Imam Malik ibn Anas and the Muwatta: life and legacy

Imam Malik ibn Anas and the Muwatta: life and legacy

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Quick answer: Malik ibn Anas (may Allah have mercy on him) spent most of his life in Madinah, where he taught for decades and compiled the Muwatta, the oldest surviving compendium of Islamic law. His followers formed the Maliki school, which is still the main school across North and West Africa. The sources agree on the outline of his life and differ on some details, and those differences are marked below.

A family of transmitters in Madinah

Malik’s household was already part of the world of learning. His great-grandfather, grandfather, father and uncles all transmitted traditions, and the family’s ancestral home was in Yemen, with his grandfather settling in Madinah after accepting Islam.

The year of his birth is not fixed. Most popular biographies give 93 AH (711 CE), while Britannica gives c. 715, Encyclopaedia of Islam-style summaries place it between 708 and 716 and another biography says 714 CE. For converting between the two calendars, the Hijri converter can help.

He studied in the city that held the Prophet’s Mosque and the households of many Companions’ descendants. His teachers included Ibn Hurmuz, Rabi’ah ibn Farrukh, Nafi’ and Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri. Nafi’ was the freed man of Abdullah ibn Umar (may Allah be pleased with him), and he had studied religion from Companions, especially Ibn Umar. A biography reports that the chain “Malik from Nafi’ from Ibn Umar” was called the most reliable of all by Imam al-Bukhari, which is why it is often called the golden chain.

Malik was careful about when he began to teach. He said he did not sit to give fatwa until seventy of the scholars of Madinah had testified that he was fit to do so. His learning drew a considerable number of students.

Timeline

The table separates what the sources report consistently from what they report with differences. Dates marked c. are approximate.

Date (AH / CE) Event How firm is it?
c. 93 AH / c. 711 CE Born in Madinah Place agreed; year ranges from 708 to 716 CE
Youth and early adulthood Studies with Ibn Hurmuz, Rabi’ah, Nafi’ and al-Zuhri Consistent in the biographies found
754 to 775 CE Reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, linked to both the Muwatta and the flogging Reign dates from a standard reference
762 to 763 CE Malik punished under al-Mansur Date from one reference work; reasons given differ
c. 765 to 770 CE Muwatta composed One reference says “perhaps”; no exact date
179 AH / 795 CE Dies in Madinah, buried in al-Baqi’ 179 AH agreed; one source gives 796 CE
240 AH / 854 to 855 CE Death of Sahnun of Qayrawan, who spread the school in North Africa Consistent

The flogging: what the sources report

All the accounts found agree that Malik was beaten on the orders of the Abbasid governor of Madinah. They disagree on why.

Britannica says that during a rebellion he declared that loyalty to the caliph was not a religious necessity, since homage had been given under compulsion, and he was flogged after the caliph prevailed. Another reference states that he was punished in 762 and 763 for supporting Muhammad ibn Abdallah, an Alid claimant to the throne.

A third version, common in popular biographies, says the governor pressed people to swear allegiance to al-Mansur and Malik ruled that an oath given under coercion was not binding. Others add that the rebels then used his ruling to argue that their pledge had been forced. These accounts are not necessarily in conflict, but the sources do not line them up, so the exact charge is not settled here.

Details of the punishment vary as well. One account says he was carried out unconscious and put on a donkey to be paraded around Madinah, and some reports say his arm was dislocated.

The same accounts describe what came after. One relates that when al-Mansur was told, he invited Malik to take retaliation against the governor, and Malik declined. Britannica adds that the episode raised his prestige, and in later years he regained favour with the central government.

How the Muwatta came to be written

The book’s origin is told in more than one way. The Islamic Society of Britain summarises the common account: the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur suggested it, Malik first declined, and he later agreed to write a book preserving the practice of Madinah. IslamQA, citing Ibn Abd al-Barr’s al-Istidhkar, gives the caliph’s request as asking Malik to produce a book for the people, and adds that Malik responded but refused to force everyone to follow it.

One reference suggests it was perhaps composed about 765 to 770, within al-Mansur’s reign. Malik used the collection in his teaching and sometimes added to it later.

The name is explained by a saying attributed to him: he showed the book to seventy scholars of Madinah and every one of them approved it. The word muwatta’ is also translated “the well-trodden path”.

The sources differ on a famous follow-up request. The Islamic Society of Britain says al-Mansur’s son Harun al-Rashid asked that the Muwatta be displayed in the Kaaba and that all Muslims be bound to follow Malik, while an introduction to one English translation has al-Mansur himself wishing the book to be kept in a prominent place in the Kaaba for people to consult. Both accounts report that Malik refused to impose his book; another reference says Harun tried to make it the basis of a unified law code.

What is inside the Muwatta

Britannica classes it as a musannaf, a work that gathers hadith, reports from Companions and the compiler’s own opinions. It is arranged by subject, from ritual purity and prayer to marriage, divorce and business. About half the material is traced to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself, and the rest to Companions and the generation after them.

