Publisher's description:
This book studies the legal reasoning of Mālik ibn Anas (d. 179 H./795 C.E.) in the Muwaṭṭa' and Mudawwana. Although focusing on Mālik, the book presents a broad comparative study of legal reasoning in the first three centuries of Islam. It reexamines the role of considered opinion (ra'y), dissent, and legal ḥadīths and challenges the paradigm that Muslim jurists ultimately concurred on a “four-source” (Qurʾān, sunna, consensus, and analogy) theory of law. Instead, Mālik and Medina emphasizes that the four Sunnī schools of law (madhāhib) emerged during the formative period as distinctive, consistent, yet largely unspoken legal methodologies and persistently maintained their independence and continuity over the next millennium.

Table of contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I
Chapter I: Mālik in Medina
Chapter II: An overview of Mālik's Legal Reasoning
Chapter III: Medinese Praxis through the Eyes of Others
Chapter IV: Medinese Praxis in the Eyes of the Mālikī Tradition
PART II
Chapter V: Mālik's Terminology
Chapter VII: the Sunna-Terms
Chapter VII: Terms Referring to the People of Knowledge in Medina
Chapter VIII: References to Medinese Praxis
Chapter IX: Amr-Terms Supported by Local Consensus
Chapter X: AN: Al-Amr ʿIndanā
Conclusion: Mālik and Medina in Perspective
Bibliography
Index