Skip to the contentSkip to the rooms
نُورCodex of Light All companions

Companions · Scribe of revelation · Collector of the Qur'an

زيد بن ثابت

Zayd ibn Thabit

Too young for Badr, chosen at twenty-one to gather the Book between two covers.

The whole account

The account

Turned away from Badr and Uhud for his age, Zayd ibn Thabit conquered by intellect instead: he arrived in Madinah with seventeen surahs memorized, and the Prophet ﷺ ordered him to learn the script of the Jews, which he mastered in half a month, becoming the Prophet's translator and foremost scribe of revelation. When the ayah of the mujahidin descended while his shoulder bore the Prophet's writing board, he felt the weight of revelation nearly crush his thigh; he wrote "not equal are the sitters" and then the exemption came for the excused in that same breath, under his pen.

After Yamamah killed hundreds of reciters, Abu Bakr and Umar summoned him for the task he described as heavier than moving a mountain: collect the Qur'an. "You are a young man, intelligent, and beyond suspicion, and you used to write the revelation for the Messenger of Allah." He verified every verse against memory and written witness together, and years later chaired Uthman's committee that copied the single mushaf for the ummah. The judge and inheritance-jurist of Madinah for a generation, he is the quiet proof that the Book reached us through discipline, not accident.

The facts

The narrations

You are a young man, intelligent, beyond suspicion, and you used to write the revelation. So pursue the Qur'an and collect it.

Bukhari 4986

Read beside it

The words

Lights that name it

On the Path

People beside it

Places

BeforeUbayy ibn Ka'bAfterAbdullah ibn Abbas
On the Companions page The Path