Maʿn, al-Wāqidī, and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk said: “Mālik’s mother carried him in her womb for three years.” (1)

Al-Wāqidī also reported: “She carried him for two years.”

Mālik began seeking knowledge when he was about thirteen years old. At twenty-one he was already qualified to issue legal opinions and had taken his seat as a teacher. A number of scholars transmitted from him while he was still a fresh-faced youth. Toward the end of the caliphate of Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr—and thereafter—students from every region travelled to him; during the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd they crowded around him, and this remained the case until his death.

Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Muʿaddil informed us; ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf informed us; Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq informed us; Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Qāsim al-Khaṭīb informed us. They both said:

Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī informed us; ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Anbārī informed us; ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mahdī informed us; Muḥammad ibn Mukhallad informed us; Abū Yaḥyā Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ghālib al-ʿAṭṭār narrated to us; Ibn ʿUyaynah narrated to us, from Ibn Jurayj, from Abū al-Zubayr, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayrah, who traced it back to the Prophet ﷺ:

“People will strike the flanks of their camels in search of knowledge, yet they will find no scholar more learned than the scholar of Madinah.” (2)

Using the same chain up to Ibn Mukhallad: Layth ibn al-Faraj narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī narrated to us, from Sufyān, from Ibn Jurayj, from Abū al-Zubayr, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from