The book exists in several versions, and the counts differ. IslamQA reports that the version of Yahya al-Laythi, the best known, was counted at 1,942 reports by Shaykh Khalil Shiha, including both reports from the Prophet ﷺ and reports stopping at Companions. The version of Abu Mus’ab al-Zuhri reaches 3,069 in the Mu’assasat al-Risalah edition, which counts everything, including Malik’s own words. The versions also differ in the order of books and chapters.

The Muwatta and the two Sahih collections overlap. The second report in Sahih al-Bukhari begins with a chain through Abdullah ibn Yusuf, from Malik, from Hisham ibn Urwa, from his father, from Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her), and the same report is found in the Muwatta through Yahya, from Malik. In it, a Companion, al-Harith ibn Hisham (may Allah be pleased with him), asks the Prophet ﷺ how revelation comes to him.

أَحْيَانًا يَأْتِينِي مِثْلَ صَلْصَلَةِ الْجَرَسِ ـ وَهُوَ أَشَدُّهُ عَلَىَّ ـ فَيُفْصَمُ عَنِّي وَقَدْ وَعَيْتُ عَنْهُ مَا قَالَ، وَأَحْيَانًا يَتَمَثَّلُ لِيَ الْمَلَكُ رَجُلاً فَيُكَلِّمُنِي فَأَعِي مَا يَقُولُ ". قَالَتْ عَائِشَةُ رضى الله عنها وَلَقَدْ رَأَيْتُهُ يَنْزِلُ عَلَيْهِ الْوَحْىُ فِي الْيَوْمِ الشَّدِيدِ الْبَرْدِ، فَيَفْصِمُ عَنْهُ وَإِنَّ جَبِينَهُ لَيَتَفَصَّدُ عَرَقًا.

Narrated 'Aisha: (the mother of the faithful believers) Al-Harith bin Hisham asked Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! How is the Divine Inspiration revealed to you?" Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) replied, "Sometimes it is (revealed) like the ringing of a bell, this form of Inspiration is the hardest of all and then this state passes off after I have grasped what is inspired. Sometimes the Angel comes in the form of a man and talks to me and I grasp whatever he says." 'Aisha added: Verily I saw the Prophet (ﷺ) being inspired divinely on a very cold day and noticed the sweat dropping from his forehead (as the Inspiration was over)

Method: the practice of Madinah

Malik’s school is known for giving weight to the lived practice of the city. A reference describes his teaching as distinctive for championing the practice of the people of Madinah. The Slough Islamic Trust’s dictionary entry says the school treated the collective practice of Madinah, passed from generation to generation, as stronger evidence than an isolated hadith, and that it also emphasises maslahah mursalah, or public interest. Other summaries add that he relied on the Quran, the Sunnah, consensus and analogy.

These are descriptions of the school as it later developed, and scholars of each madhhab discuss how far Malik’s own method matches them. The Muwatta itself, as the sources describe it, records both reports and the opinions of Madinah’s jurists side by side.

He is also remembered for admitting limits. A saying preserved by Ibn Abd al-Barr in al-Intiqa’ has him say that “The shield of the scholar is, ‘I don’t know'”.

Students and the spread of the school

Malik taught across the lines that later separated the schools. Both al-Shafi’i and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, a major figure in the Hanafi school, were his students, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal respected him.

School Link to Malik reported in the sources
Maliki Named after him; the Muwatta is its foundational text
Hanafi Al-Shaybani is listed among his students
Shafi’i Al-Shafi’i is listed among his students and, by one account, had memorised the Muwatta by the age of ten
Hanbali Ahmad ibn Hanbal is reported to have respected him

The Muwatta was taught in all the medieval centres of learning, especially Egypt, Baghdad, North Africa and Spain. In the east his school met strong competition from the Shafi’i, Hanbali and Zahiri schools, but it took root in the west.

Much of that growth came through a second book. The Mudawwana is a larger body of Maliki doctrine shaped by Malik’s student Ibn al-Qasim and transmitted through Sahnun. Sahnun’s revision and transmission of it was possibly the major factor in the spread of the school across North Africa and Muslim Spain. Qayrawan became an early Maliki centre, and today the school is predominant in North and West Africa.

What the reader can take from this life

  • Know the limits of your knowledge. Malik waited for the testimony of seventy scholars before giving fatwas, and he is quoted as calling “I don’t know” a scholar’s shield. A reader facing a question outside their own training can ask a qualified scholar rather than guess.
  • Offer help without forcing it on others. Asked by caliphs to make his book the single standard, he is reported to have refused. His example shows a place for firm scholarship alongside respect for other scholars’ conclusions.
  • Handle injury with restraint. After the flogging, the accounts say he declined retaliation and went on teaching. Whatever the exact charge, the reports describe a man who stayed in his city and kept to his work.

Sources