Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf (d. 94/713 or 104/722). Abū
Salama was the son of the famous Companion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf. He
 His Teachers 21

was judge of Medina at the time when Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣī was governor there
during the caliphate of Muʿāwiya (r. 41–60/661–80). Abū Isḥāq (al-Shīrāzī?)
said of him, ‘Abū Salama in his time was better than [ʿAbdallāh] ibn ʿUmar in
his time.’20
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits twelve Prophetic ḥadīths from Abū Salama
via Ibn Shihāb (including four shared with Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab).
(v) Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. c. 106/724). Sālim was the son of the famous
Companion ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar (by a slave girl of his) and grandson of the
second caliph ʿUmar. It is said that Sālim was the most like his father of all
his children and that his father was the most like his father of all his children.
Sālim is described as being particularly devout (nāsik), indicated also by his
wearing wool. It is also said that (like Mālik) he never left Medina.21
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits nine Prophetic ḥadīths from Sālim via
Ibn Shihāb.
The other six names mentioned as being of the ‘Ten’ Jurists are the following:
(vi) Al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr (d. 106/724, or ‘in the
caliphate of Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik’ (r. 101–5/720–4)). Al-Qāsim was the
grandson of the first caliph Abū Bakr. His father Muḥammad was killed when
al-Qāsim was still young and he grew up as an orphan under the tutelage of
his paternal aunt ʿĀʾisha. Mālik said of him, ‘Al-Qāsim was one of the jurists of
this community.’22 The famous Iraqi scholar Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn said, ‘At the
time al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad died there was no-one that people were more
pleased with than him.’ [ʿAbdallāh] ibn ʿAwn said, ‘I saw three people the like
of whom I have never seen: Ibn Sīrīn in Iraq, al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad in the
Ḥijāz, and Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa in Syria.’23
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits only one Companion ḥadīth from
al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad via Ibn Shihāb (although their names occur
twice as co-reporters for shared opinions). (This is in a context of fifty-
two reports altogether in the Muwaṭṭaʾ either from or about al-Qāsim ibn
Muḥammad.)
(vii) Sulaymān ibn Yasār (d. c. 100/718). Sulaymān ibn Yasār was a mukātab
slave belonging to Maymūna, the wife of the Prophet, and was manumitted
by her, as were his three brothers.24 Mālik said of him, ‘Sulaymān ibn Yasār
was one of the most learned men among us after Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab.’25 He
also said of him, ‘Sulaymān ibn Yasār was the most knowledgeable man that
22 Early Islam in Medina

people relied upon (kāna mulzaman) after Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, and the two
of them would very often agree in their opinions. If anyone raised their voice
or said anything bad in his gathering, he would get up and leave.’26
In addition to his teaching activities, Sulaymān was put in charge of
the market of Medina for a year during the governorate of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz (87–94/706–13) and the caliphate of al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r.
86–96/705–15).27
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits two Prophetic ḥadīths from Sulaymān via
Ibn Shihāb.
(viii) Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām (d. 94/713).
Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was known as the ‘monk of Quraysh’ (rāhib
Quraysh) because of the large amount of time he spent in prayer and worship.
Mālik said of him, ‘I have not heard of any of the Successors doing iʿtikāf
[retreat in a mosque] except for Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. This was,
I think, because of its difficulty.’28
In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik transmits two Prophetic ḥadīths from Abū Bakr ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān via Ibn Shihāb.
(ix) Qabīṣa ibn Dhuʾayb (d. 86/705 or 87/708). Qabīṣa was praised by Ibn
Shihāb as ‘one of the scholars of this community’.29 However, he features far
less frequently as an authority in the Muwaṭṭaʾ than the other Seven, or Ten,
Jurists.
Mālik transmits only one Prophetic ḥadīth from him in the Muwaṭṭaʾ,
which is via Ibn Shihāb.
(x) Abān ibn ʿUthmān (d. before 105/724). Abān was the son of the third
caliph ʿUthmān. He was appointed governor of Medina in the year 76/695
during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 65–86/685–705). There are various
reports in the Muwaṭṭaʾ about judgements made by Abān as governor, but
Mālik only transmits one Prophetic ḥadīth related from him in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.
(None of these are related via Ibn Shihāb.)
(xi) Khārija ibn Zayd ibn Thābit (d. c. 99/717). Khārija was the son of the
famous Companion Zayd ibn Thābit. He is mentioned only three times in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, twice as the vehicle for judgements of his father – one of which
Mālik relates from Khārija’s nephew and Zayd’s grandson, Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān
ibn Zayd ibn Thābit – and once as an authority in his own right. (None of these
are related via Ibn Shihāb.)
 His Teachers 23

We may further note that, of the 120 Prophetic ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ
where Ibn Shihāb’s direct source is named, 13 are related directly from seven
Companions, while the other 107 come from thirty-three Tābiʿīn. In other
words, a small portion of his material is transmitted directly from Companions,
but the majority of it is transmitted from other Tābiʿīn. As we have seen, of these
Tābiʿīn, pride of place goes to four of the Seven/Ten Jurists, namely Saʿīd ibn
al-Musayyab (seventeen ḥadīths), ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr (fifteen ḥadīths), Abū
Salama (twelve ḥadīths, four of which are shared with Saʿīd) and ʿUbaydallāh
ibn ʿAbdallāh (eleven ḥadīths). Of these four men, it is related that Ibn Shihāb
said, ‘I met four oceans of knowledge: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, ʿUrwa ibn
al-Zubayr, ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh, and Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.’30
As we have seen, Ibn Shihāb also transmits ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ from
at least four of the other Seven/Ten Jurists, namely Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh (nine
ḥadīths), Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (two ḥadīths), Sulaymān ibn Yasār
(two ḥadīths) and Qabīṣa (one ḥadīth).
Other noteworthy teachers of Ibn Shihāb include ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn (‘Zayn
al-ʿĀbidīn’), the grandson of the fourth caliph ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, from whom he
relates three ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, and ʿAbdallāh and al-Ḥasan, grandsons
of ʿAlī through al-Ḥusayn’s half-brother, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, from
whom he relates one ḥadīth in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.
As can be seen, many of these teachers of Ibn Shihāb were the direct
descendants of well-known and respected Companions, such as ʿUrwa and
al-Qāsim, who were both grandsons of the first caliph Abū Bakr; Sālim, who
was grandson of the second caliph ʿUmar and son of the famous Companion
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Ḥanafiyya and
his brother al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, who were all grandsons of the fourth
caliph ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib; and Abū Salama, who was the son of the famous
Companion ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn ‘Awf. The same, of course, applies to others
amongst the Seven/Ten Jurists, such as Abān, the son of the third caliph
ʿUthmān, and Khārija, the son of the famous Companion Zayd ibn Thābit. As
mentioned above, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s figures include only Prophetic ḥadīths, of
which he includes 131. Ibn Shihāb is also the source for many other reports
in the Muwaṭṭaʾ. A search of a digital copy of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, using perhaps a
slightly different understanding of what constitutes a Prophetic ḥadīth, yielded
the following results: of a total of 280 reports mentioning Ibn Shihāb, at least
24 Early Islam in Medina

123 (44%) – rather than 131 – are Prophetic ḥadīths; 92 (33%) appear to be
Companion ḥadīths; and the remaining 65 (23%) are from Successors, with 45
of these 65 being from Ibn Shihāb as an authority in his own right. It should
also be noted that, in the vast majority of instances, Mālik relates from Ibn
Shihāb directly, but on five occasions he does so indirectly (via Ziyād ibn Saʿd
(twice), ʿUthmān ibn Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar ibn Khalda (twice) and Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd).
This, then, gives us an idea of the intellectual environment in which Ibn
Shihāb, Mālik’s main teacher, received his learning.

2. Nāfiʿ, the mawlā (‘freed slave’) of Ibn ʿUmar

(d. 117/735)

Mālik relates eighty musnad ḥadīths from Nāfiʿ in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, sixty-six (83%)
of which are via his patron (mawlā), ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, the Companion and
famous son of the second caliph ʿUmar. This isnād (‘chain of authority’) of
Mālik, from Nāfiʿ, from ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, from the Prophet, is known as
the ‘golden chain’ of authority, because of its shortness and the excellence of
each of its individual links. Mālik said, emphasizing the reliability of Nāfiʿ, ‘If
I heard a ḥadīth from Nāfiʿ, I wasn’t worried if I didn’t hear it from anyone else.’31
Among the other fourteen ḥadīths are one from al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad
(from ʿĀʾisha), one from Sulaymān ibn Yasār and one related from Ibn ʿUmar’s
son Zayd, from ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Rahmān ibn Abī Bakr, that is, from a
grandson of ʿUmar from a grandson of Abū Bakr.
Also included in the Muwaṭṭaʾ are a further 152 reports from Nāfiʿ from or
about ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, that is, where Ibn ʿUmar is effectively cited as the
final authority. A further thirteen reports cite ‘higher’ authorities, including
ten from or about Ibn ʿUmar’s father, ʿUmar. There are also two ḥadīths from
Ibn ʿUmar via Ibn ʿUmar’s wife, Ṣafiyya bint Abī ʿUbayd, and a further five
reports from her, including one about her father-in-law ʿUmar and one about
her sisters-in-law Ḥafṣa and Fāṭima. In addition, Mālik transmits three reports
from Nāfiʿ which he relates via Nāfiʿ’s son, Abū Bakr.
It is readily apparent from the above that, as Mālik noted, Nāfiʿ was the
transmitter of a great deal of knowledge from Ibn ʿUmar.32
 His Teachers 25

With regard to the Seven/Ten Jurists, Nāfiʿ relates four reports from Ibn
ʿUmar’s son Sālim, as well as four reports (including one Prophetic ḥadīth) from
Sulaymān ibn Yasār and one Prophetic ḥadīth from al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad.

3. Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī (d. 143/760)

Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd’s grandfather, Qays, was a Companion. Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd was
appointed judge of Medina during the governorate of Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad
al-Thaqafī in the time of al-Walīd ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 125–6/743–
4). He later went to Iraq where he was appointed judge – of al-Hāshimiyya,
a town built by the caliph al-Saffāḥ in Kufa – by Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr (r.
136–58/754–75). Having not been well off, his fortunes changed for the better
after Abū Jaʿfar made him judge. He himself, however, didn’t change and he
remained generous with his money. He was once asked about this and he
said, ‘If a person is strong in himself (nafsuhu wāḥida), money won’t change
him.’33 On one occasion he arranged for Rabīʿa (another of Mālik’s shaykhs;
see below) to go to Ifrīqiyya to collect some inheritance for him, and, when
Rabīʿa returned with 500 dinars, he divided the sum equally between himself
and Rabīʿa.34
Mālik relates seventy-seven musnad ḥadīths from Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ. As with Ibn Shihāb, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd relates a number of ḥadīths
from the Seven/Ten Jurists, including nine from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, one
from Abū Salama, four from Sulaymān ibn Yasār and one from al-Qāsim
ibn Muḥammad. Another important source for him was ʿAmra bint ʿAbd
al-Rahmān, from who he relates seven ḥadīths, six of which are from ʿĀʾisha
(one of ʿAmra’s main sources).

4. Hishām ibn ʿUrwa (d. 146/763)

Hishām’s father was ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr, who, as noted above, was one of the
Seven/Ten Jurists of Medina and younger brother of the famous Companion,
and one-time caliph of the Ḥijāz, ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Zubayr. As mentioned
26 Early Islam in Medina

earlier, ʿUrwa’s mother was Asmāʾ, the daughter of the first caliph Abū Bakr and
sister of ʿĀʾisha, and so Hishām was a great-grandson of Abū Bakr. Hishām’s
mother was a slave girl from Khurasan.
Nearly all the Prophetic ḥadīths (fifty-three out of fifty-seven) from
Hishām in the Muwaṭṭaʾ are related from his father ʿUrwa, and nearly half
of these (twenty-three) are related by ʿUrwa from his aunt, ʿĀʾisha. Hishām
also transmits from other family members, such as his cousins ʿAbbād ibn
ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Zubayr and Fāṭima bint al-Mundhir ibn al-Zubayr (who was
also his wife). He also transmits various Companion ḥadīths – again, on the
authority of his father – as well as a number of reports of his father’s own
opinions.

5. Abū l-Zinād ibn Dhakwān (d. 130/748)

Abū l-Zinād’s father, Dhakwān, was a mawlā of Ramla, the wife of the third
caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (although some say he was the mawlā of ʿUthmān’s
daughter, ʿĀʾisha, or of ʿUthmān himself). Abū l-Zinād was one of those who
gave fatwā in Medina, and he and Rabīʿa (see below) were considered the two
jurists of Medina in their time, with many considering Abū l-Zinād to be the
more knowledgeable of the two. Mālik said, ‘Abū l-Zinād used to have a study
circle by himself in the mosque of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him
and grant him peace.’ He acted as secretary (kātib) for ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, the governor of Kufa during the caliphate
of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–20), and also as secretary for Khālid
ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Ḥārith ibn al-Ḥakam, the governor of Medina from
114–118/732–736, during the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–
25/724–43). In both instances he was in charge of the financial affairs of the
treasury (bayt al-māl).35
It is related that he went to see the caliph, Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, with the
details of the financial accounts of Medina and sat with Hishām in the company
of Ibn Shihāb. Hishām asked Ibn Shihāb what the month was in which ʿUthmān
would give the people of Medina their stipends and Ibn Shihāb said that he
didn’t know. (Abū l-Zinād commented, ‘We used to think that Ibn Shihāb
 His Teachers 27

would never be asked about anything without him having knowledge of it.’)
Hishām then asked Abū l-Zinād, and he said, ‘In [the month of] Muḥarram.’36
Mālik relates fifty-four musnad ḥadīths from Abū l-Zinād in the Muwaṭṭaʾ,
all of which are from al-Aʿraj, from Abū Hurayra. The Muwaṭṭaʾ also includes
twelve other Companion and Successor ḥadīths transmitted by Abū l-Zinād
from or via other authorities, including four from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, three
from or via Sulaymān ibn Yasār, two via Abū Salama and one via Khārija.

6. Zayd ibn Aslam (d. 136/754)

Zayd’s father, Aslam, was a mawlā of the second caliph ʿUmar who had been
brought to Medina as a captive after the battle of ʿAyn al-Tamr during the
caliphate of Abū Bakr (r. 11–13/632–4). Aslam was considered one of the best
of the mawālī in terms of his knowledge and behaviour, and his son followed
in his footsteps.
Zayd ibn Aslam was said to be the most learned of the people of Medina with
regard to interpretation of the Qur’an after Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī.
Mālik said of him, ‘Zayd ibn Aslam was a man of knowledge who feared Allah.
He would act kindly towards me (yanbasiṭu ilayya), and would say, “Son of
Adam, fear Allah and people will love you, whether they want to or not.” ’37
Zayd’s grandson (Zayd ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Zayd ibn Aslam) said that
when Mālik compiled the Muwaṭṭaʾ, he put the ḥadīths of Zayd ibn Aslam at
the end of the various chapters. When he asked Mālik about this, he said, ‘They
are like a lamp which casts light on what is before them.’38
Mālik relates fifty-one Prophetic ḥadīths from Zayd ibn Aslam in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ. Nearly half of these (twenty-three) are from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, the
brother of Sulaymān ibn Yasār. (ʿAṭāʾ and Sulaymān – along with two other
brothers – were the mawālī of Maymūna, the wife of the Prophet; Sulaymān
was considered to be the one with the best knowledge of fiqh, whereas ʿAṭāʾ had
the best knowledge of ḥadīth.) Other shaykhs of Zayd ibn Aslam mentioned
in the isnāds of his ḥadīths include his father Aslam (two ḥadīths and various
Companion reports), his brother Khālid (one report about ʿUmar) and Saʿīd
ibn al-Musayyab (one ḥadīth).
28 Early Islam in Medina

7. ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Bakr (ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr)

ibn Ḥazm (d. c. 135/752)

ʿAbdallāh’s father, Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm, was appointed judge of Medina during
the governorship of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (c. 87–c. 93/c. 706–c. 712). When
ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz became caliph (r. 99–101/717–20), he appointed Abū
Bakr ibn Ḥazm as governor of Medina. Mālik said of Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm,

There was no-one among us in Medina who had more knowledge about
giving judgement (‘ilm al-qaḍā’) than Abū Bakr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr
ibn Ḥazm. He was appointed governor by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who
wrote to him telling him to write down knowledge [i.e. ḥadīths] from ʿAmra
bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, and he wrote it down
for him. No other Anṣārī was ever appointed governor of Medina other than
Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm. He was also a judge.39

Abū Bakr’s grandfather, ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm, was a well-known Companion.

He is especially known for the written document mentioned earlier that was
entrusted to him by the Prophet to the people of the Yemen, which contained
details about various legal issues, especially blood money (and which is
referred to in the Muwaṭṭaʾ).
Mālik said that (ʿUmāra?) Ibn Ghaziyya was once asked by Ibn Shihāb
about those who were giving fatwā in Medina and he said, ‘There is no-one
among them like ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Bakr, and he would be much better known
if it were not that his father is still alive.’40
Mālik relates twenty-six ḥadīths from ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Bakr in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, ten of which are from his father. Five ḥadīths are related from the
above-mentioned ʿAmra bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, three of them directly and two
via his father. Among the other eleven ḥadīths are two from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn
Abī Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām, that is, the son of the
Abū Bakr who is one of the Seven/Ten Jurists.
Among Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm’s sons, ʿAbdallāh was the most renowned for
his knowledge of ḥadīth. Another son, Muḥammad – who, like his father, was
a judge – is also mentioned as an authority by Mālik in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, where he
transmits three reports from him: a Prophetic ḥadīth, via his father Abū Bakr,
and two reports from ʿUmar, one of which is also via his father.
 His Teachers 29

8. ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīnār (d. 127/744 or 131/748)

ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīnār was, like Nāfiʿ, a mawlā of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar. Mālik
relates twenty-six Prophetic ḥadīths from him, most of which (twenty-two)
are via his patron Ibn ʿUmar. Of the other four, two are via Sulaymān ibn Yasār
and two via Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān, the father of one of Mālik’s main shaykhs
(see below).

9. Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa

(d. 132/749 or 134/751)

Isḥāq was considered the most knowledgeable and most reliable of a number
of brothers who all transmitted ḥadīth. His grandfather, Abū Ṭalḥa, was one
of the older Companions. According to al-Wāqidī, there was no one that Mālik
would put before Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa with regard to ḥadīth.41
Mālik relates fifteen ḥadīths from Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa in
the Muwaṭṭaʾ, ten of which are from the Companion Anas ibn Mālik, who
was Isḥāq’s uncle. (Anas and ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa were sons of the same
mother, Anas by her first marriage and ‘Abdallah by her second.) One of the
other five is related by Isḥāq from his wife, Ḥumayda bint Abī ʿUbayda. He
also relates four Companion reports from Anas.

10. Sālim, Abū l-Naḍr (d. 133/750 or 130/747)

Sālim, more commonly known as Abū l-Naḍr, was the mawlā of ʿUmar ibn
ʿUbaydallāh ibn Maʿmar al-Taymī, one of the notables of Quraysh under
whom Abū l-Naḍr worked as a secretary. ʿUmar’s grandfather, Maʿmar, was a
Companion and cousin of Abū Quḥāfa, Abū Bakr’s father.42 Mālik described
Abū l-Naḍr as a man of excellence, intelligence and worship.43
Mālik relates fifteen Prophetic ḥadīths from Abū l-Naḍr in the Muwaṭṭaʾ,
six of which are via the Seven/Ten Jurists (three via Abū Salama, two via
Sulaymān ibn Yasār and one via ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUtba).
30 Early Islam in Medina

11. Sumayy, the mawlā of Abū Bakr (d. 130/747)

Sumayy was the mawlā of Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn
Hishām, one of the Seven/Ten Jurists of Medina.44
Mālik relates thirteen Prophetic ḥadīths from Sumayy in the Muwaṭṭaʾ
(although, since one of them effectively combines three different ḥadīths, Ibn
ʿAbd al-Barr allows that one could consider them fifteen ḥadīths altogether).
Of these, four are from his patron Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. All the
others (nine, or eleven) are from Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān (the father of Suhayl,
one of Mālik’s main shaykhs; see below), from Abū Hurayra.

12. Rabīʿa ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. between 130/747

and 136/753)

Rabīʿa – known as ‘Rabīʿat al-Raʾy’, or ‘Rabīʿa of the Informed Opinion’ – was

one of the first, if not the first, of Mālik’s main teachers. We are told that Mālik’s
mother took the decision to set Mālik on a path of study and, after dressing
him up in ‘the clothes of learning’, told him to go to Rabīʿa to study, advising
him to learn from his behaviour before his knowledge.45
Mālik had a particularly high opinion of Rabīʿa: when Rabīʿa died, he
commented that the sweetness of fiqh had gone.46
Mālik relates twelve Prophetic ḥadīths from Rabīʿa in the Muwaṭṭaʾ. These
are from various sources, including, from among the Seven/Ten Jurists, one
from al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad and one from Sulaymān ibn Yasār.

13. Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān (d. beginning of

caliphate of Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr (r. 136–58/754–75))

Suhayl’s father, Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān (d. 101/719), was the mawlā of a woman
called Juwayriya of the Ghaṭafān tribe. Abū Ṣāliḥ was a key source of ḥadīth
for many of the scholars of the people of Medina of the generation before
Mālik – including, as we have seen, Sumayy, the mawlā of Abū Bakr – and,
 His Teachers 31

in particular, of the ḥadīths transmitted by Abū Hurayra, who said of him,

by way of praise, ‘This man has been done no harm by not being one of the
descendants of ʿAbd Manāf!’ – in other words, in having slave origins rather
than being one of the tribe of Quraysh.47
Mālik relates ten musnad ḥadīths from Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, all of which are from his father, Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayra, from
the Prophet.

14. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim (d. c. 126/743)

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim was the son of al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn
Abī Bakr, one of the Seven/Ten Jurists of Medina. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s mother
was Qurayba, the daughter of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Bakr. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
was thus the great-grandson of the first caliph Abū Bakr through both his
father and his mother.
An anecdote is told of how Mālik’s son, Yaḥyā, was entering and leaving the
room where his father was teaching and would not sit down and participate.
Mālik noticed him and said, ‘What makes this situation easier for me is that this
business cannot be inherited. No-one has taken the place of his father except
for ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq –
may Allah be pleased with him. He was the best man of his time, and his father
was the best man of his time.’48
Mālik includes ten Prophetic ḥadīths from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim
in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, eight of which are via his father, al-Qāsim, six of them in turn
from al-Qāsim’s aunt, ʿĀʾisha. (Of the other two, one is without a full isnād,
and the other is from ʿAbdallāh, the son of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar.)

15. Al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 139/756)

Al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yaʿqūb, ‘the mawlā of the Ḥuraqa’, was one
of the Younger Successors; his father was also a Successor, and his grandfather
was one of the Older Successors. Yaʿqūb was a mukātab slave belonging to Aws
32 Early Islam in Medina

ibn al-Ḥadathān al-Naṣrī and he married a slave girl belonging to a man of the
Ḥuraqa tribe. She gave birth to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, but, because she did so before
Yaʿqūb had paid off his kitāba, the walāʾ of her son was judged by ʿUthmān to
go to her former owner, not his, hence the nisba of ‘the mawlā of the Ḥuraqa’.49
Mālik relates nine musnad ḥadīths from al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, but Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr includes a tenth ḥadīth which, he says, must be
Prophetic, because of its meaning and because of the existence of full isnāds
for it elsewhere, although Mālik himself says of it, ‘I don’t know whether he
attributes this to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or
not.’50 Five of these ten ḥadīths are via his father, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. An eleventh
report is included in the Muwaṭṭaʾ on the authority of al-ʿAlāʾ, from his father,
from his grandfather, about ʿUthmān.
*****
The above fifteen are the teachers of Mālik from whom he relates ten or more
Prophetic ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ. He had, of course, many other teachers,
some of whom we mention here because of their particular interest.

16. Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad (d. 148/765)

Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib was a
great-great-grandson of the fourth caliph, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, and, in that
capacity, is considered the Sixth Imam of the Twelver Shiʿas (following on
from his father Muḥammad, his grandfather ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, his great-
grandfather al-Ḥusayn, his great-great-uncle al-Ḥasan and his great-great-
grandfather ʿAlī). Jaʿfar’s mother was Farwa, the daughter of al-Qāsim ibn
Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr (as noted above, one of the Seven/Ten Jurists and
the father of Mālik’s shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim). Jaʿfar was thus
not only a direct descendant of the fourth caliph ʿAlī but also of the first caliph
Abū Bakr – which should alert us to the intellectually questionable nature of
some groups revering the one and reviling the other.
Mālik said of him,

I often used to visit Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad and I would always find him busy in
one of three things: either he would be doing the prayer, or fasting, or reciting
the Qur’an. I only ever saw him relate ḥadīths from the Messenger of Allah,
 His Teachers 33

may Allah bless him and grant him peace, if he was in wuḍūʾ (state of ‘minor’
ablution) and he would never speak about what did not concern him. He was
one of the men of knowledge who were known for their devotion, their doing
without the things of this world, and their fear of Allah. One year I went on
ḥajj with him. When he came to al-Shajara he went into iḥrām, but, every time
he tried to declare his intention to begin [his ḥajj], he would be overcome.
I said to him, ‘You have to do it.’ He was kind and well-disposed towards me,
and said, ‘Son of Ibn ʿĀmir, I am afraid if I say Labbayk, Allāhumma labbayk
(‘I am at your service, Allah, I am at Your service’), He will say, Lā labbayk,
wa-lā saʿdayk (‘You are not at My service, nor are you welcome’).’

Mālik added, ‘Once his grandfather, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, went into iḥrām and,
when he wanted to say – or said – Labbayk, Allāhumma, labbayk, he went into
a swoon, fell off his camel and hurt his face.’51
Mālik relates nine Prophetic ḥadīths from Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ (although, according to Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, five of them derive from
one longer ḥadīth from the Companion Jābir about ḥajj).52 All of these ḥadīths
are related by Jaʿfar from his father Muḥammad.

17. Nāfiʿ ibn Mālik, Abū Suhayl

(d. between 132/750 and 136/754)

Abū Suhayl was Mālik’s uncle. The Muwaṭṭaʾ includes two Prophetic ḥadīths
from him, both of which are related in turn from his father (Mālik’s grandfather),
Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir. The Muwaṭṭaʾ also includes nine other reports from Abū
Suhayl, eight of which are from his father. There are also two further reports
that Mālik relates on the authority of his grandfather, one a Prophetic ḥadīth
and the other about ʿUthmān.

18. Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir ibn al-Ḥuḍayr

(d. 130/747 or 131/748)

As well as having an extensive knowledge of fiqh, Ibn al-Munkadir was

renowned in Medina as a man of high spiritual status whose prayers were
34 Early Islam in Medina

answered, and who was very generous, despite not being well off. His mother
was a slave-girl.
The strong impression that he made on Mālik is evident in Mālik’s words
about him: ‘Muhammad ibn al-Munkadir was a lord among Qur’an reciters,
and would weep a lot when [teaching] ḥadīth. If I found myself feeling hard-
hearted in any way, I would go to him, look at him and be reminded by him,
and the benefit would last for days. He used to pray a lot at night.’53
Mālik relates five Prophetic ḥadīths from him in the Muwaṭṭaʾ (along with
three other reports: two from ʿUmar and one on his own authority).

19. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Maʿmar, Abū

Ṭuwāla (d. at the end of the Umayyad
caliphate i.e. c. 130/747)

Abū Ṭuwāla was the judge of Medina during Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm’s governorate.
Mālik said of him,

ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Maʿmar was a man of excellent behaviour
(rajul ṣāliḥ). He was a judge during the caliphates of Sulaymān [r. 96–9/715–17]
and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz [r. 99–101/717–20]. He would fast a lot. He was
able to express himself very well. He would go in to see the governor and advise
him and tell him where the truth lay in any situation without trying to make
things easy for him, whereas other people would be afraid of being beaten.54

Among the sayings recorded from Abū Ṭuwāla is the following: ‘If only we
had the behaviour of our forefathers in the Jāhiliyya along with our Islam!’55
Mālik relates three Prophetic ḥadīths from Abū Ṭuwāla in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.

20. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala al-Aslamī, Abū

Ḥarmala (d. in the caliphate of Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Saffāḥ (r.
132–6/749–54) or in 145/762)

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s father, Ḥarmala, was a Companion and, like his son,
was also a transmitter of ḥadīth. However, the reason for mentioning ʿAbd
 His Teachers 35

al-Raḥmān here is that there are two rock inscriptions in the Ḥismā region of
north-western Saudi Arabia that bear his name and thus provide documentary
evidence of his existence. The first inscription, at Shaʿib al-Hashūsh (?), reads,
‘I am Abū Ḥarmala, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala al-Aslamī. I advise [people]
to have fear of Allah, the Great.’ The second, in the vicinity of Tabuk, reads, ‘I
am ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala al-Aslamī. I ask Allah for the Garden as a
final resort, for His pleasure as a reward, and for the believers as companions.
Amin, Lord of the Worlds.’56
Mālik relates five Prophetic ḥadīths from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala in
the Muwaṭṭaʾ.57
*****
We noted earlier that Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr mentions a total of ninety-eight shaykhs
from whom Mālik transmits ḥadīth from the Prophet in the Muwaṭṭaʾ. There
are also, however, shaykhs from whom he transmits only non-Prophetic
material and which Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr thus does not include in his Tamhīd.
Among these, the following three may be noted as examples:

21. Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān ibn Zayd ibn Thābit (d. 132/742)

We referred above to Mālik transmitting a report from Khārija (from his father
Zayd ibn Thābit), one of the Seven/Ten Jurists of Medina, via his nephew Saʿīd
ibn Sulaymān ibn Zayd ibn Thābit. Saʿīd was at one time judge of Medina
(during the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43)). Mālik
said of him,

When Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān ibn Zayd ibn Thābit was appointed [judge], he
didn’t want to take it on and asked the governor of Medina to excuse him. The
governor gathered together the shaykhs of the people of Medina – and Saʿīd
was someone who was very diligent in doing the prayer – [these shaykhs
including] Saʿd ibn Ibrāhīm [the judge before him], Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān [judge in the time of Muʿāwiya, and one of the Seven/Ten Jurists
of Medina], Muḥammad ibn Muṣʿab ibn [Abī] Ḥanbal and Muḥammad ibn
Ṣafwān, and they all said to him, ‘To judge by the truth for one day (qaḍāʾ
yawm bi-l-ḥaqq) is better in our opinion than doing the prayer for the whole
of your life’, at which point he accepted being a judge.58
36 Early Islam in Medina

22. Abū Jaʿfar Yazīd ibn al-Qaʿqāʿ (d. c. 130/747)

Abū Jaʿfar was the chief Qur’an reciter in Medina in his day, having taught
the Qur’an in Medina since before the Battle of al-Ḥarra (63/683), and his
reading is one of the Ten Readings commonly recognized by the Muslims.
Mālik relates four Companion reports from Abū Jaʿfar in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, three
of them about ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar and one about ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAyyāsh.

23. ʿUrwa ibn Udhayna

We should also bear in mind that Mālik did not only relate from scholars and
specialists of ḥadīth. There is, for example, a report in the Muwaṭṭaʾ (which
is also recorded in the Mudawwana) from the well-respected Medinan poet,
ʿUrwa ibn Udhayna – who was a friend of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik before
Hishām became caliph and left Medina for Damascus – about an incident
concerning his grandmother when both of them were on the way to Mecca
for ḥajj or ʿumra. She had vowed to walk to Mecca but then, while on her way,
became unable to do so. She asked a mawlā of hers to ask ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar
what she should do, and ʿUrwa went with him. (ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar said she
should ride to Mecca and then fulfil her oath by walking, from the place where
she had stopped, in a future year.)59 Many centuries later, this one report was
to cause exaggerated criticism of Mālik by the Hungarian scholar Goldziher
(see further Chapter 5).

24. ʿAbdallāh ibn Yazīd ibn Hurmuz (d. 148/765)

Last, but not least, we should mention one of Mālik’s first and most influential
teachers, the younger Medinan Successor ʿAbdallāh ibn Yazīd ibn Hurmuz,
who is also one of the least known. It is said that Mālik studied solely under
Ibn Hurmuz for a period of at least seven years, although one report suggests
that the total time he spent with him was more like thirty years.60 Despite this
long time – and in contrast to his other main teachers such as Ibn Shihāb
 His Teachers 37

and Nāfiʿ – Ibn Hurmuz is only rarely cited as an authority – and never in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ – and, when he is cited, it is never as a transmitter of ḥadīth. The
sources explain that this was because he had made Mālik swear that he would
never transmit a ḥadīth from him mentioning his name.61
Sometimes we find Ibn Hurmuz’s name mentioned alongside that of
Rabīʿa, and it seems clear that the two were closely associated. Thus, out of
nine references to Ibn Hurmuz in the Mudawwana, three of them include
mention of Rabīʿa;62 and, out of twenty-one in the ʿUtbiyya, five also contain
mention of Rabīʿa.63 It is said that, when Mālik uses phrases such as ‘This is
what I found the people of our city doing’, ‘the people of knowledge in our city’
or ‘the matter which we are all agreed upon here’, it is Rabīʿa and Ibn Hurmuz
that he is referring to.64
*****
These, then, are some of the teachers from whom Mālik transmitted his
knowledge. They include people whose main task was to transmit this material
to others, and others whose main task was to dispense justice in a formal sense,
as judges, in accordance with this knowledge; but they also include, as with
ʿUrwa ibn Udhayna, people who were simply living in Medina as Muslims.
In many instances, they include, as we have seen, people who were direct
descendants of some of the most important Companions, including the first
four Rightly Guided Caliphs. In all instances, they were people who shared
this common heritage of the city and were concerned to keep it alive and pass
it on to future generations, both in word and deed.
Transmission by word leads us to a consideration of the written word and
‘books’, which in Mālik’s case means primarily his Muwaṭṭaʾ, which is the
subject of Chapter 3. Transmission by deed leads us to a consideration of the
ʿamal, or ‘practice’, of the people of Medina, which is the subject of Chapter 4.
38
 3

The Muwaṭṭaʾ

A number of writings are attributed to Mālik, and sayings and opinions of his
are recorded in various other sources, but by far his most important work is
the Muwaṭṭaʾ. The Muwaṭṭaʾ is particularly interesting not only because of the
high standing of its author – or perhaps we should say its compiler, as most of
the material in it is transmitted, as we have seen, from earlier authorities – and
the reliability of his material but also because of its historical precedence: it
is, in effect, our first compendium of Islamic law and our first book of ḥadīth
organized according to subject matter. (There are fragments of other early
legal works that exist,1 but the Muwaṭṭaʾ is characterized by its completeness
and its multiple transmissions.)
As to the excellence of its author, we have already referred earlier (see
Chapter 1) to the well-known ḥadīth that ‘the time is nigh when people will
beat the livers of their camels [i.e. urge them on] in search of knowledge, but
they will not find anyone more knowledgeable than the scholar of Medina’, and
we saw that this was taken to refer to Imam Mālik. As a contemporary of his,
Ibn ʿUyayna, put it,

I used to say that it was [Saʿīd] ibn al-Musayyab, but then I said [to myself]
that in the time of Ibn al-Musayyab there were also Sulaymān [ibn Yasār],
Sālim [ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar] and others [in Medina]. Now I say that it
was Mālik, because he lived until a time when there was no one else left in
Medina that was equal to him.2

Mālik’s excellence with regard to ḥadīth scholarship was acknowledged by

his contemporaries, and it earned him the title of amīr al-muʾminīn fī l-ḥadīth –
‘the commander of the faithful with regard to ḥadīth’.3 He was described by
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, the fourth of the imams of the Four Madhhabs, as ‘an
imam in ḥadīth and fiqh’.4 The famous ḥadīth scholar and transmitter of the
40 Early Islam in Medina

Muwaṭṭaʾ, Ibn Mahdī, put the same idea in the following terms: ‘Al-Thawrī
is an imam with regard to ḥadīth but not an imam with regard to the sunna;
al-Awzāʿī is an imam with regard to the sunna, but not an imam with regard to
ḥadīth. Mālik, however, is an imam with regard to both.’5
As for authenticity of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, it was the view of Imam al-Shāfiʿī, one
of Mālik’s main students and the founder of the third of the Four Madhhabs,
that ‘there is no book on earth, after the Qur’an, which is more accurate (aṣaḥḥ)
than the book of Mālik’,6 while the scholar Abū Zurʿa said, ‘If someone were
to make an oath on pain of divorce that all the ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ were
sound, he would not have to expiate his oath, whereas if he were to say the
same about anyone else’s ḥadīths, he would have to do so.’7
As for its historical precedence, we restrict ourselves to the comments of
three prominent scholars:

1. The Mālikī scholar Qadi Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148) says, in
his commentary on the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Tirmidhī, ‘The Muwaṭṭaʾ is the first
source and the core, while the book of al-Bukhārī is the second source in
this respect; the rest, such as Muslim and al-Tirmidhī, built on the basis of
these two.’8
2. The Ḥanafī ḥadīth scholar al-Ḥāfiẓ Mughalṭāy (d. 762/1361) said that
Mālik was the first to organize authentic ḥadīth into content-based
chapters (awwal man ṣannafa al-ṣaḥīḥ).9
3. In his Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha, the highly respected scholar Shāh Walī
Allāh al-Dihlawī (1114–1176/1704–1762) confirms the primacy of
Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ, followed by the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections of al-Bukhārī and
Muslim.10

The different transmissions of the Muwaṭṭaʾ

As was the nature of texts recorded in Mālik’s time, the Muwaṭṭaʾ has come
down to us in the form of various transmissions (riwāyāt). These differ from
one another to a greater or lesser degree in terms of details in the wording
of the texts, the wording of the different chapter headings, the order of these
chapters and, in some cases, the inclusion or exclusion of larger portions of
material. Nevertheless, these different transmissions share an overwhelming
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 41

overall similarity, which enables us to have a high degree of certainty about

their attribution to one and the same source, and one and the same place,
namely, Mālik in Medina.
Over ninety people are on record as having transmitted the Muwaṭṭaʾ
directly from Mālik, but, despite this number, far fewer transmissions have
actually survived to this day in published or manuscript form. To the best
of my knowledge, there are eight transmissions of the text that are currently
available in printed and/or manuscript form. Four of these are complete, while
the other four are incomplete to differing degrees. These eight printed versions
are those of the following:

1. Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī (complete)

2. Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī (complete)
3. Al-Shaybānī (complete)
4. Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr (complete; a few folios already published)
5. Suwayd al-Ḥadathānī (incomplete, but extensive)
6. Al-Qaʿnabī (incomplete; only a few chapters)
7. ʿAlī ibn Ziyād (incomplete; only a few chapters)
8. Ibn al-Qāsim (incomplete, but most musnad ḥadīths included)

We shall look briefly at each in turn.

1. Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī (d. 234/848; from al-Andalus). Yaḥyā first
transmitted the Muwaṭṭaʾ in his native Andalus from the Andalusian scholar
Ziyād ibn Shabṭūn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (known as ‘Shabṭūn’), who had transmitted
it from the Tunisian scholar ʿAlī ibn Ziyād (for whom, see further below). Yaḥyā
then travelled to Medina and transmitted the whole of the text directly from
Mālik, apart from a very short portion consisting of four out of six chapters
of the Book of Iʿtikāf which still retain their immediate attribution to Ziyād
(ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) rather than Mālik.11 Yaḥyā’s journey to Medina took
place in the year 179/795, in the last year of Mālik’s life, and his transmission
thus represents a late – although probably not the latest – version of the text
(see further below, under Abū Muṣʿab). Mālik recognized Yaḥyā’s qualities and
referred to him as ‘the intelligent one (ʿāqil) of al-Andalus’.12
Yaḥyā’s transmission has been published many times, in many editions, as
have numerous commentaries on it.
42 Early Islam in Medina

2. Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī (d. 189/805; from Kufa, but later
settled in Baghdad). Al-Shaybānī was one of the main students of Abū Ḥanīfa
and was effectively responsible, along with Abū Ḥanīfa’s other main student
Abū Yūsuf, for transmitting the learning of the Iraqi city of Kufa that later
became the Ḥanafī madhhab. Al-Shaybānī spent three years studying under
Mālik13 and transmitted a version of the Muwaṭṭaʾ from him. His transmission
is significantly different in form: while it retains much of the material common
to the other transmissions, it at times includes and at times omits a certain
number of Prophetic ḥadīths found in other versions, and the order that the
material is presented in is different. His transmission is also characterized by
the exclusion of the opinions of Mālik and the Medinans, preferring instead to
highlight the views of Abū Ḥanīfa and the Kufans. Al-Shaybānī’s transmission
has been published a number of times, as have various commentaries on it.

3. Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī (d. 242/856; from Medina). Abū Muṣʿab Aḥmad ibn
Abī Bakr al-Qāsim ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Zurāra ibn Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
ibn ʿAwf, to give him his full name, was the great-great-great-grandson of the
Companion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ‘Awf. (We have already noted two men of
knowledge connected with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s family: first, his son Abū Salama,
one of the Seven Jurists of Medina; and second, Mālik’s shaykh Ṣafwān ibn
Sulaym, whose father Sulaym was the mawlā of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s son
Ḥumayd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ‘Awf.) Abū Muṣʿab was born in Medina and,
like Mālik, lived there for the whole of his life. In his later years he became
judge of the city.
A complete edition of Abū Muṣʿab’s transmission, from a unique manuscript
in the Salar Jang Library in Hyderabad, India – although fragments of this
transmission exist in other libraries – has been edited and published. Abū
Muṣʿab’s transmission is very similar to that of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā, although in
general it is a little longer. The Andalusian scholar Ibn Ḥazm, generalizing,
said that it contains ‘about 100 ḥadīths’ more than Yaḥyā’s transmission,14 while
the editor of the printed text specifies that it contains twenty-four Prophetic
ḥadīths which either do not occur in Yaḥyā’s transmission or occur in it without
a full isnād, but ten other ḥadīths that occur in a ‘fuller’ version in Abū Muṣʿab’s
transmission, as well as thirty-two extra Companion reports, seventeen extra
Successor reports and sixty-eight extra opinions of Mālik not contained in
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 43

Yaḥyā’s transmission.15 There are also minor differences in chapter order and
in some details of the wording. It is considered – along with the transmission
of Abū Ḥudhāfa al-Sahmī, which contains a roughly similar number of extra
ḥadīths – to be the latest of the transmissions of the Muwaṭṭaʾ.16

4. Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr (d. 231/845; from Egypt). His full name is Yaḥyā ibn
ʿAbdallāh ibn Bukayr, but he is usually known simply as Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr,
or just Ibn Bukayr. He is said to have gone through the Muwaṭṭaʾ seventeen
times with Mālik (one at least of which would have been towards the end of
Mālik’s life, as Ibn Bukayr is said to have travelled to see Mālik in the year
178/794). His transmission is one of five referred to by Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr
in his commentary on the Muwaṭṭaʾ, the Istidhkār. (The other four are the
transmissions of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī, Ibn al-Qāsim, al-Qaʿnabī and
Muṭarrif.)17 An edition of Ibn Bukayr’s transmission was published in Algiers
in 1905, and manuscript copies exist in the Ẓāhiriyya Library in Damascus,
the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul, the National Library in Algiers and in
various collections in Morocco.18 In terms of its form, it is very similar to
the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī (although the North African
manuscripts seem characterized by incomplete isnāds which only mention the
name of the last major authority).19

5. Suwayd al-Ḥadathānī (d. 240/854; from al-Ḥadītha, in Iraq). An incomplete,

but extensive, fragment of the transmission of Suwayd al-Ḥadathānī exists in
the Ẓāhiriyya Library in Damascus and has been edited and published.

6. al-Qaʿnabī (d. 220/835; from Medina; settled in Basra but died in Mecca).
His full name is ʿAbdallāh ibn Maslama ibn Qaʿnab. Al-Qaʿnabī is considered
by many – along with ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf al-Tinnīsī – to be the most reliable
transmitter of the Muwaṭṭaʾ. His transmission was the one preferred by Abū
Dāwūd (among the compilers of the Six Books of ḥadīth). It is also said to be
the one with the most additional material in it (akbarihā).20 Al-Qaʿnabī spent
twenty years studying the Muwaṭṭaʾ under Mālik and was once praised by him
as being ‘the best of people on the earth’.21
Portions of this transmission in a unique manuscript in the National Library
in Tunis have been edited and published.22
44 Early Islam in Medina

7. ʿAlī ibn Ziyād al-Tūnisī (d. 183/799; from Tunis). A unique manuscript
preserved in Qayrawan which contains a small portion of ʿAlī ibn Ziyād’s
transmission has been edited and published. His transmission is considerably
earlier than that of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī and can be dated to around the
year 150 AH.

8. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim (d. 191/806; from Egypt). Fragments of

Ibn al-Qāsim’s transmission exist in manuscript form in Tunis and Qayrawan,
and elsewhere.23 In his Mulakhkhaṣ, al-Qābisī (324–403/936–1012) collected
together the ḥadīths of this transmission that have a full isnād, and this work
of al-Qābisī has been published as ‘the Muwaṭṭaʾ in the transmission of Ibn
al-Qāsim’.
Ibn al-Qāsim was one of the main students of Mālik and, like al-Qaʿnabī,
spent twenty years studying under Mālik.24 In addition to transmitting the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, Ibn al-Qāsim was also responsible for transmitting the opinions and
judgements of Mālik that now constitute the major Mālikī text known as the
Mudawwana.25

9. ʿAbdallāh ibn Wahb (d. 197/812; from Egypt). Mention should also be
made of the transmission of Ibn Wahb, traces of which are found throughout
the ḥadīth literature in the form of Ibn Wahb’s direct transmissions from
Mālik.26 A book published recently with the title ‘the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Ibn Wahb’
is clearly not a transmission of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ – there is very little mention
of Mālik in it – but rather Ibn Wahb’s own ‘Muwaṭṭaʾ’.27 Ibn Wahb features
regularly as an authority in the Mudawwana.
There is, however, one other route of transmission that has been noted by
scholars but often overlooked. This is the transmission of the same material
from Mālik – and thus effectively of his Muwaṭṭaʾ – in the later collections of
ḥadīth. If we consider the Six Books, for example, that is, the collections of
al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī and Ibn Mājah, we
find that they often rely on specific transmissions from Mālik different from the
published ones noted above. Thus, for example, al-Bukhārī, in his Ṣaḥīḥ, relies
extensively on the transmission of ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf al-Tinnīsī, although
also on the transmissions of Maʿn ibn ʿĪsā and al-Qaʿnabī; Muslim, in his Ṣaḥīḥ,
relies mostly on the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Tamīmī al-Naysābūrī
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 45

(d. 226/840) (not to be confused with Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī); Abū Dāwūd,
in his Sunan, relies mostly, as we have mentioned, on the transmission of
al-Qaʿnabī; al-Tirmidhī often relates directly from Qutayba ibn Saʿīd (d.
240/854), from Mālik, but also indirectly via Maʿn ibn ʿĪsā; while al-Nasāʾī
is said to have preferred the transmission of al-Qaʿnabī and/or relied on that
of Qutayba ibn Saʿīd. Ibn Mājah, being somewhat later than the others, only
relates small numbers of ḥadīths from people who transmitted directly from
Mālik, but, of those people, the names of Suwayd ibn Saʿīd [al-Ḥadathānī]
and Hishām ibn ʿAmmār stand out. To this list can be added the Musnad of
Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, who relies particularly on the transmission of ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī; and the collections of Ibn al-Madīnī, who, like Abū
Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī, relied mostly on the transmission of al-Qaʿnabī, and
of Abū Ḥātim, who relied mostly on the transmission of Maʿn ibn ʿĪsā.28 It
can thus be seen that, in this sense, the Six Books and the other collections
of ḥadīth mentioned effectively preserve other transmissions of the Muwaṭṭaʾ.
The same applies to al-Shāfiʿī, whose Kitāb al-Umm, as pointed out recently by
Ahmed El Shamsy, effectively contains portions of his own transmission of the
Muwaṭṭaʾ.29 (See further below.)
It is clear from the above that we have many transmissions of this text, the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, making for a highly reliable text. But what are the differences, if any,
between these different transmissions?

The differences between the transmissions

Some transmissions, such as that of al-Shaybānī, appear significantly different

from that of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī, while others are remarkably similar.
An idea of the differences – and similarities – between these transmissions
can be gained by a comparison of some key chapters between the various
transmissions available (namely, in the present instance, those of Yaḥyā ibn
Yaḥyā al-Laythī, Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr, al-Qaʿnabī, Suwayd and
al-Shaybānī). Two e­ xamples – dictated by the illustrations available in printed
form of a manuscript of Ibn Bukayr’s transmission – will suffice, the first from
the Book of Zakāt, and the second from the Book of Fasting.
46 Early Islam in Medina

Example 1: From the Book of Zakāt

In the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī, the Book of Zakāt begins
with a chapter entitled ‘What Zakāt Is Due On’. This chapter contains four
reports: two Prophetic ḥadīths of very similar import followed by a report
from the ‘Fifth Rightly-Guided Caliph’, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and then a
brief comment by Mālik, as follows:

1. Yaḥyā related to me from Mālik, from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā al-Māzinī, that his
father said: ‘I heard Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī say, that the Messenger of Allah,
may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “There is no zakāt on less
than five camels; there is no zakāt on less than five ūqiyyas [of silver]; and
there is no zakāt on less than five wasqs.” ’ [An ūqiyya is a weight, equivalent
to forty dirhams. A dirham weighs approx. 2.97 g, so an ūqiyya weighs
approx. 40 × 2.97 = 119 g. A wasq is a measure, not a weight, but is roughly
equivalent to 128 kg.]30
2. Yaḥyā related to me from Mālik, from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ṣaʿṣaʿa al-Anṣārī, later al-Māzinī, from his father, from
Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and
grant him peace, said: ‘There is no zakāt on less than five wasqs of dates;
there is no zakāt on less than five ūqiyyas of silver; and there is no zakāt on
less than five camels.’
3. Yaḥyā related to me from Mālik that he had heard that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz had written to his governor in Damascus about zakāt, saying: ‘Zakāt
only applies to crops, gold and silver, and livestock.’
4. Mālik said: ‘Zakāt only applies to three things: crops, gold and silver, and
livestock.’31

The transmission of al-Zuhrī contains the same reports, and in the same order,
although there are some minor differences in detail. In the second report, the
immediate source of Mālik is given as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, rather than Muḥammad, and his nisba is given simply as
‘al-Māzinī’, without mentioning ‘al-Anṣārī’. In the third and fourth reports, the
three categories are given in a slightly different order: where Yaḥyā has ‘crops-
coin-camels’, al-Zuhrī has ‘coin-crops-livestock’.32
If we look at Ibn Bukayr’s transmission (as represented by the two published
folios from the Zāhiriyya manuscript), we find the same four reports, in the
same order, but again with minor differences. The first ḥadīth is the same,
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 47

except that the grammatical gender of the word ‘five’ is different. In the second
ḥadīth, Mālik’s source is given as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān, and his nisba is also given simply as ‘al-Māzinī’, as in al-Zuhrī’s
transmission; the order of the categories is also different, with silver and camels
put before dates, and the phrase ‘of silver’ is not included. In the third and
fourth reports, the order is the same as with al-Zuhrī, although Ibn Bukayr’s
transmission also includes a short report (after No. 3 above about ʿUmar ibn
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz) from Ibn Shihāb to the effect that Sulaymān ibn Yasār said that
there is no zakāt on less than five ūqiyyas.33
The published fragment of Suwayd’s transmission includes a general section
on zakāt, but the whole section is much shorter than the Book of Zakāt in
the transmissions of Yaḥyā and al-Zuhrī, and consists simply of fourteen
reports under the general heading of ‘What has come down about zakāt’.
However, it does contain the first two Prophetic ḥadīths mentioned in the
other three transmissions. They have exactly the same content, except that
Mālik’s direct source for the second is given as Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ṣaʿṣaʿa (as in Yaḥyā’s transmission), and he does not
mention either ‘al-Anṣārī’ or ‘al-Māzinī’.34
Al-Shaybānī’s transmission is rather different. He includes only the second
of the two Prophetic ḥadīths – with the same content as the other transmissions,
but citing, as in Yaḥyā’s and Suwayd’s transmissions, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh
ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ṣaʿṣaʿa as Mālik’s source (and without mentioning
either ‘al-Anṣārī’ or ‘al-Māzinī’, as with Suwayd). Al-Shaybānī does not include
the report about ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (No. 3), nor the comment from Mālik
(No. 4). Instead, he includes a comment about Abū Ḥanīfa’s view, saying,

This is what we go by, and what Abū Ḥanīfa used to go by, except in one
situation, namely, that a tenth should be taken from what the earth produces,
whether it is a little or a lot, if it has been irrigated by naturally flowing water
or rain from the sky; if, however, it has been irrigated using a bucket or a
water-wheel, only a twentieth is due. This was [also] the opinion of Ibrāhīm
al-Nakhaʿī and Mujāhid.35

In Yaḥyā’s transmission, the above chapter is followed by a chapter entitled

‘Zakāt on Gold and Silver’. This consists of four ḥadīth reports, followed by
nine reports from Mālik, as follows:
48 Early Islam in Medina

1. Yaḥyā related to me, from Mālik, that Muḥammad ibn ʿUqba, the mawlā
of al-Zubayr, asked al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad about a mukātab slave of
his from whom he had received, by arrangement, a large sum of money
(qāṭaʿahu bi-mālin ʿaẓīm) [i.e. in order to speed up his manumission], and
whether he should pay zakāt on it. Al-Qāsim said: ‘Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq
would not take zakāt from anybody’s money until that person had had it for
a year.’ Al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad added: ‘When Abū Bakr gave people their
stipends, he would ask each person whether he had any money on which he
needed to pay zakāt. If he said “Yes”, he would take the zakāt due on that
money out of his stipend, and if he said “No”, he would give him his stipend
and not take anything from it.’
2. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from ʿUmar ibn Ḥusayn, from ʿĀʾisha bint Qudāma,
that her father said: ‘Whenever I came to ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān to receive my
stipend, he would ask me whether I had any money on which I needed to
pay zakāt. If I said “Yes”, he would take the zakāt due on that money from
my stipend, and if I said “No”, he would give me my stipend.’
3. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, from Nāfiʿ, that ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar
would say: ‘No zakāt is due on any money until [its owner] has had it for
a year.’
4. [Yaḥyā] related to me from Mālik, that Ibn Shihāb said: ‘The first one to
take zakāt [directly] out of people’s stipends [i.e. the zakāt that he considered
due on the stipend itself]36 was Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān.’
5. Mālik said: ‘The sunna about which there is no difference of opinion
among us is that zakāt is due on twenty dinars of gold in the same way that
it is due on two hundred dirhams [of silver].’
6. Mālik said: ‘There is no zakāt due on twenty dinars of clearly defective
weight. If the amount increases so that it comes to twenty dinars of full
weight, then there is zakāt to pay on it, but there is no zakāt on less than
twenty dinars [of full weight]. Nor is there any zakāt due on two hundred
dirhams of clearly defective weight. If the amount increases so that it comes
to two hundred dirhams of full weight, then there is zakāt to pay on it. If
[the dinars or dirhams] are considered acceptable in the same way that full-
weight ones are (fa-in kānat tajūzu bi-jawāz al-wāzina) [i.e. with, at worst,
only marginal weight deficiency],37 then I think there is zakāt to be paid on
that amount, whether it is dinars or dirhams.’
7. Mālik said, about a man who has one hundred and sixty full-weight
dirhams and the exchange rate in [his] town is eight dirhams to the dinar,
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 49

that there is no zakāt due on [that amount]. Rather, zakāt is only due on
twenty actual dinars or two hundred dirhams.
8. Mālik said, about a man who has five dinars, acquired as profit (fāʾida)
or in some other way, and then trades with that amount until, when a year
has elapsed, the amount has reached a zakātable amount, that he should pay
zakāt on it, even if it only reaches that amount one day before the year has
elapsed or one day after the year has elapsed. There is then no zakāt to pay
on it until a year has elapsed from the day zakāt was paid on it.
9. Mālik said, about a man who has ten dinars and trades with them and
which, by the time a year has elapsed, come to an amount of twenty dinars,
that he should pay zakāt on that amount straightaway and not wait for a
year to elapse from the time it reaches a zakātable amount, because a year
has elapsed over that amount, which is now twenty dinars in his possession
(li-anna al-ḥawl qad ḥāla ʿalayhā wa-hiya ʿindahu ʿishrūn). After that there
is no zakāt to pay on it until a year has elapsed from the time when zakāt
was paid on it.
10. Mālik said: ‘The agreed-upon position here, with regard to income
from hiring out slaves, or renting out properties, or the payments made by
mukātab slaves, is that no zakāt is due on any of that until a year has elapsed
from the day when the owner [of the money] takes possession of it.’
11. Mālik said, about gold and silver that is shared between partners, that if
the portion of any one of them reaches twenty dinars in gold or two hundred
dirhams [in silver], he should pay zakāt on it. If a person’s portion is less
than the amount on which zakāt is due, he does not have to pay any zakāt.
If their portions together come to a zakātable amount, but some of them
have larger portions than others, zakāt should be taken from each one of
them according to the size of his portion, as long as each individual’s share
is large enough for zakāt to be due on it. This is because the Prophet, may
Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘There is no zakāt on less than
five ūqiyyas of silver.’ Mālik added: ‘This is what I prefer most out of what
I have heard about this.’
12. Mālik said: ‘If a man has [an amount of] gold or silver which is divided
up between a number of different people, he should add it all up together
and then pay whatever zakāt is due on the whole amount.’
13. Mālik said: ‘No-one has to pay zakāt on gold or silver that he has acquired
(afāda) until a year has elapsed from the day he acquired it.’38
50 Early Islam in Medina

