Global Intifada

Currently Reading: “The Madinan Way” by Ibn Taymiyya which discusses “[t]he Soundness of the Basic Premises of the School of the People of Madina.”

Excerpt:

“As for Muwatta’ and books like it, they were written in the manner of the scholars who wrote at that time. In the time of the Messenger of Allah , may Allah bless him and grant him peace, people used to write down the Qur’an. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had forbidden them to write down anything other than the Qur’an from him. He said “Anyone who has written down anything except the Qur’an should efface it.” Then that was abrogated, according to the majority of the scholars, when writing was permitted for ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr. He said, “Dictate something for my father.’ He wrote a document for ‘Amr ibn Hazm. They said that the initial prohibition was out of fear of making the Qur’an like something else. Then when there was no danger of that, permission was granted. From that time on people used to write down what they wrote of the hadiths of the Messenger of Allah , may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and they also wrote down other things.

They did not organize that in book form until the time of the Followers of the Followers. Then knowledge was written down, and the first to write something about tafsir and something about the dead was Ibn Jurayj. Sa’id ibn Abi ‘Uraba, Hammad ibn Salama, Ma’mar and such men wrote on the subject of the Prophet, the Companions and the Followers. These are the books of fiqh, knowledge, roots and branches after the Qur’an. Malik wrote the Muwatta’ in this manner. He wrote after ‘Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, ‘Abdullah ibn Wahb, Waki’ ibn al-Jarrah, ‘Abdu’r-Rahman ibn Mahdi, ‘Abdu’r-Razzaq, Sa’id ibn Mansur and others.

These are the books which were under consideration in that time which ash-Shafi’i indicated when he stated, ‘There is no book after the Qur’an more correct than the Muwatta’ of Malik. His hadiths are sounder than the hadiths of his peers.’

It was the same when Imam Ahmad was asked about the hadiths and opinions of Malik and the hadiths and opinions of others. He preferred the hadiths and opinions of Malik over the hadiths and opinions of those people.

This confirms the hadith which at-Tirmidhi and others related from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, ‘A time is soon coming when people will beat their camels in search of knowledge and will not find a man of knowledge with more knowledge than the man of knowledge of Madina.’ It is related from more than one, and Ibn Jurayj, Ibn ‘Uyayna, and others stated that it refers to Malik.”

p 26 - 27

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