Schools of Religious Law

Maliki School

Also Known As Maliki The usual short form, as in Maliki jurisprudence.

Origin 730 to 800 CE

One of the four surviving Sunni schools of jurisprudence, named for Malik ibn Anas of Medina, whose Muwatta is among the earliest surviving works of Islamic law. The school gives distinctive weight to the settled practice of the people of Medina as evidence of the Prophet's own custom, alongside the Quran, hadith and analogy. It travelled west with the Muslim advance across North Africa and into al-Andalus and West Africa, where it remains the dominant school.

Facts

Giving

Standing Giving Expectation

The Maliki school shares the general 2.5% zakat rate but calculates a wider livestock base than the other three Sunni schools and the Imami school alike. Mughniyya's comparative fiqh text states the Malikis alone "levy zakat on both grazing and non-grazing livestock," where every other school exempts livestock an owner feeds rather than grazes freely; and the Malikis alone levy zakat "on both working as well as other animals without any difference," where the other schools exempt an ox used for tilling or a camel used for transport regardless of number. The Maliki position on debt is narrower than the Hanbali school's: debt only prevents zakat liability on gold and silver specifically, not on grain, livestock or minerals, so a debtor owing money still owes zakat on a herd or a harvest even while a gold or silver holding of the same value would be exempt. 4

Standard Rate Expected

Two and a half percent. 4

How the Expectation Is Enforced

Codified Obligation With Consequences 4

Origins

Origin Period

730 to 800 CE 1

Place of Origin

Medina, in the Hijaz 1

Founder

Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), whose teaching was carried on and systematized by his students, chief among them Ibn al-Qasim and, later, Sahnun in the Mudawwana 1

Origin of the Name

Named for its founding jurist, Malik ibn Anas 1

Status

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 2

Observance

Observance Note

The predominant school across North and West Africa today, and historically the school of al-Andalus. 3

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

The settled practice of Medina as a source of law 1

Alone among the four, treats the settled practice of Medina as a source that can override a sound hadith, and admits an unstated public benefit as a ground of ruling.

Organisation

Governance

Authority in trained scholars, with no central office 1

Ordination

Conferred by a teacher's certification of learning 1

Practice

Liturgical Language

Classical Arabic 2

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The Practice of Medina as a Source of Law

What distinguishes Maliki jurisprudence is a claim about evidence. Malik ibn Anas taught in Medina, the city where the Prophet lived and was buried, and he held that the settled practice of its people, amal ahl al-Madina, was itself proof of the sunna. If the whole community of the city did something continuously, that continuity was better evidence of what the Prophet had done than a single chain of transmission running back through one narrator who might have misremembered.

The Muwatta is the book that shows the method working. It is arranged by legal topic and moves between prophetic hadith, the reported opinions of Companions and their successors, and plain statements of what the people of Medina do, without treating the last of these as the weakest. That is why it is read as both a hadith collection and a law book, and why it is among the earliest surviving works of either kind.

The argument against the principle was made early and has never gone away. Al-Shafii, who had studied with Malik, objected that the custom of a city is a local habit and cannot outrank an authenticated report of what the Prophet said. The Maliki reply distinguishes practice transmitted continuously from the generation of the Prophet himself, which carries the weight, from later Medinan usage, which does not. The dispute is one of the clearest cases in Islamic law of two schools disagreeing not about a ruling but about what is allowed to count as a reason for one.

Sources The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual HistoryAhmed El Shamsy with Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

The Road West, and the Books the School Reads

Maliki law travelled with the armies, the scholars and the merchants who moved west, and it settled where they settled. It became the school of Ifriqiya, of the Maghrib, of al-Andalus for as long as Muslim rule lasted there, and of the Sahara and the Sudanic belt as far as the Niger. It remains dominant across North and West Africa today, and is followed in Upper Egypt, Sudan, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The literature the school works from is layered rather than single. The Mudawwana, compiled by Sahnun at Qayrawan out of the answers of Ibn al-Qasim, who had studied with Malik, is the foundational body of positions. The short Risala of Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani is the manual generations of students memorised. The Mukhtasar of Khalil ibn Ishaq, written in the fourteenth century, compresses the preferred rulings into a text so dense that the commentaries on it, rather than the text itself, are the working library of West African jurists, and copies of both are well represented in the surviving manuscript collections of Timbuktu.

Two Maliki instruments have had reach beyond the school. Istislah, ruling with the public interest in view where the texts are silent, gave jurists room to address questions the sources had not anticipated, and it is a Maliki argument that later reformers across the Muslim world reached for. Amal, the recognition that the established practice of a court can settle what the books leave open, gave regional judiciaries a way to adapt without claiming to legislate.

Sources The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.) with Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Islam

Branch Of

Sunni

One of the four surviving Sunni schools of jurisprudence.

