and the hadith and legal opinions of others, he preferred Mālik’s hadith and legal opinions to theirs.

This corroborates the hadith narrated by al-Tirmidhī and others from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—who said:

“Soon people will drive their camels hard in pursuit of knowledge, yet find no scholar more learned than the scholar of Medina.”

It has been reported from several scholars, including Ibn Jurayj, Ibn 'Uyaynah and others, that they said, “He is Mālik.”

Those who disputed this did so on two grounds. The first was to question the hadith: some claimed that its chain of transmission contained a break. The second was that the Prophet meant someone other than Mālik, such as al-'Umarī the ascetic or someone like him.

The response is that what the hadith describes, and the fact that Mālik is the one intended, were established for those who were present and are known through mass transmission to those who were absent. There is no doubt that, in Mālik’s time, no one attracted more people who drove their camels hard to reach him than Mālik.

This can be established in two ways. The first is by seeking to establish his superiority over such scholars as al-Thawrī, al-Awzā'ī, al-Layth and Abū Hanīfah. This, however, is disputed, and there is no need to pursue it here.

The second is to say that Mālik outlived all of them, for he