ication by the last Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, of the message of the Qur'an, the practice ('amal) of the people of Madinah of the first generations, a transmission of the ethos that permeated the city, and Imam Malik's painstaking clarification of the Sunna, the hadiths, the practice and legal judgements. Ash-Shafi'i' said, "After the Book of Allah, there is no book on the face of the earth sounder than the book of Malik." 'Ala' ad-Daan Maghlatay al-Hanafi said, "The first person to compile the sahih was Malik." Ibn Hajar said, "The book of Malik is sound by all the criteria that are demanded as proofs in the mursal, munqati' and other types of transmission." As-Suyuti followed Ibn Hajar's judgement and said, "It is absolutely correct to say that the Muwatta' is sound (sahih) without exception." Al-Bukhari and Muslim transmitted most of its hadiths and included them in their sahih collections. The authors of the rest of the six books, the Imam of the hadith scholars, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and others did the same.