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

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 classic Moroccan text from which generations learnt the basics of Islam, Iman and Ihsan.

Kitab Ash-Shifa bi ta'rif huquq al-Mustafa, (Healing by the recognition of the Rights of the Chosen One), of Qadi 'Iyad (d. 544H/1149CE) is perhaps the most frequently used and commented upon handbook in which the Prophet's, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, life, his qualities and his miracles are described in every detail. Generally known by its short title, Ash-Shifa, this work was so highly admired throughout the Muslim world that it soon acquired a sanctity of its own for it is said: "If Ash-Shifa is found in a house, this house will not suffer any harm... when a sick person reads it or it is recited to him, Allah will restore his health." Ash-Shifa gathers together all that is necessary to acquaint the reader with the true stature of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, with the esteem and respect which is due to him, and with the verdict regarding anyone who does not fulfil what his stature demands or who attempts to denigrate his supreme status - even by as much as a nail paring. QADI 'IYAD His full name was Abu al-Fadl 'Iyad ibn Musa ibn 'Iyad ibn 'Imran ibn Musa ibn Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah ibn Musa ibn 'Iyad al-Yahsubi, the famous Imam. He was born in Ceuta in the month of Sha'ban, 496 AH and lived there although his family originated from Andalusia. According to his son, Muhammad, his ancestors originated in Andalusia and then moved to the city of Fes, staying in the Qarawiyyin at some point. 'Imrun moved to Ceuta after having lived in Fes. Qadi 'Iyad was the Imam of his time in hadith and its sciences. He was a scholar of tafsir and its sciences, a faqih in usul, a scholar in grammar, language and Arabic speech, as well as in the battles and lineages of the Arabs. He had insight into judgements and had the legal competence to write contracts. He preserved and knew the Maliki madhhab. He was an excellent poet, familiar with literature and an eloquent orator. He was steadfast, forbearing and a good companion. He was generous and gave a lot of sadaqa. He was constant in action and tenacious in the truth. He died in Marrakesh in the month of Jumada al-Akhira or Ramadan in 544 AH. AISHA BEWLEY Aisha Abdurrahman at Tarjumana Bewley is one of today's most prolific translators of classical Arabic works into English. For more than thirty-five years she has been concerned with making the contents of many classical Arabic works more accessible to English-speaking readers. She is co-translator of The Noble Qur'an A New Rendering of its Meaning in English. Other works include Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik, The Meaning of Man, Mu'awiya - Restorer of the Muslim Faith, A Glossary of Islamic Terms, Islam: The Empowering of Women and Muslim Women, a Biographical Dictionary.

"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"."--

Original Islam investigates the primacy of Madinan Islam and the madhhab (school of law) of its main exponent, Malik ibn Anas. It contains an annotated translation of Intisar al-faqir al-salik li-tarjih madhhab al-Imam al-kabir Malik, which was written by al-Ra'i, a fifteenth-century Andalusian scholar resident in Cairo. This book includes: a comprehensive section on the scholarly credentials of the great eighth-century Madinan jurist Malik ibn Anas a detailed examination of a number of theoretical and practical disputed legal issues examples of the inter-madhhab rivalry and prejudice prevalent in fifteenth-century Cairo an extensive introduction giving background information on al-Ra’i and his life and times. It also highlights the significance of the text for contemporary Muslim discourse, in which both "modernist" and "fundamentalist" elements often equate the concept of madhhab with an outmoded tradition which must be rejected as irrelevant to the practice of Islam in a globalized world. This book aims to put this ongoing controversy about madhhab, particularly the Maliki madhhab and its "pre-madhhab" Madinan origins, on a surer footing. Original Islam provides access to a hitherto little known area of Islamic law and is essential reading for those with interests in this area.