Its detailed verification will follow shortly.
Before doing so, however, I wish to draw attention to two matters:
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What is meant here by “the majority” is, in fact, the four Imams alone, following the path of the early generations, as Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah has set out in Ighāthat al-Lahfān 1/226–230. Thus, when the Shī‘ī author Ibn al-Muṭahhar attributed to Ahl al-Sunnah the permissibility of musical amusements and singing, Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah branded this a fabrication in his refutation of him, Minhāj al-Sunnah 3/439, saying:
“This is a lie against the four Imams, for they are unanimous in prohibiting the maʿāzif (musical instruments), the implements of amusement such as the lute and the like. Indeed, were someone to destroy them, he would not, in their view, be liable for the damaged property; even keeping them is forbidden according to them.”
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Al-Shawkānī’s attribution of a concession to the people of Medina may, if taken without qualification, suggest that Malik is among them. This is not the case, although others had preceded him in that impression, as al-Dhahabī says in the biography of Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Abī Salamah al-Mājishūn:
“I say: The people of Medina are lenient regarding singing and are known for their tolerance of it.”
He also notes that slave girls in his house would strike the miʿzaf (a musical instrument).
I say: Imam Malik is certainly not among them. On the contrary, he—and other scholars of Medina—reproved them for it. Abu Bakr al-Khallāl, in al-Amr bil-Maʿrūf p. 32, and Ibn al-Jawzī in Talbīs Iblīs p. 244, both transmit with an authentic chain from Isḥāq ibn ʿĪsā al-Ṭabbāʿ, a trustworthy narrator cited by Muslim, who said: