The Message Book

Author's name: Abdullah bin Abi Zaid Al-Qayrawani

The message is considered the first summary of Maliki jurisprudence and the first thing this imam wrote. Sheikh Mahraz bin Khalaf Al-Tunisi asked him, while he was still a young man, to write a brief book on the beliefs of the Sunnis, along with jurisprudence and etiquette, so that the children of the Muslims whom he taught could learn it. So he wrote the message in the year three hundred and twenty-seven, and he was seventeen years old at that time.
It is, in its entirety, a summary of jurisprudence according to the school of Imam Malik - may God have mercy on him - and he began it with an introduction mentioning the general belief of the Salaf and the Imams of Hadith, and its author included in it more than four thousand jurisprudential issues, with four thousand hadiths, between Musnad and Mawquf, presented in a unique form, distinctive production, clear expressions, and a collection of narrations of the companions of the Imam and those below them of the skilled scholars, with complete control of the form, studied distribution of the text, and distinction of the heads of the issues, their ends and the places of their endings.