Holds Element

99 Names of Allah

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Adhan

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Al-Azhar

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Almsgiving / Charity

Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Aqeeqah

Source Marriage and Slavery in Early IslamKecia Ali

Ashura

Source The Shi'is of IraqYitzhak Nakash

Asr

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Burial

Source The Islamic Understanding of Death and ResurrectionJane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Caliph

Source The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early CaliphateWilferd Madelung

Caliphate

Source God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political ThoughtPatricia Crone

Day of Arafah

Source The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy PlacesF. E. Peters

Dhuhr

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Eid al-Adha

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Eid al-Fitr

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Fajr

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Faqih

Source The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual HistoryAhmed El Shamsy

Fasting

Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Ghusl

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Ghusl al-Mayyit

Source The Islamic Understanding of Death and ResurrectionJane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Hafs 'an 'Asim

Accepted as canonical, but the reading recited across the Maliki west is Warsh, and Qalun in Libya and parts of Tunisia.

Source The Art of Reciting the Quran: The Recited Book in the Life of EgyptKristina Nelson

Hajj

Source The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy PlacesF. E. Peters

Halal

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Hijab

Source Quran 24:31 and 33:59

Ihram

Source The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy PlacesF. E. Peters

Imam

Source The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual HistoryAhmed El Shamsy

Iqama

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Isha

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Islamic New Year

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Isra and Mi'raj

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Istighfar

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Istikhara

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Istisqa

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Itikaf

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Khitan

Source Marriage and Slavery in Early IslamKecia Ali

Laylat al-Bara'ah

Mid Shaban is kept across the Maliki west as popular devotion rather than on the strength of a ruling of the school, and Malik is reported to have disapproved of singling the night out.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Laylat al-Qadr

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Madrasa

Source The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the WestGeorge Makdisi

Maghrib

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Marriage Ceremony

Source Marriage and Slavery in Early IslamKecia Ali

Masjid al-Haram and the Kaaba

Source The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy PlacesF. E. Peters

Mawlid

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Mina

Source The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy PlacesF. E. Peters

Misbaha

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Mufti

Source The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual HistoryAhmed El Shamsy

Nikah

Source Marriage and Slavery in Early IslamKecia Ali

Niqab

Worn in parts of the Maliki west as regional custom rather than required by a ruling of the school, which excepts the face and the hands.

Source Quran 24:31 and 33:59

Pilgrimage

Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Prayer

Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Prayer Rug

Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz

Qadi

Source The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual HistoryAhmed El Shamsy

Showing 1 to 50 of 89 in Holds Element, page 1 of 2.

Held Differently

Basmala

Maliki law omits the invocation at the head of the opening chapter in the obligatory prayer, holding that it is no part of the chapter.

Source Al-MuwattaMalik ibn Anas

Khums

In Maliki law khums is the fifth of the spoils of war set aside in the Quran, not a standing annual levy on surplus wealth.

Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Medina

Medina is a source of law in the Maliki school and not only a place of pilgrimage. The settled practice of its people carries evidential weight that no other school grants it.

Source Al-MuwattaMalik ibn Anas

Mujtahid

Independent reasoning in the Maliki school is exercised within its own method, and the classical schools argued at length over whether reasoning outside a school remained open at all.

Source Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?Wael B. Hallaq

Salat (Daily Prayer)

Maliki prayer is made with the arms hanging at the sides rather than folded over the body. It is the one posture that tells a Maliki congregation apart on sight.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Tarawih

The Maliki school follows the settled practice of the people of Medina on the Ramadan night prayer, which Malik records in the Muwatta, rather than the fixed count of twenty units the other Sunni schools keep.

Source Al-MuwattaMalik ibn Anas

Bidah

Innovation divides into good and bad, with local practice weighed as evidence.

Usul al-fiqh

Accepts istihsan and gives maslaha, the public interest, a standing that has made this school central to modern reformist theory.

Critiqued Here

Nahj al-Balagha

The attribution of the collection to Ali is disputed in Sunni scholarship, which reads it as a later compilation whose material cannot all be traced to him.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

The Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie

Sunni jurists across the schools questioned both the authority claimed for the 1989 ruling and its reach beyond the jurisdiction that issued it.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Alcohol and intoxicants are forbidden

Al-Masalih al-Mursala (Unstated Benefit)

Maliki jurists admit an unstated public benefit as a ground of ruling, which gives the school more room than the others in matters the sources do not address at all.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Al-Masalih al-Mursala: Unstated Public Benefit Is a Ground for Ruling

Amal Ahl al-Madina (The Practice of the People of Medina)

The settled practice of the people of Medina is a source of law in the Maliki school and in no other, on the reasoning that a whole city transmits the Prophet's practice more reliably than a single chain of narrators.

Source The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C.E.Christopher Melchert

Authority of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence

Fasting from dawn to dusk in Ramadan

Hadith

Hadith are affirmed as a source of law and doctrine in the Maliki school, drawn from the Sunni six-book canon shared across Sunni Islam.

Source Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in IslamAisha Y. Musa

Ijma (Scholarly Consensus)

Consensus binds, and the Maliki school gives particular weight to the consensus of the scholars of Medina.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Ijma: The Consensus of the Scholars Is Binding

Ijtihad and taqlid

Ijtihad and taqlid are both foundational method in the Maliki school, which gives particular weight to the practice of Medina as a source of law.

