Malik ibn Anas

Mālik ibn Anas ibn Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Ghaymān ibn Khuthayn ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith al-Aṣbaḥī al-Ḥumyarī al-Madanī (Arabic: مَالِك بْن أَنَس بْن مَالِك بْن أَبِي عَامِر بْن عَمْرو بْن ٱلْحَارِث بْن غَيْمَان بْن خُثَين بْن عَمْرو بْن ٱلْحَارِث ٱلْأَصْبَحِي ٱلْحُمَيْرِي ٱلْمَدَنِي, 711–795 CE / 93–179 AH), commonly known as Mālik ibn Anas (Arabic: مَالِك بْن أَنَس), was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, and traditionist. Born in Medina, Malik rose to become the premier scholar of hadith in his day, seeking to apply to "the whole legal life" in order to create a systematic method of Islamic jurisprudence which would only further expand with the passage of time. 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 afterwards, becoming the founder 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 the Muslims), a vast portion of Egypt, some parts of Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, and Khorasan, and the prominent Sufi orders, the Shadili and Tijani.

Perhaps Malik's most famous accomplishment in the annals of Islamic history is, however, his compilation of the 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 the Muwatta' led to Malik being bestowed with such reverential epithets as Shaykh of 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."