Kitab Ikhtilaf Malik wa al-Shafi'i (The Disagreement of Malik and al-Shafi'i)

The Book of the Disagreement of Malik and al-Shafi'i is book 70 in the Dar al-Wafa' numbering of al-Umm. It takes the form of questions put to al-Shafi'i by al-Rabi' ibn Sulayman al-Muradi, the muezzin, al-Shafi'i's companion, who sometimes speaks for the followers of Malik; the editor notes that "our master" in his questions means Imam Malik. ^{1 2} It is al-Shafi'i's critique of his teacher's way of using hadith, which the museum reports as his. ²

Al-Rabi' asks how a report from the Messenger of God is established; al-Shafi'i refers to his book Jima' al-Ilm and restates his doctrine: when a trustworthy narrator relates from a trustworthy one back to the Prophet it is established, and no hadith of the Prophet is left except for another of his that contradicts it; when hadiths conflict, either one abrogates the other, or the better attested is taken, and if they are equal, the one closer to the Book and the sunna. ¹ When there is a hadith from the Prophet with nothing from him against it, al-Shafi'i disregards whatever anyone below him says against it. ² Al-Rabi' asks: does our master follow this doctrine? Al-Shafi'i answers that he followed it in some of knowledge and left it in some, and promises to mention hadiths of the Prophet that Malik adopted with nothing from Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman or Ali agreeing, and others he adopted although some of the imams are reported to differ. ²

• The eclipse prayer: al-Shafi'i relates from Malik the hadith of Ibn Abbas and A'isha that the Prophet prayed two rak'as during an eclipse with two bowings in each, and says: we and you adopted it, and others differed from us. ² See the eclipse prayer.
• Raising the hands: he argues from Malik's hadith from Ibn Umar on raising the hands at the opening, at bowing and on rising, and tells his Maliki interlocutor that they leave what Malik narrated from the Prophet and from Ibn Umar. ^{3 4} See raising the hands in prayer.
• In one place the interlocutor reports that others rejected a hadith they relied on because it was mursal and from a man people avoided narrating from, and calls that unfair; al-Shafi'i answers: you are less fair than they, since you disregard their hadith that is established for them and contradict what you yourselves narrate from the Prophet. ³

The running heads show its chapters: prayer, alms, sale of fruit, judgements, manumission, the imam praying seated, raising the hands, saying amin aloud, prostrations of the Qur'an, prayer inside the Ka'ba, witr, recitation at the two festivals, combining prayers, the woman with irregular bleeding, a dog licking a vessel, funerals, missing the pilgrimage, tamattu', life-grants ('umra), the birth sacrifice ('aqiqa), sales, marriage without a guardian, the minimum dower, clientage, lost property, wiping over leather socks, jihad, reviving dead land, the qasama oath, and then chapters on Malik's departure from what he narrated from Uthman, and his differences with A'isha, Ibn Abbas and Zayd ibn Thabit. ^{2 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15}