Imam Malik ibn Anas (93–179 AH / 711–795 CE), the imam of Madinah and founder of the Maliki school, is buried in Baqi' Graveyard, a short distance…
Imam Malik ibn Anas (93–179 AH / 711–795 CE), the imam of Madinah and founder of the Maliki school, is buried in Baqi' Graveyard, a short distance east of the grave of the Companion Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (RA). He was born in Madinah, taught in it for most of a century, and was buried in the ground he never left. A scholar who never moved Malik learned from the surviving Tabi'un of the city — Nafi', the freed slave of Abdullah ibn Umar (RA), Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Rabi'a al-Ra'y and Abdullah ibn Hurmuz — and he treated the settled practice of Madinah as living evidence, since it had been handed down in the place where the revelation was received. His al-Muwatta , the earliest surviving book of hadith and law arranged by subject, came out of that method: a narration, then how the people of Madinah actually acted on it. Al-Shafi'i, who studied with him as a young man, later said there was no book on the earth after the Book of Allah more reliable than Malik's Muwatta . His students carried the school outwards while he stayed put. Ibn al-Qasim and Ibn Wahb took it to Egypt, Asad ibn al-Furat and Sahnun to Qayrawan and from there across North Africa and into al-Andalus, so that most of the western Muslim world prays and rules by the fiqh of a man who almost never left his own city. Adab before narration Malik would not narrate the words of the Prophet ﷺ casually. He bathed, put on his best clothes and perfume, sat upright and only then began; if someone asked him a hadith while he was walking or standing, he refused. Asked why, he answered that he disliked narrating the hadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ except in a state of dignity for it. He was also willing to say la adri — I do not know — and taught that the phrase was half of knowledge. Everyone's word is taken from and left, except the occupant of this grave ﷺ. Imam Malik, cited by Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Intiqa' fi Fada'il al-A'imma al-Thalatha The flogging in Madinah In 147 AH Malik was flogged on the order of Ja'far ibn Sulayman, the governor of Madinah, for continuing to transmit the hadith that a divorce pronounced under coercion does not take effect — a report that undercut oaths of allegiance extracted by force. He was beaten until his shoulder was dislocated. He did not retract the hadith, and afterwards he was more respected in the city than before. When the caliph al-Mansur later proposed to make the Muwatta binding on every province and hang it in the Ka'ba, Malik refused, saying the Companions had scattered to different lands and the people of each place had taken what reached them. The grave Malik died in Madinah in 179 AH at around eighty-six years of age, after an illness of some weeks, and was buried in Baqi'. His grave lies near the eastern side of the graveyard, close to Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (RA) and beside that of the Qur'an reader Nafi' ibn Abi Nu'aym, unmarked and level with the ground like every other grave in Baqi'.
This site is located within Jannat al-Baqi Graveyard.