In the transmission of al-Zuhrī, these thirteen reports appear in exactly

the same order and almost exactly the same form. The only differences are
minimal and relate to occasional slightly different formulations of the same
meaning, such as using a different form of the verb but with the same meaning
(e.g. Yaḥyā: aslama ilayhi (‘gives/hands over to him’); al-Zuhrī: sallama
ilayhi), or the inclusion or exclusion of a definite article (Yaḥyā: min mālin
zakātan; al-Zuhrī: min mālin al-zakāta), or a different conditional particle
(Yaḥyā: fa-idhā qāla; al-Zuhrī: fa-in qāla), or a slightly different word order
(Yaḥyā: zakāta dhālika l-māl (‘the zakāt of that money’); al-Zuhrī: zakāta mālihi
dhālika (‘the zakāt of that money of his’)). Also, in al-Zuhrī’s transmission,
Mālik’s comment ‘This is what I prefer most out of what I have heard about
this’ becomes shortened to ‘This is what I prefer most out of what I have heard’.
Otherwise, the texts are effectively word for word the same.39
Ibn Bukayr’s transmission tells almost exactly the same story. The illustrated
fragment – which goes up to the end of Report No. 8 above – contains the
same sort of minor differences, such as different verbs with the same meaning
(where Yaḥyā and al-Zuhrī have dafaʿa ilayya, Ibn Bukayr has aslama
ilayya – although, for the phrase mentioned in the previous paragraph, Ibn
Bukayr, like al-Zuhrī, has sallama ilayhi), or slightly different formulations
of the same phrase (e.g. Ibn Bukayr: wa-in kānat tajūzu; Yaḥyā: fa-in kānat
tajūzu; al-Zuhrī: wa-in kāna yajūzu), and so forth. Ibn Bukayr also uses the
shorter phrase ‘The sunna among us’ as opposed to the longer formula ‘The
sunna about which there is no difference of opinion among us’ of Yaḥyā and
al-Zuhrī.40 Otherwise, Ibn Bukayr’s transmission is remarkably close to the
other two (and particularly that of al-Zuhrī).
The fragment of Suwayd’s transmission only includes two of these thirteen
reports, namely, Nos 3 and 4 above. Both of these reports are the same as
in the other three transmissions mentioned, except that in No. 4, Suwayd’s
transmission gives simply ‘Muʿāwiya’ rather than ‘Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān’.41
Al-Shaybānī’s transmission is again, as in the first chapter considered
above, rather different. He includes Reports Nos 1, 2 and 3, but in a different
order and under different headings. Under the heading ‘When is zakāt due
on money?’ he includes the ḥadīth from ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, that is, No. 3
above, after which he adds the comment: ‘This is what we go by, and it is the
opinion of Abū Ḥanīfa, except if [a person] acquires money and adds it to an
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 51

amount he already has on which zakāt needs to be paid. Then, when zakāt is
due on the first amount, he pays zakāt on the second amount along with [the
first].’ He then includes Reports Nos 1 and 2, in that order, under the different
heading of ‘If a man is owed a debt, does he have to pay zakāt on it?’ After the
first report, he adds the comment: ‘We go by this, and [this] is the opinion of
Abū Ḥanīfa.’ None of the nine opinions of Mālik are included in al-Shaybānī’s
transmission.42
These differences can be tabulated as in Table 2.
If we consider the whole of the Book of Zakāt in the transmissions available,
a much clearer picture emerges of both the differences in content between them
and also of the general structure of the Muwaṭṭaʾ as a whole. If for convenience’s
sake we take Yaḥyā’s transmission as the standard, we note that there are thirty
separate chapters, all with their separate titles, in the Book of Zakāt. Al-Zuhrī’s
transmission contains almost exactly the same amount of material, but two of

Table 2 Differences between the Transmissions in the Book of Zakāt

ZAKĀT Yaḥyā al-Zuhrī Ibn Bukayr Suwayd al-Shaybānī

Z 1.1 (P) • • • • ×
Z 1.2 (P) • • • • •
Z 1.3 (S) • • • - ×
Z 1. 3a (S) × × • - ×
Z 1.4 (M) • • • - × + AH
Z 2.1 (C) • • • - •
Z 2.2 (C) • • • - • + AH
Z 2.3 (C) • • • • • + AH
Z 2.4 (C) • • • • ×
Z 2.5 (M) • • • - ×
Z 2.6 (M) • • • - ×
Z 2.7 (M) • • • - ×
Z 2.8 (M) • • • - ×
Z 2.9 (M) • • - - ×
Z 2.10 (M) • • - - ×
Z 2.11 (M) • • - - ×
Z 2.12 (M) • • - - ×
Z 2.13 (M) • • - - ×
KEY:
P = Prophetic ḥadīth; C = Companion ḥadīth; M = opinion of Mālik; AH = opinion of Abū Ḥanīfa
• = present; × = not present; – = not covered by fragment
52 Early Islam in Medina

the headings in Yaḥyā’s transmission are not present in al-Zuhrī’s, thus leaving
only twenty-eight chapters in al-Zuhrī’s transmission rather than thirty as in
Yaḥyā’s. There is a further difference: Yaḥyā’s transmission contains one chapter
heading (his twenty-sixth: ‘Buying zakāt and taking it back’) which does
not appear in al-Zuhrī’s Book of Zakāt. It consists of two Prophetic reports,
followed by an opinion of Mālik.43 The opinion of Mālik appears, although
in a modified form, elsewhere in al-Zuhrī’s Book of Zakāt (towards the end
of his tenth chapter);44 and while the two Prophetic ḥadīths do not appear
in the Book of Zakāt in al-Zuhrī’s transmission, they do appear in al-Zuhrī’s
Book of Jihad.45 Al-Zuhrī’s transmission also contains one chapter heading,
‘Taking [livestock from the people of] jizya as part of their jizya (poll-tax)’,
which does not appear in Yaḥyā’s transmission. In al-Zuhrī’s transmission this
chapter contains three reports: two Companion reports (from ʿUmar) and one
opinion of Mālik.46 The second report from ʿUmar and the opinion of Mālik
occur in Yaḥyā’s twenty-fourth chapter, ‘The jizya of the People of the Book
and the Magians’, but the first report from ʿUmar does not occur in Yaḥyā’s
transmission.47 (It does, however, occur in al-Shaybānī’s transmission.)48
If we consider the other transmissions for which extensive fragments are
available, similar observations can be made. The fragment of al-Qaʿnabī’s
transmission contains two portions with material from the Book of Zakāt.
The first follows Yaḥyā’s transmission report by report, from the end of the
chapter on ‘What has come down about the zakāt of cattle’ (Yaḥyā’s twelfth
chapter) to the end of the following chapter (‘The zakāt of associates’). The
second portion, which covers two chapters in both transmissions (Yaḥyā’s
twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters), also follows Yaḥyā’s transmission
report by report, except that, towards the end of the first of these two chapters,
al-Qaʿnabī includes an extra report from ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr.49
Suwayd’s transmission, as we mentioned above, contains only fourteen
reports in his chapter on ‘What has come down about zakāt’,50 corresponding
to material in eight of Yaḥyā’s chapters. As there is very little material reflecting
Mālik’s own opinions, one might be tempted to think that, as with al-Shaybānī,
this material has been edited out. However, the thirteenth of Suwyad’s reports
is an opinion of Mālik, and many other chapters in his transmission contain
opinions of Mālik. It therefore seems that the limited extent of the material in
Suwayd’s Book of Zakāt must be due to other causes.
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 53

Al-Shaybānī’s transmission shows the most differences. The twenty-three

reports that he includes in his ‘Chapters on Zakāt’ are all the same as in other
transmissions but are not presented in the same order (although there is a
certain amount of overlap). Furthermore, as we have noted above, he also
includes opinions of Abū Ḥanīfa (at least one, and sometimes more than one,
in all but one of the fourteen ‘Chapters on Zakāt’).51
A second example will further illustrate the nature of the differences
between these transmissions.

Example 2: From the Book of Fasting

In the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythi, the first three chapters of the
Book of Fasting appear as follows:

(i) What has come down about sighting the new moon to start and end the
fast in Ramadan
1. Yaḥyā related to me from Mālik, from Nāfiʿ, from ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar,
that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,
mentioned Ramadan and said: ‘Don’t begin the fast until you see the new
moon, and don’t break the fast until you see the new moon. If it is cloudy,
work out [when it should be].’
2. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, from ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīnār, from
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and
grant him peace, said: ‘A month has [at least] twenty-nine days in it, so don’t
begin the fast until you see the new moon and don’t break the fast until you
see it. If it is cloudy, work out [when it should be].’
3. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, from Thawr ibn Zayd al-Dīlī, from
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and
grant him peace, mentioned Ramadan and said: ‘Don’t begin the fast until
you see the new moon, and don’t break the fast until you see the new moon.
If it is cloudy, complete a full thirty days.’
4. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, that he had heard that the new moon
was once sighted in the time of ʿUthmān in the late afternoon and ʿUthmān
did not break the fast until it was evening and the sun had set.
5. Yaḥyā said: I heard Mālik say, about someone who saw the new moon
of Ramadan by himself, that he should fast, and that it was not correct for
54 Early Islam in Medina

him to break the fast when he knew that that day was part of Ramadan.
He added: ‘Whoever sees the new moon of Shawwāl by himself should not
break the fast, because the danger with people is that someone among them
who is not trustworthy will break the fast, and then others, when they hear
about this, will say ‘We have seen the new moon.’ Whoever sees the new
moon of Shawwāl during the day [i.e. before sunset] should not break the
fast but should complete that day’s fasting, because that is the new moon of
the coming night.’
6. Yaḥyā said: I heard Mālik say: ‘If people are fasting on the Day of Fiṭr,
thinking that it is Ramadan, and then hear from a reliable source that the
new moon of Ramadan was seen a day before they [themselves] started
fasting and that that day is now Day 31, they should break their fast, on that
day, at whatever time the news reaches them. However, they should not do
the ʿĪd prayer if the news comes to them after mid-day.’
(ii) Making the intention to fast before dawn
1. Yaḥyā related to me, from Mālik, from Nafi’, that ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar
would say: ‘Only someone who has made the intention to fast before dawn
is actually fasting.’ [Yaḥyā, al-Zuhrī, al-Shaybānī: lā yasūmu … illā;52 Ibn
Bukayr, Suwayd: lā yasūmanna … illā].53
2. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, from Ibn Shihāb, the same as that from
ʿĀʾisha and Ḥafṣa, the wives of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant
him peace.
(iii) What has come down about being quick to break the fast
1. Yaḥyā related to me, from Mālik, from Abū Hāzim ibn Dīnār, from Sahl
ibn Saʿd al-Sāʿidī, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and
grant him peace, said: ‘People will remain in good as long as they are quick
to break the fast.’
2. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala
al-Aslamī, from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, that the Messenger of Allah, may
Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘People will remain in good as
long as they are quick to break the fast.’
3. [Yaḥyā] related to me, from Mālik, from Ibn Shihāb, from Ḥumayd ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān would
both pray maghrib when they saw the night darkening, before breaking
their fast, and would then break their fast after doing the prayer. That was
in Ramadan.54
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 55

The first chapter thus contains six reports: three Prophetic ḥadīths of very
similar import, one report from ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and two opinions of
Mālik; the second contains two Companion reports, with the same content,
from three different authorities; and the third contains two Prophetic ḥadīths,
only differing in their isnād, and a further report about the practice of ʿUmar
and ʿUthmān.
In the transmission of al-Zuhrī, all these reports occur, and in the same
order, except that he includes a further short chapter, containing three reports,
between the first two chapters, as follows:

What has come down about the pre-dawn meal (suhūr)

1. Abū Muṣʿab related to us, saying: Mālik related to us, from Ibn Shihāb,
from Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘Bilāl calls [the adhān] while it is still
night, so eat and drink until Ibn Umm Maktūm calls [the adhān].’ [Ibn
Shihāb] said: ‘Ibn Umm Maktūm was a blind man, who wouldn’t call [the
adhān] until someone had said to him “Morning has come. Morning has
come.” ’
2. Abū Muṣʿab related to us, saying: Mālik related to us, from ʿAbdallāh ibn
Dīnār, from ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘Bilāl calls [the adhān] while it is still
night, so eat and drink until Ibn Umm Maktūm calls [the adhān].’
3. Abū Muṣʿab related to us, saying: Mālik related to us that he heard ʿAbd
al-Karīm ibn Abī l-Mukhāriq say: ‘Part of the practice of the prophets (min
ʿamal al-nubuwwa) is being quick to break the fast and delaying the pre-
dawn meal.’55

These three reports all occur in the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythi,
but in other places. The first two occur in the Book of the Prayer, in the chapter
entitled ‘The time of suhūr in relation to the call to prayer’,56 and the third
occurs, in an extended form, in the Book of Shortening the Prayer, in the
chapter entitled ‘Placing one hand over the other in the prayer’.57 (All three are
repeated in the equivalent places in al-Zuhrī’s transmission.)58
In the transmission of Ibn Bukayr, all these four chapters occur in the same
order as they appear in al-Zuhrī’s transmission and with the same content –
the only significant difference being a different isnād for the first ḥadīth in the
56 Early Islam in Medina

chapter on ‘Being quick to break the fast’ which, instead of being from Abū
Hāzim ibn Dīnār, from Sahl (as in the transmissions of Yaḥyā and al-Zuhrī; also
those of al-Qaʿnabī, Suwayd, and al-Shaybānī), is from Ibn Shihāb, from Sālim
ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar.59 The fragment of al-Qaʿnabī’s transmission also has
the same reports, and in the same order, but the fragment only contains the
material from the fourth report in the first chapter (about ʿUthmān) through to
the second report in the third chapter (from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala).60
Suwayd’s transmission is close to these last three: it contains all the ḥadīths in
these four chapters, and in the same order, except that he omits – or seems to
have omitted – the Companion ḥadīth from ʿUthmān and the opinions of Mālik
in the first chapter.61 Al-Shaybānī’s transmission is more truncated: he avoids
repetitions of content in the Prophetic material but maintains the Companion
material; he also omits the opinions of Mālik but includes instead opinions of
Abū Ḥanīfa.62 (See Table 3.)
As in the example of zakāt above, there are a few minor differences on
a purely formal level between the transmissions which do not affect the
meaning. Names may be shortened. For example, ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar is given

Table 3 
Differences between the Transmissions in the Book of Fasting

FASTING Yaḥyā al-Zuhrī Ibn Bukayr al-Qa’nabī Suwayd al-Shaybānī

F 1.1 (P) • • • - • • + AH
F 1.2 (P) • • • - • (•)
F 1.3 (P) • • • - • ×
F 1.4 (C) • • • • × ×
F 1.5 (M) • • • • × ×
F 1.6 (M) • • • • × ×
F 2.1 (P) › • • • • • + AH
F 2.2 (P) › • • • • ×
F 2.3 (P) › • • • • ×
F 3.1 (P) • • • • • • + AH
F 3.2 (P) • • • • • ×
F 3.3 (P) • • • - • • + (AH)
F 4.1 (C) • • • - • • + AH
F 4.2 (C) • • - - × ×
KEY:
P = Prophetic ḥadīth; C = Companion ḥadīth; M = opinion of Mālik; AH = opinion of Abū Ḥanīfa
• = present; › = elsewhere; × = not present; – not covered by fragment
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 57

sometimes as simply Ibn ʿUmar (e.g. Suwayd: first two ḥadīths), Ḥumayd
ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf (Ibn Bukayr) is given as simply Ḥumayd
ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (the others), and ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī l-Mukhāriq
al-Baṣrī (Yaḥyā) is given simply as ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī l-Mukhāriq in the
transmissions of al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr, al-Qaʿnabī and Suwayd. There are also
one or two examples of additional text in some transmissions, for example,
‘That was in Ramadan’ (Yaḥyā, al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr, al-Qaʿnabī, but not in
the transmission of Suwayd) and, more significantly perhaps, in the ḥadīth
from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala (Ḥadīth 3.2 above), where the additional
phrase ‘they should not delay it like the people of the East do’ occurs in the
transmissions of al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr, al-Qaʿnabī and Suwayd, but not in
that of Yaḥyā.63 Sometimes, as we saw in the example about zakāt, a slightly
different grammatical form is used, for example, lā yasūmu (approx. ‘he is not
fasting’) (Yaḥyā, al-Zuhrī, al-Shaybānī) as opposed to lā yasūmanna (approx.
‘he should not fast’) (Ibn Bukayr, Suwayd).
It is thus apparent that, for this portion of the text at least, the transmissions
of al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr and al-Qaʿnabī are remarkably similar, and that of
Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā only marginally different. (Suwayd’s transmission here is
also close to the first three.) Any differences that there are are only minor
and have no bearing on the basic framework and meaning of the texts being
transmitted. Even al-Shaybānī’s transmission, while omitting some reports –
notably the opinions of Mālik – and including others – notably the opinions of
Abū Ḥanīfa – nevertheless shares a large amount of the basic material that is
clearly recognizable as being part of ‘the Muwaṭṭaʾ’.
If we broaden our focus to cover the whole of the Book of Fasting, we
find a similar situation as with the Book of Zakāt. In Yaḥyā’s transmission,
the Book of Fasting contains twenty-two chapters, although there is some
related material – about fasting on the day of ʿArafa and during the days of
Minā – that he includes in his Book of Ḥajj.64 Again, al-Zuhrī’s transmission
contains very much the same material, but in a slightly different order: the
material on fasting during the ḥajj is included by him in his Book of Fasting,
but he mentions the material again in what he calls the Book of Rites (Kitāb
al-Manāsik).65
58 Early Islam in Medina

When we look at the transmission of al-Qaʿnabī, the similarities with that of

al-Zuhrī are very apparent. Al-Qaʿnabī – for the three portions from the Book
of Fasting included in the published fragment of his transmission – presents
the same reports and follows the same order as al-Zuhrī, the only difference
being that he includes an extra report in the chapter on ‘Making an oath to fast’
which is not included in the transmission al-Zuhrī (but is in the transmission
of Yaḥyā), and that he includes material on fasting during ḥajj in the Book of
Fasting.66
The fragment of Suwayd’s transmission includes a much more extensive
portion of the Book of Fasting than it does of the Book of Zakāt. Altogether he
includes seventy-one reports, which, except for two minor reversals of order,
follow exactly the same order as the transmissions of al-Zuhrī and, where the
relevant fragments overlap, of al-Qaʿnabī.67
Al-Shaybānī’s transmission, as we saw above in the case of the Book of
Zakāt, contains significantly less material and in a significantly different
order.68 Nevertheless, all the reports from Mālik that he includes in his
transmission are represented in one or more of the other transmissions. The
main difference, as we saw with the Book of Zakāt, is that he excludes any
opinions of Mālik and, instead, includes opinions of Abū Ḥanīfa, with the
comment ‘This is what we go by’.
It thus seems that the transmissions of al-Zuhrī and al-Qaʿnabī – and
Ibn Bukayr to the extent that one has had access to his transmission – are
remarkably close to each other, only differing – and then only occasionally –
on minor details of vocabulary, grammar and/or word order and the order
of presentation. Yaḥyā’s varies a little more, but is nevertheless very close to
them.69 Suwayd’s transmission is also very close to these others – certainly
textually speaking – although not as complete; and, while al-Shaybānī’s
transmission is more pruned, it is nevertheless, textually speaking, very much
part of the cluster of material transmitted from Mālik under the umbrella of
‘the Muwaṭṭaʾ’.70
It will be evident that all of these differences are minor and have no bearing
on the basic texts being transmitted, all of which goes to confirm, as we noted
earlier, the attribution of the material to the person the transmitters say they
got it from – Mālik – in the place where he was living – Medina. The varied and
broad geographical distribution of these transmitters – Yaḥyā in al-Andalus
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 59

(Spain), al-Zuhrī in Medina, Ibn Bukayr in Egypt, al-Qaʿnabī in Basra, Suwayd

in al-Haditha (Iraq) and al-Shaybānī in Kufa (Iraq) – not to mention also Ibn
al-Qāsim in Egypt and Ibn Ziyād in Tunis – also acts as a confirmation of this
claim: it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to have
got together to make up a lie – indeed, innumerable lies – about Mālik, which
then everyone else not only accepted as true but were also prepared to act upon
in their everyday lives because of that acceptance. The many transmissions of
this corpus of texts – not to mention their indirect transmission in the standard
ḥadīth literature (such as the well-known Six Books) – all corroborate each
other and indicate a highly reliable text.
In short, in the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik we have a very strong textual tradition
which – excepting only the Qur’an – is unparalleled in the history of Islam,
thus justifying al-Shāfiʿī’s comment (see above) that the Muwaṭṭaʾ is the most
accurate book on the face of the earth after the Qur’an.

The form and general content of the Muwaṭṭaʾ

But what was it that this book contained? We have seen, in the examples
outlined above, that it contains four main categories of material. There are
ḥadīths from the Prophet, there are reports from various Companions, there
are reports from various Successors, and there are reports – often introduced
as ‘opinions’ – from Mālik. Furthermore, in any one chapter they are presented
in that order: that is, where there are reports from all four categories, it is
the Prophetic ḥadīths that are put first, then Companion and Successor
ḥadīths, and then, finally, any general statements by Mālik. We can thus
assume that this material is being presented in order of precedence, with
material from or about the Prophet occupying pride of place, then material
from the Companions, then the Successors and then Mālik. At the same time,
this represents a chronological arrangement, with the historical sequence of
Prophet-Companions-Successors-Mālik being preserved, which, of course,
also appears more specifically in the individual isnāds (chains of authority) of
these reports. In other words, there is a continuity of transmission, from the
Prophet, through the Companions and Successors, up to the time of Mālik.
60 Early Islam in Medina

This continuity is made even more apparent by the presence among Mālik’s
opinions of phrases such as ‘What has been established as sunna’, ‘This is
what the people of knowledge in our city have always held to’ and ‘This is the
position that the people of knowledge have always held to here’. This indicates
a continuous transmission of this material, not by text, but by ʿamal, or action,
from the time of the Prophet up until to the time of Imam Mālik.
It is recorded that Mālik was once asked about these and similar expressions,
such as ‘The agreed position here’, or ‘… in our city’, ‘I found the people of
knowledge [doing] …’, or ‘I heard some of the people of knowledge [saying] …’,
and he said,

Most of what is in the book is my opinion, but, on my life, it is not so much

my opinion as that which I have heard from more than one of the people of
knowledge and excellence and the imams worthy of being followed from
whom I took my knowledge – and they were God-fearing. But, in order to
simplify matters I have said it is my opinion. This [I have done] when their
opinion was the same as that which they found the Companions following,
and which I then found them [i.e. the Successors] following. It is thus an
inheritance which has been passed down from one generation to another
down to our present time. [So] when I say, ‘I am of the opinion’, it is really
the opinion of a large group of the imams who have gone before. When
I say, ‘The agreed upon position with us’, it is what the people of fiqh and
knowledge have agreed upon without any difference of opinion among
them. When I say, ‘The position with us (al-amr ʿindanā)’, it is what the
people here have acted upon, and has become the basis for judgements, and
is known by both the learned and the ignorant. Similarly, when I have said,
‘in our city’, or ‘some of the people of knowledge’, that is something that
I have considered good (istaḥsantuhu) among the opinions (qawl) of the
people of knowledge. Where I have heard nothing from them, I have used
my own judgement (ijtahadtu) and considered the matter according to the
way (madhhab) of those I have met, until I felt that I had arrived at the truth,
or near to it, so that it would not be outside the way of the people of Medina
and their opinions, even though I had not heard that particular [judgement]
directly.
I have thus said that it is my opinion after having considered the matter
deeply in relation to the sunna and what has been endorsed by the people
of knowledge who are worthy of being followed, and what the practice here
 The Muwaṭṭaʾ 61

has been from the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and
grant him peace, and the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, along with what those
who I have met in my life-time [have said]. It is thus their opinion, and
I have not gone outside it for anyone else’s.71

Such phrases – ‘This is the position here with us’, or ‘This is the sunna about
which there is no disagreement here with us, and which the practice of the
people (ʿamal al-nās) is still in accord with’, and others of the same ilk – also
indicate that this transmission took place in Medina (‘with us’) and manifested
itself in the actions of the people of Medina. This, then, is how the people of
Medina were putting the judgements of the Sharīʿa into practice. This is the
concept of the ʿamal of the people of Medina, which is the keystone of Mālik’s
madhhab, or way of arriving at legal judgements. It is to this that we now turn.
62
 4

The ʿamal of the people of Medina

We have noted above that an understanding of the ʿamal of the people of

Medina is critical to an understanding of Mālik and his way (madhhab) and,
indeed, of the nature of his book the Muwaṭṭaʾ. We have seen that it is in
the nature of the Muwaṭṭaʾ to include ḥadīth, both Prophetic and also post-
Prophetic (i.e. reports from the Companions and the Successors), but that the
book encompasses more than just ḥadīth. It is, in effect, a sourcebook of ʿamal,
or, one could say, a textual version of the non-textual source of ʿamal.
ʿAmal is a simple enough word in Arabic. It refers to action, or what is done
(ʿamila, yaʿmalu, ‘to do’). In our present context, it refers to the actions, or
practice, of the people of Medina, that is, how they put the injunctions of the
Qur’an and the Prophet into practice. Thus the ʿamal of the people of Medina
is a non-textual transmission of the knowledge of the dīn in its practical
application and refers to what the people were doing by way of putting the
precepts and principles of the dīn into practice.
That Mālik and his contemporaries knew and used the term ʿamal is clear
from the Muwaṭṭaʾ itself. A digital search of Yaḥyā’s transmission reveals forty-
five instances of the word ʿamal being used in a technical sense to refer to the
ʿamal of the people of Medina. These instances further divide into four distinct
categories:

(i) There are thirty instances of where the word ʿamal is used in a title
heading, where the word indicates the practice (ʿamal) or procedure that
should be followed, that is, ‘what is [to be] done’ in a particular situation,
such as ‘The practice (al-ʿamal) regarding doing ghusl for the two ʿĪds
and calling an adhān or iqāma for them’, where it is reported that Mālik
had heard ‘more than one of their scholars say that there has never been
any call to prayer or iqāma for [the prayers of] ʿĪd al-Fiṭr or ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā
from the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant
64 Early Islam in Medina

him peace, up until today’;1 or ‘The practice regarding the ʿaqīqa sacrifice
[i.e. the sacrifice for a new-born child]’, where Mālik says,

The way things are done here (al-amr ʿindanā) with regard to the ʿaqīqa
sacrifice is that, if anyone slaughters for this purpose, he does so by
slaughtering one sheep for either a male or female child. The ʿaqīqa sacrifice
is not obligatory, but it is a recommended action (yustaḥabb al-ʿamal bi-hā),
and is part of the way people have always done things here.2

In the section on ʿaqīqa in Ibn Ziyād’s transmission, Mālik refers to the practice
of sacrificing one sheep per child, whether for a boy or a girl, and uses the
direct expression ‘This is the practice (al-ʿamal) here’.3

(ii) There are six instances where it is denied that a particular judgement is
the ongoing practice (ʿamal), such as Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ doing only
one rakʿa (instead of three) for witr, after which Mālik comments that
‘the practice with us does not accord with this’;4 or Mālik’s comment,
with regard to a decision of ʿUmar to double the compensation price
that was owed for a camel that had been stolen and then slaughtered, ‘It
is not the practice here with us (wa-laysa ʿalā hādhā l-ʿamalu ʿindnā)
to double the compensation price; rather, the established practice of
the people here is that the man pays, as a fine, the value of the camel or
animal on the day that he took it.’5
(iii) There are five instances of where a practice is stated as being the
ongoing practice (ʿamal), such as the instance of the ʿaqīqa sacrifice
referred to above – ‘this is the practice (ʿamal) here’; or where Mālik
says that, if date palms are shared between two people and the harvest of
one of them, but not the other, reaches the minimum amount on which
zakāt is due, only the one who harvests that minimum has to pay zakāt.
‘This,’ he says, ‘is the practice (al-ʿamal) with regard to all associates in
any crop that is harvested.’6
(iv) There are also four instances where the expression ‘the practice of the
people (ʿamal al-nās)’ – or, in one case, ‘the practice of those who have
gone before (ʿamal al-māḍīn)’ – is used, all of which indicate that a
certain practice was the general practice of the people which was well
known and accepted among them. Thus, for instance, Mālik notes that it
is permitted for someone to buy an animal and pay for it in advance, as
long as the date for payment is specified, the animal is clearly described
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 65

and the price is paid upfront; this is then binding on both parties.
‘This,’ he says, ‘continues to be part of the practice of the people (ʿamal
al-nās) which is acceptable (jāʾiz) between them and which the people
of knowledge in our city continue to hold to.’7 Similarly, Mālik notes
that selling bundles according to a list of their contents is different from
selling a head-and-shoulder cloth (sāj/ṭaylasān) in its bag, or a garment
which is folded up, or suchlike. The difference, he says, is

the way things are done (al-amr al-maʿmūl bihi) and the knowledge of
this that people have in their hearts, and the practice of those who have
gone before (ʿamal al-māḍīn), and that this continues to be a type of
transaction that people consider acceptable and see no harm in. [This
is] because selling bundles according to a list of their contents, without
displaying everything, is not done with any intention of [benefitting from]
uncertainty (gharar).8

It is thus clear that, for Mālik’s time at least, the principle and concept of ʿamal
was very much used and acknowledged and not a later theoretical construct.9
There has been a lot of dispute about this source from the earliest times.
Because by concept it is a non-textual source, it immediately poses problems
for those with a textual frame of reference – and that means most scholars
throughout most of Islamic history. For, although the Prophet was ‘unlettered’
(ummī), that is, did not read or write, his teachings became progressively
recorded in written form: first in the form of the Qur’an, as the message
delivered by him in his capacity as the Messenger of Allah, and then, later,
in the form of ḥadīth, as a record of his sayings and actions in his capacity as
the first exemplar of this Qur’anic message. Indeed, ‘knowledge’ in the early
period of Islamic history effectively meant ‘knowledge of ḥadīth’. But, as we
have also seen, for Mālik there was something else that was more reliable, and
in this sense higher, than ḥadīth, namely, the practice of the dīn in his native
city of Medina. The very name Medina means, quite literally – according to the
view that it is the noun of place of the root dāna, yadīnu – the place of the dīn,
that is, the place where it was put into practice. In a letter to al-Layth ibn Saʿd
(d. 175/791), Mālik himself said about Medina and its people,

