After The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur'an, the Muwaṭṭa’ and Madinan ʿAmal (1999) and Original Islam: Malik and the Madhhab of Madina (2007), Yasin Dutton presents in this book a new reading of Mālik's Muwaṭṭa’, to “fill certain gaps and develop certain arguments, in order to arrive at a better understanding of the first period of Islam and its subsequent development” (p. 1). The introduction clarifies the purpose of his study: to go beyond the “very critical, and often ignorant” readings (p. 4) of Mālik and Mālikism proposed by Western scholars. After expressing the intention of his commendable project, the author subsequently develops his arguments over five chapters.
In the first chapter, “The man and his family” (pp. 9–13), the author reconstructs the biography of Mālik b. Anas, taking up what he had left in footnotes in his Origins of Islamic Law and relying on the Tartīb al-madārik of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149). The second chapter, “His teachers” (pp. 15–37), follows a similar logic: Dutton draws on the list of Mālik's masters that he published in his first book, and offers short biographies of these scholars, taken mainly from al-Tahmīd of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1071). The author carefully selects the sources he uses in order to present and justify his discourse. Texts and authors are not contextualized within their cultural and social environment, nor within the broader history of Islamic law or of the Māliki maḏhab. Moreover, Dutton relies exclusively on Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, while their accounts should be compared with other sources.
The third chapter, “al-Muwaṭṭa’” (pp. 39–61), is divided into three subsections: after a brief apologetic introduction aiming to put forward the “high standing” and the “excellence” of Mālik (p. 39), the author returns to the question of the transmission of the Muwaṭṭa’. As in the previous chapter, he relies principally on the list of transmitters of the Muwaṭṭa’ already established in his Origins of Islamic Law. Dutton's objective is to bestow upon the work of Mālik b. Anas “a very strong textual tradition which – excepting only the Quran – is unparalleled in the history of Islam” (p. 59). However, the attentive reader cannot subscribe to his argument since the author's methodology suffers from several shortcomings. Not only does Dutton lean towards an uncritical reading of sources, he also neglects part of the scientific literature on the subject. Regarding the transmissions of the Muwaṭṭa’ by Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Layṯī (p. 41), the author fails to mention Maribel Fierro's observations that he never studied under Mālik's authority. On Ibn Wahb's transmission (pp. 44–5), he does not mention any of Miklos Muranyi's works. In the second part of the third chapter (“The differences between the transmissions”, pp. 45–59), Dutton argues that the various extant recensions of the Muwaṭṭa’, except that of al-Šaybanī, are all close to each other, and this would be evidence of a “highly reliable text” (p. 59). Yet the author's conclusions are based on the study of only three short extracts from the Muwaṭṭa’, and not on a complete and detailed analysis of all the recensions. In the final part of the third chapter (“The form and general content of the Muwaṭṭa’”, pp. 59–61), Dutton attempts to demonstrate that the Muwaṭṭa’ follows a logical organization, which would make Mālik the recipient of a discontinued tradition since the Prophet: “The ʿamal of the people of Medina” (pp. 63–78).
Dutton proposes a definition of ʿamal based on late authors such as al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149) and Ibn Ḥamdūn (d. 1273/1856). On the basis of three examples taken from the Muwaṭṭa’, he analyses the use of ʿamal by Mālik as a tool for commenting on the Quranic text (tafsīr) or the prophetic sunna (šarḥ). The most extensively treated example is “How to hold one's hands when doing the prayer” (pp. 74–8), reminiscent of the subject of a previous article by the same author. In his discussion, Dutton relies on a single pronouncement of Ibn al-Qāsim from the Mudawwana in favour of sadl, concluding that this “clearly indicates a lack of existential knowledge of this practice [i.e. practice of the qabḍ]”. However, others among Mālik's disciples, like Ašhab (d. 204/819), argued that nothing was wrong (lā ba's) with the practice of qabḍ. Ibn Nāfiʿ (d. 186/802) even stated that this practice is an established sunna, and Ibn al-Māǧišūn (d. 212/827) and Muṭarrif (d. 220/835) argued that Mālik preferred (yastaḥsinu) qabḍ to sadl (see the treatment of this issue by Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Kitāb iḫtilāl aqwāl Mālik wa-aṣḥābi-hi, ed. M. Muranyi, Ḥ.M. Laḥmar, Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, Beirut, 2003, p. 107). The reader is left wondering whether Dutton simply ignored these statements or voluntarily put them aside.
In the last chapter, the author offers an overview of modern and classical controversies regarding the issue of Medinan ʿamal (pp. 79–105). His analysis is at times superficial (in particular when dealing with ancient controversies between Mālik and al-Šaybanī, al-Šāfiʿī, and al-Layṯ b. Saʿd), but he provides useful translations from Arabic into English, although entire parts of this section appear to be borrowed from his previous work, Original Islam.
In sum, Yasin Dutton's new book adds little to our understanding of “the first period of Islam and its subsequent development”. The author largely synthesizes some of his previous work, while offering a decidedly naïve reading of the sources. The reader is here faced with dogma, rather than the results of evidence-based research. However, it must be noted that the author's effort to translate passages from Arabic into English offers a useful perspective on the question of iḫtilāf and of legal disputes in the first centuries of Islam.
