Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020): 416-420

Book Review

This is a high-quality translation of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, not only because the translators are renowned scholars 
in the field of Islamic studies but also—
and mainly—because the participation 
of Mohammad Fadel, who specializes in 
Islamic law, ensures the accuracy of the 
terminology employed. 

This English translation of the Royal 
M o r o c c a n  E d i t i o n  o f  t h e  M u w a ṭ ṭ a ʾ 
responds to a series of initiatives started 
in Morocco aimed at producing academic 
English translations of the ummahāt 
(foundational texts) of the Mālikī school 
of law. Since the author of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, 
M ā l i k  b .  A n a s  ( d .  1 7 9 / 7 9 6 ) ,  w a s  t h e 
 eponym of the school and one of the 

1.  Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Mālik, the Muwaṭṭaʾ, and Sunni Identity,” Muwaṭṭaʾ Roundtable, Islamic Law Blog, 
December 7, 2019, https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/07/malik-muwatta-sunni-identity/.

2.  Mālik b. Anas, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, 2. At least twenty manuscripts have been preserved of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā’s 
recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ. See History of Andalusi Authors and Transmitters (HATA), 3. Fiqh: 9, http://
kohepocu.cchs.csic.es/flipbooks/3/#p=8.

3.  This was collated with the manuscripts of Abū ʿUmar al-Muntajālī (d. 350/961) and the autograph 

most prominent figures in the formation 
of early Sunni identity,1 the Muwaṭṭaʾ is a 
reasonable starting point, particularly as 
the previous translations into English are 
of a non-academic character.

The translation is based on the Royal 
M o r o c c a n  E d i t i o n  o f  t h e  M u w a ṭ ṭ a ʾ 
published in 2013, which in turn is based 
on “some of the most ancient North 
A f r i c a n  a n d  A n d a l u s i a n  m a n u s c r i p t s 
a v a i l a b l e . ” 2  S i x  m a n u s c r i p t s  a r e 
mentioned in the Arabic introduction to 
the Royal Moroccan Edition (pp. 39–72), 
namely, (1) a manuscript from al-Zāwiya 
al-Ḥamzawiyya preserved in Tunis that 
was copied in 487/1094, which was taken 
as the base manuscript for the edition;3  

Mālik b. Anas, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ: The Recension of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā 
al-Laythī; A Translation of the Royal Moroccan Edition.  
Translated with notes by Mohammad Fadel and Connell 
Monette. Harvard Series in Islamic Law 8 (Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press, 2019), 858 pp. Price: $95.00 (cloth).

Adday Hernández 
CSIC – Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del  

Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo (ILC) 

(adday.hernandez@cchs.csic.es)

© 2020 Adday Hernández. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and 
only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.

https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/07/malik-muwatta-sunni-identity/
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020)

417  •  AddAy Hernández

(2) the copy of Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ṭallāʿ  
(d. 497/1103), copied at the beginning 
o f  t h e  s e v e n t h / t h i r t e e n t h  c e n t u r y ;  
( 3 )  t h e  c o p y  o f  A b ū  M u ḥ a m m a d 
Shurayḥ al-Ruʿaynī (d. 539/1144), one 
of the companions of Ibn Ḥazm, who 
wrote the manuscript in his own hand 
f o r  h i s  s o n  M u ḥ a m m a d  b .  S h u r a y ḥ  
(d. 567/1171), probably copied during the 
first half of the sixth/twelfth century;  
(4) a manuscript copied in 595/1198;  
(5) a manuscript copied by ʿAbd Allāh  
b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Labbād  
(d. 613/1216); (6) a final manuscript 
copied around the same time as the latter. 
Unfortunately, the places where these 
manuscripts are kept are rarely mentioned 
(see pp. 67–72).4 Moreover, the editors 
report consulting previous editions as 
well, namely, (1) the Egyptian edition of 
Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, (2) the 
edition of Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf,5 and 
(3) the edition of Muṣṭafā al-Aʿẓamī.

Preceding the translation, we find three 
introductory chapters which helpfully 
situate the work in its context, although 
the titles of the first two are quite similar, 
making it somewhat difficult to distinguish 
their respective content. 

First, “The English Translation of the 
Royal Moroccan Edition” (pp. 1–6), the 
author of which is not specified, offers 
background to the initiative that led to the 
translation of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, as well as an 
account of the previous translations, the 

manuscript of Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Abī ʿĪsā (d. 339/950), chief judge of Cordoba and a 
relative of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā, the transmitter of this recension of the Muwaṭṭaʾ.

4.  In the electronic resource History of Andalusi Authors and Transmitters it is possible to find a list of 
manuscripts of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ with references to the libraries where they are 
kept and the catalogs in which these copies are listed (3. Fiqh: 9, http://kohepocu.cchs.csic.es/flipbooks/3/#p=8). 

