Malik ibn Anas

Malik ibn Anas, born around 711 and who died in 795 in Medina, was a Muslim scholar, jurist and hadith traditionalist who founded the Maliki school, one of the four major schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. Born into the Humayr clan of the Quraysh in Medina, he studied under scholars including Hisham ibn Urwah and Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri and became the leading hadith authority of his era. His most significant work was compiling al-Muwatta, one of the oldest and most revered hadith collections in Islam, praised by the jurist Al-Shafii as the soundest book on earth after the Quran, and his jurisprudential views went on to become the normative legal school across North Africa, al-Andalus, Egypt, Sudan and parts of the wider Middle East.