Isnads in the Muwatta

[dklei...@gmail.com]

I have constructed a database of all the chains of precedent in the
Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas. I used the translation of Ayesha Bewley
because it is available online and therefore already digitized. The
Muwatta is divided into 61 books and within each book there are a
series of numbered sections (sometimes over a hundred). I made at
least one entry for each numbered section and if there was more than
one entry from a numbered section I distinguished them by a letter.
For example: 02.011a would refer to the first precedent in the
eleventh section of the second book. 71 of the numbered sections
contain no precedences.

There are a total of 2069 precedences in the data base. Precedences
are not exactly the same as isnads because if there is more than one
narrator at any point in an isnad I have created separate precedence
chains for each and some of the precedences seem too brief to be
consider isnads. For example there are 25 entries in the data base
that read ??? meaning that Malik says something like "I have heard
that ... ".

I am interested in whom Malik quotes from. The following table shows
for each name how many isnads begin with that name for all the names
associated with ten or more isnads:
Ibn Shihab - 311
Nafi' - 276
Yahya ibn Sa'd (al-Ansari) - 243
Hisham ibn 'Urwa - 125
Zayd ibn Aslam - 86
Abu'z-Zinad - 75
'Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn 'Amr ibn Hazm - 45
'Abduillah ibn Dinar - 45
Rabi'a ibn 'Abd ar-Rahman - 42
'Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Qasim - 30
Ishaq ibn 'Abdullah ibn 'Abdullah ibn Abi Talha - 20
Abu'n-Nadr, the mawla of 'Umar ibn 'Abdullah - 20
Sumayy, the mawla of Abu Bakr ibn 'Abd ar-Rahman - 19
Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn 'Ali - 15
Abu'z-Zubayr al-Makki - 15
Da'ud ibn al-Husayn - 15
al-'Ala' ibn 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn Ya'qub - 12
Humayd ibn Qays al-Makki - 12
Abu Suhayl ibn Malik [Malik's paternal uncle] - 12
Thawr ibn Zayd ad-Dili - 11
Suhayl ibn Abi Salih - 11
Humayd at-Tawil - 10

Most of these names will be nothing but names except to students of
isnads. Ibn Shihab is al-Zuhri the most famous scholar of the Umayyid
period and the fact that Malik uses him more than any other source is
a measure of his importance in the collection of Islamic tradition.
Nafi' is the maula of Abdullah ibn Umar and Malik quoting from Nafi'
quoting from Abdullah is, in the opinion of the most respectable
hadith collector, al-Bukhari, the best possible isnad. Yahya ibn Sa'id
(called al-Ansari to distinguish him from several other Yahya ibn
Sa'id's) is, on the other hand, almost completely unknown. One of the
important conclusions to be drawn from this data base is that Yahya's
contribution to Islamic Law may well have been largely overlooked in
the past.

[dklei...@gmail.com]