5.  His critical edition of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s Tamhīd has been recently published. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Kitāb 
al-Tamhīd li-mā fī al-Muwaṭṭaʾ min al-maʿānī wa-l-asānīd, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, 17 vols. (London: 
Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2017). 

translation team, the process followed in  
the translation work, and the editorial 
conventions. 

Second, “Introduction to the Translation 
of the Royal Moroccan Edition of the 
Muwaṭṭaʾ, Recension of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā 
al-Laythī” (pp. 7–38) provides readers 
with a biography of Mālik b. Anas and the 
role he played within the Sunni tradition.  
It also contains a subsection on the place of 
the Muwaṭṭaʾ in modern scholarship and, 
finally, an overview of the work’s contents.

Third, “Arabic Introduction to the 
Royal Moroccan Edition of the Muwaṭṭaʾ” 
(pp. 39–72) is an English translation of the 
introduction to the Arabic edition from 
which the present translation has been 
made.

Regarding the language and style, 
the unsigned first introduction states 
t h a t  “ t h e  t r a n s l a t i o n  h a s  s o m e t i m e s 
adopted a very formal, even archaic tone, 
while at other times, a colloquial style 
was deemed more appropriate” (p. 3).  
T h i s  v a r i a t i o n  n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g ,  t h e 
language is always clear and idiomatic.  
As stated in the first introductory chapter, 
the text was initially translated by Drs. 
Ali Azeria and Mohamed Ouakrime of  
Al Akhawayn University, with the help of 
the editors of the Royal Moroccan Edition 
and two graduate assistants, Lahoucine 
Amedjar and Dawud Nasir. This initial 
translation relied on primary and secondary 
Mālikī sources. In a second stage, in order 

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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020)

Mālik b. Anas’s Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ  •  418

to make the text accessible to modern legal 
scholars, nonspecialists in Islamic law, 
and English-speaking Muslims, Fadel 
adapted the translation to contemporary 
legal terminology in English. In a third 
stage, Fadel and Monette modified the 
translation to produce an easily readable 
text, which occasionally led them to depart 
from the original structure and sense of 
the Arabic. Both the decision to translate 
every term into English and the specific 
translation choices made for each term 
can be debated.6 For example, whereas the 
term ribā has usually been translated as 
“usury,” it is here translated as “unlawful 
profit.” Although it is true that “usury” 
is not an accurate translation,7 a profit 
obtained from selling wine or pork is 
also unlawful but does not constitute 
ribā, so perhaps “interest” would have 
been a more appropriate translation. 
This kind of critique, however, does not 
detract from the merit of the translation, 
which constitutes, in my view, a valuable 
scholarly accomplishment.

6.  Kecia Ali, for instance, has questioned the decision to translate into English terms that are not objects of 
comparative legal study. In particular, she focused on the translation of the terms ama and jāriya as “handmaiden,” 
a term that she considers archaic and ambiguous and one that does not reflect the reality of slavery in the 
period in which the Muwaṭṭaʾ was composed. Kecia Ali, “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” Muwaṭṭaʾ Roundtable, Islamic 
Law Blog, December 6, 2019, https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%e1%b9%ad%e1%b9%ada%ca%be-
roundtable-the-handmaidens-tale/.

7.  On the meaning of ribā and usury, see Adday Hernández, El valor del tiempo: Doctrina jurídica de la usura 
(ribā) en el Occidente islámico medieval (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2016).

8.  Hady Roger Idris, “Reflections on Mālikism under the Umayyads of Spain”, in The formation of al-Andalus. 
Part 2: Language, religion, culture and the sciences, ed. Maribel Fierro and Julio Samsó, 85–101, (Aldershot: 
Ashgate Variorum, 1998), 92–95.

9.  Ḥusayn Mu’nis (Hussain Monès), “The role of men of religion in the history of Muslim Spain up to the 
end of the caliphate,” in The formation of al-Andalus. Part 2: Language, religion, culture and the sciences, ed. 
Maribel Fierro and Julio Samsó (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1998), 51–84.

10.  Maribel Fierro, “Proto-Malikis, Malikis and Reformed Malikis,” in The Islamic School of Law: Evolution, 
Devolution, and Progress, ed. Peri J. Bearman, Rudolph Peters, and Frank E. Vogel, 57–76 (Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press, 2005), 62; Alfonso Carmona, “The Introduction of Malik’s Teachings in al-Andalus,” in 
Bearman, Peters, and Vogel, Islamic School of Law, 41–56.

There is little to say about the structure 
of the translation, since it retains the 
structure of the original work, which is the 
same as that followed by the later manuals 
of Mālikī fiqh. 

