Abu Hurayrah

Four years of companionship, a spread cloak, and the largest memory in the history of the sunnah.

The account

Abd ar-Rahman ibn Sakhr ad-Dawsi came to Madinah around Khaybar, poor, unmarried, and unencumbered, and made a decision that shaped the religion: while others traded and farmed, he attached himself to the mosque and to the Prophet's ﷺ heels on a full stomach or an empty one. He complained once of forgetting; the Prophet told him to spread his cloak, made a motion into it, and said gather it to yourself. "I never forgot anything after it." More than five thousand narrations reach the ummah through him; the daily architecture of a Muslim's worship, dhikr, and manners leans on his memory everywhere.

He mothered his mother in da'wah, weeping to the Prophet when she insulted the message, returning with the du'a "O Allah, guide the mother of Abu Hurayrah" to find her behind the door saying the shahadah. The cat-father nickname came from a kitten he carried; the scholars' title came later: the imam of the huffaz. Under Umar he governed Bahrain, under the ummah's need he governed nothing but the transmission, teaching in the Prophet's mosque until his death near sixty years after the Hijrah.

The facts

Companionship~4 years, total devotion
Narrations5,300+
The cloak“I never forgot after it”
His motherGuided by his ﷺ du'a

The narrations

He spread his garment, and the Prophet ﷺ made a motion with his hands into it, then said: gather it. I gathered it, and I never forgot anything after it.

Bukhari 119 · Muslim 2492

Read beside it

The words

On the Path

People beside it

Umar ibn al-KhattabAl-Faruq · Second caliphعمر بن الخطاب

Places

BeforeWaraqah ibn Nawfal AfterAnas ibn Malik

On the Companions page The Path