Be truthful, remain chaste, do good, be patient and endure; forgive, repay kindness, and be accommodating. (1)
Be forbearing and brave; be gentle, lenient, deliberate, kind, and steady; (2) be firm, diligent, protective—carry burdens and fend off harm. For I have been perfectly sincere with you, if you but accept my counsel, and you will be guided to the clear, lion-trodden highway. (3)

Sahnun the Mālikī, author of the Mudawwanah, (4) is Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥabīb ibn Ḥassān ibn Hilāl ibn Bakkār ibn Rabīʿah al-Tanūkhī. His lineage goes back to the city of Homs, but his father brought him, along with its troops, to the lands of the Maghrib, where they settled, and the leadership of the Mālikī school there ultimately rested with him.

He studied jurisprudence under Ibn al-Qāsim, and the story is as follows: Asad ibn al-Furāt al-Mālikī came from Iraq to Egypt and asked ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim, the companion of Imām Mālik, many questions; Ibn al-Qāsim answered him, Asad grasped them, and then carried them to the Maghrib, where Sahnun copied them from him. Later Sahnun traveled to Ibn al-Qāsim in Egypt, repeated those questions to him, and Ibn al-Qāsim added to them, omitted some, and retracted others. Sahnun arranged the material, returned with it to the Maghrib, and Ibn al-Qāsim wrote with him to Asad ibn al-Furāt, telling him to compare his copy (5) with Sahnun’s and correct his own accordingly. Asad refused, whereupon Ibn al-Qāsim prayed against him (6); neither he nor his book thereafter derived benefit. The scholarly journeys then turned to Sahnun, the Mudawwanah spread from him, and he outshone the scholars of that age. He served as judge in Qayrawān until he died in this year at the age of eighty—may Allah have mercy upon him.

[Then the year 241 AH began]

In Jumādā al-Ākhirah of this year the people of Homs again rose against their governor, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdawayh, intent on killing him; the Christians among his own followers even assisted them. He wrote to the Caliph informing him of this, so the Caliph ordered him to confront them, and he wrote to the governor of Damascus to reinforce him with troops to help quell the people of Homs. He further instructed him to flog three of them—men notorious for wickedness—with whips until they died, then to crucify them at the city gates, and to flog