How the Maliki Madhab got all over Africa

http://www.bayaans.org/akhirat_aur_uski_manzilien.html

on that page, click "Akhirat Dars - 11 (Taleem Aur Tadeeb)"

or you could click here:
http://www.bayaans.org/akhirat/akhirat_dars11.mp3

go to 15:30 ... mufti mudassir makes mention of this.

The reason i'm blogging about it is that i remember a couple/few years ago i was at ISNA at a Ustadh Muhammad AlShareef lecture about i think the life of imam Malik bin Anas (rahimahullah)... ie the founder of the Maliki madhab.... and in the Q/A section somebody asked taht very question, about if imam malik (rahimahullah) never left madinah except for hajj, how then did the maliki madhab get to africa and grow so much.

Well anyway, in that lecture mufti mudassir makes mention of it, transl/paraphrasing:

The lecture is about adab, and he was talking about the importance of adab and how it is a key to barakah and knowledge, etc. So he states a story where Imam Malik (Rahimahullah) was giving a dars to his students, and all the sudden there was an elephant that came into their neighborhood... and all the village people started saying, y'know "whoaaa an elephant". Well the students had never seen an elephant, they had only heard about it, like in surah fil. Well all the students ran out to go and check it out... all but one. imam yahya ibn yahya, who probably wasn't an "imam" yet, didn't go out of adab for the scholar, knowledge, and the blessings of the gathering. His teacher (imam malik (ra)) even told him, "you could go and check it out" and he said no and that that gathering's takhaza and ihtaram is that I should stay here (ie he had proper adab with the gathering, knowledge, and teacher). And mufti mudassir says that, it was through him that the entire maliki fiqh made it to "shaam" and "misr"... shaam is the northern part, ie, modern day syria/jordan/etc. Misr is basically modern day egypt, and hence africa.

In other words, the implication is that, Allah rewarded imam yahya ibn yahya for his excellent adab by allowing him to be the link to spreading maliki fiqh all over the place. It's like the tafsir on surah kawther, how when Allah likes somebody he carries his/her legacy on, and its up to him to "cut somebody off", like the reference in the last ayah of surah kawther. This concept is present throughout the deen, like how when we recite the Quran, our teacher gets rewarded as well, and his teacher, and his teacher, all the way upto and including the prophet pbuh... and it was Allah's favor upon every person in that entire chain to have had the ability and tawfiq to do that good deed, and it is His favor that he kept it going. get it?

Well syria/jordan/etc are mainly shafi'i fiqh right now, not maliki, so some other historical events must have happened to make that change, which is highly probable because imam shafi'i comes a gen or 2 gens after imam malik. But as for maliki fiqh getting to africa, maybe it was through misr... but this is still gross speculation... this needs to be verified, ask mufti saab. However, one thing it definitely does explain is how did maliki fiqh even make it out of madinah, based on his wording it would seem as though it was, at one generation, via imam yahya ibn yahya... but again, please verify. This whole blog posting is based on like 4 sentences from mufti mudassir, everything else is "speculative extrapolation". But I thought it would be good to share cuz i think this is a common Q... "if imam malik didn't leave madinah, how is maliki fiqh all over Africa?"

... and of course don't take my word for any of this, listen to that lecture, and dbl check with mufti mudassir in real life if you can.