One does note, however, the absence 
of information on the transmitter of this 
version of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā 
al-Laythī (d. 234/848): his origins, his 
powerful position in Cordoba, and how 
his many disciples accorded him fame and 
spread his recension of the work. It would 
also have been helpful for the volume to 
have offered a more detailed account 
of the introduction of the Muwaṭṭaʾ in 
the Islamic West, a process linked to the 
spread of Mālikism. 

According to Hady Roger Idris,8 and 
contrary to what Muʾnis affirms, 9 the 
introduction of Mālik’s doctrine was 
not supported by the Umayyad dynasty 
o f  C o r d o b a .  I n s t e a d ,  i t  w a s  a d o p t e d 
independently by ʿulamāʾ educated in 
the Islamic East who transmitted it after 
their return and was only later endorsed 
by the Umayyads.10 Of the two main legal 

https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%e1%b9%ad%e1%b9%ada%ca%be-roundtable-the-handmaidens-tale/
https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%e1%b9%ad%e1%b9%ada%ca%be-roundtable-the-handmaidens-tale/
https://bibliographies--brillonline--com.csic.debiblio.com/entries/index-islamicus/the-role-of-men-of-religion-in-the-history-of-muslim-spain-up-to-the-end-of-the-caliphate-A217831?s.num=6&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.index-islamicus&s.q=mu%27nis+husayn
https://bibliographies--brillonline--com.csic.debiblio.com/entries/index-islamicus/the-role-of-men-of-religion-in-the-history-of-muslim-spain-up-to-the-end-of-the-caliphate-A217831?s.num=6&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.index-islamicus&s.q=mu%27nis+husayn


Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020)

419  •  AddAy Hernández

trends found between the late second/
eighth and the early third/ninth centuries, 
Mālikism was the only possible choice, 
since Ḥanafism had been adopted by the 
Abbasids and was thus perceived by the 
Umayyads, who opposed its introduction 
in al-Andalus, as the doctrine of the 
enemy. In addition, the Muwaṭṭaʾ had a 
series of features that dovetailed with fit 
the ideological program of the Umayyads. 
For instance, according to Maribel Fierro, 
the criticisms of the “East” (al-mashriq,  
a reference to Iraq) found in the text fit 
the Umayyads’ anti-Abbasid policies, and 
the report included in the Muwaṭṭaʾ on the 
taxes taken by ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān from the 
Berbers of the Maghrib demonstrated that 
their conversion to Islam took place under 
Umayyad rule, an argument that was used 
to fight the spread of Fāṭimid influence in 
North Africa.11 

There is an academic debate about 
whether we can talk about a real affiliation 
by the Andalusī jurists to the Mālikī 
madhhab as such in Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā’s 
t i m e s ,  o r  w h e t h e r  i t  w o u l d  b e  m o r e 
appropriate to talk about geographical 
schools, the Medinese/Egyptian school  
 

11.  Maribel Fierro, “Medina, the Mashriq, and the Maghrib in the Recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ by the 
Cordoban Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Laythī,” Muwaṭṭaʾ Roundtable, Islamic Law Blog, December 6, 2019, https://
islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BE-roundtable-medina-the-mashriq-
and-the-maghrib-in-the-recension-of-maliks-muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BC-by-the-cordo-
ban-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-b-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-al/.

12.  See, for instance, Knut Vikør, Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law (London: Hurst and 
Co., 2005), 98; Ana Fernández Félix, “Biografías de alfaquíes: La generación de al-‘Utbī,” in Biografías y género 
biográfico en el occidente islámico, ed. María Luisa Avila Navarro, 141–75 (Granada: CSIC, 1997), 165; Miklos 
Muranyi, “A Unique Manuscript from Kairouan in the British Library: The Samāʿ-Work of Ibn al-Qāsim al-ʿUtaqī 
and Issues of Methodology,” in Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. Herbert Berg, 325–68 
(Leiden: Brill, 2003); Fierro, “Proto-Malikis,” 65.

13.  Maribel Fierro, “El alfaquí beréber Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Layṯī (m. 234/848), ‘El inteligente de al-Andalus,’” 
in Ávila Navarro, Biografías y género biográfico, 269–344, at 334.

