Ibn al-Qāsim said, “I asked Mālik about ʿAlī and ʿUthmān.” He replied, “I have never encountered anyone I take as an authority except that he holds one should refrain from taking sides with respect to them.” Ibn al-Qāsim added, “He meant refraining from preferring one over the other.”

I then asked, “And what about Abū Bakr and ʿUmar?”

He answered, “There is no uncertainty concerning them; they are superior to everyone else.”

Al-Ḥasan ibn Rushayq said, “I heard al-Nasāʾī say, ‘Allah’s trustees over the knowledge of His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, are three: Shuʿbah, Mālik, and Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān.’”

Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ relates from Maʿn that Mālik once left a gathering, whereupon a man called Abū al-Juwayriyyah—suspected of irjāʾ—caught up with him and said, “Listen to me.”

Mālik replied, “Beware, lest I be forced to testify against you.”

The man said, “By Allah, I seek nothing but the truth. If what I present is correct, then accept it; if not, then speak.”

Mālik asked, “And if you defeat me?”

He said, “Then follow me.”

Mālik asked, “And if I defeat you?”

He replied, “Then I shall follow you.”

Mālik asked, “And if another person comes along, debates with us, and defeats us both?”

He answered, “Then we will follow him.”

Mālik said, “Man, Allah sent Muḥammad—peace and blessings be upon him—with a single religion, yet I see you moving from one opinion to another.” (1)

It is also related from Mālik that he said, “Argumentation about the religion breeds disputation, removes the light of knowledge from the heart, makes it hard, and sows rancor.” (2)

Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ further states that Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī declared, “Mālik—may Allah have mercy on him—was the furthest of people from the methods of the speculative theologians, and the most vigorous in refuting the Iraqis.”

He then relates that Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah said: A man once asked Mālik, “ ‘The Most Compassionate rose over the Throne’ (Q 20:5); how did He rise?” Mālik remained silent until sweat broke out upon him; then he said, “The rising (istiwaʾ) is known, its modality is inconceivable, and asking about this—”