Preservation of Hadith through Writing
Writing is a very important means of preserving hadith. This means of preserving hadith has continued without interruption since the time of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ had hadith written down and also ordered that they be written. Therefore, the claim that hadith was written down two and a half centuries later and was not written before then is utterly wrong and based on ignorance. From the blessed era of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ until today, the writing of hadith has continued in every age. No era has been devoid of the writing of hadith.
The Writing of Hadith in the Prophetic Era
Sayyidina Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him) says that when Allah granted Makkah to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ as a conquest, he stood among the people, praised and extolled Allah, and then said:
“Indeed, Allah restrained the elephants from Makkah and gave authority over Makkah to His Messenger and the believers. Before me, fighting in Makkah was not lawful for anyone, and for me it was made lawful only for an hour of the day. After me, it will not be lawful for anyone. Its game shall not be chased, its thorny trees shall not be cut, and no one shall pick up a lost item in it except one who announces it. And whoever has a person killed in it, his heirs have the choice of one of two things: they may take the blood-money or retaliation.”
Sayyidina Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said:
“O Messenger of Allah, permit the use of idhkhir (dry grass), for we use it in our graves and our houses.” The Prophet ﷺ said:
(إِلَّا الأَذْخِرَ)
That is, the use of idhkhir (grass) is permitted.
A man from Yemen named Abu Shah stood up and said:
“O Messenger of Allah, write this sermon for me.” The Prophet ﷺ said:
((اكْتُبُوا لِأَبِي شَاءٍ))
“Write (this sermon) for Abu Shah.”
Sayyidina Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him) says that none of the Companions of the Prophet narrated more hadith from him ﷺ than I did, except Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him), because he used to write and I did not write.
Sayyidina Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that I used to write down everything I heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ so that I could memorize it. The Quraysh forbade me, saying: “You write down everything, while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is a human being who speaks in anger and in happiness.” So I stopped writing. When this was mentioned to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, he pointed with his finger to his blessed mind and said:
أكْتُبْ فَوَالَّذِي نَفْسِي بِيَدِهِ مَا يَخْرُجُ مِنْهُ إِلا حَقٌّ
“Write! By the One in whose hand is my soul, nothing but the truth comes out of it.”
Abu Qabil, a Tabi’i (may Allah have mercy on him), said:
We were with Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As (may Allah be pleased with him) when he was asked: Which of the two cities will be conquered first, Constantinople or Rome? Abdullah (may Allah be pleased with him) had a chest with rings brought, then took out a book from it and said:
We were writing with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when he was asked which of the two cities would be conquered first: Constantinople or Rome?
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“The city of Heraclius first, that is, Constantinople, will be conquered.”
Yazid ibn Shurayk (may Allah have mercy on him) says that Sayyidina Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) said:
We did not write anything from the Prophet ﷺ except the Qur’an and what is in this sheet.
The meaning of Sayyidina Ali’s statement is that from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ we recorded only these two things: the noble Qur’an and the rulings that are in this sheet. He was asked: What is in this sheet? He said:
It contains the rulings on blood-money and the release of prisoners, and the ruling that a Muslim is not to be killed in retaliation for a disbeliever.
Ma’bad ibn Hilal (may Allah have mercy on him) says that when we insisted a great deal, Sayyidina Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him) would bring out the register he had and say:
These are the (hadiths) that I heard from the Prophet ﷺ; I wrote them down and presented them before the Prophet ﷺ.
Note:
[Hafiz al-Dhahabi’s declaring this narration munkar is without evidence. Uqbah ibn Abi Hakim is sadduq and hasan al-hadith, and the sole narration of such a narrator is by no means harmful, واللہ اعلم. Nadeem]
Imam al-Zuhri (may Allah have mercy on him) says:
This is a copy of the book that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had written regarding charity (before his death), and it was preserved with the family of Umar ibn al-Khattab. He also says:
Salim ibn Abdullah ibn Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) had it read to me, and I memorized it in the same way, and this is the document that Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz had transmitted from Abdullah ibn Abdullah ibn Umar and Salim ibn Abdullah ibn Umar.
From all these narrations it is clear as daylight that hadith was written down even in the blessed era of the Prophet ﷺ. He himself gave orders for it, and the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) also wrote down the blessed hadiths with enthusiasm and zeal.
The Writing of Hadith in the Era of the Companions
After the Prophet ﷺ, this practice continued in the era of the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them). After the Prophet ﷺ passed away, the Companions wrote and had written the blessed hadiths. For example:
It is narrated from Sayyidina Anas ibn Malik that Sayyidina Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (may Allah be pleased with him) wrote this document for him and sent him to Bahrain:
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ: هَذِهِ فَرِيْضَةُ الصَّدَقَةِ الَّتِي فَرَضَ رَسُولُ اللهِ عَلَى الْمُسْلِمِيْنَ وَ الَّتِي أَمَرَ اللهُ بِهَا رَسُولُهُ.
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. This is the obligatory charity (zakat) which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made obligatory upon the Muslims, and which Allah commanded His Messenger to enforce.
Abu Uthman al-Nahdi says: We were with Utbah ibn Farqad in Azerbaijan or in Sham when the letter of Sayyiduna Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) reached us (in which it was written:)
Amma ba’d! Verily, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ has forbidden silk (for men), except for this much (i.e., the width of) two fingers.
