The Maliki School in North Africa and Andalusia

The Maliki school's westward spread — to North Africa and Andalusia — is one of the most important stories in Islamic legal history, and Ad-Dibaj al-Mudhahhab documents it through the biographies of the scholars who established and developed the tradition in these regions.

The school's entry into North Africa was primarily through the agency of Ibn al-Qasim Abd ar-Rahman (128–191 AH), Malik's most important Egyptian student. Ibn al-Qasim transmitted Malik's positions extensively and his Mudawwanah — a collection of legal questions and answers organized systematically — became the foundational text of the Maliki school in North Africa. Through his students in Qayrawan and other North African centers, the Maliki tradition became dominant across the Maghreb.

Andalusian Maliki scholarship developed distinctively. Figures like Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi (c. 152–234 AH), who brought the Muwatta to Andalusia after studying with Malik, and later scholars who developed the school in Cordoba and other Andalusian cities, created a tradition that was both deeply Maliki in its orientation and responsive to the specific intellectual environment of Andalusia. Andalusian Maliki scholars were often distinguished by their breadth of learning — many combined expertise in jurisprudence with hadith scholarship, linguistics, and literature.

Ibn Hazm ad-Dhahiri, the Andalusian jurist and polymath who was himself not a Maliki but a critic of the Maliki school, provides a contrasting perspective that Ibn Farhun occasionally acknowledges. The Maliki school in Andalusia faced challenges from Ibn Hazm's literalist approach and from the Zahiri school he championed, requiring Maliki scholars to defend their methodology's legitimacy.

The decline of Andalusian Maliki scholarship as the Reconquista gradually reduced Muslim-controlled territory is documented in Ad-Dibaj al-Mudhahhab through the biographies of late Andalusian scholars who continued to produce important work even as the political circumstances became increasingly difficult. The transfer of scholarly energy from Andalusia to North Africa — particularly to Fez, Tunis, and Tlemcen — is reflected in the increasing prominence of Maghrebi scholars in the later sections of the work.