Malik ibn Anas

Malik ibn Anas (Arabic: مَالِك بْن أَنَس, romanized: Mālik ibn ʾAnas; c. 711–795), also known as Imam Malik, was a Muslim scholar, jurist, muhaddith and traditionalist who is the eponym of the Maliki school, one of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence in Sunni Islam.

Born in Medina into the clan of Humayr which belonged to the Banu Taym of Quraysh, Malik studied under Hisham ibn Urwa, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Ja'far al-Sadiq, Nafi ibn Sarjis and others. He rose to become the premier scholar of hadith in his day, Referred to as the Imam of Medina by his contemporaries, his views in matters of jurisprudence became highly cherished both in his own life and afterward, becoming the eponym of the Maliki school, one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. His school became the normative rite for Sunni practice in much of North Africa, al-Andalus (until the expulsion of medieval native Iberian Muslims), a vast portion of Egypt, some parts of Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, and Khorasan, and the prominent orders in Sufism, the Shadili and Tijani.