Mālik ibn Anas

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Abū ʿAbdallāh Mālik ibn Anas al-Asbahī ( Arabic مالك بن أنس بن مالك بن أبي عامر الأصبحي, DMG Abū ʿAbdallāh Mālik b. Anas b. Mālik b. Abī ʿĀmir al-Aṣbaḥī ; born at 711 (between 708 and 715) in Medina ; died 795 ibid) is the founder of one of the legal schools of Islam and namesake of Maliki jurisprudence . There is every indication that Mālik was the most famous Medinan lawyer at the time of his death.

Mālik's life's work as the basis of Maliki jurisprudence is al-Muwattaʾ  /الموطأ / al-Muwaṭṭaʾ  / 'The leveled path', a work that has been received in various reviews by its students. Mālik's merit in the history of the development of Islamic jurisprudence lies primarily in the fact that he endeavored to mediate between the traditional Ḥadīth material of primarily Medinan origin and the legal practice generally known in Medina ( ʿamal ahl al-Madīna / sunnat ahl al-Madīna ) . However, he tends to give priority to legal practice.

Tomb of Malik ibn Anas in Baqīʿ al-Gharqad

Life

Mālik ibn Anas came from a Yemeni family who had settled in Medina before Mālik was born . He studied with Ibn Hurmuz , Nāfiʿ and Rabīʿa b. Abī ʿAbd ar-Rahmān and spent his entire life in his native Medina studying, teaching and - like some of his contemporaries - giving legal opinions . The sources on which he falls back in his writings are mostly of Medinan, but also partly of Meccan provenance.

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The commentators of his main work (see below) and the chronologically or alphabetically arranged biographical literature of the Malikites, the so-called "Malikite class books", from the 11th century and later, report on Mālik's life and work. In these books not only everyday episodes and anecdotes from the life of Mālik, but also traditions about the virtues ( Fadā'il ) of both his person and his work are reported.

The Damascus scholar-biographer Ibn ʿAsākir wrote a short version of these biographical reports under the title: "The uncovering of the veiled about the advantages of the Muwaṭṭaʾ "كشف المغطا في فضل الموطا / Kašf al-muġaṭṭā fī faḍl al-Muwaṭṭā . Here also the z. Partly contradicting traditions about Mālik's encounter with the Abbasid caliphs al-Mansūr , al-Mahdi and Hārūn ar-Raschīd ; they are said to have commissioned the legal scholar to write a legal work with the help of which to unify the jurisdiction in all centers of the Islamic empire. The authenticity of these messages has been questioned by both contemporary research and Muslim scholar biographers.

An important source for the presentation of the Vita Māliks and its primary sources are the biographical works of the law school, the so-called ṭabaqāt literature. These “class books” usually begin with the biography of the school founder. Some of the above commentaries devote the first chapter to a detailed description of the life and work of Mālik.

  • One of the earliest biographically oriented works on Muwaṭṭaʾ that is available in print was written by the Andalusian scholar Ibn al-Ḥaḏḏāʾ (Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Aḥmad, born 958; died 1022) from Córdoba. After an extensive study trip to the Orient, he was Qādī in Seville and Saragossa . His work "The Announcement of Those Women and Men Who Are Mentioned in the Muwaṭṭaʾ "التعريف بمن ذكر في الموطأ من النساء والرجال / at-Taʿrīf bi-man ḏukira fī-l-Muwaṭṭaʾ min an-nisāʾ wa-r-riǧāl in two printed volumes. The author gives a short biography of all the persons named in the isnads of Mālik's work and mentions the opinions of hadith critics about them. He quotes, sometimes only fragmentarily, some of the hadith they have handed down and compares them with the deviations in content in the available work reviews.
  • The Andalusian scholar Ibn Ḫalfūn (Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad al-Azdī, d. 1239) from Huelva , who worked in Seville , wrote his "The names of the teachers of Mālik ibn Anas" Asmāʾ schuyūch Mālik ibn Anas  /أسماء شيوخ مالك بن أنس / Asmāʾ šuyūḫ Mālik b. Anas , which is preserved in the library of the Escorial in the Andalusian style and was published in 2004. The author relies on the biographical literature of his predecessors. T. is no longer available. He names some people whose biographies are not listed in al-Mizzī and in other comprehensive scholarly encyclopedias because they are not cited as narrators in the canonical collections of traditions . In the presentation of the Vita of Mālik's primary sources, he also names their teachers and students and briefly describes their living conditions and learning. Still Dhahabi (1274-1348) Ibn Ḫalfūn called as a good expert and well-known critic of Ḥadīṯüberlieferer.
  • The most extensive biographical work of the Malikites was written by ʿIyāḍ ibn Mūsā al-Yaḥṣubī (d. 1149), Qādī in Sabta under the Almoravids . The author of this eight-volume work dedicates the first two volumes to Mālik's Vita, his virtues as a teacher and the views of his contemporaries. In the other six volumes - classified according to the centers of Maliki scholarship - the representatives of the law school are presented chronologically up to the time of the author. Later, also modern biographers the work served as an indispensable source.
  • The already mentioned above Damascene scholar Ibn Nasir ad-Din (d. September 1438) the biographies of passes Muwatta -Überlieferer with a 40-page preface one in which he gives a lecture especially the traditional indications about the merits Malik.

