I heard Abū Muṣʿab relate, “I heard Mālik say, ‘I did not issue legal verdicts until seventy men had testified that I was qualified to do so.’” (1)

Abū Muṣʿab then added, “Mālik would never transmit a hadith except while he was in a state of ritual purity, out of reverence for the hadith.” (2)

Using this same chain, he said: Ibn Ḥayyān narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Walīd narrated to us; Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā narrated to us, who said: al-Shāfiʿī declared, “Whenever the transmitted report (athar) is present, Mālik is like a star; he and Sufyān are the twin luminaries.” (3)

Likewise, through this chain: Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us; al-Sarrāj narrated to us; Maḥmūd ibn Ghaylān narrated to us; Abū Dāwūd narrated to us; Shuʿbah said, “I came to Medina one year after Nāfiʿ had died, and the teaching circle belonged to Mālik.” (4)

And with this chain: Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rāshid informed us; I heard Abū Dāwūd say, “Some of Ibn Wahb’s companions told me on his authority that when Mālik was flogged, his head was shaved and he was mounted on a camel. He was then ordered, ‘Announce yourself!’ (5)

“So he proclaimed, ‘Whoever already knows me, knows me; and whoever does not, I am Mālik ibn Anas, and I say: a divorce pronounced under coercion is null and void.’

“When this reached the governor Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān, he said, ‘Catch up with him and bring him down.’” (6)