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Malik ibn Anas

Muslim scholar and namesake of the Maliki school (711–795)

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Through Muslims, Medina and Iraq

Born in Medina into the clan of Humayr which belonged to the Banu Taym of Quraysh, Malik studied under Hisham ibn Urwa, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Ja'far al-Sadiq, Nafi ibn Sarjis and others. He rose to become the premier scholar of hadith in his day, Referred to as the Imam of Medina by his contemporaries, his views in matters of jurisprudence became highly cherished both in his own life and afterward, becoming the eponym of the Maliki school, one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. His school became the normative rite for Sunni practice in much of North Africa, al-Andalus (until the expulsion of medieval native Iberian Muslims), a vast portion of Egypt, some parts of Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, and Khorasan, and the prominent orders in Sufism, the Shadili and Tijani.

Perhaps Malik's most famous accomplishment in the annals of Islamic history is, however, his compilation of al-Muwatta', one of the oldest and most revered Sunni hadith collections and one of "the earliest surviving Muslim law-book[s]," in which Malik attempted to "give a survey of law and justice; ritual and practice of religion according to the consensus of Islam in Medina, according to the sunna usual in Medina; and to create a theoretical standard for matters which were not settled from the point of view of consensus and sunna." Composed in the early days of the Abbasid caliphate, during which time there was a burgeoning "recognition and appreciation of the canon law" of the ruling party, Malik's work aimed to trace out a "smoothed path" (which is what al-muwaṭṭaʾ literally means) through "the farreaching differences of opinion even on the most elementary questions." Hailed as "the soundest book on earth after the Quran" by al-Shafi'i, the compilation of al-Muwatta' led to Malik being bestowed with such reverential epithets as Shaykh al-Islam, Proof of the Community, Imam of the Believers in Hadith, Imam of the Abode of Emigration, and Knowledgeable Scholar of Medina in later Sunni tradition.

According to classical Sunni tradition, the Islamic prophet Muhammad foretold the birth of Malik, saying: "Very soon will people beat the flanks of camels in search of knowledge and they shall find no one more expert than the knowledgeable scholar of Medina," and, in another tradition, "The people ... shall set forth from East and West without finding a sage other than the sage of the people in Medina." While some later scholars, such as Ibn Hazm and al-Tahawi, did cast doubt on identifying the mysterious wise man of both these traditions with Malik, the most widespread interpretation nevertheless continued to be that which held the personage to be Malik. Throughout Islamic history, Malik has been venerated as an exemplary figure in all the traditional schools of Sunni thought, both by the exoteric ulema and by the mystics, with the latter often designating him as a saint in their hagiographies. Malik's most notable student, ash-Shafi'i (who would himself become the founder of another of the four orthodox legal schools of Sunni law), later said of his teacher: "No one constitutes as great a favor to me in the religion of God as Malik ... when the scholars of knowledge are mentioned, Malik is the star."

Biography

Malik was born as the son of Anas ibn Malik (not the Sahabi with the same name) and Aaliyah bint Shurayk al-Azdiyya in Medina, c. 711. His family was originally from the al-Asbahi tribe of Yemen, but his great grandfather Abu 'Amir relocated the family to Medina after converting to Islam in the second year of the Hijri calendar, or 623 CE. His grandfather Malik ibn Abi Amir was a student of the second Caliph of Islam Umar and was one of those involved in the collection of the parchments upon which Quranic texts were originally written when those were collected during the Caliph Uthman era.

Teachers

Living in Medina gave Malik access to some of the most learned minds of early Islam. He memorized the Quran in his youth, learning recitation from Abu Suhail Nafi' ibn 'Abd ar-Rahman, from whom he also received his Ijazah, or certification and permission to teach others. He studied under various famed scholars including Hisham ibn Urwah and Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri as well as the famed Imam Jafar al-Sadiq.

Both Malik and al Zuhri were student to Nafi Mawla Ibn Umar, prestigious Tabi'un Imam and freed slave of Abdullah ibn Umar.

Imam Malik, studied also with Imam Jafar a wellknown scholar of his time, although primarily influenced by other Fuqaha, like Nafi’.

Imam Malik was a teacher of Imam Shafi, who in turn was a teacher of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

Imam Malik inherited his knowledge from the seven jurists of Madinah, known as Fuqahā’ al-Sab‘ah:

  1. Ubaydullah ibn 'Abdullah ibn 'Utbah ibn Mas'ud
  2. 'Urwah ibn al-Zubayr
  3. Al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn 'Abi Bakr al-Siddiq
  4. Sa-id ibn al-Mussayib
  5. Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām
  6. Sulaymān ibn Yasār
  7. Khārijah ibn Zayd ibn Thābit

Golden Chain of Narration

Malik's chain of narrators was considered the most authentic and called Silsilat al-Dhahab or "The Golden Chain of Narrators" by notable hadith scholars including Muhammad al-Bukhari. The 'Golden Chain' of narration (i.e., that considered by the scholars of Hadith to be the most authentic) consists of Malik, who narrated from Nafi‘ Mawla ibn ‘Umar, who narrated from Ibn Umar, who narrated from Muhammad.

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