Source Authority, Continuity and Change in Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Istihsan (Juristic Preference)

Juristic preference is used in the Maliki school, where Malik is reported to have called it nine tenths of knowledge, though it is applied more narrowly than in Hanafi practice.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Istihsan: A Jurist May Set Aside a Strict Analogy for a Better Ruling

Meat must be slaughtered halal

Pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime

Pork is forbidden (haram)

Qiyas (Analogical Reasoning)

Analogy is accepted in the Maliki school, but it yields to the practice of Medina where the two conflict.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Qiyas: Analogical Reasoning Is a Source of Law

Sharia

Sharia, elaborated through Maliki jurisprudence, the school founded by Malik ibn Anas and historically dominant across North and West Africa, is affirmed as binding.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

The Quran

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

The Settled Practice of the People of Medina Is a Source of Law

The Sunna Recorded in Hadith Is a Binding Source of Law

Usury (riba) is forbidden

Position On

Haram

The forbidden category is affirmed in Maliki law as the strongest of the five rulings.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Jihad

Jihad is a chapter of Maliki law, and its treatment in the school shaped the legal argument over rising in the West African jihad movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Source Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A ReaderRudolph Peters

Jizya

The poll tax and the protected status it buys are treated in Maliki law, whose application across North and West Africa gave the category a long practical history.

Source Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to CoexistenceMilka Levy-Rubin

Kaba'ir and Sagha'ir

The division into grave and lesser sins is affirmed in Maliki doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Kaffara

Kaffara is affirmed in Maliki law as a defined expiation, and the Muwatta records the early Medinan rulings on it.

Source Al-MuwattaMalik ibn Anas

Sharia

The Maliki school, which gives distinctive weight to the practice of the people of Medina as evidence of the Sunna.

The five rulings

The five rulings are the classification of acts in Maliki jurisprudence.

Source Principles of Islamic JurisprudenceMohammad Hashim Kamali

Sources

1. The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C.E.

Christopher Melchert, Brill, 1997the formation of the Maliki schoolView the Source

2. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition

P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005entries on Malik ibn Anas and on the MalikiyyaView the Source

3. The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History

Ahmed El Shamsy, Cambridge University Press, 2013View the Source

4. The Five Schools of Islamic Law: Zakat

Muhammad Jawad Mughniyya, Al-Islam.org, hosting Muhammad Jawad Mughniyya's own comparative fiqh workView the Source

Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence

Milka Levy-Rubin, Cambridge University Press, 2011

Al-Muwatta

Malik ibn Anas, 795

The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places

F. E. Peters, Princeton University Press, 1994View the Source

Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice

Marion Holmes Katz, Cambridge University Press, 2013Publisher abstract

Quote, Publisher abstract

The five daily prayers (Salat) that constitute the second pillar of Islam deeply pervade the everyday life of observant Muslims.

View the Source

Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam

Kecia Ali, Harvard University Press, 2010View the Source

Fiqh al-Zakah

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Scientific Publishing Centre, King Abdulaziz University, 1969View the Source

God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought

Patricia Crone, Columbia University Press, 2004

The Art of Reciting the Quran: The Recited Book in the Life of Egypt

Kristina Nelson, University of Texas Press, 1985

The Amman Message

Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2008Summary, Three Points, point one

Quote, Summary, Three Points, point one

They specifically recognized the validity of all 8 Mathhabs (legal schools) of Sunni, Shi'a and Ibadhi Islam; of traditional Islamic Theology (Ash'arism); of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), and of true Salafi thought, and came to a precise definition of who is a Muslim.

View the Source

An Introduction to Islamic Law

Wael B. Hallaq, Cambridge University Press, 2009the practice of Medina as a source, and Maliki usulView the Source

The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection

Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Oxford University Press, 2002View the Source

Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader

Rudolph Peters, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996

Quran 24:31 and 33:59

Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World

Pascale Ghazaleh (ed.), American University in Cairo Press, 2011

The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West

George Makdisi, Edinburgh University Press, 1981View the Source

Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence

Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Islamic Texts Society, 2003View the Source

Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?

Wael B. Hallaq, International Journal of Middle East Studies 16:1, 1984

The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate

Wilferd Madelung, Cambridge University Press, 1997View the Source

Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History

Nehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 1981

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief), HarperOne, 2015View the Source

The Shi'is of Iraq

Yitzhak Nakash, Princeton University Press, 1994

Essays About This Entity (3 essays)

Usul al-fiqh Is Not One Theory, It Is Four Schools Disagreeing About What Counts as a Source

Accepts istihsan and gives maslaha, public interest, real standing

Read the Essay

Salat's Three Variant Accounts Split Into a Posture and a Substitution

Arms hanging at the sides, the one posture that tells a Maliki congregation apart on sight

Read the Essay

Four Sunni Schools Say the Same Thing Twice, About Two Different Words

One of the four Sunni schools repeating both findings

Read the Essay

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Maliki School

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Holds Element

Held Differently

Critiqued Here

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