All people are subordinate to the people of Medina. To it the Emigration was
made, in it the Qur’an was revealed and the lawful (ḥalāl) made lawful and
the forbidden (ḥarām) made forbidden. The Messenger of Allah was living
66 Early Islam in Medina

among them and they were present during the very act of revelation. He
would tell them to do things and they would obey him. He would institute
sunnas for them and they would follow him, until Allah took him to Himself
and chose for him what is in His presence, may the blessings and mercy of
Allah be upon him.
Then there rose up after him those who were put in authority after him
and who, of his community, were the ones who followed him most closely.
When matters arose about which they had knowledge, they put that
knowledge into practice. If they did not have [the requisite] knowledge,
they would ask [others] and would go by what they considered the most
valid option according to their own personal reasoning (ijtihād) and their
recent experience [of when the Prophet was alive]. If someone disagreed
with them, or said something that was more valid and more worthy of being
followed, they would leave aside their own opinion and act according to the
other, stronger opinion. After them the Successors trod the same path and
followed the same sunnas.
So, if there is something clearly acted upon in Medina, I am not of the
opinion that anyone may go against it, because of the inheritance that [the
Medinans] have which it is not permissible for any others to ascribe to, or
claim for, themselves. Even if the people of other cities were to say, ‘This is
the practice (ʿamal) in our city’, or ‘This is what those before us used to do
[here]’, they would not have the same authority for that, nor would it be
permissible for them in the way that it is for [the people of Medina].10

So, for Mālik, what he and the people of his city had inherited was the practice
of Islam, and it had the authority of all those who had practised it, and kept it
in practice, from the time of the Prophet, though the time of the Companions
and the Successors, down to his own day. And he was concerned to pass that
on, as it was, and not to go beyond them. But, by his time, other centres had
grown up, or were beginning to grow up, foremost among which was that of
the people of Kufa, represented particularly by Imam Abū Ḥanīfa and his two
main students, Abū Yūsuf and al-Shaybānī (al-Shaybānī being, as we have seen,
one of Mālik’s own students and a transmitter of a version of the Muwaṭṭaʾ). In
a short space of time these two positions, those of Medina and Kufa, would be
rivalled by a third school, that of Imam al-Shāfiʿī – another student of Mālik –
in Egypt.
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 67

These three schools would later become the three main madhhabs of
the Muslim world, namely, the Mālikīs, the Ḥanafīs and the Shāfiʿīs, which,
alongside a fourth madhhab, the Ḥanbalīs (referring to Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal)
would become the Four Madhhabs of classical Islam.
In the classical picture, all four madhhabs are based on certain shared
sources, namely, the Qur’an, the sunna, consensus and analogy, and this is
what creates their overall similarity. But there are other, disputed sources in
addition to the agreed ones. If we take the Mālikī madhhab as an example, we
find a number of other sources which that madhhab espouses, but which are
generally considered disputed (i.e. disputed by some, but not necessarily all,
of the other madhhabs). Thus, in his Ḥāshiya (‘marginal gloss’) on Mayyāra’s
commentary on the famous didactic poem al-Murshid al-Muʿīn, the Mālikī
scholar Ibn Ḥamdūn (d. Fez, c. 1273/1856), summarizing, says,

Mālik bases his madhhab on seventeen sources (adilla), namely:

   1. an unambiguous text (naṣṣ) of the Qur’an;
   2. its overt meaning (ẓāhir), by which I mean the general application
(ʿumūm) [of a judgement];
  3. its dalīl (‘indication’), by which I mean mafhūm al-mukhālafa
(lit. ‘what is understood by contrast’, i.e. argumentum e contrario, or
counter-implication);
  4. its mafhūm (‘implication’), by which I mean al-mafhūm bi-l-awlā
(lit. ‘what is understood as being more appropriate’, i.e. a fortiori deduction);
  5. its shabah (‘similarity’), by which I mean when the reason for a
judgement is given, as when Allah says, ‘[except for carrion, flowing blood,
or pork] because that is filth; or some deviance (fisq) [consecrated to other
than Allah]’ [Q. 6:145];
   6–10. the same five with regard to the sunna;
   11. consensus (ijmāʿ);
   12. analogy (qiyās);
  13. the ʿamal (‘practice’) of the people of Medina;
   14. the opinion (qawl) of a Companion;
  15. istiḥsān (‘considerations of equity’);
  16. sadd al-dharāʾiʿ (lit. ‘blocking the means [to what is ḥarām]’); and
68 Early Islam in Medina

  17. istiṣḥāb (i.e. assuming the continuation of a situation, and thus of

the relevant judgement).
   18. As for murāʿāt al-khilāf (‘taking the differences [between madhhabs]
into account’), this is sometimes followed and sometimes not.11

This list provides a convenient overview, but it also poses problems. First,
it is quite clearly a systematisation: we are presented with eighteen different
categories, all of which are potentially the source for a judgement, but there is
clearly overlap between them, such that, for example, the judgements about the
prohibition of taking usury, or the obligation to fast Ramadan, may be found
in both the Qur’an and the sunna, quite apart from the subdivision of Qur’an
and sunna into the first ten categories given above. Second, it is also very much
a text-based, or text-influenced, systematization. Thus, for example, the first
ten categories refer to linguistic techniques of approaching the Qur’an and the
sunna, as texts. By contrast, the ʿamal of the people of Medina (No. 13) is
quintessentially a non-textual source, although that, too, becomes recorded
historically in textual form. Third, this list creates a potentially false sense of
priorities. Qur’an and sunna (Nos 1–10) are rightly given pride of place – we
recall the ḥadīth that Mālik highlights in the Muwaṭṭaʾ: ‘I have left among you
two things, and if you hold to them both you will never go astray: the Book
of Allah and the Sunna of His Prophet’12 – after which come consensus and
analogy (Nos 11 and 12), the other two of the accepted ‘four sources’. Thus the
ʿamal of the people of Medina, at No. 13, is effectively relegated to a subsidiary
position after the four main sources, which accords with the view that it is a
disputed source that is not accepted by the other madhhabs.
There are further issues with this ‘four-sources-plus’ picture. First, it was
only with the work of Imam al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) that the ‘four-source’ theory
really began to take shape (he is credited with being the first to propound
it – albeit in a pre-systematized form – in his renowned Risāla),13 so one is
entitled to ask, what was the picture that was envisaged before the time of
Imam al-Shāfiʿī, that is, at the time of Imam Mālik, and before him? (We should
remember that in the wording of the Qur’an the dīn was complete at the time
of the Farewell Hajj: ‘Today I have perfected your dīn for you, and completed
My blessing on you, and am pleased with Islam as a dīn for you (al-yawma
akmaltu lakum dīnakum wa-atmamtu ʿalaykum niʿmatī wa-raḍītu lakumu
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 69

l-islāma dīnan)’ [Q. 5:3].) Second, the ʿamal of the people of Medina has to be
seen as more than just one source out of many (e.g. one out of 17, or possibly
18, as with Ibn Ḥamdūn above). Rather, we can see it as an all-encompassing
source which effectively gives us a practical application and understanding of
‘Qur’an and sunna’.
We also note in passing that there are some sources that, although commonly
associated with Mālik and his madhhab, do not appear in Ibn Ḥamdūn’s list,
for example, ʿurf (‘custom’) and al-maṣāliḥ al-mursala (lit. ‘untrammelled
benefits’ i.e. considerations of the public good when there is no clear text either
for or against a particular matter).
We have seen above that Medina is seen, and remembered by its scholars, as
the place where the ḥalāl and the ḥarām were revealed and where the various
sunnas of the Prophet were first put into practice. This living picture was then
inherited and passed down, by each successive generation, to the time of
Mālik, whose Muwaṭṭaʾ can be considered as a distillation of this dīn-in-action
that Mālik witnessed at first hand in his native city and wished to preserve and
pass on to others. Mālik himself said of his book,

In it are ḥadīths of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant
him peace, and opinions (qawl) of the Companions and the Successors, and
opinions (raʾy) which are the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the people of Medina and
whose [opinions] I have not gone beyond (lam akhruj ʿanhum).14

From the later, post-Shāfiʿī perspective, we are used to ḥadīth being just
the ḥadīth of the Prophet. Thus, when we look at any of the major ḥadīth
collections, such as the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, for instance, we find that the
overwhelming majority of the material is Prophetic, that is, it goes back
specifically and overtly to the Prophet. In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, however, and other
early collections of ḥadīth, this is not the case. There, by contrast, we find that
at least half of the material comes from sources other than the Prophet, that is,
from the Companions and the Successors. This implies that a change had taken
place between the time of the compilation of the Muwaṭṭaʾ and other early
collections of ḥadīth, in the second half of the second century AH, and the
time of the compilation of the Six Books, beginning in the first half of the third
century AH. This change is that the later compilers are no longer interested
in anything other than reports with a formal – and authentic – isnād back to
70 Early Islam in Medina

the Prophet, that is, in texts, and ones with specifically Prophetic authority.
Anything else is considered insufficient, indeed ‘weak’. But this was not the
position of Mālik and his contemporaries for whom other reports and other
information also had authority.
What was this authority? If we go back to Mālik’s comment above, we notice
that he says ‘whose [opinions] I have not gone beyond (lam akhruj ʿanhum)’.
By this he is indicating a different sort of transmission of knowledge, and a
different sort of understanding, and transmission, of the sunna – one which is
encompassed by the ʿamal of the people of Medina.

The ʿamal of the people of Medina

What is the ʿamal of the people of Medina? ʿIyāḍ says, in his Madārik,

You should know, may Allah ennoble you, that all the leaders of the
madhhabs, whether legal scholars or theologians, or people of ḥadīth or
people of intellectual reasoning, are as one group against us regarding this
matter, attributing error to us – as they claim – and using as an argument
whatever occurs to them, to the extent that some of them have gone beyond
the limits of prejudice and defamation and cast aspersions on Medina and
listed its faults, when this is not a matter about which there is any dispute.
Among them are those who have failed to understand the matter or to find
out the true position of our madhhab with regard to it, and so have spoken
about it on a basis of guesswork and conjecture; among them also are those
who have taken their words from others who have not understood what
our true position is; and among them are those who have altered things
and have attributed to us what we would never say about the matter, as
have al-Ṣayrafī, al-Maḥāmilī and al-Ghazālī, who have transmitted on our
authority what we would never say, and have used as an argument against
us the same arguments that are used against those who cast aspersions on
consensus (ijmāʿ).15

So ʿamal is not to be confused with the ‘standard’ meaning of consensus,

since the consensus of Medina is a different concept altogether. Rather, the
consensus of Medina is based on the sunna of the Prophet, but on a non-
textual, ʿamal-based transmission of it.
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 71

This is also why the ʿamal of the first generations in Medina is understood
to be stronger than ḥadīth, that is, a better indication of sunna, even if those
ḥadīth are completely authentic and backed up by the most impeccable isnāds.
In a chapter entitled ‘What has been related from the first community and the
men of knowledge regarding the obligation to go back to the practice (ʿamal)
of the People of Medina, and its being a conclusive proof in their opinion, even
if it is contrary to ḥadīth’, ʿIyāḍ spells out the argument for the superiority of
ʿamal over ḥadīth as a more accurate transmission of the sunna of the Prophet.
He says,

It is related that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, may Allah be pleased with him, once
said on the minbar: ‘By Allah, I will make things difficult for any man who
relates a ḥadīth which is contrary to ʿamal.’
Ibn al-Qāsim and Ibn Wahb said: ‘I saw that with Mālik ʿamal was stronger
than ḥadīth.’
Mālik said: ‘There were people among the men of knowledge of the
Successors who would narrate certain ḥadīths, and hear other ḥadīths from
others, and would say, “We are not ignorant of this, but the ʿamal that has
come down to us is different.” ’
Mālik said: ‘I once saw Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm,
who was a judge, being reproached by his brother, ʿAbdallāh, who was
an honest man with an extensive knowledge of ḥadīth, for giving a
judgement on a case when there was a ḥadīth giving a different judgement.
ʿAbdallāh said, “Hasn’t such-and-such a ḥadīth come down about this?”
Muḥammad replied, “It has.” ʿAbdallāh said, “Then why don’t you give
your judgement in accordance with it?” Muḥammad replied, “But what
is the position of the people with regard to it?” – i.e. [what is] the agreed
ʿamal in Medina? – by which he meant that the ʿamal of Medina was
stronger than ḥadīth.’

We recall (see Chapter 2) that ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Bakr ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm
was one of Mālik’s main teachers of ḥadīth. His brother Muḥammad, however,
was a judge and thus involved in the daily application of the Sharīʿa, and
knowledge of what was applied in practice was higher than what was only
theoretical. (Muḥammad was also one of Mālik’s sources, as we have seen, for
some reports in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.) ʿIyāḍ continues,
72 Early Islam in Medina

Ibn al-Muʿadhdhal said: ‘I once heard someone ask Ibn al-Mājishūn, “Why do
you transmit a ḥadīth and then not act upon it?” He replied, “So that it be
known that it is with full knowledge of it that we do not act upon it.” ’
Ibn Mahdī said: ‘The established sunna of the people of Medina is better than
ḥadīth.’ He also said: ‘Often I will have numerous ḥadīths on a subject, but will
find the people of the mosque (ahl al-ʿarṣa, lit. ‘the people of the courtyard’)
following something contrary to them, at which point those ḥadīths become
weak in my opinion’ – or words to that effect.
Rabīʿa said: ‘One thousand from one thousand is preferred by me to one from
one. One from one would tear the sunna right out of your hands.’16

‘One thousand from one thousand’ is the methodology of Medina; ‘one from
one’ is effectively the methodology of everywhere else.
We noted above that all the Muslims accepted the primacy of ‘Qur’an and
sunna’, but how was this ‘Qur’an and sunna’ to be understood? In later times,
once both Qur’an and sunna have been thoroughly textualized, we have tafsīrs
(‘commentaries’) of Qur’an and sharḥs (‘commentaries’) of the ḥadīth texts,
but before any tafsīr or sharḥ there was the original practice of the dīn – the
ʿamal of the people of Medina – and this ʿamal acts as a tafsīr of Qur’an and
a sharḥ of ḥadīth, but a living, non-textualized one that was passed on from
generation to generation first and foremost by action rather than texts.

Some examples of tafsīr and sharḥ by ʿamal

Some examples from the Muwaṭṭaʾ will show how Mālik presents what is
effectively tafsīr of Qur’an by ʿamal, and sharḥ of sunna by ʿamal.

Example 1: The oath of abstinence from marital intercourse

There is a verse in the Qur’an about īlāʾ (an oath of abstinence from marital
intercourse) which says, ‘Those who make an oath of abstinence from their
wives may wait for four months: if they return (fa-in fāʾū) [to their wives],
Allah is Forgiving and Merciful; if they decide to divorce (wa-in ʿazamū
l-ṭalāq), Allah is All-Hearing and All-Knowing’ (Q. 2:266–7).
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 73

A problem arose here with the meaning of the phrase ‘if they return (fa-
in fāʾū)’: did it mean if they resume their marriage before the allotted period
is up, or when it had finished? The answer to this question then affected the
understanding of ‘if they decide to divorce (wa-in ʿazamū l-ṭalāq)’, since this
also could be taken to mean if they decide on divorce either within the allotted
period or when this period was up.
In his chapter on īlāʾ in the Muwaṭṭaʾ,17 Mālik gives what had become the
dominant ʿamal in Medina, although not all Medinan scholars had been of the
same opinion. He begins the chapter by citing a report from ʿAlī to the effect
that, if a man makes such an oath and the four-month period passes without
him ‘returning’, that is, resuming marital relations with his wife, he should be
formally asked whether he wishes to resume marital relations or to divorce. He
then adds the characteristic phrase, ‘This is the position with us (wa-dhalika
l-amr ʿindanā)’, that is, this is the judgement acted upon and the ʿamal of the
people of Medina regarding this point. He then says that this was also the
view of Ibn ʿUmar. However, he then notes that this was not the only position
held in Medina: two of the well-known Seven Jurists of Medina – Saʿīd ibn
al-Musayyab and Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān – held that the ‘return’ had to
be within the four-month period and that the completion of the four months
constituted an automatic divorce. This, says Mālik, was also the position of
Ibn Shihāb (as we have seen, one of Mālik’s main teachers), as it was also the
opinion that Marwān (as governor of Medina under Muʿāwiya) had gone by in
adjudicating such cases. Nevertheless, despite this dissenting view – which was
also the standard position of the Iraqi jurists of the early period and became the
standard position of the Ḥanafī madhhab – the ʿamal of the people of Medina
settled on the view of ʿAlī and Ibn ʿUmar as mentioned above. More to the
point, Mālik’s justification of this view in the Muwaṭṭaʾ is that it is ‘the position
with us’, that is, the ʿamal of the people of Medina. It is then, effectively, an
instance of tafsīr by ʿamal.

Example 2: Being prevented from doing ḥajj or ʿumra

Another particularly obvious example of tafsīr by ʿamal by is illustrated by the

two chapters in the Muwaṭṭaʾ on iḥṣār (i.e. being prevented from doing ḥajj or
ʿumra) – ‘Iḥṣār by an enemy’ and ‘Iḥṣār by something ther than an enemy’.18 The
74 Early Islam in Medina

relevant Qur’anic verse does not distinguish between the two situations, saying
only, ‘If you are prevented, then [you should sacrifice] whatever sacrificial
animal (hady) is easy; and do not shave your heads until the sacrificial animal
has reached its place of sacrifice’ (Q. 2:196). This, indeed, was the position of
the Iraqi jurists, as preserved in the Ḥanafī madhhab. The Medinans, however,
maintained the distinction recorded by Mālik in the Muwaṭṭaʾ: in ‘ordinary’
situations of iḥṣār, such as illness, or mistaking the beginning of the month
and thus the date of the ḥajj, one had to follow the Qur’anic prescription of
sacrificing a hady and shaving one’s head, and so forth, after having reached
Mecca, as laid down in Q. 2:196. If, however, one was prevented by an enemy,
then the position followed by the Medinans was that of Ibn ʿUmar: ‘We will do
what we did with the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace …’, which was simply to come out of iḥrām wherever one was, without
having to ‘reach the Kaʿba’, and without having to make up the ḥajj or ʿumra
at a future date or do anything else by way of reparation. This, then, is a clear
instance of tafsīr taking the specific form of takhṣīṣ al-qurʾān bi-l-ʿamal, that
is, making an exception to an otherwise general rule through recourse to the
ʿamal of the people of Medina.

Example 3: How to hold one’s hands when doing the prayer

A third instance illustrates how ʿamal could be used as a sharḥ of ḥadīth. In the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik records two ḥadīths which ostensibly indicate the judgement
of qabḍ, that is, clasping the left hand at the wrist with the right, while doing
the prayer. These two ḥadīths are recorded in the chapter entitled ‘Putting one
hand over the other when doing the prayer’, as follows:

Yaḥyā told me, from Mālik, that ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī l-Mukhāriq al-Baṣrī
said: ‘Among the words of prophecy are: If you do not feel ashamed, do as
you wish; putting the hands one over the other when doing the prayer, that
is, putting the right over the left; and hurrying to break the fast, and delaying
the pre-dawn meal.’
He also told me, from Mālik, from Abū Ḥāzim ibn Dīnār, that Sahl ibn Saʿd
said: ‘People used to be told that a man should put his right hand over his left
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 75

arm when doing the prayer.’ Abū Ḥāzim added, ‘As far as I know, he traces
that back [i.e. to the Prophet].’19

The standard position in the madhhab, though, as summarized for instance in

Khalīl’s (d. c. 776/1374) Mukhtaṣar, is that sadl (i.e. letting one’s arms hang by
one’s sides) is the preferred way of doing the prayer.
As we can see, what is recorded in the Muwaṭṭaʾ gives us no indication as
to why sadl should be the preferred judgement. The Mudawwana, however
(of which Khalīl’s Mukhtaṣar is a summary), does. In it, Mālik is recorded
(by Ibn al-Qāsim) as saying, ‘I do not know about this [practice] with regard
to obligatory prayers (lā aʿrifu dhālika fī l-farīḍa), but there is no harm in
someone doing it in voluntary prayers, if he has been standing for a long time,
in order to make things easier for himself.’20 The phrase used, lā aʿrifu dhālika
fī l-farīḍa, clearly indicates a lack of existential knowledge of this practice. In
other words, ‘we know about the ḥadīths on this subject, but this is not the
way the people are doing, or have done, the prayer here in Medina’. We are
reminded of the reports mentioned above, about transmitting a ḥadīth ‘so that
it be known that it is with full knowledge of it that we do not act upon it’.
Put differently, it is sadl, not qabḍ, that is the ongoing ʿamal of the people
of Medina and thus the judgement to be followed. And this is, indeed, the
understanding of the traditional scholars of the madhhab, who confirm, first,
in a general sense, that not every ḥadīth is to be acted upon, even though it
may be completely authentic; and, second, in this specific instance, that sadl is
the ʿamal of the people of Medina. Thus, for instance, Muḥammad Ḥabīballāh
ibn Māyaʾbā al-Shinqīṭī (d. 1364/1944) says in his Iḍāʾat al-ḥālik,

Not everything that is authentic is acted upon

   Since abrogation may have occurred in its respect.
It is for this reason that Mālik chose not to act by
   A small number [of reports] in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.
I say: an example of this is the ḥadīth about qabḍ,
   Which is abrogated by sadl in a manner which is pleasing.21

Elsewhere he says, when mentioning that the ḥadīths in the Muwaṭṭaʾ are to be
understood in the light of reports in the Mudawwana, and that Ibn al-Qāsim’s
76 Early Islam in Medina

transmissions from Mālik are to be given preference over those of other

students of the Imam,

An example of this is the ḥadīth about qabḍ,

   Which is [related] in it (i.e. the Muwaṭṭaʾ) with a well-known,
faultless isnād.
Ibn al-Qāsim restricts the judgement to voluntary prayers
   As has come down to us in transmissions from him.
In obligatory prayers it is disliked, as is clear[ly transmitted]
   From Mālik, and that is the view that is to be given preference.22

He adds, in his commentary on the phrase ‘to be given preference’, ‘in the
opinion of Mālik and the majority of the scholars of his madhhab … because
of the strength of the evidence for it, and the continued practice of it (jarayān
al-ʿamal bihi) both in the early period in Medina and elsewhere, and more
recently in other places’.23
On a similar note, Shaykh ʿIllīsh says in his Fatḥ al-ʿAlī al-Mālik, in response
to a question about whether qabḍ is disliked in obligatory prayers whatever the
situation (muṭlaqan), or just if it is done without the intention of following
the sunna,

Ibn al-Qāsim’s transmission from Mālik in the Mudawwana, which is

given precedence over others, is that qabḍ is disliked in obligatory prayers,
whatever the situation, because it has been abrogated … The text of the
Mudawwana is: ‘Mālik disliked putting the right hand over the left in
obligatory prayers, saying “I do not know about this with regard to obligatory
prayers”, and the meaning of this phrase is, “I do not know about this as the
continued practice of the Companions, the Successors, and the Successors
of the Successors with regard to obligatory prayers. What I know of as their
continued practice with regard to obligatory prayers is sadl”.’24

These are but three examples: many more could be chosen, such as those
chapters relating to inheritance where Mālik specifies the ʿamal on a given topic
at the beginning of the chapter and then ties it in with the relevant Qur’anic
verse at the end of the chapter, or the sections on business transactions which
effectively record the Medinans’ living response to the Qur’anic prohibition
of usury. Nevertheless, they illustrate how ʿamal could not only clarify
 The ʿAmal of the People of Medina 77

ambiguities in the texts themselves but also be used to add further details and
fill out gaps not necessarily obvious from the texts by themselves.
Thus, the ʿamal of the people of Medina can act as a tafsīr of Qur’an, and
a sharḥ of ḥadīth, but one in which the non-textual has distinct preference
over the textual. At the same time, it provides a fuller historical framework
for the Qur’an and the sunna than that which is simply provided by the texts
themselves.
ʿIyāḍ records the following exchange between Mālik and Abū Yūsuf, the
Kufan jurist and major student of Abū Ḥanīfa:

Abū Yūsuf said [to Mālik], ‘You do the adhān with tarjīʿ [repeating the
initial phrases of the adhān out loud after having said them quietly] but
you have no ḥadīth from the Prophet about this.’ Mālik turned to him and
said, ‘Subḥāna-llāh (“Glory be to God”)! I have never seen anything more
amazing than this! The call to prayer has been done [here] every day in front
of witnesses, and sons have inherited it from their fathers, since the time
of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Does
this need “So-and-so from so-and-so”? This is more accurate in our opinion
than ḥadīth.’
Abū Yūsuf also asked him about the ṣāʿ [a measure of volume relating to
various judgements of fiqh] and Mālik said, ‘Five and one-third raṭls.’ Abū
Yūsuf said, ‘What’s your basis for saying that?’ Mālik said to some of the
people with him, ‘Go and fetch the ṣāʿs that you have.’ Many of the people
of Medina, [from families of] both the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār, came, and
every one of them brought a ṣāʿ [with him] and said, ‘This is the ṣāʿ which
I inherited from my father, who inherited it from his father, who was one of
the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant
him peace.’ Mālik said, ‘This sort of widespread knowledge is more reliable
in our opinion than ḥadīth.’ So Abū Yūsuf accepted Mālik’s opinion.25

In other words, there is another type of transmission of the sunna which is

not based on ḥadīth but, rather, on ʿamal. Indeed, as we have seen – in the case
of sadl v. qabḍ in particular, but also in the exchange above with Abū Yūsuf –
this is seen to be stronger than ḥadīth, that is, a better indication of the sunna
than ḥadīth.
This distinction between sunna as action and ḥadīth as words – albeit words
about an action – is the main area of dispute between the scholars of Medina,
78 Early Islam in Medina

represented by Mālik, and the scholars of the other centres of learning,

represented by Abū Ḥanīfa (Kufa, Iraq) and al-Shāfiʿī (Egypt), and others who
did not accept the Medinan method of arriving at judgements by ʿamal.
It is to some examples of this dispute – which occurs in both ancient and
modern forms – that we now turn.
 5

Controversies, ancient and modern

In the previous chapter, we noted Qadi ʿIyāḍ’s comment that ‘all the leaders
of the madhhabs, whether legal scholars, or theologians, or people of ḥadīth,
or people of intellectual reasoning, are as one group against us regarding this
matter’, that is, regarding the validity of Medinan ʿamal as a source of law. This
opposition manifested most evidently in the different parties’ attitude towards
sunna and how it might or might not be manifested in ḥadīth (particularly,
but not exclusively, Prophetic ḥadīth). We saw also, in the section from ʿIyāḍ’s
Madārik about the ʿamal of the people of Medina being a conclusive proof
even if it is contrary to ḥadīth, that, for Mālik, ʿamal was a stronger proof than
simply ḥadīth, since it represented a continuous and acted-upon tradition
from the time of the Prophet and his Companions up until his own time, such
as was the case for the size of the ṣāʿ and the mudd, or the way of calling the
adhān in Medina, which Mālik described as being ‘more accurate than ḥadīth’.
We also referred (see Chapter 4) to the two groups of the Medinans and the
Kufans as the forerunners of the Mālikī and Ḥanafī madhhabs, respectively,
and who were soon to become joined by another, third, madhhab, that of
Imam al-Shāfiʿī.
In this chapter we look at a number of specific examples of disagreement
raised by opponents of Mālik and his method in their specialist literature on
the subject. Although we have only chosen a few, they give a good idea of the
basic issues at stake.
80 Early Islam in Medina

Mālik and al-Shaybānī

Example 1: Passing in front of someone who is doing the prayer

In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik includes the following two chapters, which appear one
after the other:

A. The strong warning against passing in front of someone who is doing

the prayer
1. Yaḥyā related to me from Mālik, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Saʿīd al-Khudrī, from his father, that the Messenger of
Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘Don’t let anyone pass
in front of you when you are doing the prayer. Ward him off as much as you
can, and if he refuses, fight him, for he is just a devil.’
2. He told me, from Mālik, from Abū l-Naḍr the mawlā of ʿUmar ibn
ʿUbaydallāh, from Busr ibn Saʿīd, that Zayd ibn Khālid al-Juhanī sent him
to Abū Juhaym to ask him what he had heard from the Messenger of Allah,
may Allah bless him and grant him peace, about someone passing in front
of someone doing the prayer. Abū Juhaym said: the Messenger of Allah, may
Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘If the one passing in front of
someone who is doing the prayer knew what he was bringing on himself, it
would be better for him to wait forty than to pass in front of him.’ Abū l-Naḍr
said: ‘I don’t know if he said “forty days”, or “forty months” or “forty years”.’
3. He told me, from Mālik, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, that
Kaʿb al-Aḥbār said: ‘If the one passing in front of someone who is doing the
prayer knew what he was bringing on himself, it would be better for him to
sink into the ground than to pass in front of him.’
4. He told me, from Mālik, that he had heard that ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar
would dislike passing in front of women while they were doing the prayer.
5. He told me, from Mālik, from Nāfiʿ, that ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar would never
pass in front of anyone who was doing the prayer nor would he let anyone
pass in front of him.

