Al-Muwatta

The first formulation of Islamic Law based on the behaviour of the people of Madinah during the time of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the great Companions, Al-Muwatta is the blueprint for a just and radiant society: the earliest, clearest, cleanest record of salafi Islam. It is the first of the sahih works, long pre-dating al-Bukhari and Muslim. In addition, the Muwa¿¿a' contains a record of the practice ('amal) of the people of Madinah of the first generations, a transmission of the ethos that permeated the city, and Imam Malik's painstaking clarification of the Sunna, the ¿adiths, the practice and legal judgements. Imam Malik's (93 AH/711 CE - 179 AH/795 CE) full name is Malik ibn Anas ibn Malik ibn Abi 'Amir al-A¿ba¿i and he was related to Dhu A¿ba¿, a sub-tribe of ¿imyar. He was instructed in the learning and recitation of the Noble Qur'an by Imam Nafi' ibn 'Abd ar-Ra¿man ibn Abi Nu'aym, the Imam of the reciters of Madina and one of the 'seven reciters'. Among the huge number of his teachers in ¿adith and fiqh were Nafi', the mawla of 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar, and Ibn Shihab az-Zuhri. He sat to give fatwa when he was seventeen years old after seventy Imams had testified that he was worthy to give fatwa and teach. His own students included Imam ash-Shafi'i and Imam Muhammad ibn al-¿asan ash-Shaybani the ¿anafi mujtahid, as well as a great number of Imams of ¿adith and fiqh, and thus he is known as Imam al-A'immah 'the Imam of the Imams'. He is recognised to be the subject of the hadith from Abu Hurayra: "The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him said, 'There will come a time when the people will beat the livers of their camels in search of knowledge and they will not find an 'alim with more knowledge than the 'alim of Madina.'" Aisha Abdurrahman 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, with her husband Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley, of The Noble Qur'an, a New Rendering of its Meaning in English. Other works include her translation of The Meaning of Man of Sidi Ali al-Jamal, Muhammad Messenger of Allah - ash-Shifa of Qadi 'Iyad, Muhammad ibn Sa'd's Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir, and of her own authorship: Mu'awiya - Restorer of the Muslim Faith, A Glossary of Islamic Terms, Islam: The Empowering of Women and Muslim Women, a Biographical Dictionary.