This subject would take a long time to trace in detail. Were we to exhaustively discuss the merits of the scholars of Medina and the soundness of their principles, the discussion would be lengthy.
With this established, no one doubts that Mālik—may Allah be pleased with him—was the foremost exponent of the school of the scholars of Medina, both in transmitted knowledge and juristic judgment. Neither in his lifetime nor afterward was anyone more accomplished in this than he. His standing among Muslims, scholars and laypeople alike, is evident to anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with knowledge.
The hadith master Abū Bakr al-Khatīb compiled accounts of those who narrated from Mālik, and they numbered some 1,700. These were only those whose narrations reached al-Khatīb nearly three hundred years later. What, then, of those whose accounts had been lost or whose reports had not reached him? Al-Khatīb died in 462 AH; he was a contemporary of Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Bayhaqī, Judge Abū Ya‘lā, and others like them. Mālik died in 179 AH, Abū Hanīfa in 150 AH, al-Shāfi‘ī in 204 AH, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal in 241 AH.
For this reason, al-Shāfi‘ī—may Allah have mercy on him—said: “Beneath the sky, there is no book, after the Book of Allah, more correct than Mālik’s al-Muwatta’.” It is indeed as al-Shāfi‘ī—may Allah be pleased with him—said.
This does not contradict the position of the imams of Islam that, after the Quran, no book is more authentic than the Sahīh collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, although the imams agree that al-Bukhārī’s