B. Permission to pass in front of someone who is doing the prayer

1. Yaḥyā told me, from Mālik, from Ibn Shihāb, from ʿUbaydallāh ibn
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUtba ibn Masʿūd, that ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās said: ‘I came
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 81

up riding on a donkey while the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him
and grant him peace, was leading the people in prayer at Minā, and I was
at the time nearing puberty. I passed in front of part of the row, and then
dismounted and sent the donkey off to graze, and then joined the row, and
no-one rebuked me for what I had done.’
2a. He told me, from Mālik, that he had heard that Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ
would pass in front of some of the rows while the prayer was in progress.
2b. Mālik said: ‘I think there is leeway with regard to this, if the iqāma has
been made and the imam has started the prayer and a man cannot find any
way into the mosque except by going between the rows.’
3. He told me, from Mālik, that he had heard that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib said: ‘A
man’s prayer is not broken by anything that passes in front of him.’
4. He told me, from Mālik, from Ibn Shihāb, from Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh, that
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar used to say: ‘A man’s prayer is not broken by anything
that passes in front him.’1

This, then, is what Mālik includes in the two sections that deal with this
issue, according to Yaḥyā’s transmission from him. (They occur in almost
identical form in the transmission of al-Zuhrī, except that Mālik’s comment
in B2b finishes at the words ‘if the iqāma has been made’.)2 It is clear from the
two headings that there is effectively a general rule to which there is a possible
exception.
Let us compare this presentation with that of al-Shaybānī, in his transmission
of the Muwaṭṭaʾ and also in his al-Ḥujja ʿala ahl al-Madīna (‘The Proof Against
the People of Medina’).
Al-Shaybānī’s transmission of the Muwaṭṭaʾ contains the following c­ hapter –
and the reader should not be surprised if it is remarkably similar to what we
have just mentioned:

Chapter on someone passing in front of (someone doing) the prayer

1. Mālik informed us: Sālim Abū l-Naḍr the mawlā of ʿUmar told us, that
Busr ibn Saʿīd informed him that Zayd ibn Khālid al-Juhanī sent him to Abū
Juhaym al-Anṣārī to ask him what he had heard the Messenger of Allah, may
Allah bless him and grant him peace, say about someone passing in front of
someone doing the prayer. He said: the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless
him and grant him peace, said: ‘If the one passing in front of someone who
82 Early Islam in Medina

is doing the prayer knew what he was bringing on himself, it would be better
for him to wait forty than to pass in front of him.’ He said: ‘I don’t know if
he said “forty days”, or “forty months” or “forty years”.’ [= report A2 above]
2. Mālik informed us: Zayd ibn Aslam told us, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Abī Saʿīd al-Khudrī, from his father, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘Don’t let anyone pass in front of you
when you are doing the prayer. If he refuses, fight him, for he is just a devil.’
[= report A1 above]
3. Mālik informed us: Zayd ibn Aslam told us, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, that Kaʿb
said: ‘If the one passing in front of someone who is doing the prayer knew
what he was bringing on himself, it would be better for him to sink into the
ground than to pass in front of him.’ [= report A3 above]
Muḥammad [ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī] said: It is disliked for a man to pass
in front of someone who is doing the prayer. If someone wants to pass in
front of him, he should ward him off as best he can but not fight him. If
he fights him, the fighting that he is involved in while doing the prayer is
more serious for him than the man passing in front of him. We don’t know
of anyone who is of the opinion that he should fight him, except what has
been related from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī. The majority do not follow this, but,
rather, what I have described to you, and this is Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinion.
4. Mālik informed us: al-Zuhrī told us, from Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh, that Ibn
ʿUmar said: ‘The prayer is not broken by anything.’ [see report B4 above]
Muḥammad said: ‘This is what we go by. The prayer is not broken by
anything that passes in front of someone who is doing the prayer.’3

Once again, as we saw in Chapter 3, al-Shaybānī’s transmission, while

maintaining the textual integrity of the reports he transmits – with some
very small differences, such as in the names ‘Sālim Abū l-Naḍr the mawlā
of ʿUmar’ rather than ‘Abū l-Naḍr the mawlā of ʿUmar ibn ʿUbaydallāh’, and
‘Kaʿb’ rather than ‘Kaʿb al-Aḥbār’ – chooses to exclude certain reports that do
not reflect his position and that of Abū Ḥanīfa, as he also adds comments that
clarify his and Abū Ḥanīfa’s position.
In his book Kitāb al-Ḥujja ʿala ahl al-Madīna, al-Shaybānī deals at some
length with this issue.4 He says,

Abū Ḥanīfa said: It is not correct for a man to pass in front of someone
who is doing the prayer, regardless of whether it is a voluntary or obligatory
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 83

[prayer] or whether the iqāma has been made and people have started
doing the prayer. If someone does pass in front of someone who is doing the
prayer, he should ward him off as best he can. If he refuses, so that he would
have to fight him, he should let the man pass by without fighting him, for
fighting whilst doing the prayer is more serious than having the man pass
in front of him.
The people of Medina say, about someone passing in front of people while
they are doing the prayer: ‘We think there is leeway with regard to this, if the
iqāma has been made.’ [cf. report B2b]
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan said: The reports about not passing in front of
people while they are doing the prayer, [both] after the iqāma and before the
iqāma, are too numerous for us to go by the opinion of one who says, ‘There
is no harm in this, if the iqāma has been made.’
The people of Medina say: ‘But we have heard that Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ
would pass in front of people while they were doing the prayer.’ [= report
B2a above].
Our reply is: ‘This has been related from Mālik ibn Anas, from Saʿd, without
him mentioning any isnād or naming any source. Rather he just says, “We
have heard that Saʿd would do this.” ’5

Al-Shaybānī then quotes exactly the same ḥadīths that he transmits in his
version of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, namely reports A1, A2 and A3 above, except that he
adds, after report A1, the words ‘Mālik then says that “fighting him” means
“pushing him away” ’, and also includes Ibn ʿUmar’s report (A5) between
reports A1 and A2. He then concludes,

So these are the ḥadīths of the people of Medina which are an argument against
them and which they go against (yaʾkhudhūna bi-khilāfihā), and one of the
ones who goes against them is Mālik ibn Anas, although he is the one who
relates them. How can they be people of reports when they openly leave aside
what they have related? If we wanted to argue against them using many other
ḥadīths on this and related points, we could do so, but using their own ḥadīths
provides a stronger argument against them. This also points to how, in other
opinions of theirs, they leave reports aside and go by what they think is good
(bi-mā istaḥsanū), without them backing it up by any report (athar) or sunna.6

Al-Shaybānī’s criticism is thus clear: Mālik and the Medinans claim to go

by reports (āthār) but do so inconsistently, allowing exceptions to general
84 Early Islam in Medina

rules with only the authority of a single Companion (in this case, Saʿd ibn Abī
Waqqāṣ), and in a report which doesn’t even have a full isnād to it, rather than
accepting the overriding authority of the Prophet in fully backed-up ḥadīths.
What is also noticeable, though, is the textual consistency between these
sources. It is clear that al-Shaybānī is relying on exactly the same reports, even
if his overall interpretation is different.

Example 2: Zakāt on mines

In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik includes the following two chapters, sequentially, in

the Book of Zakāt:

A. Zakāt on mines
1a. Yaḥyā told me, from Mālik, from Rabīʿa ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from more
than one person, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant
him peace, assigned the mines of al-Qabaliyya, which lie in the direction of
al-Furʿ [a place between Mecca and Medina], to Bilāl ibn al-Ḥārith al-Muzanī,
and up until this day only zakāt has ever been taken from these mines.
1b. Mālik said: ‘I think, and Allah knows best, that nothing should be taken
from what is extracted from mines until what is extracted from them reaches
an amount of twenty dinars of gold or two hundred dirhams [of silver].
When it reaches that amount, zakāt should be taken from it, there and then.
If the amount comes to more than that, [zakāt] is taken from it accordingly,
for as long as the mine is producing. If the vein runs out but then, later, more
is obtained from [the mine], the new supply is dealt with in the same way as
the first, and zakāt starts to be taken from it as it was from the first.’
1c. Mālik said: ‘Mines are treated the same way as agricultural produce.
[Zakāt] is taken from them in the same way that it is taken from agricultural
produce: it is taken from what the mine has produced on the day that it is
produced, without waiting for a year to elapse, in the same way that a tenth
is taken from agricultural produce on the day that it is harvested, without
waiting for a year to elapse.’

B. Zakāt on buried treasure (rikāz)

1a. Yaḥyā told me, from Mālik, from Ibn Shihāb, from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab
and Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Abū Hurayra, that the Messenger
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 85

of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘A fifth [is due] on
buried treasure (rikāz).’
1b. Mālik said: ‘The position on which there is no disagreement here with us,
and which I have heard the people of knowledge mentioning, is that rikāz
refers to treasure that is found that was buried in the time of the Jāhiliyya,
without needing any capital, or expense, or a lot of work and effort [to
recover]. If it needs capital, or a lot of work, with success on one occasion
and failure on another, it is not rikāz.’7

Elsewhere, in the ‘General section on blood-money’, Mālik includes a longer

version of Abū Hurayra’s ḥadīth (i.e. report B1a above):

[C1] Yaḥyā told me, from Mālik, from Ibn Shihāb, from Saʿīd ibn
al-Musayyab and Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Abū Hurayra,
that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,
said: ‘An animal is free of liability (jubār) if it causes an injury; a well is free
of liability [if someone falls into it]; a mine is free of liability [if it collapses
on someone];8 and a fifth is due on rikāz.’
Mālik said: ‘The meaning (tafsīr) of the word jubār is that there is no
compensation (diya) to be paid [for any injury caused].’
Mālik said: ‘[Regardless of] whether someone is leading an animal, or
driving it, or riding it, he is liable for what that animal [treads on and]
destroys, except if the animal has bolted without anything having been done
to make it bolt. ʿUmar gave the judgement that blood-money had to be paid
in the case of the man who made his horse run.’9

Al-Shaybānī, in his transmission of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, combines these reports

into the following section:

Chapter on Rikāz
Mālik informed us: Rabīʿa ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and others told us, that
the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, assigned
some mines from among the mines of al-Qabaliyya, which is in the direction
of al-Furʿ, to Bilāl ibn al-Ḥārith al-Muzanī, and, up until this day, only zakāt
has been taken from these mines. [= report A1 above].
Muḥammad [ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī] said: ‘There is the well-known
ḥadīth that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “A
fifth [is due] on buried treasure (rikāz).” Someone said, “O Messenger of
86 Early Islam in Medina

Allah, what is rikāz?” He said: “Wealth that Allah created in the earth on the
day He created the heavens and the earth.” So a fifth is due on mines such as
these, and that is the opinion of Abū Ḥanīfa and the majority of our jurists.’10

Elsewhere, in the section dealing with blood money, al-Shaybānī also includes
the same ḥadīth as above (report C1) about wells and then says,

This is what we go by. ‘Jubār’ means liability-free. ‘An animal’ here refers to
one that has run loose and then wounded or injured somebody. ‘A well’ and
‘a mine’ refers to when a man hires someone to dig a well or a mine and it
falls on him and kills him. There is no liability for that. ‘And a fifth is due
on rikāz: ‘rikāz refers to whatever is taken out of a mine, whether it be gold,
silver, lead, copper, iron, or mercury: a fifth is due on it. This is the opinion
of Abū Ḥanīfa and the majority of our jurists.
Mālik informed us: Ibn Shihāb told us, from Ḥizām ibn Saʿd ibn Muḥayyiṣa, that
a camel belonging to al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib went into someone’s orchard and caused
a lot of damage. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, gave the judgement (qaḍā) that it was the responsibility of the owners of
orchards to protect them during the day, but that whatever damage was done by
livestock during the night was the responsibility of the owners of the livestock.11

Al-Shaybānī takes up the issue in his Kitāb al-Ḥujja:

Gold and silver that is extracted from mines

Abū Ḥanīfa said that a fifth is taken from gold and silver that is extracted
from mines, whether it is a little or a lot.
The people of Medina say: ‘Nothing should be taken from what is extracted
from mines until what is extracted from them reaches an amount of twenty
dinars of gold or two hundred dirhams [of silver]. When it reaches that
amount, zakāt should be taken from it, there and then. If the amount comes
to more than that, [zakāt] is taken from it accordingly, for as long as the
mine is producing. If the vein runs out but then, later, more is obtained from
[the mine], the new supply is dealt with in the same way as the first, and
zakāt starts to be taken from it as it was from the first.’ [= report B1b above].
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan [al-Shaybānī] said: ‘Zakāt does not apply to
mines. Rather, mines are like booty, on which a fifth is due, whether [it is]
a little or a lot. We have heard that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless
him and grant him peace, said: “A fifth [is due] on buried treasure (rikāz).”
Someone said, “O Messenger of Allah, what is rikāz?” He said: “Wealth that
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 87

Allah created in the earth on the day He created the heavens and the earth.”
So a fifth is due on such mines.’
The people of Medina say that rikāz refers to wealth that was buried in the
time of the Jāhiliyya, which does not need any capital, or expense, or a lot
of work [to recover]. If it needs capital, or a lot of work, with success on one
occasion and failure on another, it is not rikāz. [= report B1b above]
Abū Ḥanīfa said: ‘This and [wealth from] mines is the same. Whether it
needs a lot of work [to extract] or whether it has been found without any
effort, it is the same: on this, and what is extracted from mines, a fifth is due.’
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan said: ‘Rikāz is what is found in mines, and buried
treasure is considered the same as wealth that is extracted from mines. This
is a matter of the Arabic language that I would not have thought the people
of Medina would have held a contrary opinion about. One says, arkaza
al-maʿdin (“the mine produced rikāz”), meaning that a lot of wealth was
extracted from it. There is [also] the well-known ḥadīth that a man asked
the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “What do
you say about [wealth] that is found in a village that is no longer lived in?”
He said, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “On it, and on rikāz, a
fifth is due”, thus considering it to be of a different category to rikāz.’

Al-Shaybānī then mentions a long ḥadīth about various types of lost property,
which also contains the phrase ‘a fifth is due on rikāz’. He then cites another
version of the ‘jubār’ ḥadīth, from Abū Ḥanīfa, also containing the phrase ‘and
a fifth is due on rikāz’, and then closes the chapter by citing a report from ʿAlī
about a fifth being due on some buried treasure that was found ‘in one of the
buildings of the non-Arabs’.12
So, whereas the Medinans consider gold and silver produced from mines
to be subject to zakāt, Abū Ḥanīfa and those following him consider anything
precious that is taken out of the ground to be subject to the tax of one-fifth,
without differentiating between what has involved effort and what hasn’t.

Mālik, al-Shaybānī and al-Shāfiʿī

Example 3: The purity of water that a dog has licked

In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik includes the following ḥadīth, in the ‘General chapter
on wuḍūʾ’:
88 Early Islam in Medina

A1. [Yaḥyā] told me, from Mālik, from Abū l-Zinād, from al-Aʿraj, from
Abū Hurayra, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant
him peace, said: ‘If a dog drinks from a vessel of yours, you should wash it
seven times.’13

He also includes, in the chapter on ‘Pure water for doing wuḍūʾ’, two other
ḥadīths about water that animals have drunk from:

B1a. [Yaḥyā] told me, from Mālik, from Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa,
from Ḥumayda, the daughter of ʿUbayda ibn Farwa, from her maternal aunt
Kabsha, the daughter of Kaʿb ibn Mālik – who was married to Abū Qatāda
al-Anṣārī – that she had told her that Abū Qatāda came in [one day] and she
poured out some water for him to do wuḍūʾ with. A cat came to drink from
it and he tilted the vessel so that [the cat] could drink from it. Kabsha said,
‘He saw me looking at him, and said, “Are you surprised, my cousin?” I said,
“Yes”. He said, “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, said, ‘They are not impure. They are part of your household that come
and go around you.’ ” ’
B1b. Mālik said: There is no harm in [such water] as long as you do not see
any impurity on [the cat’s] mouth.
B2. [Yaḥyā] told me, from Mālik, from Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, from Muḥammad
ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥārith al-Taymī, from Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn
Ḥāṭib, that ʿUmar was once on a journey with a group of people, among
whom was ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣī. They came to a pool, and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣī said
to the owner, ‘O owner of the pool! Do wild beasts come and drink from
this pool?’ ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said, ‘O owner of the pool, do not tell us.
We come and drink after the wild beasts and they come and drink after us.’14

Al-Shaybānī, in his transmission, does not include the ḥadīth about dogs,
but he does include the one about cats, which he includes in the chapter on
‘Doing wuḍūʾ with water a cat has drunk from’, after which he says, ‘There
is no harm in doing wuḍūʾ with water left over after a cat has drunk from it,
although to use other water is preferable in our opinion. This is [also] the view
of Abū Ḥanīfa.’15
Al-Shaybānī also includes the ḥadīth about wild beasts, in the chapter on
‘Doing wuḍūʾ with water that wild beasts have drunk from or licked’, after
which he adds the comment:
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 89

If the pool is large, such that if you move the water on one side, the water
on the other side doesn’t move, that water is not harmed by any wild animal
that drinks from it, nor by anything dirty that falls into it, unless it changes
the smell or taste. If the pool is small, such that if you move the water on one
side, the water on the other side moves, and wild beasts drink from it, or
something dirty falls into it, it should not be used for doing wuḍūʾ. Do you
not see that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb disliked [the man] telling him, and told
him not to do so?16

In the Mudawwana, we find the following chapter about the subject,

presented in the form of an exchange between Saḥnūn (‘I said’) and Ibn
al-Qāsim (‘He said’):

Doing wuḍūʾ with water that animals, chickens and dogs have drunk
from
[Ibn al-Qāsim] said: ‘I asked Mālik about water that donkeys and mules have
drunk from, and he said, “There is no harm in it”.’
I [i.e. Saḥnūn] said: ‘What would you think if it gets onto something else?’ He
said, ‘It and that something else are the same (huwa wa-ghayruhu sawāʾ).’
He said: ‘There is no harm in the sweat of pack-horses, mules and donkeys.’
He said: ‘Mālik said, about a vessel that has water in it that a dog has drunk
from: “If he has used it to do wuḍūʾ and has then done the prayer, that is
acceptable.” ’
He said: ‘He did not consider dogs to be like other [animals].’
He said: ‘Mālik said: “If a bird or animal that eats carrion drinks from a vessel,
that water should not be used for doing wuḍūʾ.” ’
He said: ‘Mālik said: “If a dog drinks from a vessel that has milk (laban) in it,
there is no harm in consuming that milk.’ ”
I said: ‘Did Mālik say that a vessel should be washed seven times if a dog has
drunk from it, if it contains milk or water?’
He said: ‘Mālik said: “There is the ḥadīth that has been transmitted [about this],
but I do not know what its real meaning (ḥaqīqa) is.” ’
He said: ‘It is as if he considered dogs to be part of the household, and not like
other wild beasts. He would say, “If a vessel is to be washed, it should only be
when it has had water in it”, although he still considered this a weak opinion.
90 Early Islam in Medina

He added: “It should not be washed if it has had fat (samn) or milk in it, and
anything like this that a dog has licked can be eaten. I consider it a serious
matter that someone should go to any provision that Allah has provided
[people] with and then throw it away because a dog has licked it.” ’
I said: ‘If a bird or an animal that eats carrion, or a chicken that eats filth (natin),
drinks from the milk, can the milk be consumed or not?’
He said: ‘If you are certain that it has some dirt on its beak, you shouldn’t drink
[the milk], but if you don’t see anything on its beak, then there is no harm
in it. It is not like water, because water can be thrown away and not used for
wuḍūʾ.’
Ibn Wahb [relates], from ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith, that Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd and Bukayr
ibn ʿAbdallāh would both say that there is no harm in a man doing wuḍūʾ
with water that donkeys or mules or other animals have drunk from. Ibn
Shihāb said the same about donkeys.
Ibn Wahb [relates that] ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, Rabīʿa, and Abū l-Zinād said the
same about donkeys and mules, and ʿAṭāʾ recited the words of Allah, the
Blessed and Exalted, ‘Horses, mules and donkeys, for you to ride and as
an adornment’ [Q.16:8]. Mālik said the same, according to a report from
Ibn Wahb.
ʿAlī ibn Ziyād [relates], that Mālik said, about someone who does wudu’ with
water that a dog has drunk from and then does the prayer, ‘I do not consider
that he has to repeat the prayer, even if he learns about the situation within the
time for the prayer.’
ʿAlī [ibn Ziyād] and Ibn Wahb [relate], that Mālik said: ‘I do not like [people]
doing wuḍūʾ with water that a dog has drunk from, if it is only a small amount
of water; but there is no harm in doing so if it is a large amount of water, such
as a pool with a large amount of water in it, or anything else of that nature.’
Ibn Wahb [relates], from Ibn Jurayj, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, came down to a waterhole with Abū Bakr and
ʿUmar. The people in charge of the water came out and said, ‘O Messenger of
Allah, wild beasts and dogs drink from this pool.’ He said: ‘For them is what
they have taken into their stomachs, and for us is what is left – a drink which
is pure and purifying.’
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd told me the same, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAṭāʾ
ibn Yasār, from Abū Hurayra, from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless
him and grant him peace. ʿUmar also said, ‘Do not tell us, O owner of the
pool. We drink after the wild beasts and they drink after us.’ Dogs are less
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 91

problematic than wild beasts, and cats are even less so, because they are
[animals] that people keep [in their houses].
Ibn al-Qāsim said: ‘Mālik said: “There is no harm if the saliva of a dog gets
onto a man’s clothing.” Rabīʿa said the same. Ibn Shihāb said: “There is no
harm if you are forced to use water that a dog has drunk from to do wuḍūʾ
with.” Mālik said: “One eats game that it has hunted, so how can its saliva be
disliked?” ’17

Mālik is therefore clearly of the opinion that food, in particular, should not be
wasted just because a dog has licked it. He is well aware of the ḥadīth about
washing a vessel seven times if a dog has drunk water from it – he himself
relates it in the Muwaṭṭaʾ – but he reserves judgement as to its ‘reality’ (ḥaqīqa);
that is, he is not sure of the full implications of the words: what applies to
water need not necessarily apply to milk, or gravy, or any other liquid; and
what applies to dogs need not necessarily apply to other animals, or birds, and,
indeed, need not necessarily apply in all circumstances.
Let us now consider, by comparison, al-Shāfiʿī’s view of the same issue as
discussed in his Kitāb al-Umm, in the section on the differences of opinion
between him and Mālik (Kitāb Ikhtilāf Mālik wa-l-Shāfiʿī):

Dogs drinking out of a vessel or anything else

I [i.e. al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulayman] asked al-Shāfiʿī about a dog drinking from a vessel
in which there is an amount of less than two large jars (qullatayn) of water, or
milk, or gravy.
He said:‘The water, milk, or gravy should be thrown away and not used, and the
vessel should be washed seven times. Any [part of a] garment that that water
or milk gets onto, must be washed, because that [water or milk] is impure.’
I said:‘What is the argument for that?’
He said:‘Mālik informed us, from Abū l-Zinād, from al-Aʿraj, from Abū Hurayra,
that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,
said: “If a dog drinks from a vessel of yours, you should wash it seven times.” ’
Al-Shāfiʿī said:‘It is thus clear in the sunna of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, [that], if a dog drinks water from a vessel and
the vessel becomes impure so that it needs to be washed seven times, it has
become impure because of the water that has come into contact with it. The
92 Early Islam in Medina

water is more susceptible (awlā) of becoming impure than the vessel, which
has only become impure because the water has touched it. And if water –
which is pure and purifying (ṭahūr) – becomes impure [in such a way], then
milk and gravy, which are not pure and purifying – are even more susceptible
to becoming impure by whatever makes the water impure.’18

It is thus clear that al-Shāfiʿī is not willing to entertain any exceptions to what
he considers a general rule. The ḥadīth in his view clearly indicates the impurity
of what dogs have licked, and so there is only one conclusion: any liquid they
lick becomes impure and the vessel containing it becomes impure and needs
to be washed seven times before it can be considered pure again.
For Mālik, however, things are not so clear-cut, and there is counter-
evidence. In particular, dogs are used for hunting, by Quranic and Prophetic
authority, and if one is allowed to eat what they have sunk their teeth into, and
thus mixed their saliva with, then it cannot be that everything a dog’s saliva
touches becomes impure. As he says, ‘One eats game that it has hunted, so
how can its saliva be disliked?’ Furthermore, given the existence of this kind
of counter-evidence, he considers it a serious matter to throw away food that
Allah has provided people with simply because a dog has licked it. And so it
is that he recognizes the existence of the ḥadīth but does not know what its
‘reality’ is.

Example 4: Bringing ‘dead’ land (al-mawāt) to life

Mālik includes the following chapter in the Muwaṭṭaʾ:

The judgement about developing ‘dead’ land

1a. Yaḥyā related to me, from Mālik, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwa, from his father,
that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:
‘If anyone brings “dead” land to life, it is his, and an unjust root has no right.’
1b. Mālik said: ‘An “unjust root” refers to whatever is dug, or taken, or
planted, without a right.’
2a. Mālik related to me [sic], from Ibn Shihāb, from Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh,
from his father, that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said: ‘If anyone brings “dead” land
to life, it is his.’
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 93

2b. Mālik said: ‘That is the position here with us.’19

The same two ḥadīths are related from the same sources in the transmission
of al-Shaybānī, in a chapter entitled ‘Bringing “dead” land to life, whether with
the permission of the imam or not’, where al-Shaybānī adds the following
comment:

We go by this, that if anyone brings ‘dead’ land to life, with or without the
permission of the imam, it is his. Abū Ḥanīfa said: ‘It is not his unless the
imam confirms that it is his.’ He also said: ‘The imam should confirm that it
is his, if he has brought it to life; if he doesn’t do so, it is not his.’20

In the Mudawwana, we are given more details about this distinction. In the
relevant section on ‘What has come down about bringing “dead” land to life’,
we find the following passage:

I [Saḥnūn] said: ‘What do you think about someone who brings “dead” land
to life without the permission (amr) of the imam? Is it his, or is it not his
until the imam has given him permission, according to Mālik?’
He [Ibn al-Qāsim] said: ‘Mālik said: “If he brings it to life, it is his, even
if he hasn’t sought permission from the imam.” Mālik said: “Bringing it to
life means creating watercourses, digging wells, planting trees, building
buildings, and planting crops. If he does any of these, he has brought it to
life.” He added: “He should not do this where it is near to settled land. The
explanation (tafsīr) of the ḥadīth, ‘If anyone brings “dead” land to life, it
belongs to him’, is that it refers to open land and desert. If it is near to settled
land and is [land] that people are naturally covetous about, then he can only
bring it to life if it has been allocated to him by the imam.” ’21

We see, therefore, that Mālik draws a distinction between land that is some
distance from where people are living, which anyone is free to bring to life,
and land which is near to where people are living, which can only be brought
to life if the imam has given permission for this to be done. It also seems to be
the case, as mentioned in al-Shaybānī’s transmission, that Abū Ḥanīfa assumes
that the imam’s permission is always needed, although al-Shaybānī himself
doesn’t take this view.
Al-Shāfiʿī, for his part, takes a characteristically straightforward view. In the
Kitāb al-Umm we read:
94 Early Islam in Medina