Mālik's copy of the Koran

The Maliki legal scholar in Córdoba Abū l-Walīd Ibn Ruschd (d. 1126), the grandfather of the philosopher Averroes , mentions a report by the Mālik student Ibn al-Qāsim al-ʿUtaqī in his extensive legal compendium al-Bayān wa-t -taḥṣīl, as a result, his teacher showed him a copy of the Koran that is said to have been in the possession of Mālik's grandfather Mālik ibn Abī ʿĀmir (died around 693-694). This old copy was not only richly decorated and bound in a piece of the kiswa , but also contained readings that differed from the Koran code of the caliph Uthman ibn Affan . In his above-mentioned work, Ibn Ruschd gives these thirteen reading variants in the tradition of Ibn al-Qāsim. Studies of these variants have shown that they predominantly represent the variants common in Medina. However, some readings are of unknown provenance. Mālik's copy of the Koran, from the possession of his grandfather, who was one of the well-known Medinan readers of the Koran in Uthman's time, was probably put together from two different codices.

Works

al-Muwaṭṭaʾ

Title page of the Book of Fasting from the Muwaṭṭaʾ on parchment. Made for the private library of Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashfin in Marrakech in 1107

Al-Muwatta (Arabic الموطأ, DMG al- Muwaṭṭaʾ 'The Leveled Path') is the main work of Mālik ibn Anas and offers a systematic presentation of the Islamic rite and law based on the common law of Medina. In his Muhammadan Studies , Ignaz Goldziher describes the work more as a corpus iuris, not a corpus traditionum (i.e. a collection of laws, not a collection of traditions). Mālik made the legal consensus ( idschma ) or the traditional legal practice of the Medinese strong.

Nevertheless, the hadeeth material known at the time of Mālik was always caught between traditionalism and generally accepted legal practice. Even in the Muwaṭṭaʾ the Ḥadīth takes a back seat in favor of the Medinan legal practice. The Sunnah of the Medinese, which is not necessarily identical with the Prophet's Sunna , is a groundbreaking argumentation in the finding of the law, because even Mālik is said to have ignored prophetic Ḥadīthe, which contradicted the legal practice ( ʿamal ) of the Medinese. The German orientalist Joseph Schacht has discussed this method of finding the right law by analyzing the polemics of Ash-Shāfiʿī against Mālik.

“The Ḥadīṯ is therefore by no means the highest authority for Mālik; his inclination to an independent legal view ( Ra'y ) is undisputed in the medinan legislation. Numerous students of his and later followers of his Maḏhab were distinguished precisely by the fact that they followed the Raʾy Māliks and not the Ḥadīṯ. "

Mālik was not the first to write a legal work in Medina. His older contemporary al-Mādschischūn († 780), whose work Ignaz Goldziher had already compared to Mālik's oeuvre in shaping Medinan jurisprudence , is also considered to be the author of a legal work, the fragments of which - recorded in the middle of the 9th century - some ago Years have been discovered and described. Goldziher's observations are confirmed by the structure of the fragments found:

"In the same (al-Mādschischūns book) only the doctrine was presented, the law according to the Medinan consensus, without citing the traditions which can serve as a support for the doctrine."

- Muhammadan Studies , Vol. 2. p. 219

Other writings

The relevant biographies of the Malikites name other writings that Mālik is said to have written and that are currently only known from quotations or mentions in later works of the school of law:

  • His letter to the caliph Hārūn ar-Raschīd الرسالة الى هارون الرشيد / ar-Risāla ilā Hārūn ar-Rašīd , is found in an Andalusian tradition. The twenty-five-page text that appeared in print in 1954 (Cairo) is based on a copy that was used as teaching material in Ramla in December 1031 . The letter contains moral exhortations and legal advice to the caliph.
  • His letter to the judges of Risāla fī al-aqdiya  /رسالة في الأقضية / Risāla fī l-aqḍiya  / 'The Epistle on the Rules of Law' probably contained instructions to the judges in the Islamic provinces.
  • His letter to the Egyptian legal scholar and traditionalist al-Laith ibn Saʿd , mentioned by the biographers , probably goes back to the correspondence between the two scholars. It has been discussed several times in research, but was only published and commented on in 1995.

