—“Give precedence to Quraysh and do not put yourselves before them.” (1)
“And as for my giving precedence to Ibn Bukayr, it is because the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Let the elder lead, let the elder lead.’ (2)—meaning the one senior in age. Besides, he heard the Muwattaʾ from Mālik seventeen times, whereas your father heard it only once.”
I said: yet even so, there is a well-known gap in his audition. (3)
He continued: the two of them left and never returned, departing in open hostility. (4)
Abū ʿAbd al-Malik Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Barr al-Qurṭubī, d. 338 AH, composed a book (5) on the scholars of Córdoba. In it he mentioned Baqī ibn Makhlad, saying: “He was virtuous and God-fearing, constant in fasting and night prayer, wholly devoted to worship, without rival in his era, unmatched by any peer in his land. His first pursuit of knowledge was under Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā…"
(1) Reported by al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan, 3/121, and Manaqib al-Shafi‘i, 1/21, through Ma‘mar → al-Zuhri → Ibn Abi Huthma (Abu Bakr b. Sulayman), as a marfu‘ hadith. Al-Bayhaqi judged it a good mursal. Ibn Hajar cites it in Tawali al-Ta’sis, p. 45, calling it a strong mursal, and notes four connected corroborations: (a) Anas, in Abu Nu‘aym, Hilyat al-Awliyaʾ, 9/64; (b) ‘Ali, in al-Bazzar; (c) ‘Abd Allah b. al-Saʾib, in al-Tabarani, al-Kabir; (d) Jubayr b. Mut‘im, in al-Bayhaqi, Manaqib al-Shafi‘i, 1/22–23.
(2) An extract from a longer hadith recorded by Malik, al-Muwattaʾ, 2/877–78 (chapter: qasama), by al-Bukhari, 2/203, 206 (chapter: diyat), by Muslim, no. 1669 (qasama), and also by Abu Dawud (4520, 4521, 4523), al-Tirmidhi (1422), and al-Nasaʾi, 8/5, 12.
(3) The text cited follows Yahya b. Yahya al-Laythi’s recension of al-Muwattaʾ, the version now commonly printed and studied. Abu Mus‘ab al-Zuhri’s recension remains unpublished, though al-Baghawi frequently relies on it in Sharh al-Sunna. Numerous transmitters narrated the Muwattaʾ from Malik, and their copies differ in order, additions, and omissions. Abu Mus‘ab’s version is among the fullest; Ibn Hazm states that it contains about one hundred hadiths more than the other recensions. The remark “there is a well-known lacuna in it” means that Yahya b. Yahya did not hear the entire Muwattaʾ from Malik.
(4) See Mu‘jam al-Udabaʾ, 7/81–82.
(5) The autograph reads: “kitab” (book).