I [i.e. al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān] asked al-Shāfiʿī about someone who brings
‘dead’ land to life, and he said: ‘If the “dead” land has no owner and it is
brought to life by one of the people of Islam, then it is his and not anyone
else’s. It doesn’t make any difference to me whether the sultan has given it to
him or not, because the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,
has given it to him, and what the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, has given [to someone] has more right to be acknowledged as a gift
than the gift of the sultan.’
I said: ‘What is your argument for saying this?’
He said: ‘[It is] what has been related by Mālik from the Prophet, may Allah bless
him and grant him peace, and one of his Companions.’
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘Mālik informed us, from Hishām [ibn ʿUrwa], from his father,
that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “If anyone
brings ‘dead’ land to life, it is his, and an unjust root has no right.” ’
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘Mālik informed us, from Ibn Shihāb, from Sālim [ibn ʿAbdallāh],
from his father, that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said: “If anyone brings ‘dead’ land
to life, it is his.” ’
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘Sufyān and others informed us, via a different isnād to this, of a
report from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, with the
same meaning.’
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘This is what we go by. The gift that the Messenger of Allah, gave
the one who brings “dead” land to life, that it is his, is more [of a gift] (akthar)
to him than the gift of the governor.’
I said to al-Shāfiʿī: ‘We dislike someone bringing “dead” land to life unless it is
with the permission of the governor.’
Al-Shāfiʿī said, may Allah have mercy on him: ‘How is it that you go against
what you relate from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,
and ʿUmar, when this, in your view, is sunna, and ʿamal after them both;
and [how] do you affirm the right of the governor to give [something to
someone], when it is not the governor’s right to give something that is not his,
or to withhold from someone something that is his. There is no constraint on
someone taking what is his, and, if he has brought “dead” land to life, he has
taken what is his, without there being any objection to that, so that someone
might say, with regard to that which to which he is fully entitled and which he
has a right to take, “Don’t take it unless you have the permission of the imam!”
If someone were to say [about such a situation] that this is a matter that the
sultan must investigate, he would only investigate it if there was another party
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 95

disputing the case, and if it seems clear in his opinion that [the land] has no
owner. If he were to give it to someone, and then the rightful owner were to
come and claim it as his, he would give it to the rightful owner. Similarly, if
someone were to take [land] and bring it to life without his permission, the
sultan has no role in the matter. He would only have a role if, when he gave
it to someone, no-one else could claim that it was his and take it from [that
other person]. As for someone putting forward a claim to be the rightful
owner after the sultan has given it to him, that is meaningless, except in the
sense of someone taking what is already his.’
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘This is an arbitrary approach to knowledge, leaving aside what
you have related from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,
and ʿUmar, when no-one that we know of among the Companions of the
Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, expressed a contrary view
to them, because of an opinion you have, and restricting for others [what
should be] broader than this.’
I said to al-Shāfiʿī: ‘Have any others taken a contrary opinion to you in this?’
He said: ‘I do not know of anyone who has a contrary opinion in this matter,
other than yourselves and those you have related this from, other than Abū
Ḥanīfa. I think that you have heard his words and gone by them, although
Abū Yusuf took a contrary position and held the same view as we do and
blamed Abū Ḥanīfa for going against the sunna.’
Al-Shāfiʿī, may Allah have mercy on him, said: ‘Part of what also contains the
same meaning of what you have an opposing view about is what you have
related from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and
those after him, with no-one expressing an opposing view, [which is] that
Mālik informed us, from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā al-Māzinī, from his father, that the
Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “There
[should be] no harm or reciprocal harm.”22 [Mālik] then follows this up, in his
book [i.e. the Muwaṭṭaʾ], with [the following] ḥadīth, as if he considers it to be
an explanation of it.’
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘Mālik informed us, from Ibn Shihāb, from al-Aʿraj, from Abū
Hurayra, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, said: “No-one should prevent his neighbour from fixing a wooden peg
in his wall.” Abū Hurayra then said: “Why is it that I see you turning away
from this? By Allah, I will keep on at you about it.” ’23
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘He then follows this with [the following] two ḥadīths from
ʿUmar, as if he considers them to be about the same subject.’
96 Early Islam in Medina

Al-Shāfiʿī, may Allah have mercy on him, said: ‘Mālik informed us from
ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā al-Māzinī, from his father, that al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Khalīfa dug
an irrigation ditch from al-ʿUrayḍ. He wanted it to pass by him via the land
of Muḥammad ibn Maslama, but Muḥammad [ibn Maslama] refused. So
al-Ḍaḥḥāk spoke to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb about it, and ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb
called for Muḥammad ibn Maslama and told him to clear the way, but Ibn
Maslama said, “No.” ʿUmar said, “Why are you stopping your brother from
accessing what is of benefit to him and is also useful to you? You drink from
it at the beginning and at the end and this doesn’t cause you any harm.” But
Muḥammad said, “No.” So ʿUmar said, “By Allah. It will pass by him even if it
is over your belly!” ’24
Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘Mālik informed us, from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā al-Māzinī, from his
father, that he said, “There was a stream (rabīʿ) in my grandfather’s garden
belonging to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf wanted to
change its course to a part of the garden that was nearer to his land, but the
owner of the garden wouldn’t let him. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf spoke to
ʿUmar, and ʿUmar gave judgement that it should pass by him, and this was
done.” ’25
Al-Shāfiʿī, may Allah have mercy on him, said: ‘So you have related in this
book [i.e. the Muwaṭṭaʾ] a sound and trustworthy ḥadīth from the Prophet,
may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and two ḥadīths from ʿUmar ibn
al-Khaṭṭāb and then gone against all of them and said about each one, “This
is not used for judging between people (lā yuqḍā bi-hā ʿalā l-nās)” and “The
ʿamal is not in accord with them.” You have not recorded from any person
that I know anything that is contrary to these [reports] or even one of them.
So whose ʿamal is it that you are referring to by which you go against the
sunna of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace? It
is more fitting in our opinion that this ʿamal be rejected. You are going against
ʿUmar, as well as the sunna. It is problematic to go against just ʿUmar, but to
go against the sunna as well is even more problematic, but you say you are
going by ʿamal. We do not know what you mean by ʿamal, right up until this
day, and I do not think we will ever know for as long as we live.’26

Again, as we saw above, al-Shāfiʿī relies on exactly the same reports that
Mālik cites, but he puts them into a framework that allows no exceptions to
the general rule, and certainly not any exceptions that seem to rely on the
amorphous – in his view – concept of ʿamal.
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 97

Al-Layth ibn Saʿd’s letter to Mālik

Al-Layth ibn Saʿd (d. 175/791) was one of Mālik’s contemporaries and one of
the chief scholars in Egypt in his time. As for his status, it is recorded that Ibn
Wahb said of him, ‘If it were not for al-Layth and Mālik, we would have gone
astray,’27 while al-Shāfiʿī said, ‘Knowledge revolves around three people: Mālik,
al-Layth and Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna.’28 Al-Shāfiʿī even said of al-Layth, when he
arrived in Egypt after al-Layth’s death, that al-Layth was more knowledgeable
than Mālik, but that it was his followers who had let him down after his death.29
We have referred (Chapter 4) to Mālik’s letter to al-Layth ibn Saʿd on hearing
that he was giving fatwās that were contrary to the established position in
Medina. Mālik had written to him in the following way:

From Mālik ibn Anas to al-Layth ibn Saʿd: Peace be upon you. I praise Allah,
other than whom there is no god, to you. Know that I have heard that you
are giving fatwās to people contrary to that which a group of the Muslims
here in this city of ours follow. You, as an imam and a person of excellence
and high standing in the eyes of the people of your land, and in view of their
need of you and their reliance upon what comes to them from you, should
fear for yourself and follow that by which you hope to achieve safety.

He then mentioned some of the special qualities of Medina and of the people
who were living there in the first days of Islam, as we have noted above. He
then says,

Know that the only reason I am writing this to you is to give you advice for
the sake of Allah, because of my concern for you and my good opinion of
you. So consider my letter [to you] in the way it should be considered and,
if you do so, you will realize that I have not spared you any good counsel.

He then signs off, making duʿāʾ for him, and dating the letter.

Al-Layth’s reply

After greeting him, part of al-Layth’s reply to Mālik is as follows:

98 Early Islam in Medina

You have heard that I have been giving fatwās contrary to that which is
followed by a group of people where you are, and that I should fear for
myself because of the reliance of the people here on the fatwās I give them,
and that everyone should follow the people of Medina, which is the place to
which the Hijra was made and in which the Qur’an was revealed.
You are right in what you have written, God willing, and I have taken it
in the way that you would like. Nor is there anyone to whom knowledge
is attributed who is more hateful of irregular judgements (shawādhdh
al-futyā), nor anyone who gives more preference to the scholars of the
people of Medina who have passed away, nor anyone who is more ready to
accept their fatwās in what they are agreed on than me. Praise be to Allah,
the Lord of all the worlds. He has no partner.
As for what you mention about the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him
and grant him peace, being in Medina, and the Qur’an being revealed to him
there while he was among his Companions, and what Allah taught them
from him, and how [all] people should follow them with regard to that, it is
as you have said.
As for what you say about Allah’s word ‘The first forerunners among the
Muhājirūn and Anṣār, and those who followed them in doing good: Allah is
pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. He has prepared gardens
for them with rivers flowing under them, remaining in them timelessly,
for ever and ever. That is the great victory’ [Q.9:100], many of those first
forerunners went out on jihād for the sake of Allah, seeking the pleasure
of Allah. They put together armies, and people gathered to them, and they
showed them what was [in] the Book of Allah and the Sunna of His Prophet,
without concealing from them anything that they knew. In every army there
was a group among them who would teach the Book of Allah and the Sunna
of His Prophet and who would exercise their intellect with regard to matters
not explained by the Qur’an and the Sunna. Foremost among those who did
this were Abū Bakr, ʿUmar and ʿUthmān, whom the Muslims had chosen
for themselves. These three did not fall short regarding the armies of the
Muslims nor were they unaware of their needs. Rather, they would write
to them even about small matters relating to the establishment of the dīn,
and warn them against differing about the Qur’an and the Sunna of His
Prophet. There was no matter that the Qur’an had explained, or that the
Prophet had acted by or that they had agreed to act upon after him, without
them teaching it to them. If there was a matter that the Companions of the
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 99

Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, acted upon
in Egypt or Syria or Iraq at the time of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar and ʿUthmān, and
which they were still doing up until they died, they did not tell them to
do anything else. So we do not consider it acceptable for the armies of the
Muslims today to introduce anything new that their predecessors (salaf )
among the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him
and grant him peace, and their Successors had not acted by – although the
Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, did have differences of opinion afterwards, in their fatwās, on many
things. If I did not know that you knew these things, I would have written
them down for you. Then the Successors had differences of opinion on
[many] things after the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace. [Men such as] Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab and his
like had strong disagreements among themselves, as did those coming after
them and who you have known personally in Medina and elsewhere. The
chief ones among them at that time were Ibn Shihāb and Rabīʿa ibn Abī ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān. Rabīʿa’s disagreements with some of those who had gone before
you are aware of, and were present at, and I have heard you talk about them
and [also his disagreements with] the views of some of the best intellects
among the people of Medina [such as] Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, ʿUbaydallāh ibn
ʿUmar, Kathīr ibn Farqad, and many others who were older than him, to
the extent that what you didn’t like about that forced you to leave his circle.
I spoke with both you and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbdallāh [ibn al-Mājishūn]
with regard to some of what we consider unacceptable from Rabīʿa, and
you were both in agreement about what I disagreed with, disliking the same
things [from him] that I disliked. And yet, despite all this, by the grace of
Allah, there was a lot of good in Rabīʿa: [he had] a sharp intellect, excellent
Arabic, clear qualities, excellent behaviour in the dīn, and a love for his
brothers generally and for us in particular. May Allah have mercy on him
and forgive him, and reward him for the best of his actions.
There were also a lot of different opinions expressed by Ibn Shihāb, [both]
when we met him and if any of us wrote to him, and sometimes he would
write to someone about a matter, despite his extensive knowledge, with
three different answers, each of which would contradict the other, without
him realising what it was that he had said earlier about the matter. It is this
that has caused me to discard those opinions that you did not want me to
discard.30
100 Early Islam in Medina

Joining the prayers because of rain

Al-Layth then mentions a number of issues on which there was significant

difference of opinion, sometimes even among the scholars of Medina. The first
of them is that of joining between the prayers of maghrib and ʿishāʾ on rainy
nights. Al-Layth says,

You also know about my disliking his opinion that any one of the armies
of the Muslims can join between [maghrib and ʿishāʾ] on a night when it is
raining, although the rain in Syria is much more frequent than it ever is in
Medina. No imam among them ever joined between prayers on a night when
it was raining, although there were among them Abū ʿUbayda ibn al-Jarrāḥ,
Khālid ibn al-Walīd, Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān, ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, Muʿādh ibn
Jabal – and we have heard that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him
and grant him peace, said that Muʿādh was the most knowledgeable of them
with regard to what is ḥalāl and what is ḥarām, and he also said that Muʿādh
would come on the Day of Rising ahead of the men of knowledge by a long
way – and Shurāḥibīl ibn Ḥasana, Abū l-Dardāʾ and Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ; and in
Egypt there were Abū Dharr, al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām, and Saʿd ibn Abī
Waqqāṣ; in Ḥimṣ there were seventy of those who had been at [the Battle
of] Badr and in the Muslim armies as a whole; and in Iraq there were Ibn
Masʿūd, Ḥudhayfa ibn al-Yamān, ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn, and the Commander
of the Faithful ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib – may Allah ennoble his face for long years
in the Garden – and there were [other] Companions of the Messenger of
Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, with him, and none of
them ever joined between maghrib and ʿishāʾ.31

The issue of joining between maghrib and ʿishāʾ because of rain was indeed
an issue on which there was difference of opinion between scholars, but Mālik,
in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, is clear that, in his opinion, this is acceptable. In the section
on ‘Joining between two prayers when resident and when travelling’,32 Mālik
mentions a report from Ibn ʿAbbās that the Prophet prayed ẓuhr and ʿaṣr
together, and also maghrib and ʿishāʾ together, when it was neither a situation
of fear nor of being on a journey, to which Mālik then adds, ‘I think that was
because of rain.’ He then immediately follows this with a report from ʿAbdallāh
ibn ʿUmar to the effect that, if the amīrs joined between maghrib and ‘isha’
because of rain, he would join with them.33 Al-Shaybānī doesn’t mention the
report from Ibn ʿAbbās and Mālik’s comment after it, but he does mention
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 101

the report about ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar joining the prayers if the amīrs did
so, although he then says, ‘We don’t go by this. We don’t join between two
prayers at one time, except for ẓuhr and ʿaṣr at ‘Arafa, and maghrib and ʿishāʾ
at Muzdalifa.’ He then adds, ‘We have heard that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb wrote
to people in the provinces forbidding them from joining between two prayers,
and informing them that joining between two prayers at [any] one time is a
major wrong action.’34 Indeed, it was Abū Ḥanīfa’s view, like that of al-Layth
ibn Saʿd, that the prayers should never be joined because of rain. But Mālik’s
view was that of his teacher Hishām ibn ʿUrwa, who said that he saw Abān
ibn ʿUthmān joining the prayers because of rain, and with him were ʿUrwa
ibn al-Zubayr, Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Rahmān and
Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Rahmān, and none of them expressed any objection to
him doing that. Similarly, ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿUmar said that he saw Sālim and
al-Qāsim doing the prayer (with the implication of them joining the prayers)
with the amīrs on rainy nights. This was also the view of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal,
while al-Shāfiʿī held the view that one could join not just between maghrib and
ʿishāʾ but also between ẓuhr and ʿaṣr, if the rain was persistent.35 So, although it
may have been the case that the people in Syria were not of the habit of joining
the prayers on nights when it was raining, the same cannot be said about the
people of Medina, for whom it was clearly a well-known practice. Perhaps,
contrary to what al-Layth suggests, it was precisely because heavy rain was so
much less frequent in Medina than in Syria that the judgement of joining the
prayers was allowed in Medina, since the occurrence of rain there was a lot
more exceptional and so permitted this exception to the general rule.

Making a judgement with only one witness and the oath of the
plaintiff

The second example al-Layth mentions is that of arriving at a judgement

on the basis of the testimony of only one witness along with the oath of the
plaintiff (as opposed to that of two male witnesses, or that of one man and two
women). He says,

You know that this is still used as a basis for judgement in Medina, although
the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant
102 Early Islam in Medina

him peace, did not judge by it, whether in Damascus or Hims or Egypt or
Iraq, nor did the Rightly Guided Caliphs Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān and ʿAlī
write to them about it. Then ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz became caliph, and he,
as you know, was full of concern about bringing sunnas to life, along with
his seriousness in putting the dīn into practice, and his hitting the mark with
regard to his opinions, and his knowledge of what people had done in the
past. Ruzayq ibn Ḥakīm wrote to him saying, ‘You used to judge on the basis
of one witness and the oath of the plaintiff ’, and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
wrote back to him saying, ‘We used to judge by that in Medina but we found
the people of Syria not doing that and so we only judge on the basis of the
testimony of two just men, or one man and two women.’36

Al-Layth’s position is thus clear: although the people in Medina continue

to judge according to this principle, it effectively goes against the rest of the
Muslim community and should be rejected on that basis. For Mālik, however,
the matter is not as clear-cut as that. In the relevant section in the Muwaṭṭaʾ,
‘Judging on the basis of an oath with a single witness’, Mālik spells out his
argument in the face of others’ objections:

There are people who say that an oath with a single witness is not valid,
taking as their argument the words of Allah, the Blessed and Exalted – and
His word is the truth – ‘And have two of your menfolk bear witness, or, if
there are not two men, then one man and two women, from among those
whom you are satisfied with as witnesses’ [Q. 2:282], and saying that if
someone does produce [another] man or two women [as witnesses] he is
entitled to nothing and cannot be allowed to take an oath along with only
one witness.
Part of the argument against such people is to ask them what they would
say if someone were to claim some property from another man [i.e. without
having any witnesses]? Would not the one against whom the claim is being
made [either] swear that the claim is false, in which case the claim would be
dropped, or refuse to do so, in which case the claimant would be asked to
swear an oath that his claim is true, and thus establish his claim against the
other man as valid? This is something about which there is no disagreement
among anybody, anywhere. Why then do people accept this, and where in
the Book of Allah does it occur? If people accept this, then let them accept
an oath with one witness, even though it is not in the Book of Allah, the
Mighty and Glorious, and that what has been established as sunna (mā
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 103

maḍā min al-sunna) is enough. However, sometimes people like to know

what the correct view is and where the proof lies, and in what we have said
is a sufficient clarification of what is unclear in this matter, God willing.37

In other words, it is a false expectation to expect to find all judgements in

the Qur’an. Rather, there is the lived context of the Book. As Mālik says,
‘what has been established as sunna is enough’, that sunna being the one
that was established and maintained in Medina, and thus provides a model
for others.

The zakāt of joint owners

A third example will further clarify al-Layth’s position and the nature of his
objections. Al-Layth says,

Another example is that I have heard that you say, about two joint owners
(khalīṭayn) of property (māl), that it is not obligatory for them to pay zakāt
until each one possesses an amount on which zakāt is necessary. However,
in the document of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb it says that they are both liable
to zakāt and should pay according to what each one owes (yatarāddāni
bi-l-sawiyya). That was acted upon during the governorate of ʿUmar ibn
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz before you, and that of others, and is what Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd
transmitted to us and he was not of any lesser quality than the best of the
scholars in his time, may Allah have mercy on him, and forgive him, and
make the Garden his abode.38

But this is to assume just one explanation of the concept of joint ownership
in ʿUmar’s document. Mālik records this document in the chapter in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ on ‘Zakāt on livestock’, which ends with the words ‘What is separate
should not be joined together, and what is together should not be separated,
out of fear of zakāt’.39 Mālik then explains what he understands by this phrase,
in the chapter entitled ‘The Zakāt of associates’,40 as follows:

Mālik said, about two associates (khalīṭayn): ‘If there is one herdsman, one
male animal, and one pasture, and one watering-place, then the two are
associates (khalīṭān), even if each one of them knows which animals are his
and which are the other man’s. If someone doesn’t know which animals are
his, he is not an associate (khalīṭ) but a co-owner (sharīk).’
104 Early Islam in Medina

Mālik said:‘It is not obligatory for either associate to pay zakāt until he has an
amount on which he has to pay zakāt. The explanation (tafsīr) of that is, that,
if one of the associates has forty or more sheep and the other one has less than
forty sheep, the one who has forty sheep has to pay one sheep while the one
who has less than that doesn’t have to pay anything. If both of them have the
minimum amount on which zakāt is due, they are considered together for
the purposes of zakāt, and both of them have to pay zakāt on the combined
amount. If one of them has a thousand or less sheep, on which zakāt is due,
and the other has forty or more sheep, then they are associates and each one
pays his contribution according to the number of animals he has – on the one
with a thousand, his portion, and on the one with forty, his portion.’
Mālik said:‘Two associates with camels are like (bi-manzilat) two associates with
sheep: they are considered together for zakāt if each one has an amount on
which zakāt is due. This is because the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless
him and grant him peace, said, “There is no zakāt on less than five camels”,
and ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said, “On free-ranging sheep, if they come to forty,
there is one sheep [to pay].” ’
Mālik said:‘This is what I like best out of what I have heard about the matter.’
Mālik said:‘ʿUmar said: “What is separate should not be added together, and
what is together should not be separated, out of fear of zakāt”, and that refers
to people who have livestock.’
Mālik said:‘The explanation (tafsīr) of the phrase “what is separate should
not be added together” is that there should be three people who each have
forty sheep, on each one of whom zakāt is [thus] due. Then, when the zakāt
collector comes to them, they add them together so that they only have to
pay one sheep [because between 40 and 119 sheep, only one sheep is due].
They are forbidden to do this. The explanation of the phrase “what is together
should not be separated” is that two owners each have 101 sheep, and so
would owe three sheep on that amount [because on 201 to 300 sheep, three
sheep are due]. Then, when the zakāt collector comes, they divide up their
sheep so that each one only has to pay one sheep. This is forbidden. And so it
is said, “What is separate should not be added together, and what is together
should not be separated, out of fear of zakat.” ’
Mālik said:‘This is what I have heard about this.’

So Mālik is clearly aware of other views and is not saying his view is the only
view but, rather, that he has heard this view and it is the one he likes best out
of what he has heard.
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 105

The oath of īlāʾ (abstention from marital intercourse)

Another example al-Layth mentions is the one we have mentioned earlier

about īlāʾ (see Chapter 4), on which there was significant difference of opinion
in Medina and yet which seems by Mālik’s time to have been resolved to an
agreed position (al-amru ʿindanā). As we have seen, the difference of opinion
concerned whether divorce automatically ensued after the four-month
waiting period was up, and whether the ensuing divorce should be considered
revocable (rajʿī) or irrevocable (bāʾin).
Al-Layth is thus concerned about ikhtilāf – differences of opinion. If there
are differences of opinion, and especially if this is the case even in Medina,
then why should people be obliged to follow one view rather than another?
And if the supposed Medinan view is actually different from the vast majority
of the rest of the umma, why should one be obliged to follow it at all?
Mālik’s response, of course, is the one that we have already heard. As a group
experience, Medina remains different in quality from that of any other city,
which cannot claim as a lived experience that which the Medinans can claim.
And although, as we have seen, textual reports may suggest a clear picture
with only one side to it, the lived experience of Medina produced genuine
exceptions to genuine norms, but they were just that – exceptions to otherwise
agreed norms.

***

Modern controversies

Although it is clear that there has been – and still remains – the phenomenon
of ikhtilāf, it seems that one of the most frequent criticisms of Mālik and his
madhhab among Muslims today is that it somehow ignores the perceived
unity of the community around ḥadīth and fosters a culture of inconsistency
with regard to texts and, at the same time, an acceptance of merely human
decision when that of Allah and His Messenger is (a) available (i.e. through
Qur’an and ḥadīth) and (b) is enough. But what the examples above show is
that it is the exception that proves the rule. There is general acceptance, for
example, that one shouldn’t walk in front of someone who is doing the prayer,
106 Early Islam in Medina

but what should a person do if the mosque is so crowded, with gaps opening
up left, right and centre as people move forward to fill them up after the iqāma
has been called, that one has no choice but to walk in front of others if one
wants to fill up a gap? (This is, of course, exactly the situation today in both
Mecca and Medina at any of the prayer times.)
Similarly, although there is general acceptance that there are four ongoing
madhhabs which are all acceptable, it is also acceptable to try to understand
how this situation came about. Was it not one initial event that resulted in
what we see later? The position of Mālik is that Medina is our best record of
that initial phenomenon and its continuation. But, goes the counterargument,
the Companions spread out in the lands, taking their knowledge with them
and establishing communities wherever they went. This of course is true,
but Rabīʿa’s counterargument is the key one here: ‘one thousand from one
thousand is preferred by me to one from one’. And ‘one thousand from one
thousand’ cannot, in this context, mean one thousand people transmitting
the same ḥadīth or ḥadīths from one thousand others – which is extremely
unlikely to have occurred in Rabīʿa’s time, and certainly not in any formal way.
It has to have meant one thousand people (at least) taking their dīn by living
example from one thousand others (at least), which takes us back to ʿamal
and its particular form of transmission by action. And it makes a priori sense
that the place where this matter first started and was first put into practice
has a claim – and potentially a better claim than any other place – to first
consideration. Medina, after all, was the focal point in the past; could it not,
should it not, also be the focal point going forward in the future?
Furthermore, as Qadi ʿIyāḍ points out in his Madārik, it is the duty of every
muqallid (‘follower’ i.e. one not entitled to exercise ijtihād, or independent
legal judgement) to choose the imam that he thinks is the most worthy of
being followed. In fact, he says, this is precisely the ijtihād that the muqallid
is entitled to exercise with regard to his dīn.41 Therefore, the claim of the
followers of Mālik that their imam is the closest to the truth is entirely to
be expected. It is not a rejection of the other madhhabs but a reasoned and
reasonable judgement about one particular option, based on an assessment of
the available evidence.
It is also equally clear that Medina is not seen as a ‘monolithic fiqh entity’ –
as it has been expressed42 – but rather a dominant position among possibilities.
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 107

Nevertheless, it is clear that Mālik’s choice of judgements among these

possibilities was one that he felt had the strongest claim to the truth. As he said
about the zakāt of joint owners of livestock, ‘This is what I like best out of what
I have heard about the matter.’ We also quoted him earlier (see Chapter 3) as
saying, in the context of the agreed opinion of Medina,

Where I have heard nothing from them, I have used my own judgement
(ijtahadtu) and considered the matter according to the way (madhhab) of
those I have met, until I felt that I had arrived at the truth, or near to it,
so that it would not be outside the way of the people of Medina and their
opinions, even though I had not heard that particular [judgement] directly.