The authenticity of these writings is generally questioned by both European scholars and Muslim scholars - such as the above-mentioned letter to the caliph Hārūn ar-Raschīd by as-Suyūtī .

  • The Legal Issues of al-Masāʾil  /المسائلwhich he had answered outside of his main work in the form of the Quaestiones et responsiones , are preserved in the fifteen volumes of the Mudawwana of Sahnūn ibn Saʿīd in the tradition of Ibn al-Qāsim al-ʿUtaqī and should be authentic.

The Maliki school of law spread in the early 9th century especially in Egypt , North Africa and Islamic Spain ( al-Andalus / Andalusia ) through the teaching of Mālik's teachings among his numerous students. In addition to his main work mentioned above - in the review of his students - his doctrinal opinions are preserved in partly extensive legal works of the subsequent generations. His Muwattaʾ was commented on by Maliki scholars until the 11th century, which is how the Maliki doctrine of law was expanded and developed in terms of content.

Legal positions

A peculiarity of Mālik in marriage law was that he considered stipulations of the kind that the man undertakes to the woman not to marry another woman or not to have a concubine as null and void. He saw the matter differently only if the man had vowed in this regard to cast it out or to release it. In this case, the man was required to keep his vow.

Collections of hadiths traced back to Mālik

Between the 9th and 13th centuries, traditionarians put together Ḥadīṯe that could be traced back to the traditions of Mālik. These adīṯe are preserved either in his muwaṭṭaʾ or outside it with complete isnads . A total of 532 adīṯe from seven collections from four centuries have been summarized in one volume and commented on in detail. Each of these collections was entitled:عوالي حديث مالك بن أنس / ʿAwālī ḥadīṯ Mālik ibn Anas  / 'The high hadiths narrated by Mālik ibn Anas', where "high" denotes the fact that the chain of narrators ( Isnad ) comprises as few links as possible, which is commonly seen as evidence of the high reliability of the respective tradition. These traditions, traced back to the Prophet Mohammed with a "high" Isnad , were called in the Ḥadīth science ḥadīṯ ʿālī (plural: ʿawālī ). The oldest of these collections goes back to Hischām ibn ʿAmmār b. Nuṣair (770–859), a well-known traditionalist and Koran reader, who worked as a preacher in the main mosque of Damascus ( Umayyad mosque ).

literature

  • Nabia Abbott: Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri . II. Qurʾānic Commentary and Tradition. Chicago 1967
  • A. Bekir: Histoire de l'école malikite en Orient jusqu'à la fin de moyen-age . Tunis 1962
  • Robert Brunschvig: Polémiques médiévales autour du rite de Malik . In: Andalus. 15/1950, pp. 377-435
  • Yasin Dutton: The Origins of Islamic Law. The Qur'an, the Muwatta 'and Madinan' amal . Cruzon Press 1999, ISBN 0-7007-1062-0
  • The Encyclopaedia of Islam . Volume VI. Pp. 262-293; Volume XI. P. 572
  • Ignaz Goldziher: Muhammadan Studies . Halle 1890. Volume II. P. 213 ff.
  • Raif Georges Khoury: al-Layth Ibn Saʿd (94 / 713-175 / 791), grand maître et mécène de l'Egypte vu à travers quelques documents islamiques anciens. In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Festschrift Nabia Abbott). 40, pp. 189-202 (1981)
  • Manuela Marín: Los ulemas de al-Andalus y sus maestros orientales. In: Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus. Volume III. Pp. 257-306
  • Miklós Murányi : Religious Literature in Arabic. Fiqh. In: Helmut Gätje (Ed.): Outline of Arabic Philology. Volume 2, pp. 299-325. Dr. Ludwig Reichert Publishing House. Wiesbaden 1987. ISBN 3-88226-145-5
  • Miklos Muranyi: Contributions to the history of Ḥadīṯ and legal scholarship of the Mālikiyya in North Africa up to the 5th century. That is, bio-bibliographical notes from the mosque library of Qairawān . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1997. ISBN 3-447-03925-6
  • Miklos Muranyi: The Muwaṭṭaʾ commentary by the Andalusian al-Qanāziʿī (st.413 / 1022). A contribution to the Andalusian tradition . In: Islam. 82 (2005), pp. 52-106
  • Joseph Schacht: The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford 1967
  • Fuat Sezgin: History of Arabic Literature. Brill, Leiden 1967. Volume IS 457-465

