Purification and Prayer in the Maliki School

The Risalah of Ibn Abi Zayd moves from creed directly into the practical obligations of worship, beginning with purification and prayer. His treatment reflects the distinctive features of Maliki jurisprudence, which in some cases differ significantly from the Shafi'i, Hanafi, and Hanbali schools, and which the Risalah presents with characteristic concision and clarity.

Purification in Maliki Fiqh

Ibn Abi Zayd's treatment of purification introduces several Maliki positions that distinguish the school from others. On the question of water, Maliki fiqh holds that water does not become ritually impure unless it is actually changed in one of its perceptible qualities — color, taste, or smell — by contact with an impurity. The quantity of water is not determinative in the way it is for the Shafi'i school, which uses the two-qullah threshold. This Maliki principle derives from the broad hadith that water is pure and nothing makes it impure unless it changes its character.

Regarding wudu, the Maliki school requires: intention, washing the face, washing the arms to the elbows, wiping the head (with the distinctive Maliki requirement of wiping the entire head, not merely a portion as Shafi'i allows), washing the feet, and performing these acts sequentially. The Maliki school also treats the act of rubbing (dalk) the washed limbs as obligatory, unlike other schools which consider it merely recommended.

The Risalah addresses a Maliki distinctive regarding wiping over leather socks (khuff): unlike the Hanafi and Hanbali schools, the Maliki school in one of its positions does not permit wiping over khuff as a substitution for washing the feet, because Malik reportedly preferred not to act on the relevant hadiths due to doubts about their authenticity. This is one of the few areas where the Maliki position appears more stringent than the other three schools.

Prayer Obligations

Ibn Abi Zayd's chapter on prayer covers the five daily prayers, their times, conditions, and pillars. The Maliki school has distinctive positions on prayer times: the Maliki school extends the permissible time for Fajr prayer until the sun has fully risen (not merely to the beginning of sunrise), and holds that the Isha prayer may permissibly be delayed until midnight in ordinary circumstances.

The Maliki school requires the recitation of al-Fatiha in every raka'a for those praying alone, but for those praying behind an imam, the rules differ from the Shafi'i school. The Maliki position is that the ma'mum (follower) should listen to the imam's recitation rather than reciting simultaneously, and that in silent prayers (Dhuhr and Asr), the follower should recite al-Fatiha.

Maliki Prayer Jurisprudence in West Africa

The Risalah's prayer chapter became the primary source for prayer jurisprudence across the Maliki-practicing regions of West Africa. The text's concision meant it could be memorized in full, and its positions became the standard by which local scholars judged the correctness of worship. Commentaries by North African scholars — most famously Ibn Abi Zayd's own students and later by scholars such as Khalil ibn Ishaq in his Mukhtasar — elaborated these positions into comprehensive legal codes that governed Muslim life from Mauritania to Sudan.