Warrad, the scribe of Sayyiduna Mughirah (may Allah be pleased with him), says that Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) wrote to Sayyiduna Mughirah ibn Shu’bah (may Allah be pleased with him) asking him to write and send to him those (hadiths) which he had heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. So Mughirah (may Allah be pleased with him) wrote back to him: Verily, the Prophet of Allah ﷺ used to recite the following after every prayer:
(لاَ إِلَهَ إِلا اللهُ وَحْدَهُ لا شَرِيكَ لَهُ لَهُ الْمُلْكُ وَ لَهُ الْحَمْدُ وَ هُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ، اللَّهُمَّ لَا مَانِعَ لِمَا أَعْطَيْتَ وَ لَا مُعْطِيَ لِمَا مَنَعْتَ وَ لَا يَنْفَعُ ذَا الْجَدِ مِنْكَ الْجَدُّ)
Sayyiduna Mughirah (may Allah be pleased with him) also wrote to him that the Prophet ﷺ used to forbid idle talk (qil wa qal), excessive questioning, and squandering wealth; and he would also forbid disobedience to mothers, burying daughters alive, withholding what is due to others, and begging without need.
Bashir ibn Nahik says that I used to write down whatever I heard from Sayyiduna Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him). Then when I intended to take leave from him, I went to him with my book, read it out to him and said:
Is this what I heard from you? He said:
Yes.
Ma’n ibn Abd al-Rahman says that Abd al-Rahman ibn Abdullah placed a book before me and swore an oath, saying:
This is a book written in the hand of his father, Abdullah ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him).
Recording of Hadith in the Era of the Tabi’un
After the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) came the era of the eminent Tabi’un, and in this era hadith was written and compiled on a very broad scale. Hadiths were written in such abundance that, if they were all to be mentioned, the fear of lengthiness would arise; therefore we shall be content with citing only a few references.
Abdullah ibn Dinar (may Allah have mercy on him) says:
Caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (may Allah have mercy on him) sent a written order to the people of Madinah: Search out and write down the hadiths of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, for I fear the disappearance of knowledge and of those who possess it.
It is narrated from Sulayman ibn Musa that he saw:
Nafi’, the freedman of Ibn Umar, dictating his knowledge, and it was being written down in his presence.
Imam Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani says that Abu Qilabah (may Allah have mercy on him) bequeathed his books to me, so I brought these books from Sham; for their hire I paid more than ten dirhams.
Musa ibn Uqbah reports that Kurayb kept with us books of Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) equal in weight to a camel’s load. Then whenever Ali ibn Abdullah ibn Abbas needed a book, he would write asking that a certain book be sent to him, and they would copy that book and send a copy to him.
Salih ibn Kaysan says that Imam al-Zuhri wrote (hadith) and I did not write, so he succeeded and I was lost.
Likewise, the Sahifah of Hammam ibn Munabbih, which is still famous in the scholarly world, containing about one hundred and fifty hadiths and printed many times with Urdu translation, was also compiled by Imam Hammam ibn Munabbih, a Tabi’i and student of Sayyiduna Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him).
The Sirah of Imam Muhammad ibn Ishaq is also a work composed in the era of the Tabi’un, and this book too has been printed many times and is famous in the scholarly world.
After the era of the Tabi’un comes the era of the Tabi’ al-Tabi’in, in which work on recording hadith took place on an even wider scale than before. Muwatta Imam Malik, Kitab al-Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-Zuhd of Imam Waki’ ibn al-Jarrah, Kitab al-Manasik of Sa’id ibn Abi Arubah, Kitab al-Siyar of Muhammad ibn Ishaq, and Kitab al-Du’a of Muhammad ibn Fudayl, among others, were compiled in this era. Then after this, so much work was done on the writing and compilation of hadith that it is difficult to encompass in writing. The Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq, the Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shaybah, and the Musnad of Ibn Abi Shaybah were written, and likewise the Musnad of Ahmad, the Musnad of Abu Dawud al-Tayalisi, and countless other books came into existence.
In summary, hadith was never left unwritten in any era. The writing and compilation of hadith in the era of the blessed Prophet ﷺ was in a particular style. Then in the era of the Companions and the early era of the Tabi’un it gained even more momentum, and in the final era of the Tabi’un it reached such a height that scholars of hadith were seen everywhere, and wherever one looked, hadith lessons were taking place. Afterwards, in the era of the Tabi’ al-Tabi’in and then the imams of the hadith scholars, what need is there to speak of: everywhere the voices of “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said” were resounding.
Even now, if someone keeps insisting that hadith was written after two and a half centuries, and therefore it is not a legal proof, then all that can be said to him is:
If your eyes are closed, then even the day is night;
What fault is there in this, of the sun?
Through the very means by which Allah the Exalted preserved the Qur’an, He also preserved the explanation of the Qur’an, namely the blessed hadith. If the Qur’an was preserved through memorization, then hadith was also preserved through memorization; and if the Qur’an was preserved through writing, then hadith was also preserved through writing. Why is this?
Because both are revelation (wahi), both are sent down from Allah (من اللہ). The Quran is the Word of Allah, and the Hadith is the word of the Messenger of Allah; the Quran is the Book of Allah, and the Hadith is the explanation of the Book of Allah. They are two manifestations of one reality and two faces of one picture. The Quran is the text, and the Hadith is its explanation. What the Prophet ﷺ did and said in explaining the Quran is, although it is a separate thing in terms of its existence, one and the same in terms of its reality and essence; therefore, following both is obligatory. Today both exist in their original state, and they will continue to exist in the future.
ان شاء اللہ
