Malik and Medina

This book studies the legal reasoning of Malik ibn Anas (d. 179 H./795 C.E.) in the Muwatta' and Mudawwana. Although focusing on Malik, 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 hadiths and challenges the paradigm that Muslim jurists ultimately concurred on a "e;four-source"e; (Qur?an, sunna, consensus, and analogy) theory of law. Instead, Malik and Medina emphasizes that the four Sunni schools of law (madhahib) emerged during the formative period as distinctive, consistent, yet largely unspoken legal methodologies and persistently maintained their independence and continuity over the next millennium.