Ikhtilaf Aqwal Malik wa Ashabih
- Author died
- 463 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī
Ikhtilaf Aqwal Malik wa Ashabih (The Disagreement of the Opinions of Malik and His Companions) is a treatise on intra-school legal divergence by the Cordoban jurist and traditionist Ibn Abd al-Barr (368–463 AH / 978–1071 CE), examining subsidiary rulings (furu') where Malik ibn Anas and his primary disciples held conflicting legal views .
Context and Scope
The work belongs to the genre of internal comparative jurisprudence (ilm al-khilaf), focusing specifically on differences in subsidiary rulings rather than universal principles (kulliyyat) . Ibn Abd al-Barr built upon earlier treatises dedicated to disagreements within the Maliki tradition, including the lost work al-Kutub al-Mabsutah fi Ikhtilaf Ashab Malik wa Aqwalih by Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Laythi (d. 303 AH), which served as one of his sources . Other earlier contributions to this genre include works by Abu Ubayd al-Jubayri (d. 378 AH), Yahya ibn Umar al-Kinani, and Muhammad ibn Harith al-Khushani .
The attribution of the book to Ibn Abd al-Barr is undisputed; he referenced it repeatedly across several volumes of his commentary al-Istidhkar . In Tartib al-Madarik, al-Qadi Iyad recorded that the original composition comprised twenty books (ishrun kitaban) .
Structure and Extant Content
The complete work was divided into major subject divisions. The title page of its first volume enumerates ten thematic legal books:
- Ablution (Kitab al-Wudu)
- Prayer (Kitab al-Salah)
- Funerals (Kitab al-Jana'iz)
- Fasting (Kitab al-Siyam)
- Spiritual retreat (Kitab al-I'tikaf)
- Hunting (Kitab al-Sayd)
- Slaughtering (Kitab al-Dhaba'ih)
- Military struggle (Kitab al-Jihad)
- Pilgrimage (Kitab al-Hajj)
- Vows (Kitab al-Nudhur)
Only a portion of the first volume is known to have survived, preserved in a single manuscript held in the General Library (al-Maktaba al-Kattaniyya, MS 3369) in Rabat . This surviving manuscript contains the Book of Ablution in full, followed by a truncated portion of the Book of Prayer that ends abruptly at the chapter on errors and forgetfulness in prayer (al-sahw fi al-salah) .
Modern Editions
The surviving text was edited and annotated jointly by Hamid Muhammad Lahmar and Miklos Muranyi and published by Dar al-Gharb al-Islami in 2003 (1424 AH) .
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