It has come to my attention that some people are questioning the authenticity of the statement of al-Imām Mālik b. Anas (d. 179 AH) in which he advocates the death of Jesus (as), partly because there is said to be no chain of narrators.
Here is a small #thread on this.
Here is a small #thread on this.
The statement was transmitted in al-Mustakhrajah fi l-asmi‘ah mimmā laysa fi l-Mudawwanah, also known as al-Mustakhrajah or al-‘Utbiyyah, complied by Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-‘Utbī al-Qurṭubī (d. 255 AH).
The ‘Utbiyyah is preserved today in al-Bayān wa-t-taḥṣīl wa-sh-sharḥ wa-t-tawjīḥ wa-t-ta‘līl fī masā’il al-Mustakhrajah, a commentary on the ‘Utbiyyah by the great Mālikī scholar Ibn Rushd al-Jadd (d. 520 AH).
The narration of al-Imām Mālik (rh) is mentioned on p. 448 of Muḥammad Ḥajjī's edition of Ibn Rushd's Bayān published by Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī in 1988.
The fact that Ibn Rushd reliably quotes al-‘Utbī's work is proven by a number of surviving manuscript fragments.
Miklós Murányi, among others, compared these with the quotations in the commentary and concluded that all the passages of the ‘Utbiyyah were reproduced verbatim.
Miklós Murányi, among others, compared these with the quotations in the commentary and concluded that all the passages of the ‘Utbiyyah were reproduced verbatim.
As calculated by Ana Fernández Félix, who had the ‘Utbiyyah as the subject of her PhD dissertation, one of the four chains of narrators through which 72.49% of all the masa’il in the ‘Utbiyyah are transmitted is the following:
Mālik -> Ashhab (d. 204 AH)/Ibn Nāfi‘ (d. 186 AH) -> Saḥnūn (d. 240 AH)
It is well-known that al-‘Utbī travelled and took knowledge from Saḥnūn b. Sa‘īd directly. Cf. Tārīkh ‘ulamā’ al-Andalus by Ibn al-Faraḍī (d. 403 AH).
It is well-known that al-‘Utbī travelled and took knowledge from Saḥnūn b. Sa‘īd directly. Cf. Tārīkh ‘ulamā’ al-Andalus by Ibn al-Faraḍī (d. 403 AH).
As she also rightly points out that the quoted text of the ‘Utbiyyah on p. 448 of the Bayān, where Mālik's opinion of the death of Jesus (as) is mentioned, belongs to that which is transmitted through the above-mentioned chain of narrators.
The chain is explicitly mentioned on p. 421 of the above-mentioned edition of the Bayān.
In addition, the eminent Mālikī scholar Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr (d. 463 AH), who also had access to the ‘Utibyyah, accurately reproduced this very passage in at-Tamhīd limā fi l-Muwaṭṭa’ mina l-ma‘ānī wa-l-asānīd, thus also corroborating both the text and the chain of narrators.
What I forgot to mention: The volume of the Bayān, the pages of which are discussed here, is vol. 18.
Jazakāllahu khayran—important to validate for earnest students. Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) points to Imam Mālik’s (rh) statement about Sayyiduna ‘Īsā (as) in multiple books. Here is one page that has so many other references too. To claim Ijmā’ on his being alive is a lie.
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