14.  Fierro, “El alfaquí beréber,” 330.
15.  Manuela Marín, “Una familia de ulemas cordobeses: Los Banū Abī ʿĪsà,” Al-Qanṭara 6 (1985): 291–320.

in this particular case.12 However, the 
influence exerted by Mālik b. Anas in the 
Islamic West at the time is undeniable, 
regardless of whether the Mālikī school 
had already taken form. During the fourth/
tenth century, the Muwaṭṭaʾ became 
t h e  c a n o n i c a l  ḥ a d ī t h  c o m p i l a t i o n  i n 
al-Andalus, although apparently it did not 
influence fiqh substantially in that period.13 
Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā, who had transmitted it 
to al-Andalus, was then regarded as the 
introducer of the orthodox canon, which 
included both the Muwaṭṭaʾ in relation 
to ḥadīth and Nāfiʿ’s (d. 169/785) qirāʾa 
(reading variant) of the Qurʾan.14

Y a ḥ y ā  b .  Y a ḥ y ā  w a s  a n  A n d a l u s ī 
scholar of Berber origin (belonging to the 
Maṣmūda from Tangier and Ceuta) whose 
family, known as the Banū Abī ʿĪsā,15 had 
settled in al-Andalus at the time of the 
conquests and supported the Umayyads. By 
Yaḥyā’s generation, the family had already 
reached a high degree of Arabization and 
Islamization and was very well situated 
in Andalusī society. Yaḥyā is said to have 
studied with Mālik, Nāfiʿ, and al-Layth  
b. Saʿd (d. 174/791), but the contradictions  
 
 

https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BE-roundtable-medina-the-mashriq-and-the-maghrib-in-the-recension-of-maliks-muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BC-by-the-cordoban-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-b-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-al/
https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BE-roundtable-medina-the-mashriq-and-the-maghrib-in-the-recension-of-maliks-muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BC-by-the-cordoban-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-b-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-al/
https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BE-roundtable-medina-the-mashriq-and-the-maghrib-in-the-recension-of-maliks-muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BC-by-the-cordoban-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-b-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-al/
https://islamiclaw.blog/2019/12/06/muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BE-roundtable-medina-the-mashriq-and-the-maghrib-in-the-recension-of-maliks-muwa%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa%CA%BC-by-the-cordoban-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-b-ya%E1%B8%A5ya-al/


Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020)

Mālik b. Anas’s Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ  •  420

found in the sources, together with the fact 
that the formal criteria followed in Yaḥyā 
b. Yaḥyā’s time regarding the transmission 
of texts were not as strict as those imposed 
from the third/ninth century onward, 
have led some scholars, such as Maribel 
Fierro, if not to deny, at least to question 
this direct contact.16 There are no doubts, 
however, about the fact that he attended 
the lessons of the Egyptian disciples of 
Mālik, including Ibn al-Qāsim (d. 191/806), 
whose doctrine would become the most 
widely followed in al-Andalus.

After the “traditionalization” of fiqh 
(jurisprudence) initiated by al-Shāfiʿī,17 
the Muwaṭṭaʾ, whose transmission chains 
(isnāds) do not conform to the strict 
standards imposed by the supporters of 
this traditionalization, was used by those 
ʿulamāʾ who sought an intermediat e 
position between raʾy (personal opinion) 
and ḥadīth, such as Ibn Waḍḍāḥ (d. 286/ 
900). The fact that the isnāds were not 
complete meant that the Muwaṭṭaʾ was not 
considered a valid source of ḥadīth after 
the canonization of Muslim’s and Bukhārī’s 
Ṣaḥīḥayn.18 However, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr  
(d. 463/1071) managed to complete all the 
chains except four in his Kitāb al-Tamhīd 
li-mā fī al-Muwaṭṭaʾ min al-maʿānī wa-l-

16.  Fierro, “El alfaquí beréber,” 329–330.
17.  See, for instance, Joseph E. Lowry, Early Islamic Legal Theory: The “Risāla” of Muhammad Ibn Idrīs 

Al-Shāfiʿī (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 165–205 (chap. 3: “Prophetic Sunna and Hadith in the Risāla”); Ahmed El Shamsy, 
The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
2015), 65–68 (“Al-Shāfiʿī’s Critique of Mālik”).

18.  Jonathan Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 232–234.

asānīd, with the aim of adapting the 
Muwaṭṭaʾ to the principles established by 
the discipline of ḥadīth (ʿilm al-ḥadīth) 
and providing Mālik’s work with the same 
legitimacy that had been granted to the 
Ṣaḥīḥayn.

In summary, this is a highly welcome 
contribution, especially for researchers 
working on subjects related to Islamic 
law in the premodern Islamic West, and 
there is no doubt that it will become one 
of the main reference sources in this field.  
The content is clear and accurate and the 
Arabic technical terms related to the key 
concepts discussed in each chapter are 
provided in transcription between brackets 
the first time they appear, which not 
only makes it easier to locate the specific 
expression in the Arabic text but also eases 
the reading of the English. The indexes are 
extremely useful for finding specific names 
and terms and allow the reader to identify 
both the chapters specifically devoted to 
particular concepts and the occasional 
occurrences of those concepts in other 
chapters. 

T h i s  t r u s t w o r t h y  t r a n s l a t i o n  w i l l 
contribute to raising the quality of future 
studies by helping academic researchers in 
Islamic studies interpret Mālik’s work.