The instance of sadl al-yadayn discussed earlier (see Chapter 4) seems to

cause particular concern among certain Muslims of a pro-ḥadīth frame of mind.
The existence of some thirty ḥadīths in the standard collections, which seem to
indicate that qabḍ is desirable, if not obligatory, when doing the prayer, is seen
as irrefutable evidence that this is indeed the correct judgement.43 And yet the
Mālikīs (and also the Shīʿa and the Ibāḍīs) maintain that sadl is the preferred
position. Historically, sadl has been the position followed throughout North
and West Africa in particular, where the madhhab of Mālik has held sway
until this day. There is an interesting anecdote recorded by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (707–
779/1303–1377) in his Riḥla, where he notes the following:

When we entered this city [i.e. Sinop, in northern Turkey], its people saw us
doing the prayer with sadl. They are Ḥanafīs, and do not know the madhhab
of Mālik, nor the [Mālikī] way of doing the prayer, in which the preferred
position is to do the prayer with sadl. Some of them had seen Shīʿa groups
in the Hijaz and Iraq doing the prayer that way, and so they suspected us of
having that madhhab. They asked us about that and we told them that we
followed the madhhab of Mālik. They weren’t convinced, however, and their
suspicions remained firmly in their hearts, until the Sultan’s deputy sent us
a rabbit and told one of his servants to stay with us to see what we would do
with it. We slaughtered it, cooked it, and ate it. The servant went back and
told him, at which point their suspicions were removed and they sent us gifts
of welcome – because the Shīʿa do not eat rabbit.44

This clearly shows the normality of the practice in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s time – and,
one can presume, for a long time before that (from before the time of Imam
108 Early Islam in Medina

Mālik) and for a long time after that (up until very recently, when sadl began
to suffer a decline even in predominantly Māliki contexts). Furthermore,
al-Layth ibn Saʿd, despite his objections to following Medinan ʿamal when the
Medinans were not agreed on a matter, preferred doing the prayer with sadl,
as did a number of other early jurists (although there were also others who
considered both sadl and qabḍ to be equally acceptable).45 At the very least,
the simplistic ‘black-or-white’ understanding of many present-day observers
has to be seriously nuanced.
When we come to non-Muslim scholars we find, quite naturally, a different
set of qualms. Most notably, there is a strong reluctance to accept any of the
‘early’ sources as genuinely early. They have, so the argument goes, mostly
been recorded only in much later exempla: how, then, can we be sure that the
‘original’ wording hasn’t changed over time and been subject to, in their view,
standard textual corruption? Again, while this may possibly be true in certain
cases, the Muwaṭṭaʾ provides an excellent counter-example. For, as we have
seen earlier, in the Muwaṭṭaʾ we have a text which is remarkably solid in its
essentials, that is, the texts that are recorded in it, and it has been transmitted
almost word for word not only by numerous transmitters in many different
parts of the Muslim world but also by friend and foe alike, that is to say, both
those in agreement with, and those in disagreement with, its basic position.
Thus we find great scholars such as Imam al-Shaybānī and Imam al-Shāfiʿī
frequently referring to exactly the same texts as all the other transmitters of
the Muwaṭṭaʾ, as we have seen in numerous examples above, but who have
nevertheless objected to the way Mālik understands the broader implications
of the texts. Therefore, it is not the texts themselves that are in question, but
rather the interpretation of them and the context in which they are viewed and
understood.
Amongst modern ‘Euro-American’ scholars of Islam, there seems to be a
particular prejudice against accepting the authenticity of earlier texts which
goes under the guise of ‘historical research’ or the historical-critical method.
Two names in particular are associated with this view, and it has become more
or less dogma in ‘Western’ Islamic Studies circles to accept the broad outlines –
if not all the details – of this view. These two names are those of Goldziher and
Schacht. (It is significant for our present enquiry that these two scholars, as
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 109

noted in the Introduction, are the authors of the articles on ‘Fiḳh’ in the first
and second editions, respectively, of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.)
It was Goldziher who, in his highly influential Muhammedanische Studien
(1889–90), was effectively the first Western scholar to suggest the massive
fabrication of ḥadīth for religious, historical and social reasons. He concluded,

We … will probably consider by far the greater part of it [= the ḥadīth

literature] as the result of the religious, historical and social development of
Islam during the first two centuries.
The ḥadīth will not serve as a document for the history of the infancy of
Islam, but as a reflection of the tendencies which appeared in the community
during the mature stages of its development.’46

Schacht, writing some sixty years later in his equally influential The Origins
of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950), accepted and built upon what he
called ‘this brilliant discovery’ of Goldziher’s, claiming that his book

will be found to confirm Goldziher’s results and go beyond them in the

following respects: a great many traditions [i.e. ḥadīths] in the classical and
other collections were put into circulation only after Shāfiʿī’s time; the first
considerable body of legal traditions from the Prophet originated towards
the middle of the second century, in opposition to slightly earlier traditions
from the Companions and other authorities, and to the ‘living tradition’ of
the ancient schools of law; traditions from Companions and other authorities
underwent the same process of growth, and are to be considered in the same
light, as traditions from the Prophet; the study of isnāds often enables us to
date traditions; the isnāds show a tendency to grow backwards and claim
higher and higher authority until they arrive at the Prophet; the evidence of
legal traditions carries us back to about the year 100 AH only; at that time
Islamic legal thought started from late Umayyad administrative and popular
practice, which is still reflected in a number of traditions.47

We can only say that our studies on Mālik and his Muwaṭṭaʾ indicate a
very different picture. It is true that most transmissions of the Muwaṭṭaʾ
were written down considerably after Mālik’s death. We have seen that the
standard formula introducing each section in the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn
Yaḥyā al-Laythī, for instance, is, ‘Yaḥyā told me’, with the ‘me’ in this instance
being understood to refer to Yaḥyā’s son ʿUbaydallāh, who died in 278 AH
110 Early Islam in Medina

(= 891 AD).48 At the same time, if we find that multiple witnesses from widely
separated geographical areas all tell us exactly the same story, which they
all attribute to Mālik, then it is a very far-fetched conclusion to say that this
material doesn’t come from Mālik. And, if it comes from Mālik, then it seems
a small step to trust him when he specifies those teachers from whom he says
he actually got his individual reports, unless we are to impute to him a massive
amount of lying, which goes against the tenor of all the testimonials that are
available to us from widely varying sources.
Basing himself on his reading of different transmissions of the Muwaṭṭaʾ,
Goldziher gained an ‘unfavourable impression of the reliability of Islamic
tradition in the second century’ and criticized Mālik for looseness in his
methods of transmission.49 However, Goldziher based his comments on the
two transmissions available to him, that is, those of Yaḥyā and al-Shaybānī,
which, as we have seen, do not form a representative pair. If he had had access
to – or considered the possibility of having access to – those of Abū Muṣʿab
al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr, al-Qaʿnabī and Suwayd, for instance, he would doubtless
have arrived at different conclusions. Furthermore, Goldziher’s criticism is not
as unbiased as it might at first seem to be. He says, for example, that Mālik
‘cares little about the rijāl [i.e. his sources]’ since he ‘takes over and passes
on unhesitatingly ḥadīths told by the erotic singer ʿUrwa ibn Udhayna’,50 but
this is a highly questionable judgement. First, to say that Mālik ‘cares little
about the rijāl’ runs counter to everything we know about Mālik’s strict
standards of criticism of his authorities, and we must therefore doubt very
much whether Mālik took over and passed on any ḥadīth ‘unhesitatingly’.
Second, he relates, as we have seen earlier (see Chapter 2), only one ḥadīth
from ʿUrwa ibn Udhayna and not ‘ḥadīths’, and that ḥadīth (which appears
in at least four transmissions of the Muwaṭṭaʾ and also in the Mudawwana)51
is about a personal experience of Ibn Udhayna when he went on ḥajj with
his grandmother. Third, to describe Ibn Udhayna somewhat dismissively as
merely a ‘singer’ (whether ‘erotic’ or otherwise, allowing for the pre-modern
meaning of the word ‘erotic’) is unnecessarily misleading. The passage in the
Kitāb al-Aghānī to which Goldziher refers actually describes him as ‘one of
the most respected love-poets of Medina, counted as a jurist and a muḥaddith’
and mentions also that his grandfather transmitted from ʿAlī,52 to which
al-Zurqānī adds that he was considered trustworthy and of good character.53 It
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 111

is hardly blameworthy therefore that Mālik should transmit one ḥadīth from
a man who was clearly considered to be a respected member of the cultural
community of his time.
Schacht followed the same general line as Goldziher in regard to the
attribution of the Muwaṭṭaʾ to Mālik, saying that ‘it is not Mālik who composed,
in the modern sense of the word, his work, but [his] students who, each
according to his own fashion, edited the “text” of their teacher’.54 Elsewhere
he also traces the differences between the transmissions to Mālik’s students,
claiming that ‘in those days very little stress was laid on an accurate repetition
of such texts and great liberty was taken by the transmitters’.55 However, he also
allows that Goldziher’s implicit expectation of a ‘fixed text’56 is inappropriate
in the context of an orally taught text, since ‘Mālik did not always give exactly
the same form to his orally-delivered teaching’.57 Furthermore, although
he states that ‘the different riwāyas … differ in places very much’,58 he also
acknowledges that some of them, for example, those of Ibn Wahb and Ibn
al-Qāsim, closely resemble the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā.59 Thus, as with
Goldziher, his observations that the differences between the transmissions
are due to the transmitters bears some weight in the case of al-Shaybānī, and
perhaps Suwayd, but would seem to apply far less to the transmissions of Abū
Muṣʿab, Ibn Bukayr and al-Qaʿnabī, whose chapter headings and main text are
all very close if not almost identical to Yaḥyā’s.
This raises the broader issue of the nature of ‘books’ in the early Islamic
period. It may be strictly true that, as Schacht puts it, ‘the evidence of legal
traditions carries us back to about the year 100 AH only’, if by that is meant
the existence of written texts, since that is when the enterprise of writing down
the ḥadīth – again, according to the traditional sources – began. It is part of
the traditional picture that Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm and Ibn Shihāb were both
instrumental in compiling ḥadīth at the request of the caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–20), who was concerned that knowledge of the sunna
might be lost if it were not collected and recorded in writing.60 After ʿUmar’s
death, and particularly in the time of Hishām (r. 105–25/724–43), this project
was expanded by Ibn Shihāb, to the extent that it is Ibn Shihāb who is credited
with being the first to make a comprehensive collection of ḥadīth. Despite this
collection, however, Ibn Shihāb seems not to have organized this material into
a book, which is what Mālik and his contemporaries began doing, resulting in
112 Early Islam in Medina

collections such as the Muwaṭṭaʾ. This activity thus marks the transition from
an initially oral method of transmission to one which becomes associated with
writing and, by extension, the production of ‘books’ and all that that entails
in terms of authorship and presentation. In Mālik’s time it is still primarily
individual pieces of material, that is, reports, that are being transmitted, rather
than a fixed overall form, although an overall form is involved (e.g. there are
‘books’, such as the Book of Zakāt, which for the most part contains certain
chapters in a certain order, which is usually followed by the Book of Fasting,
which for the most part contains certain chapters in a certain order, and so on
and so forth). Thus, with predominantly oral transmission and/or ‘publication’,
the question of ‘Who wrote the Muwaṭṭaʾ?’, or ‘Is Mālik the author of the
Muwaṭṭaʾ?’, is effectively meaningless and has to be thought of in different
terms. Mālik’s material is first published orally and then is noted down and
subsequently organized (or reorganized) not by him but – as Schacht notes –
by his students, and/or his students’ students, with all the possible – but still
limited – variation that that might involve. Thus, it is pointless to have doubts
about the attribution, and therefore the authenticity, of a ‘book’ such as the
Muwaṭṭaʾ simply because it has not actually been ‘written’, in the ‘published
work’ sense, by the author to whom it is attributed: it may not be a ‘book’ in
the strict single-author sense expected in later times, but neither is it someone
else’s work. Thus, ‘Mālik’s’ Muwaṭṭaʾ may not have been given a definitive shape
(or shapes, if we consider the different transmissions to represent different
‘shapes’) until many years after his death, but that does not mean that the
book cannot be attributed to him. He is indeed the originator of the work,
but it is a work that starts off in the form of private written notes and records
intended for publication orally in lectures, and is only later disseminated as an
actual ‘book’ in its more modern sense, with an identifiable beginning, middle
and end.61
More problematic, perhaps, is when there are seemingly different views
recorded from the same individual – in a seemingly authentic manner – on
the same subject (such as, for example, in the issue of sadl al-yadayn discussed
above). But, while this is seen by many non-Muslim scholars to cast major
doubts on the whole corpus of ḥadīth and its attribution to its supposed
sources, this is not the only way to understand this phenomenon. First, an
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 113

authority may indeed hold, or have held, differing views on a subject. Second,
problems with the authenticity and accuracy of ḥadīth were well known to the
early scholars of Islam, including Mālik. Mālik, for instance, comparing the
situation between Medina and Iraq, referred to Iraq as ‘the minting-house’
of ḥadīth62 and quoted the statement of Ibn Shihāb that ‘ḥadīths leave us a
handspan [in size] and come back to us as a cubit’ – meaning, from Iraq.63 This
was one of the reasons why Mālik preferred ʿamal to ḥadīth, which, as we have
seen, he considered to be ‘more accurate than ḥadīth’. The third-century Iraqi
scholar, Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), put the same idea in a more formal way:

In our opinion, the truth is more likely to be established by consensus (ijmāʿ)

than by the transmission of ḥadīth (al-riwāya). Ḥadīth may be subject to
forgetfulness, error, uncertainties, different possible interpretations, and
abrogation; someone trustworthy may transmit from someone who is not;
there may be two different commands, both of which are possible, such as
making either one or two taslīms [at the end of the prayer]. Similarly, a man
may have been present when the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, gave a certain command and then been absent when he told [people]
to do something different: he will then transmit the first command and not
the second, because he does not know it. Consensus [i.e. in this context, the
consensus of the people of Medina], however, is free from such vicissitudes.
This is why Mālik, may Allah have mercy on him, sometimes transmits a
ḥadīth from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, but then says, ‘The ʿamal in our city is such-and-such’, mentioning
something that is different to the ḥadīth. [This is] because his city was the
city of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and if the
ʿamal in his time had included such-and-such a practice, that would have
become the ʿamal of the following generation, and the generation after them,
and the generation after them – and it is not possible that all the people
would have stopped doing something that they were all doing in his city at
his time and then done something else instead – and one generation from
one generation is a much greater number than one from one. Indeed, people
have related many ḥadīths with complete chains of authority and then not
acted according to them.64

Thus, we are left with Ibn Qutayba’s conclusion that ‘the truth is more likely
to be established by consensus’ – meaning, in this context, the agreed position
in Medina – than by the transmission of ḥadīth.
114 Early Islam in Medina

One final example will illustrate not only this key distinction between
ʿamal and ḥadīth but also how an understanding of this point opens up an
understanding of not only the standard Muslim position but also the standard
non-Muslim position. In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Mālik includes the following ḥadīth in
the section entitled ‘When allowing a wife the choice of staying married does
not constitute a divorce’:

[Yaḥyā] told me, from Mālik, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim, from his
father, that ʿĀʾisha, the wife of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant
him peace, married Ḥafṣa, the daughter of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, to al-Mundhir
ibn al-Zubayr while ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was away in Syria. When ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān returned, he said, ‘Should someone like me have this done to
him? Should someone like me have decisions made about him without his
consent?’ So ʿĀʾisha spoke to al-Mundhir ibn al-Zubayr, and al-Mundhir
said, ‘It’s in the hands of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.’ ʿAbd al-Raḥmān said, ‘I would
not go against a decision that you [ʿĀʾisha] have made’, and so Ḥafṣa stayed
with al-Mundhir, and there was no divorce.65 [ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was ʿĀʾisha’s
brother, so his daughter Hafsa was ʿĀʾisha’s niece; al-Mundhir’s mother was
Asmāʾ, ʿĀʾisha’s sister, so al-Mundhir was ʿĀʾisha’s nephew.]

In the Mudawwana, in the chapter on ‘Marriage without a legal guardian’,

we find the following interchange between Saḥnūn and Ibn al-Qāsim:

I [= Saḥnūn] said: ‘In the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾisha, when she married Ḥafṣa, the
daughter of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, to al-Mundhir ibn al-Zubayr, was it not ʿĀʾisha
who concluded the marriage contract?’

He [Ibn al-Qāsim] said: ‘We do not know what the explanation (tafsīr) of this
is, except that we assume that she appointed someone else to actually contract
the marriage.’
I said: ‘Would it not be the case, if she had appointed someone else, that the
marriage would be invalid, according to Mālik, even if the girl’s father gave his
permission?’
He said: ‘This ḥadīth has come down to us. If it had been accompanied by
continuous ʿamal up until the time of those we met and from whom we took
[knowledge], and they likewise from those they had met, it would be correct
to follow it. But in fact it is like other ḥadīths which are not accompanied
by ʿamal, such as what has been related from the Prophet, may Allah bless
 Controversies, Ancient and Modern 115

him and grant him peace, regarding using perfume while in iḥrām [for ḥajj
or ʿumra], and the report that has come down from him where he said, “A
fornicator is no longer a believer when he fornicates, nor [is a thief] a believer
when he steals”, whereas Allah has revealed the punishment [for fornication]
and [the punishment of] cutting off the hand [for stealing] only for believers.
Various things have been related from the Companions which have not been
bolstered [by anything else] or been considered strong enough [to be put into
practice], while other things have been put into practice and been followed by
most people and most of the Companions.
‘This ḥadīth thus remains neither rejected as inauthentic nor acted upon.
Rather, other ḥadīths that were accompanied by practice have been acted
upon and transmitted by the Successors of the Companions of the Prophet,
may Allah bless him and grant him peace, from the Companions, and have
then been transmitted from these Successors in the same way, without them
either rejecting them as inauthentic or denying what has been transmitted.
What was not acted upon is left aside without rejecting it as inauthentic, and
what was acted upon is acted upon and accepted as authentic.
‘[In this case] the ʿamal which is well attested to and is accompanied by
people’s practice (al-aʿmāl) is [the judgement indicated by] the statement of
the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “A woman should not
be married without a legal guardian”, and the statement of ʿUmar, “A woman
should not be married without a legal guardian”, and the fact that ʿUmar
separated a man and a woman who had married without a legal guardian.’66

Schacht takes this passage as clearly stating that ‘the “practice” appeared
first and traditions from the Prophet and from Companions appeared later’.67
What this particular passage in fact shows is not a contrast between ḥadīths
on the one hand and practice, unconnected to ḥadīths, on the other, but rather
a contrast between two types of ḥadīth, namely, those that were accompanied
by ʿamal and those that were not. Furthermore, this particular ḥadīth, as is
shown by its inclusion in the relevant section in at least three transmissions
of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, as well as in the Mudawwana, is accepted as a trustworthy
source with regard to one particular aspect of the law, namely, that if a woman
is given the choice of staying with her husband or leaving him, and she chooses
to remain with him, that does not constitute a divorce. The question about
ʿĀʾisha acting as legal guardian although the girl’s father – her normal legal
116 Early Islam in Medina

guardian – was in principle available, is a secondary issue, and ʿĀʾisha’s action

is considered a special exception (khuṣūṣiyya) because of her particular status
with regard to the Prophet.68 It was an exception, and the exception proves
the general rule that, as stated in the ḥadīth cited from ʿUmar in the second
chapter of the Book of Marriage in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, no woman can get married
without the consent of her guardian, or someone of her family with sound
judgement, or the Sultan.69
Thus, it is that, when it comes to ḥadīth, it would be hard to find a more
reliable access point than the ḥadīth transmitted by Mālik in his Muwaṭṭaʾ.
Likewise, when it comes to the ʿamal of the people of Medina, it would be
hard to find a more reliable access point than the knowledge of it transmitted
by Mālik in his Muwaṭṭaʾ.
We are thus left with a picture of the dīn of Islam that is quite overtly based
on more than just texts, however authoritative those texts may be. That is,
even if we accept Qur’an and (authentic) ḥadīth as an agreed starting point
for the later expansion of Islamic law in all its ramifications of theory (uṣūl)
and detail (furūʿ), it must always be remembered that this dīn is primarily a
dīn of action – ‘Act, and Allah will see your actions, and His Messenger and
the believers’ (Q.9:105) – and that the strongest, and most effective, method of
transmission is that of action, hence the authority of ʿamal that is continually
referred to in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, all of which serves to remind us, as Rabīʿa and Ibn
Qutabya both affirmed, that the real transmission of this business is not by the
texts of the few, but by the actions of the many.
 Conclusion

It will be clear from the above that in the Muwaṭṭaʾ we have a very strong
textual tradition which fully confirms the traditional judgement of Mālik as
a past master of ḥadīth. As Imam al-Shāfiʿī put it, ‘If it’s authentic ḥadīth you
want, then it’s Mālik you need.’1 Mālik was also the one, as we have seen, on
whom al-Bukhārī and Muslim and all the later compilers of ḥadīth built their
work, and thus is at the basis of the whole written tradition of ḥadīth in Islamic
scholarship and culture.
With regard to ḥadīth, one notes that, on the Muslim side, there has been,
and continues to be, an extreme reluctance to accept the authority of ʿamal as
a source of judgements, if there is even an awareness of the possibility; rather,
texts are seen as paramount. But, as we have seen, for Mālik, ʿamal is effectively
stronger than ḥadīth and is based on an understanding of the dīn having been
transmitted primarily by the actions of people rather than texts, however
authentic those texts may be.
On the non-Muslim side, there is a similar reluctance to recognize the
authority of ʿamal both as a source of, and an extension to, the sunna of the
Prophet; there is also a similar bias towards texts, although in this case a
negative one, since if a text cannot be authoritatively dated to, for example,
the time of the Prophet, it has to be assumed in their view that it does not
go back to that time, and no individuals, it seems, are trustworthy enough to
gainsay that assumption. We can only reiterate Mālik’s argument about the
Medinan way of calling the adhān, which, he says, has been called five times
a day, every day, from the time of the Prophet until his time, in a known and
trusted manner. (In tandem with this judgement, the received knowledge of
the people of Medina from the earliest times onwards ‘until today’ is that there
is no adhān or iqāma for the two Eid prayers, and this, Mālik says, is ‘the sunna
118 Early Islam in Medina

about which there is no dispute among us’.)2 But if one does accept ʿamal as an
authoritative vehicle of transmission, a new understanding of sunna is opened
up which is not equated with the texts of ḥadīth and therefore not liable to the
same doubts and criticism.
In particular, it seems that one has to reconsider the phenomenon of
ikhtilāf, or differences of opinion, as being a natural manifestation of the
original message and not a door for criticism of it. As Ibn Mujāhid said, by way
of preface to his book on the Seven Readers (and therefore Seven Readings) of
the Qur’an that he wished to highlight in his time, ‘People have differed with
regard to readings as they have differed with regard to legal judgements.’3 Thus,
although the source is one – the message of the Prophet in both its Qur’anic
and its sunnaic forms – there is room for difference in detail, and this is as
true for the Qur’an as it is for the sunna, or perhaps we should say that it is as
true for the sunna as it is for the Qur’an. Nevertheless, the message remains
one: there is one Qur’an, one Prophet, one message and one encouragement
to action.
Finally, we should not forget the comment recorded from Mālik, that
‘knowledge is not a matter of knowing a lot of texts; knowledge is a light
that Allah puts in the heart’.4 We have also seen that for Mālik knowledge is
meaningless unless it is accompanied by action, and thus his emphasis on
ʿamal. And if, as we have suggested above, he is the key access point for ḥadīth,
it is even more so that he is the key access point for ʿamal, which is itself a
reminder that the dīn is lived and transmitted by action, not by texts. We end
our enquiry, as we started it, with the reminder that al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad
said, ‘I remember a time when people were not impressed by words,’ by which,
Mālik says, he was referring to action (ʿamal): ‘It is people’s actions that are
looked at, not their words.’5
 Glossary

adhān the call to prayer

ʿamal action, practice, especially that based on the established
legal principles and precepts of the Medinan community
amīr governor, ruler; prince
ʿaqīqa sacrifice of a sheep for a newborn child
dīn ‘religion’, but with the broader sense of ‘life-transaction’
duʿāʾ prayer, in the sense of supplication
fatwā legal ruling
fiḳh = fiqh (q.v.)
fiqh lit. ‘understanding’, that is, of how to derive and apply
the law from a knowledge of its sources; jurisprudence;
collectively, the judgements of Islamic law
ḥadīth textual report (or reports, when used collectively),
especially of the Prophet and/or his Companions
ḥajj pilgrimage (to Mecca, performed at a specific time of the
year); the fifth of the Five Pillars of Islam
ḥalāl lawful, allowed, permitted
ḥarām unlawful, prohibited, forbidden
iḥrām the special state involving certain restrictions of clothing
and general behaviour that a person must be in when doing
ḥajj (q.v.) or ʿumra (q.v.)
ijmāʿ consensus
ijtihād independent reasoning, especially as used to arrive at new
judgements in the absence of any clear precedent
ikhtilāf difference of opinion
īlāʾ oath of abstinence from marital intercourse
imam one who goes in front, one who leads the way; prayer
leader; political leader; expert
iqāma the shorter version of the adhān (q.v.) said immediately
before the prayer is begun
120 Glossary

ʿishāʾ the late evening prayer

isnād chain of authority, especially of a ḥadīth (q.v.)
iʿtikāf retreat in a mosque for a period of days, especially in the
last few days of Ramadan
jihād struggle, especially fighting for the sake of Allah to
establish Islam
jizya ‘poll-tax’; a protection tax levied on adult males of non-
Muslim communities living under Muslim rule
madhhab school of law or jurisprudence
maghrib the sunset prayer
mawlā freed slave; also, patron (of a freed slave)
mawālī pl. of mawlā (q.v.)
mudd a measure, roughly equivalent to a double-handful of grain
muḥaddith scholar or transmitter of ḥadīth (q.v.)
Muḥarram the first month of the Muslim year
mukātab slave who has made an arrangement to achieve his freedom
after earning a certain amount of money, usually paid by
instalments
musnad (of a ḥadīth) provided with a complete isnād (q.v.)
qabḍ doing the prayer with the right hand clasping the left arm
at the wrist
qirāḍ a type of commenda partnership between two parties, one
of which provides the finance and the other the labour,
with the profits being divided in an agreed manner
Ramadan the ninth month of the Muslim year; the month of fasting,
the fourth of the Five Pillars of Islam
raṭl a weight (variously defined; the Baghdadi raṭl is roughly
equivalent to 400 g)
riwāya transmission
ṣāʿ a measure consisting of four mudds (q.v.)
sadl doing the prayer with one’s arms hanging by one’s sides (as
opposed to qabḍ) (q.v.)
sharḥ (book of) commentary, especially of ḥadīth (q.v.)
Sharīʿa the divinely revealed law (lit. ‘pathway’) of the Muslims
shaykh teacher
 Glossary 121

sunna normative practice or custom, especially of the Prophet

sultan governor, ruler
tafsīr lit. ‘explanation’; (book of) commentary, particularly of
the Qur’an
taslīm saying ‘al-salāmu ʿalaykum’ (‘Peace be upon you’) at the
end of the prayer
ʿumra the ‘lesser’ pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken at any time of
the year
wuḍūʾ the ‘minor’ ablution, or act of purification, necessary after
urination, defecation, sleeping, etc., before doing the prayer
zakāt obligatory alms-tax; the third of the Five Pillars of Islam
122
 Notes

Introduction

1 David Powers, Studies in Qur’an and Ḥadīth: The Formation of the Islamic Law of
Inheritance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 1.
2 Norman Calder, Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993), p. 19.
3 Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th
Centuries C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. xxi.
4 See e.g. Herbert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: The
Debate over the Authenticiy of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period
(Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000); also Herbert Berg, ed., Method and Theory in
the Study of Islamic Origins (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
5 Mariam Sheibani, Amir Toft and Ahmed El Shamsy, ‘The Classical
Period: Scripture, Origins, and Early Development’, Chapter 16, in The
Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law, ed. Anver M. Emon and Rumee Ahmed
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
6 See Alan Jones, ‘The Dotting of a Script and the Dating of an Era: The Strange
Neglect of PERF 558’, Islamic Culture, 52 (1998), pp. 95–101.
7 See Ilkka Lindstedt, ‘Writing, Reading, and Hearing in Early Muslim-era
Arabic Graffiti’, International Qur’anic Studies Association (2017). Available
online: iqsaweb.wordpress.com/tag/ilka-lindstedt (accessed 23 February 2021).
See now also al-Saʿīd et al., Nuqūsh Ḥismā: kitābāt min ṣadr al-Islām shamāl
gharb al-Mamlaka (Riyadh: al-Majalla al-ʿArabiyya, 2017).
8 Hallaq, for instance, makes the pertinent comment that the Muwaṭṭaʾ ‘is
permeated by the notion of agreement, not disagreement’ (Wael B. Hallaq, ‘From
Regional to Personal Schools of Law? A Reevaluation’, Islamic Law and Society, 8
(2001), pp. 1–26, 11).
9 Thus, for example, Ahmed El Shamsy (The Canonization of Islamic Law
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 41) refers to ‘the alliance
formed by scholars and government officials’ that put a stop to usurious
speculation on shares in an expected food shipment at the market of al-Jār (see
also p. xiv).
124 Notes

10 Mālik ibn Anas, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, The Royal Moroccan Edition, The Recension
of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī, ed. Mohammed Fadel and Connell Monette
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).
11 See Chapter 3. Also Hallaq, ‘From Regional to Personal Schools?’, p. 12 (citing the
same passage, from Ibn Farḥūn’s al-Dībāj al-Mudhhab).
12 See Muw. 1:201.
13 For this interplay between scholars and political authorities, see e.g. Yasin
Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur’an, the Muwaṭṭaʾ and Medinan
‘Amal (Richmond: Curzon, 1999), pp. 130–2, 219 n. 75; also ibid, ‘Juridical
Practice and Madinan ‘Amal: Qaḍāʾ in the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik’, Journal of Islamic
Studies, 10, no. 1 (1999), pp. 1–21.
14 See Muw. 2:63. This particular incident is highlighted by El Shamsy, as noted
above, n. 9.
15 See Muw. 2:63–4, 67–8.
16 See e.g. Umar Abd-Allah Wymann-Landgraf, Malik and Medina: Islamic
Legal Reasoning in the Formative Period (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 54–7, which
mentions Melchert’s defence of Calder’s position but also Miklos Muranyi’s strong
rebuttal of the same; also Jonathan Brockopp, ‘Competing Theories of Authority
in Early Mālikī Texts’, in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, ed. Bernard G. Weiss
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 4–5.
17 As cited in Brockopp, ‘Competing Theories’, pp. 17–18.
18 Ibid., p. 18.
19 Muw. 2:89.
20 Muw. 2:85.
21 Muw. 2:75.
22 See Muw. 2:54; also 2:68, 76.
23 Muw. 2:76–7.
24 Muw. 2:255; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:171; Muw. Suwayd, p. 599.

1 The man and his family

1 Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1414/1994), 3:160;

al-Tirmidhī, Sunan [= al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ] (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī
al-Ḥalabī wa-Awlāduh, 1st edn, 1356/1937, 2nd edn, 1395/1975), 5:47–8.
2 See Mad. 1:110; Dutton, Origins, p. 182 n. 1.
3 See Mad. 1:115; Dutton, Origins, p. 182 n. 1.
4 For references, see Dutton, Origins, p. 182 n. 5.
5 Mad. 1:107; also Dutton, Origins, p. 182 n. 8.
 Notes 125

6 See Dutton, Origins, p. 182 n. 16.

7 Mad. 1:109.
8 Ibn Jubayr, Riḥla (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir/Dār Bayrūt, 1384/1964), pp. 173–4.
9 This identification of Nāfiʿ as the Medinan Qur’an reciter, rather than Nāfiʿ, the
mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar (as is sometimes erroneously suggested), was confirmed
to me personally in Medina by Mr ʿAbdallāh Kābir, researcher in the Centre for
Research and Studies of al-Madina al-Munawwara (personal communication,
April 2014).
10 See e.g. www.duas.org/baqi8shawwal.htm (accessed 23 February 2021).

