First published in 1989. This is the first translation of the Muwatta' in the English language. Imam Malik came from a family of learning and grew up in Madina al-Munawarra which was the capital of knowledge at that time, especially the knowledge of hadith. Known as one of the great reciter’, Malik's predisposition for retention and understanding of knowledge he took it upon himself to serve the shari'a and to preserve the Prophetic sunna. He did this by relaying it from those notable Tabi'un with whose knowledge he was satisfied and whose words he thought worthy of conveying and by his work he opened the way for all later writers and cleared a path for the compilation of Islamic law.
Compiled during the reign of Mansur, the second Abbasid Caliph, Muwatta' of Imam Malik passed his entire life in Medina and, therefore, had direct access to the most reliable authorities on hadith because most of the leading Companions and their Successors lived and died there and narrated traditions. The Muwatta' is based on the traditions narrated by them and the juristic verdicts given by them, and thus it deals only with such ahadith as have a bearing on juristic verdicts. The translator is a well-known scholar. he has done full justice to the work undertaken by him. He has provided exhaustive explanatory footnotes wherever necessary.Read more
Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik Ash-Sh fi' said, "After the Book of Allah, there is no book on the face of the earth sounder than the book of M lik." 'Al ' ad-D n Maghla y al- anaf said, "The first person to compile the a was M lik." Ibn ajar said, "The book of M lik is sound by all the criteria that are demanded as proofs in the mursal, munqa i' and other types of transmission." As-Suy followed Ibn ajar's judgement and said, "It is absolutely correct to say that the Muwa a' is sound ( a ) without exception." Al-Bukh r and Muslim transmitted most of its ad ths and included them in their a collections. The authors of the rest of the six books, the Im m of the ad th scholars, A mad ibn anbal, and others did the same. In addition, the Muwa a' contains a record of the practice ('amal) of the people of Mad nah of the first generations, a transmission of the ethos that permeated the city, and Im m M lik's painstaking clarification of the Sunna, the ad ths, the practice and legal judgements. Im m M lik ibn anas (93 AH/711 CE - 179 AH/795 CE) Imam M lik's full name is M lik ibn Anas ibn M lik ibn Ab ' mir al-A ba and he was related to Dh A ba, a sub-tribe of imyar. He was instructed in the learning and recitation of the Noble Qur' n by Im m N fi' ibn 'Abd ar-Ra m n ibn Ab Nu'aym, the Im m of the reciters of Mad na and one of the 'seven reciters'. Among the huge number of his teachers in ad th and fiqh were N fi', the mawl of 'Abdull h ibn 'Umar, and Ibn Shih b az-Zuhr . He sat to give fatw when he was seventeen years old after seventy Im ms had testified that he was worthy to give fatw and teach. His own students included Im m ash-Sh fi' and Im m Muhammad ibn al- asan ash-Shayb n the anaf mujtahid, as well as a great number of Im ms of ad th and fiqh, and thus he is known as Im m al-A'immah 'the Im m of the Im ms'. He is recognised to be the subject of the hadith from Ab Hurayra i: "The Messenger of Allah @ said, 'There will come a time when the people will beat the livers of their camels in search of knowledge and they will not find an ' lim with more knowledge than the ' lim of Mad na.'"
Each person is born in a religious environment that is not of his/her own choice. From the very beginning of human existence in this world, they are assigned the religion of their family or the ideology of the state. By the time individuals reach their teens they usually accept the beliefs of their parents or that of their particular society. However, when some people mature and are exposed to other beliefs and ideologies, they begin to question the validity of their own beliefs. Seekers of truth often reach a point of confusion upon realizing that believers of every religion, sect, ideology and philosophy all claim to have the one and only correct religion or ideology. There are only three possibilities. They are either all correct; all wrong or only one is correct and the rest are wrong.
The first written treatise of Islamic law, Imam Mālik's 8th century CE Muwaṭṭaʾ provides an unparalleled window into the lives, rituals, laws, and customs of Medina's early Muslim community. Based on the 2013 Muwaṭṭaʾ, The Royal Moroccan Edition, this translation with extensive notes makes this early legal text widely accessible.
It contains a record of the exemplification by the last Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, of the message of the Qur'an, the practice ('amal) of the people of Madinah of the first generations, a transmission of the ethos that permeated the city, and Imam Malik's painstaking clarification of the Sunna, the hadiths, the practice and legal judgements. Ash-Shafi i' said, "After the Book of Allah, there is no book on the face of the earth sounder than the book of Malik." 'Ala' ad-Daan Maghlatay al-Hanafi said, "The first person to compile the sahih was Malik." Ibn Hajar said, "The book of Malik is sound by all the criteria that are demanded as proofs in the mursal, munqati' and other types of transmission." As-Suyuti followed Ibn Hajar's judgement and said, "It is absolutely correct to say that the Muwatta' is sound (sahih) without exception." Al-Bukhari and Muslim transmitted most of its hadiths and included them in their sahih collections. The authors of the rest of the six books, the Imam of the hadith scholars, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and others did the same.
"This small treatise of Ibn Taymiyya (661/1263-728/ 1328), the extremely influential medieval Hanbali jurist, has an importance belied by its size since it is, in fact, an investigation into the origin and nature of the Prophetic Sunna. In it he discusses the value of the consensus of the people of Madina and its standing as evidence. He also deals with the lawful and unlawful, food and drink, usury, acts of worship and other matters, and compares the school of the people of Madina regarding all these things with the other schools, making it clear that the Madinan school is the soundest of all of them and the closest to the Sunna and the practice of the Salaf. Although usually associated with hadith-based legal reasoning, in this work Ibn Taymiyya demonstrates the unquestionable authority of the practice of the people of Madina, showing how it remained indisputably the authentic expression of the Sunna of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, during the first three generations of Islam when it was definitively recorded by Imam Malik ibn Anas. The conclusion he reaches is that: "In the time of the Companions, the Followers and their Followers, their school was the soundest of the schools of the people in all the lands of, Islam, east and west, both in respect of its fundamentalprinciples and its secondary rulings"."--
