Malik ibn Anas

Malik ibn Anas (also called Imam Malik) was one of the most influential jurists of early Islam. He was born in Medina around 93 AH / 711 CE; sources place his birth anywhere between roughly 708 and 716, so the year is a traditional estimate rather than a fixed date. He spent essentially his whole life in Medina, the Prophet's city, which by then was home to many descendants of the Prophet's Companions. According to the standard biographies, he left the city only to make the hajj and umra (the major and minor pilgrimages) to Mecca.

Malik studied with leading Medinan scholars of hadith (reports of the Prophet's words and deeds) and fiqh (jurisprudence), among them Nafi', Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, and Rabi'a al-Ra'y. He is best known for compiling al-Muwatta' ("the well-trodden path"), one of the earliest surviving books of Islamic law and hadith. His distinctive method gave special weight to the amal — the living practice — of the people of Medina as evidence of the Prophet's sunna.

The school of law that later formed around his teachings, the Maliki madhhab, became one of the four enduring Sunni legal schools. Tradition reports that he was flogged on the order of a Medinan governor over a legal opinion touching a loyalty oath, and that the caliphs al-Mansur and Harun al-Rashid wished to impose al-Muwatta' as a single law for the empire — which he is said to have declined, holding that scholarly diversity served the community. He died in Medina around 179 AH / 795 CE and is reported to be buried in the Baqi' cemetery.