Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked about “the soundness of the foundational principles of the school of the people of Medina,” and about Mālik, to whom their school is attributed: his standing in scholarly leadership and religious devotion, and his mastery of the Islamic religious sciences, as assessed by the leading scholars of the various cities and trustworthy experts throughout the ages.

He replied—may Allah be pleased with him:

Praise be to Allah. During the time of the Companions, the Successors, and their followers, the school of the people of Medina, the Prophet’s city, was the soundest of the schools of the Muslim cities, east and west, in both fundamentals and subsidiary matters. Medina is the home of the Sunnah, of emigration, and of support: there Allah prescribed for His Messenger Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, the practices and laws of Islam; to it the Emigrants migrated for the sake of Allah and His Messenger; and there lived the Ansār, who had settled in the city and embraced faith before the Emigrants’ arrival.

These three eras are those of the three favored generations, concerning which