Islamic Law and Society Islamic Law and Society 16 (2009) 231-238 www.brill.nl/ils

Book Reviews

Original Islam. Malik and the madhhab of Madina. By Yasin Dutton. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Series: Culture and civilization in the Middle East. Pp. xiii + 220. ISBN 978-0-415-33813-4. $160.00.

Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Rāʿī, a Mālikī from Nasrid Granada, settled in Egypt, where he died in 853/1449. He excelled mostly in grammar, but he also wrote a book on the merits of the Medinese jurist Mālik b. Anas and the legal school of which Mālik is considered the eponym. The title of this book is Intiṣār al-faqīr al-sālik li-tarjīḥ madhhab al-imām al-kabīr Mālik. Al-Rāʿī intended it to provide the Mālikīs in Egypt with arguments in favor of their school. In Original Islam, Dutton has pro­vided a translation of al-Rāʿī’s Intiṣār and rendered its full title as “Help for the Needy Traveller in Giving Preference to the Great Imām Malik.” This is a very readable translation and a welcome addition to the not so many Islamic legal texts available in Western languages. It is preceded by an introduction to al-Rāʿī and his work and is followed by a glossary, an index of names and a bibliography. Al-Rāʿī’s book is a fascinating text that draws heavily on previous Mālikī works extolling the excellence and superiority of Mālik b. Anas over the other great jurists (especially Abū Ḥanīfa, Shāfiʿī and Ibn Ḥanbal), as well as the superiority of the school named after him, over the other Sunni legal schools. The main reasons given to support this superiority are: a Prophetic hadith—found in al-Tirmidhī and al-Nasāʾī—praising the knowledge of the ʿālim of Medina, who is identified with Mālik himself; another Prophetic hadith—quoted by Muslim—stating that the people of the West will con­ tinue to be on the path of truth until the Hour comes (an adherence to the right path, understood by the Mālikīs to be ensured by the adoption of Mālikism); and the fact that all the other “founders” of the Sunni legal schools are known to have praised Mālik. In addition to these three reasons which constitute the main thread of al-Rāʿī’s book, it contains much material illustrating the many blocks on which Islamic religious and legal authority have usually been built. Thus, we find not only statements about Mālik’s profound knowledge of religious matters, but also anecdotes about his moral probity: for example, his never having entered a public bath (p. 56); his staunch dis­like of innovators and heretics; his relationships with rulers and other officials; his en­­ durance of hardship, including a public parade during which he kept repeating the legal opinion for which he had been punished and insisting on its validity (p. 59), as well as the possibility of counting Mālik among the Successors of the Prophet (p. 94). We are also informed of other traits of Mālik’s character, like his forbearance when he

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156851909X451493 232 Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 16 (2009) 231-238 was bitten by a scorpion sixteen times but did not cease reading Prophetic hadith (p. 63). This is exactly the kind of material that contributes to transforming Mālik b. Anas into some­one who was chosen for a special destiny. Al-Rāʿī includes a report recording that Ibn al-Qāsim, one of Mālik’s most influential pupils, saw written on his master’s thigh “in the writing of Divine Power, ‘Mālik is Allāh’s proof against His creation’” (p. 51). Although al-Rāʿī considers this physical trait to be unlikely, he records it, and despite all the cautions about its improbability, the report makes a strong impression on the reader because of its theological implications. It is also recorded that there was a secret between Mālik and God (p. 65). The tension between what we can call the “normality” of Mālik and the Mālikī school within Sunni diversity and the superior rank of both founder and madhhab is pervasive in al-Rāʿī’s work. One of the many examples of this tension is found on pp. 72-3. A Mālikī who is debating with a Shāfiʿī about the relative merits of their respective schools starts by stating that all four madhāhib are true and all of them good, although the Shāfiʿī should acknowledge Mālikī superiority. Immediately thereafter comes the story of how the caliph al-Manṣūr intended to write Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ in letters of gold and have it hung on the Kaʿba to make people follow it, but Mālik refused. However, a Mālikī voiced his regret for the missed opportunity by saying that had the caliph carried out his plan, he would have “removed all confusion and prejudice between people.” The main adversary of Mālikism in the Islamic West was Ibn Ḥazm, who often made fun of the extremes to which Mālikīs went in their praise of and veneration for Mālik (for example, see p. 45). Similar criticism had already been voiced by Shāfiʿī, who heard that some people in al-Andalus were wearing a headgear (qalansuwa) of Mālik’s to ask for rain and also that they used to oppose sayings of the Prophet’s by quoting Mālik’s opinions (p. 96). This extraordinary reverence for Mālik was studied by Abdelmajid Turki in his “La vénération pour Mālik et la physionomie du malikisme andalou” (Studia Islamica XXXIII [1971], reprinted in his Théologiens et juristes de l’Espagne musulmane, aspects polémiques [Paris, 1982]). Dutton might have referred to this study, as well as to others which address some of the issues dealt with by al-Rāʿī, notably Robert Brunschvig’s “Polémiques médiévales autour du rite de Malik”(Al- Andalus XV [1950]). Brunschvig’s article offers an excellent analysis of the criticisms Mālikīs faced from other schools and the arguments, both defensive and offensive, they developed to counteract them. This article also provides an overview of the trans­ formation undergone by Mālikism during this process. A good example of such trans­ formation can be found in the commentary that Averroes’ grandfather, Ibn Rushd al-Jadd (d. 520/1126), wrote of a 3rd/9th-century Mālikī legal text (see Ana Fernández Félix in her book Cuestiones jurídicas del islam temprano. La ʿUtbiyya y el proceso de formación de la sociedad islámica andalusí [Madrid: CSIC, 2003]). Ibn Rushd’s com­ mentary successfully aimed at integrating early Mālikī doctrine into the framework of the legal methodology (uṣūl al-fiqh) that had developed under the influence of Shāfiʿīsm. As for our knowledge of early Mālikī doctrine, it has been greatly enhanced by the research carried out by scholars such a Miklos Muranyi and Jonathan Brockopp.