as Jarīr said:

“When the two-year-old camel is thrust into the ring of horns,
it cannot withstand the charge of the towering, battle-tried dromedaries.” (1)

Yūnus then said, “I heard al-Shāfiʿī declare: ‘Mālik and Ibn ʿUyaynah are inseparable peers; were it not for Mālik and Ibn ʿUyaynah, the knowledge of the Ḥijāz would have disappeared.’”

Wahb ibn Jarīr—and others—reported from Shuʿbah: “I arrived in Madinah a year after Nāfiʿ’s death, and Mālik ibn Anas already had a study circle.”

Hammād ibn Zayd said: Ayyūb related to us, “Mālik certainly had a teaching circle during Nāfiʿ’s lifetime.”

ʿAshhab narrated: “I asked al-Mughīra ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān about Mālik and Ibn al-Mājishūn. He exalted Mālik and remarked, ‘The two never stood on the same level in knowledge.’”

Ibn al-Madīnī said: “I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī say: Wuhayb—who was among the most insightful scholars regarding hadith and transmitters—told me that when he reached Madinah he observed, ‘I did not find a single narrator whose transmissions were free from both approval and disapproval—except Mālik and Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī.’” (2)

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān added, “I would not place anyone ahead of Mālik in the soundness of hadith.”

Ibn Luhayʿah said: “I asked Abū al-Aswad, ‘Who holds the mantle of juristic reasoning in Madinah after Rabīʿah?’ He replied, ‘The young Asbahi scholar.’” (3)