Individual evidence

  1. Article Malikiten , in: Adel Theodor Khoury, Ludwig Hagemann, Peter Heine: Islam-Lexikon. History - idea - design. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1991, vol. 2, p. 491
  2. Jonathan Brockopp: Muhammad's Heirs. The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, 622-950. Cambridge University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-107-10666-6 . P. 105.
  3. Yasin Dutton (1999), pp. 11-13
  4. Examples in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Brill. Suffer. Vol. 10, p. 7, chapter C.
  5. The short monograph has only 14 pages. Edited by Muḥammad Zāhid ibn al-Ḥasan al-Kauṯarī. Cairo 1946
  6. Yasin Dutton (1999), pp. 28-29 and p. 192, note 86
  7. See: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Brill. Suffer. Vol. 10, p. 7: C. ( Works in the genre ), for teachers in particular and for an author's primary sources in general
  8. Fuat Sezgin (1967), p. 483; the date of birth (952) has to be corrected there according to the unanimous statements of Andalusian biographers. See Muḥammad ʿIzz ad-Dīn al-Miʿyār al-Idrīsī (ed.). Vol. 1 (Introduction), pp. 250-251
  9. Muḥammad ʿIzz ad-Dīn al-Miʿyār al-Idrīsī. Rabat 2002 with a companion volume on this literary genre and the author. The edition is based on three manuscripts, one of which is Fuat Sezgin: History of Arabic Literature. Brill, Leiden 1967. Vol. IS 457-465 cites only one
  10. Ed. Riḍā Ḫālid. Riyadh 2004
  11. See the introduction by the editor Riḍā Ḫālid, pp. 58–60; Carl Brockelmann calls the work title: History of Arabic Literature . Second edition adapted to the supplement volumes. Supplement volume 1, p. 298
  12. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Brill. Suffer. Vol. 4, p. 289
  13. ^ Complete edition Rabat, Vol. 1 (undated); Vol. 2-8: 1966-1983
  14. Manuela Marín: Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus . Vol. 1. Madrid 1988
  15. See note 28; Pp. 43-80
  16. Edited by Muḥammad al-Ḥiǧǧī et alii in 20 volumes. Beirut 1984-1991
  17. Michael Cook: A Koranic codex inherited by Mālik from his grandfather. In: Vassilios Christides and Theodore Papadopoulos (eds.): Proceedings of the sixth international congress of graeco-oriental and african studies. Nicosia 2000 (Graeco-Arabica. Vols VII-VIII, 1999-2000). Pp. 93-105
  18. Ignaz Goldziher: Muhammedanische Studien . Vol. 2. P. 213. Halle a. P. 1890. Printed in Cairo 1967.
  19. M. Muranyi: ʿAbd Allah b. Choice Life and work . Otto Harrassowitz. Wiesbaden. 1992. pp. 7-12.
  20. J. Schacht (1967), p. 312ff et passim .
  21. M. Muranyi (1987), p. 313
  22. Miklós Murányi : An old fragment of Medinan jurisprudence from Qairawān. Treatises for the customers of the Orient. Stuttgart 1985. Volume. XLVII, 3.
  23. Ignaz Goldziher (1890), p. 67
  24. RG Khoury (1981), passim.
  25. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Brill, suffering. Vol. 6, p. 262
  26. Cf. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley: al Muwatta: the first formulation of Islamic law . Kegan Paul Internat., London [a. a.], 1989. p. 212a.
  27. Some of them, also under different titles, are listed as manuscripts in Fuat Sezgin (1967), p. 464. No. IV
  28. Edited and commented on by Muḥammad al-Ḥāǧǧ an-Nāṣir. Beirut 1998 (2nd edition)
  29. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Brill. Suffer. Vol. 3, p. 24: Isnād ʿālī (a high isnād), which is used when there are very few links between the transmitter and the Prophet, or between him and a certain authority, is considered a valuable type on the ground that the fewer the links the fewer are the possible chances of error
  30. In adh-Dhahabī : chatīb dimaschq: Siyar aʿlām an-nubalāʾ , vol. 11, p. 420 and p. 425; with Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalānī : al-masdschid al-dschāmiʿ: Tahdhīb at-tahdhīb , vol. 11, p. 51
  31. Fuat Sezgin (1967), pp. 111-112

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