Malik ibn Anas ibn Malik ibn Abi Amir al-Asbahi al-Madani, whom al-Dhahabi calls the imam of the abode of emigration, is the author of the [[work/muwatta-malik|Muwatta']] 1. He was born in Medina in 93 AH, learned from its scholars, and sat there to give legal opinions and to teach 2. He qualified to give legal opinions at twenty-one; students of knowledge came to him from all regions, and crowded around him in the caliphate of al-Rashid until he died 3. Al-Haytham ibn Jamil reported that he was asked forty-eight questions and answered thirty-two of them with "I do not know" 4. Al-Dhahabi relays the words of al-Shafi'i: "Malik is my teacher, and from him I took knowledge" 4.
Al-Dhahabi relays from Ibn Sa'd Malik's account that al-Mansur resolved to have his books copied and sent to the provinces for people to act on, and that Malik advised him to leave people with what each land had chosen for itself 5. Ibn al-Nadim says that Ja'far ibn Sulayman, the governor of Medina, had him flogged, and that he remained afterwards in high standing 6. He died in 179 AH and was buried in al-Baqi' 1 6. Ibn al-Nadim opens with his entry the section he gives to the Malikis and their books 6. The editor of the Muwatta' writes that his students, above all those from North Africa, carried his book and his opinions until those lands knew no school of law but the Maliki 2.
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