Among those who studied under him were al-Shāfiʿī—who transmitted from him in great abundance—Abū ʿUbayd, Hishām ibn ʿUbayd Allāh, Aḥmad ibn Ḥafṣ, the jurist of Bukhāra, ʿAmr ibn Abī ʿAmr al-Ḥarrānī, ʿAlī ibn Muslim al-Ṭūsī, and others besides.

I have set out the details of his life in a separate monograph (1).

Ibn Saʿd said: “His roots go back to the Jazīrah; his father settled in Syria, and Muḥammad was born to him in 132 AH.”

Reliance on personal reasoning (raʾy) came to characterize his method, and he took up residence in Baghdad.

I say: He was appointed judge for Hārūn al-Rashīd after Qāḍī Abū Yūsuf, and—together with his deep mastery of jurisprudence—his intelligence was proverbial.

Al-Shāfiʿī used to say, “From him I copied a load fit for a Bactrian camel (2); I have never debated a stout man more sharp-witted than he. Indeed, were I to claim that the Qur’an was revealed in the idiom of Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, I could do so—such was his eloquence.”

Al-Shāfiʿī also reported that Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan said, “I stayed with Mālik three full years and a little more, and I heard seven hundred hadith directly from his own mouth (3).”