Introduction to Translation of Malik's Muwatta

Translators: `A'isha `Abdarahman at-Tarjumana and Ya`qub Johnson

Malik's Muwatta ("the well-trodden path") is a collection of two items:

the sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) (also known as the sunnah). The reports of the Prophet's sayings and deeds are called ahadith.
the legal opinions and decisions of the Prophet's Companions, their successors, and some later authorities.

Malik (full name Malik bin Anas bin Malik bin Abu Amir Al-Asbahi) was born in 93 A.H. and died in 179 A.H. He lived most of his life in Madinah, the city in which the Prophet (pbuh) settled in. He was a preeminent scholar of Islam, and is the originator of the Maliki judicial school of thought. He is reputed to have had over one thousand students. During Malik's lifetime, he steadily revised his Muwatta, so it reflects over forty years of his learning and knowledge. It contains a few thousand hadith.

It is important to realize, however, that Malik's collection is not complete: there are other scholars who worked as Malik did and collected other reports.

Note for WWW Developers

Malik's Muwatta is divided into 61 books on different subjects, each book containing many ahadith. The numbering system used by Malik is consecutive per book.

MSA-USC has placed anchors (hyperlinks) for all the ahadith in the translations presented here. Prospective developers of Islamic sites may find it useful to refer to these anchors. For example, one could use the anchors to create an 'active' subject index into the Muwatta.

The format of the anchor names for the translated ahadith in Malik's Muwatta is very simple:

DDD.N.N.N

where D stands for a digit, and N is a number of (several) digits. The first three digits identify the book, and the remaining numbers identify the report number. The format of the file names (one per book) is:

DDD.mmt.html

The three digits are the book number, and mmt stands for Malik's Muwatta Translation. Given the anchor, you can tell which file it is found in (e.g. 043.43.7.5 is found in 043.mmt.html).

For example, the following snippet of HTML should take you to book 28, number 28.20.46:

<a href="028.mmt.html#028.28.20.46">SAMPLE</a>

We have taken some pains to remove typos, and scanning/format errors from these files, but it is more than likely that quite a few still remain. PLEASE SEND US ANY CORRECTIONS OR SUGGESTIONS!

MSA-USC is indebted to ISL Software, makers of the WinAlim Islamic database, for donating this collection of ahadith in electronic format. The collection may absolutely NOT be copied or used for commercial gain.

Direct your comments to [email protected].

Enjoy!

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