Students of Islamic law, and of ʿUmarid tradition, rely upon "The Muwatta" by Imam Malik bin Anas of al-Madina. If we're moderately intelligent, we know that there survive several recensions of this text; two have been translated into English, that by Yahya bin Yahya al-Laythi and that by Muhammad al-Shaybani in Iraq.
Shaybani's version isn't Maliki. It is a retort to Malik's teachings during his life, and may even have induced Malik himself to edit his material. Al-Laythi's version ended up Qurân II for the Malikiya in Spain so most Malikis in the English-speaking countries - which, here, include India / Pakistan, where they're better in English than in Arabic - default to him.
If you are lucky enough to be conversant in Arabic, you also know of Abu Muṣʿab al-Zuhri (a fellow Madinese), whose transmission is quite close to Laythi's. But (1) it's not as popular as Laythi's (2) it's not always exactly the same as Laythi's and (3) nobody's translated it. Ibn Bukayr is out there too, from Egypt.
Enter Ahmed al-Shamsy. He's looking in on Shafiʿi - an Iraqi who came to Egypt, where was Ibn Bukayr and (more to the point) the Hakimi family who'd produced a famous history of the Muslims there. Shafiʿi is the founding father of the Shafiʿite sunna and also of the Hanbalites, who'd translated Laythi in India. According to Shamsy, Shafiʿi transmitted a good bit of the Muwatta into his own books, later compiled into the Kitab al-Umm. And not just as stray traditions; they're in the context of Malik's notes, which he had standardised post-Shaybani.
Shafiʿi agrees with Abu Muṣʿab against Laythi. Laythi is revealed as a second-hand transmitter who'd made mistakes, as compared with Abu Muṣʿab. With Ibn Bukayr too.
If I read Shamsy right, Malik himself might not have desired there be one singular Muwatta. When Shafiʿi met Malik, Malik tried to fob him off on one of his students. (Malik likely knew Shaybani was out there; I'm talking about his real students.) Overall I think Malik knew there would be different emphasis in the safe Madina than in a border zone like northern Syria or some tribal no-man-land like the Sahara. Hence the organisational differences (not just textual) between the recensions. I was pondering titling this post, "we got the Muwatta wrong".
Still. Whatever Muwatta we choose for baseline, and Malikis at least do need some baseline: that baseline ain't Laythi. Laythi needs to go down to the critical-text footnotes. As to the baseline itself, Abu Mus'ab will do as well as any.
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