For Imam Malik had successfully gathered the doctrines of his predecessors among the people of Medina, exercising careful judgment and exact preservation of the transmitted reports. Accordingly, I have included here matters that no one who wishes to be known as a scholar may lawfully remain ignorant of. I culled them from the works of the Mālikīs and the positions of the Medinan school, confining myself to what is soundest in knowledge and most reliable in transmission. From all that material I have relied on seven principal works, to the exclusion of the rest: the Muwattaʾ, the Mudawwana, the Book of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakam, the Mabsūṭ of Ismāʿīl al-Qāḍī, the Hāwī of Abū al-Faraj, the Mukhtaṣar of Abū Muṣʿab, and the Muwattaʾ of Ibn Wahb.

“It also contains a worthy remaining portion taken from the Book of Ibn al-Mawāzī, the Mukhtaṣar of al-Waqār, and from al-ʿUtba and al-Wāḍiḥa.”