Introduction

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (310–386 AH / 922–996 CE) was the foremost Mālikī scholar of his generation and one of the most celebrated jurists in the Islamic West. Born and raised in Qayrawān, the intellectual capital of Ifrīqiyyah in what is now Tunisia, he studied under the leading Mālikī scholars of his city and rose to become the recognized head of the Mālikī school in North Africa, earning the honorary title of the Little Mālik for the depth of his mastery and the fidelity of his transmission of the Imam's tradition. He authored works spanning creed, jurisprudence, legal methodology, and ethics, but none achieved the lasting pedagogical success of his Muqaddimah, the introductory primer he composed as a teaching text for children and new students of the Islamic sciences. He died in Qayrawān, having shaped the Mālikī tradition in a form that would endure across the Maghrib and Muslim West for centuries.

Al-Muqaddimah al-Qayrawāniyyah, also known as the Risālah of Ibn Abī Zayd, begins with a chapter on Islamic creed, affirming the essential articles of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah on the attributes of Allah, the prophethood, the hereafter, and the obligations of faith. This theological introduction is followed by a systematic survey of the principal pillars and rules of Mālikī jurisprudence: purity, prayer, zakāt, fasting, pilgrimage, commercial transactions, marriage and family law, and personal conduct. The work is deliberately concise, presenting the agreed positions of the Mālikī school without extended argumentation, making it suitable as a memorization text and a first reference for students. Ibn Abī Zayd's prose is clear and carefully organized, and the legal rulings it conveys represent the consolidated Mālikī teaching as transmitted through the scholars of Qayrawān, who stood at the head of a chain of transmission reaching back to Imām Mālik himself in Medina.

The influence of the Muqaddimah on Islamic education in the Muslim West cannot be overstated. For more than a millennium it served as the standard introductory text of Mālikī jurisprudence, memorized by students throughout North Africa, Andalusia, West Africa, and the broader Mālikī world before they proceeded to more advanced works such as the Mudawwanah, the Mukhtaṣar of Khalīl, and the great commentaries of later scholars. Numerous commentaries were written on it, of which the most celebrated are those by al-Nafzāwī and Ibn Nāji. The creedal chapter at its opening was especially influential, generating sustained scholarly attention to questions of theological method and became a reference point in discussions of Ashʿarī theology as it developed within the Mālikī school. The text remains in active pedagogical use in traditional Islamic educational institutions across the Maghrib and West Africa today.

A student approaching the Muqaddimah for the first time should understand that the text is designed to be learned under the guidance of a qualified teacher, ideally one trained in the Mālikī tradition, since its compressed format assumes that explanations will be provided orally in the classical manner of Islamic instruction. Reading it alongside one of the established commentaries will supply the context and reasoning that the primer itself does not provide. The creedal chapter should be studied with particular care, as it establishes the theological foundations on which the legal rulings rest. Readers will gain from this text a clear and reliable summary of Mālikī doctrine and will come to appreciate why generations of Muslim scholars considered it the ideal first step in a comprehensive legal education. Its compact scope conceals a carefully considered architecture that rewards patient and repeated engagement.