Mālik and Medina : Islamic legal reasoning in the formative period

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