2 His teachers

1 Tam. 6:108.
2 Tam. 6:112.
3 Tam. 6:107.
4 Ibid.
5 Tam. 6:109.
6 For references to ʿUmar’s document, see Muw. 1:195–6, 198–9; for references to
ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm’s document, see Muw. 1:157, 2:181, 186.
7 Muw. Sh., p. 330.
8 For a useful coverage of the question of Ibn Shihāb’s relationship with the
Umayyads, see Michael Lecker, ‘Biographical Notes on Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī’,
Journal of Semitic Studies, 41 (1996), pp. 21–63, esp. pp. 22–41 [reprinted in
Michael Lecker, Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia, Section XVI
(Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1999)].
9 For the role of the political authorities in collecting zakāt, and the Qur’anic verses
indicating this (particularly Q.9:60 and 103), see Yasin Dutton, ‘The Qurʾān as
a Source of Law: The Case of Zakāt (Alms-Tax)’, in Islamic Reflections Arabic
Musings: Studies in Honour of Alan Jones, ed. Robert G. Hoyland and Philip F.
Kennedy (Oxford: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004), pp. 201–16, esp. pp. 203–8.
10 Tam. 6:112; also Lecker, ‘Biographical Notes’, p. 37.
11 Tam. 7:58–9.
12 Tam. 8:5.
13 Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar (Cairo: Maktabat
al-Khānjī, 1421/2001), 7:509.
14 Tam. 6:303.
15 Tam. 7:58.
16 Tam. 9:209.
126 Notes

17 Tam. 8:6; also 6:307.

18 Tam. 9:7.
19 Tam. 9:9.
20 Tam. 7:60.
21 Tam. 9:207, 209.
22 Tam. 7:58 n. 6.
23 Tam. 16:49.
24 Tam. 9:119; cf. Tam. 3:151.
25 Tam. 9:120.
26 Ibid.
27 Tam. 9:119–20.
28 Tam. 8:394.
29 Isʿāf, p. 24.
30 Tam. 7:60.
31 Tam. 13:239.
32 Tam. 13:237.
33 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, ed. Saʿīd Muḥammad al-Laḥḥām (Beirut: ʿĀlam
al-Kutub, n.d.), p. 119.
34 Tam. 23:89.
35 See Tam. 18:6–8.
36 Tam. 18:6.
37 Tam. 3:241.
38 Tam. 3:242.
39 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Kitāb al-Jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif
al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1360/1941), 1:21, 9:337.
40 Tam. 17:156.
41 Tam. 1:198.
42 Tam. 21:145; Zur. 1:76.
43 Tam. 21:146.
44 Tam. 22:7.
45 Mad. 1:119.
46 Tam. 3:2.
47 Tam. 21:236.
48 Ibn Farḥūn, al-Dībāj al-mudhhab, ed. Maʾmūn ibn Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Jannān
(Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1417/1996), p. 58.
49 Tam. 20:183.
50 Tam. 20:269; also Muw. 1:260.
51 Tam. 2:67.
52 See Tam. 2:67.
53 Tam. 12:222.
 Notes 127

54 Tam. 17:416.
55 Wakīʿ, Quḍāt, p. 100.
56 For these and similar inscriptions, see Ali al-Ghabban, Les deux routes
syrienne et égyptienne de pèlerinage au nord-ouest de l’Arabie Saoudite
(Cairo: Institute français d’archéologie orientale, 2011), and Ḥayāt al-Kilābī,
al-Nuqūsh al-Islāmiyya fī ṭarīq al-ḥajj al-Shāmī shimāl gharb al-Mamlaka
al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya, min al-qarn al-awwal ilā l-qarn al-khāmis al-Hijrī
(al-Riyadh: Maktabat al-Malik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya, 2009); also, for the second
of these two inscriptions in particular, Frédéric Imbert, ‘Califes, princes et
compagnons dans les graffiti du debut de l’Islam’, Romano-Arabica, 15 (2015),
pp. 70, 78. I am grateful to Mr Ghali Adi for alerting me to these inscriptions and
references. See also Introduction, n. 7.
57 Tam. 20: 5.
58 Wakīʿ, Quḍāt, 1:167.
59 Muw. 1:314; Muw. Sh., p. 262; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:208; Muw. Suwayd, p. 262;
Mud. 2:82.
60 Mad. 1:120.
61 Mad. 1:120; Dutton, Origins, p. 12.
62 Mud. 1:135, 3:105, 4:135.
63 Bayān, 1:52, 7:212, 10:25, 17:41, 18:447.
64 Tam. 3:4; Dutton, Origins, p. 183 n. 20.

3 The Muwaṭṭaʾ

1 See Dutton, Origins, p. 187 nn. 1 and 2.

2 Mad. 1:83.
3 Mad. 1:133–4.
4 Mad. 1:133.
5 Mad. 1:132.
6 Mad. 1:191.
7 Mad. 1:196.
8 Muw., Introduction, 1:5.
9 Muw. Sh., Introduction, p. 13.
10 Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī, Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha, ed. Muḥammad Sharīf
Sukkar (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-ʿUlūm, 1410/1990), 1:385–6.
11 See Muw. 1:232–6.
12 See Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Tahdhīb al-tahdhīb (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif
al-Niẓāmiyya, 1325–7/1907–9), 11:301; also Mad. 2:537.
128 Notes

13 See Dutton, Origins, p. 16.

14 See Muw., Introduction, pp. 7–8.
15 Muw. al-Zuhrī, Introduction, pp. 41–2.
16 See Muw. al-Zuhrī, Introduction, pp. 40–1.
17 See Muw. Ibn Ziyād, Introduction, p. 69.
18 A copy of this transmission is currently being prepared, from a number of
copies of it, by Prof. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, as referred to in a lecture given
by him at SOAS, London, 24 October 2019, entitled ‘The Muwatta’ of Malik ibn
Anas: Variations among Its Recensions and Their Rationale’. Recording available
at http://www.iccuk.org/news2.php?section=news&page=news195 (accessed 24
February 2021).
19 See Joseph Schacht, ‘Deux éditions inconnues du Muwaṭṭaʾ’, in Studi
Orientalistici in Onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida, vol. 2 (Rome: Istituto per
l’Oriente, 1956); idem., ‘On Some Manuscripts in the Libraries of Morocco’,
Hespéris-Tamuda, 9 (1968).
20 Muw., Introduction, p. 7.
21 Mad. 1:398.
22 A complete copy of this transmission is referred to by Prof. Bashshār ʿAwwād
Maʿrūf in the lecture he gave at SOAS, London, 24 October 2019 (see n. 18
above).
23 A manuscript in Istanbul containing significant portions of both the
transmissions of Ibn al-Qāsim and Ibn Wahb is referred to by Prof. Bashshār in
his lecture given at SOAS (see n. 18 above).
24 Mad. 1:436.
25 A manuscript in Istanbul containing significant portions of both the
transmissions of Ibn al-Qāsim and Ibn Wahb is being prepared for publication by
Prof. Bashshār (lecture given at SOAS; see n. 23 above.)
26 See also n. 25 above, for a manuscript containing portions of the transmission of
Ibn Wahb along with that of Ibn al-Qāsim.
27 See Ibn Wahb, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, ed. Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣīnī (Hofuf: Dār ibn
al-Jawzī, 1420/1999).
28 See Zur. 1:8; Mohamed El Mokhtar Ould Bah, Madkhal ilā uṣūl al-fiqh al-Mālikī
(Rabat: Dār al-Amān, 2011), p. 171; Muw. Ibn Ziyād, Introduction, p. 77.
29 See Ahmed El Shamsy, ‘Al-Shāfiʿī’s Recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ’, https://
islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwaṭṭaʾ-roundtable-al-shafiʿis-recension-of-maliks-
muwaṭṭaʾ (accessed 23 February 2021).
30 For these equivalences, see e.g. Yasin Dutton, ‘Islam and the Environment: A
Framework for Enquiry’, in Islam and the Environment, ed. Harfiyyah Abdel
Haleem (London: Ta-Ha, 1998), p. 61 and associated footnotes.
31 Muw. 1;188.
 Notes 129

32 See Muw. Zuh., 1:249–50.

33 Nadhīr Ḥamdān, al-Muwaṭṭaʾāt (Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 1412/1992),
pp. 118–19.
34 Muw. Suwayd, pp. 222–3.
35 Muw. Sh., pp. 114–15.
36 For this interpretation, see e.g. Zur. 2:44.
37 For this interpretation, see e.g. Muw. 1:189; Zur. 2:45; al-Baji, al-Muntaqā, Sharḥ
Muwaṭṭaʾ al-Imām Mālik, 7 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.) (originally
Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1331–2/1913–14), 2:96.
38 Muw. 1:189–90.
39 See Muw. Zuh., 1:251–4.
40 See Ḥamdān, al-Muwaṭṭaʾāt, p. 119.
41 See Muw. Suwayd, p. 223.
42 See Muw. Sh., p. 115.
43 See Muw. 1:209.
44 Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:269.
45 Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:380–1.
46 See Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:291–2.
47 See Muw. 1:206–8.
48 Muw. Sh., p. 117.
49 See Muw. al-Qaʿnabī, pp. 198–204. (The report from ʿUrwa occurs on p. 202.)
50 See Muw. Suwayd, pp. 222–6.
51 See Muw. Sh., pp. 114–20. (The exception is the ‘Chapter on kanz’ i.e. wealth
on which zakāt has not been paid (p. 120), which contains no report from Abū
Ḥanīfa.)
52 Muw. 1:212; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:301; Muw. Sh.., p. 130.
53 Ḥamdān, al-Muwaṭṭaʾāt, p. 119; Muw. Suwayd. p. 413.
54 Muw. 1:211–28.
55 Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:299–300.
56 Muw. 1:72–3.
57 Muw. 1:133.
58 Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:78–9, 164.
59 Ḥamdān, al-Muwaṭṭaʾāt, p. 117.
60 Muw. al-Qaʿnabī, pp. 204–7.
61 See Muw. Suwayd, pp. 411–14.
62 See Muw. Sh., pp. 122, 128, 130.
63 Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:301; Ḥamdān, al-Muwaṭṭaʾāt, p. 117; Muw. al-Qaʿnabī, p. 207;
Muw. Suwayd, p. 413.
64 See Muw. 1:211–27, 294.
65 See Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:343–4, 527–9.
130 Notes

66 See Muw. al-Qaʿnabī, pp. 204–30.

67 See Muw. Suwayd, pp. 411–32.
68 See Muw. Sh., pp. 122–31.
69 We note El Shamsy’s comment that al-Shāfiʿī’s transmission ‘seems to be closer to
[that] of Abū Muṣʿab than that of Yaḥyā’, which accords with our general findings
here with regard to Yaḥyā’s transmission compared with the others available. See
El Shamsy, ‘Al-Shāfiʿī’s Recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ’.
70 Sarah Savant has suggested that al-Shaybānī’s transmission is more of a
commentary than a transmission, but I would prefer to think of it as a
re-presentation of very similar material with comments – rather than a
commentary – relating to his understanding (fiqh) of the material, and hence his
frequent reference to Abū Ḥanīfa’s views and not to Mālik’s. See Sarah Savant, ‘A
Tale of 3 “Versions” ’, KITAB website, September 10, 2017, http://kitab-project.
org/2017/09/10/a-tale-of-3-versions/ (accessed 23 February 2021).
71 Mad. 1:194.

4 The ʿamal of the people of Medina

1 Muw. 1:146; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:227; Muw. Suwayd, p. 201.

2 Muw. 1:328–9; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:206; Muw. Suwayd, pp. 384–5.
3 Muw. Ibn Ziyad, p. 136. Cf. Muw. Sh., pp. 225–6, where, although the same
ḥadīths are mentioned, there is, characteristically, no mention of ʿamal.
4 Muw. 1:111; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:122; Muw. Suwayd, p. 122.
5 Muw. 2:123–4; also Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:470–1, and Muw. Suwayd, p. 279, where
only the first part of this judgement is mentioned.
6 Muw. 1:205; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:285.
7 Muw. 2:70; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:359.
8 Muw. 2:77; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:376
9 Cf. Jonathan Brockopp, Review of Dutton, Origins of Islamic Law, in Journal
of Islamic Law and Society, 7 (2000), pp. 398–400, for a rather different
understanding of the matter.
10 Mad. 1:64–5.
11 Muḥammad al-Ṭālib Ibn Ḥamdūn, Ḥāshiya ʿalā sharḥ Mayyāra al-ṣughrā
li-manẓūmat al-Murshid al-muʿīn li-ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿĀshir (Beirut: Dār
al-Fikr, 1392/1972), 1:16.
12 Muw. 2:208.
13 Although some doubt has been expressed by Hallaq and Lowry in particular
about whether al-Shāfiʿī is actually the originator of a ‘four-sources’ theory
 Notes 131

of law (see Wael B. Hallaq, ‘Was al-Shāfiʿī the Master Architect of Islamic
Jurisprudence?’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 25 (1993), pp. 587–
605; idem., The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), pp. 117–20, 128; Joseph Lowry, ‘Does Shāfiʿī Have a
Theory of “Four Sources” of Law?’ in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, ed. Bernard
G. Weiss (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 23–50), there is no denying that al-Shāfiʿī does
mention all these four sources in his Risāla – as Lowry’s citations and Hallaq’s
argument clearly demonstrate – and does seem to condemn any method beyond
them (such as istiḥsān, or ‘what someone deems good’, for example) as being too
far divorced from the revealed texts (bayān) that for him should form the sole
basis of Islamic law. Thus, at the very least, al-Shāfiʿī can be credited, as Hallaq
allows, with ‘advocat[ing] the [four-sources] Synthesis in a rudimentary form’
(Hallaq, Origins, p. 128).
14 Mad. 1:192.
15 Mad. 1:67–8.
16 Mad. 1:66. To the best of my knowledge, this important passage was highlighted
for the first time in English by Shaykh Abdalqadir al-Murabit in his Root Islamic
Education, pp. 72–3.
17 Muw. 2:18–19.
18 Muw. 1:260–1.
19 Muw. 1:133.
20 Mud. 1:74.
21 Muḥammad Ḥabīballāh Ibn Māyaʾbā al-Shinqīṭī, Iḍāʾat al-ḥālik min alfāẓ
dalīl al-sālik ilā Muwaṭṭaʾ al-Imām Mālik, 2nd edn (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir
al-Islamiyya, 1415/1995), p. 82.
22 Ibid., p. 76.
23 Ibid., p. 78 n. 9.
24 Muḥammad Aḥmad ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿalī al-mālik fī l-fatwā ʿalā madhhab al-Imām
Mālik (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1392/1972), 1:25.
25 Mad. 1:224–5.

5 Controversies, ancient and modern

1 Muw. 1:130–2.
2 Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:159–62, esp. p. 162.
3 Muw. Sh., pp. 97–98.
132 Notes

4 Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, Kitāb al-Ḥujja ʿalā Ahl al-Madīna, ed.
Mahdī Ḥasan al-Kīlānī al-Qādirī, 3rd edn (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1403/1983),
1:218–22.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 1:222.
7 Muw. 1:190–1.
8 For this interpretation, see Zur. 4:46–7.
9 Muw. 2:191, referring to Muw. 2:182.
10 Muw. Sh., p. 119.
11 Muw. Sh., pp. 232–3; for the last ḥadīth, see Muw. 2:123.
12 al-Shaybānī, Kitāb al-Ḥujja, 1:428–47.
13 Muw. 1:42–3.
14 Muw. 1:35–6.
15 Muw. Sh., p. 54.
16 Muw. Sh., pp. 42–3.
17 Mud. 1: 5–6.
18 Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, Kitāb al-Umm (in the section Kitāb Ikhtilāf
Mālik wa-l-Shāfiʿī), (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1400/1980), 7:221–2.
19 Muw. 2:121.
20 Muw. Sh., p. 296.
21 Mud. 6:195.
22 See Muw. 2:122.
23 See ibid.
24 See Muw. 2:122–3 (with slight differences).
25 See Muw. 2:123.
26 al-Shāfiʿī, Kitāb al-Umm (in the section Kitāb Ikhtilāf Mālik wa-l-Shāfiʿī),
7:243–4.
27 Mad. 1:196.
28 Ibid.
29 See, for example, al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif
al-ʿUthmaniyya, 1377/1958), 1:224; al-Abshīhī, al-Mustaṭraf (al-Manṣūra: Dār
al-Ghad al-Jadīd, 1430/2009), p. 30.
30 al-Fasawī, Kitāb al-Maʿrifa wa-l-Tārīkh (al-Madīna al-Munawwara: Maktabat
al-Dār, 1410/1990), 1:688–90.
31 Ibid., 1:690–1.
32 Muw. 1:122–4.
33 These two reports occur together, in the same order, in the transmissions of
al-Zuhrī (Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:144–5); al-Qaʿnabī (Muw. al-Qaʿnabī, pp. 185–6); and
Suwayd (Muw. Suwayd, pp. 140–1).
34 Muw. Sh., p. 82.
 Notes 133

35 See Tam. 12:210–13.

36 al-Fasawī, pp. 691–2.
37 Muw. 2:110; Muw. al-Zuhri, 2:475–6.
38 al-Fasawī, 1:694.
39 Muw. 1:195–6; Muw. al-Zuhri, 1:264–6.
40 Muw. 1:198–9; Muw. al-Zuhri, 1:270–2; Muw. al-Qa’nabi, pp. 198–201
41 See Mad. 1:76.
42 See e.g. G. F. Haddad, Review of Dutton, Original Islam: Mālik and the Madhhab
of Madina, Muslim World Book Review, 27, no. 4 (summer 2007), p. 34.
43 For these ḥadīths, see Dutton, ‘ʿAmal v. Ḥadīth in Islamic Law: The Case of Sadl
al-yadayn (Holding One’s Hands by One’s Sides) When Doing the Prayer’, Islamic
Law and Society, 3 (1996), esp. pp. 17–25.
44 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥla (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), p. 302.
45 See Tam. 20:75.
46 Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967–71), 2:19.
47 Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1950), pp. 4–5.
48 See Zur. 1:12.
49 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 2:204–5.
50 Ibid., 2:135.
51 See Muw. 1:314; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:208, Muw. Suwayd, p. 262, Muw. Sh.,p. 262;
Mud. 2:82.
52 al-Aghānī, 18:330.
53 Zur. 2:333.
54 Schacht, ‘Deux editions’, p. 477.
55 Joseph Schacht, ‘Mālik b. Anas’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, vol. 6
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), p. 264.
56 See Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 2:205.
57 Schacht, “Mālik”, p. 264.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.; idem., ‘On Some Manuscripts in Kairouan and Tunis’, Arabica, 14 (1967),
p. 230.
60 See e.g. Muw. Sh., p. 330.
61 For the general ideas in this paragraph, see particularly Gregor
Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), a revised edition and translation
(by Shawkat Toorawa) of the author’s French book Écrire et transmettre dans les
débuts de l’Islam.
62 See Mad. 1:234.
134 Notes

63 Ibn Saʿd, 7:435.

64 Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth, ed. Muḥammad Zuhrī al-Najjār
(Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1393/1972), pp. 261–2.
65 Muw. 2:18; Muw. Sh., pp. 191–2; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:603; Muw. Suwayd, p. 323.
66 Mud. 2:178.
67 Schacht, Origins, p. 63.
68 Zur. 3:38.
69 Muw. 2:3; Muw. Sh., pp. 181–2; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:569–70.

Conclusion

1 Mad. 1:130.
2 See Muw. 1:146; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 1:227; Muw. Suwayd, p. 201.
3 Ibn Mujāhid, Kitāb al-Sabʿa fī l-qirāʾāt, ed. Shawqī Ḍayf (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif,
2nd edn, c. 1980/1401), p. 45.
4 Bayān, 17:294.
5 Muw. 2:255; Muw. al-Zuhrī, 2:171; Muw. Suwayd, p. 599.
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 Index

This index does not include the separate terms Mālik, Medina, Messenger of Allah, or
Muwaṭṭaʾ. The Arabic definite article ‘al-’ is ignored for listing purposes.

Abān ibn ʿUthmān [ibn ʿAffān] 19, 22– Abū Jaʿfar Yazīd ibn al-Qaʿqāʿ 36
3, 101 Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī, see al-Zuhrī,
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Salama al-Mājishūn Abū Muṣʿab
17, 72, 99 Abū Salama ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān [ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf 20, 23, 42, 96 ʿAwf] 19–21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 35, 42,
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala al-Aslamī, 84–5, 101
Abū Ḥarmala 3, 34–5, 54, 56–7 Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān 29–31
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī 40, 45, 72 Abū Yūsuf 42, 66, 77, 95
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim (shaykh of Abū l-Zinād ibn Dhakwān 16, 19, 26–7,
Mālik) 16, 31–2, 114 88, 90–1
[ʿAbd al-Raḥmān] ibn al-Qāsim (student Aḥmad [ibn Ḥanbal] 9, 39, 45, 67, 101
of Mālik), see Ibn al-Qāsim, ʿAbd ʿĀʾisha 20–1, 24–6, 31, 54, 114–15
al-Raḥmān al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 16, 31–2
ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Bakr [ibn Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (fourth caliph) 23, 32,
ibn ʿAmr] ibn Ḥazm 16, 28, 71 73, 81, 100, 110
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Maʿmar, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn 23, 33
Abū Ṭuwāla 34 ʿAlī ibn Ziyād 41, 44, 59, 64, 90
ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīnār 16, 29, 53, 55 ʿamal (of the People of Medina) 1,
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar 20–2, 23–5, 29, 31, 36, 5–6, 8, 37, 60–1, 63–79, 94, 96, 106,
48, 50, 53–7, 73–4, 80–3, 100–1 108, 113–18
ʿAbdallāh ibn Wahb 44, 71, 90, 97, 111, 128 ʿAmra bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 25, 28
n.23, 128 n.25, 128 n.26 analogy 67–8
ʿAbdallāh ibn Yazīd ibn Hurmuz 36–7 Asmāʾ 20, 26, 114
ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf al-Tinnīsī 43–4 al-Awzāʿī 18, 40
Abū Bakr (first caliph) 8, 20–1, 23–4, 26–7,
29, 31–2, 48, 90, 98–9 Berg, Herbert 3
Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān [ibn Brockopp, Jonathan 5–7
al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām] 16, 19, 22–3, al-Bukhārī 40, 44, 69, 117
30, 73, 101
Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī, Qadi 40 Calder, Norman 2, 5
Abū Bakr [ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr] ibn consensus (ijmāʿ) 67–70, 113
Ḥazm 17, 28, 34, 111
Abū Dāwūd 43–5 ‘dead’ land, development of 92–6
Abū Ḥanīfa 9, 42, 47, 50–1, 53, 56–8, 66,
77–8, 82, 86–7, 93, 95, 101, 129 n.51, El Shamsy, Ahmed 3, 4, 45, 123 n.9,
130 n.70 130 n.69
Abū Ḥātim 45
Abū Ḥudhāfa al-Sahmī 43 fasting (Ramadan)
Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr 25, 30 making the intention before dawn 54
142 Index

pre-dawn meal 55 Ibn Wahb, see ʿAbdallāh ibn Wahb

sighting the new moon 53 Ibn Ziyād, see ʿAlī ibn Ziyād
Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa 29
gharar (uncertainty) 7–8, 65 ʿIyāḍ, Qadi 7, 70–1, 77, 79, 106
Goldziher, Ignaz 2, 36, 108–11
Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad [ibn ʿAlī ibn
ḥadīth 1–3, 40, 69, 77, 79 al-Ḥusayn] 32–3
authenticity 40, 71, 113 Jones, Alan 3
collection of 18, 111 Jurists, Seven (or Ten) of Medina 19, 22–3,
fabrication of 3, 109, 112–13 25, 28–32, 35, 42, 73
ḥadīth as ‘knowledge’ 18, 28, 65
Mālik’s excellence in 39–40, 117 Khārija ibn Zayd [ibn Thābit] 19, 22–3,
memorising or writing? 18, 28, 70 27, 35
‘people of ’ 70, 79
Prophetic / Companion / Successor 15, al-Layth ibn Saʿd 65, 97–105, 108
59, 63, 69 Lowry, Joseph 130 n.13
unity of community around 105
ḥajj, being prevented from doing 73–4 Madhhab 4, 9–10, 60, 70, 79
Hallaq, Wael 123 n.8, 130 n.13 Four Madhhabs 9, 39–40, 67, 106–7
Ḥanafīs / Ḥanafī madhhab 1, 9, 42, 67, Madārik 7, 70–2, 79, 106
73–4, 79, 107 Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir 11, 33
Ḥanbalīs / Ḥanbalī madhhab 1, 9, 67 Mālikīs / Mālikī madhhab 1, 9–10, 61, 63,
Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 17–18, 26, 67–8, 75–6, 79, 105, 107
35–6, 111 Maʿn ibn ʿĪsā 44–5
Hishām ibn ʿUrwa 16, 25–6, 92, 94, Marwān 5, 73
101 Melchert, Christopher 2
Muʿāwiya [ibn Abī Sufyān] 21, 35,
Ibāḍīs 107 48, 50, 73
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 15, 19–20, 23, 30, 32–3, Mudawwana 36–7, 44, 75–6, 89, 93,
35, 43 110, 114
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 107 Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr [ibn
Ibn Bukayr, see Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr Muḥammad] ibn ʿAmr ibn
Ibn Jubayr 12 Ḥazm 28, 71
Ibn Hurmuz, see ʿAbdallāh ibn Yazīd Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya 23
ibn Hurmuz Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir [ibn
Ibn Mahdī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 40, 45, 72 al-Ḥuḍayr] 33–4.
Ibn al-Madīnī 45 Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn 21
Ibn Mājah 44–5 Mughalṭāy, al-Ḥāfiẓ 40
Ibn al-Mājishūn, see ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī al-Murabit, Shaykh Abdalqadir 131 n.16
Salama al-Mājishūn Muslim (ḥadīth transmitter) 40, 44, 117
Ibn al-Qāsim, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 41, 43–4, Muṭarrif 43
59, 71, 75–6, 89, 91, 93, 111, 114, 128
n.23, 128 n.25, 128 n.26 Nāfiʿ (the mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar) 12, 16,
Ibn Qutayba 113, 116 24–5, 29, 37, 125 n.9
Ibn Shihāb [al-Zuhrī] 16–26, 28, 36, 47–8, Nāfiʿ (Qur’an reciter) 13, 125 n.9
54–6, 73, 80–1, 84–6, 90–2, 94–5, 99, Nāfiʿ ibn Mālik, Abū Suhayl 11, 33
111, 113, 125 n.8 al-Nasāʾī 44–5
Ibn Sīrīn, see Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn
Ibn ʿUmar, see ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar oath of abstention from marital intercourse
Ibn ʿUyayna, see Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna 72–3, 105
 Index 143

Powers, David 2 al-Shaybānī 41–2, 45, 47, 50–4, 56–9, 66,

prayer 81–9, 93, 100, 108, 110–11, 130 n.70
how to hold one’s hands 74–7, 107–8 Shīʿa 1, 32, 107
joining because of rain 100–1 Six Books (of ḥadīth) 43–5, 59, 69
passing in front of someone 80–3 Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna 39, 97
Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān 16, 30–1
Qabīṣa ibn Dhuʾayb 19, 22–3 Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 10, 34
al-Qaʿnabī 41, 43–5, 52, 56–9, 110–11 Sulaymān ibn Yasār 19, 21–5, 27, 29,
al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad [ibn Abī Bakr] 8, 30, 39, 47
19, 21, 23–5, 28, 30–2, 48, 118 Sumayy, the mawlā of Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd
Qur’an al-Raḥmān 16, 30
2:196 74 sunna 1–3, 6–8, 40, 48, 50, 60, 67–9, 70–2,
2:266–7 72 77, 79, 83, 91, 94–6, 98
2:278–9 7 Suwayd al-Ḥadathānī 41, 43, 45–7, 50, 52,
2:279 5 56–9, 110–11
2:282 102
5:3 69 testimony of one witness 101–3
6:145 67 al-Thawrī 40
9:60 5 al-Tirmidhī 9, 40, 44–5
9:100 98
9:105 116 ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh [ibn ʿUtba ibn
16:8 90 Masʿūd] 17, 19–20, 23, 29
Qutayba ibn Saʿīd 45 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 22, 26, 28, 34,
46–7, 102–3, 111
Rabīʿa [ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān] 12, 16, 25–6, ʿUmar [ibn al-Khaṭṭāb] (second caliph) 3,
30, 37, 72, 84–5, 90–1, 99, 106, 116 20–1, 23–4, 27–8, 52, 54–5, 64, 71,
Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa 21 85, 88–90, 92, 94–6, 98–9, 101–4,
115–16
Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ 64, 81, 83–4, 100 ʿUrwa ibn Udhayna 36–7, 110
al-Saffāḥ, Abū l-ʿAbbās 25, 34 ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr 3, 17, 19–20, 23, 25,
Saḥnūn 89–90, 93, 114 52, 101
al-Saffāḥ, Abū l-ʿAbbās 25, 34 usury 5, 7, 68
Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab 17, 19–23, 25, 27, 39, ʿUthmān [ibn ʿAffān] (third caliph) 11, 13,
54, 73, 84–5, 99, 101 22–3, 26, 32–3, 48, 53–6, 98–9, 102
Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān ibn Zayd ibn
Thābit 22, 35 al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 22
Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh [ibn ʿUmar] 17, 19–21, al-Walīd ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 25
23, 25, 39, 55–6, 81–2, 92 water that dogs have licked 87–92
Sālim, Abū l-Naḍr 16, 29 Wymann-Landgraf, Umar Abd-Allah, 4
Savant, Sarah 130 n.70
Schacht, Joseph 1–3, 108–9, 111–12, 115 Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr 41, 43, 45–6, 50, 55, 57,
Seven / Ten Jurists (of Medina) 19, 22–3, 59, 110–11
25, 28–32, 35, 42, 73 Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī 16, 25, 99
al-Shāfiʿī 2–4, 9, 40, 45, 59, 66, 68, 78–9, Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī 41, 43, 45, 55–8,
91–6, 101, 108, 117, 130 n.69, 63, 110–11, 130 n.69
130 n.13 Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Tamīmī 44
Shāfiʿīs 1, 9, 67, 79
Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī 40 zakāt 5, 56–8, 64
Shamsy, Ahmed El see El Shamsy, Ahmed of associates 104
144 Index

buried treasure 84–7 what zakāt is due on 46–53

collection 17–18 Zayd ibn Aslam 16, 27, 80, 82, 90
joint owners 103 Zayd ibn Thābit 5, 22–3, 35
mines 84–7 al-Zuhrī, Abū Muṣʿab 6–7, 41–2, 45–7,
ʿUmar’s document 17, 103 50–2, 55–9, 110–11, 130 n.69