memory in which he had to store up his knowledge of countless things. It was in this safe custody that all the poetry of the pre-Islamic days had been kept alive and intact. Indeed, before Islām, writing was but rarely resorted to, and memory was chiefly relied upon in all important matters. Hundreds and even thousands of verses could be recited from memory by one man, and the reciters would also remember the names of the persons through whom those verses had been transmitted to them. Aṣma‘ī, a later transmitter of ḥadīth, says that he learned twelve thousand verses by heart before he reached majority; of Abū Dzamdzam, Aṣma‘ī says that he recited verses from a hundred poets in a single sitting; Sha‘bī says that he knew so many verses by heart that he could continue repeating them for a month; and these verses were the basis of the Arabic vocabulary and even of Arabic grammar. Among the Companions of the Holy Prophet were many who knew by heart thousands of the verses of pre-Islamic poetry, and of these one was ‘Ā’ishah, the Holy Prophet’s wife. The famous Bukhārī trusted to memory alone for the retention of as many as six hundred thousand sayings and many students corrected their manuscripts by comparing them with what he had only retained in his memory.
The first steps for the preservation of Ḥadīth were thus taken in the life-time of the Holy Prophet,10 but all his followers were not equally interested in the matter, nor had all equal chances of being so. Everyone had to work for his living, while on most of them the defence of the Muslim community against overwhelming odds had placed an additional burden. There was, however, a party of students called the Aṣḥāb al-Ṣuffah who lived in the mosque itself, and who were specially equipped for the teaching of religion to the tribes outside Madīnah. Some of these would go to the market and do a little work to earn livelihood; others would not care to do even that. Of this little band, the most famous was Abū Hurairah, who would remain in the Holy Prophet’s company at all costs, and store up in his memory everything which the Holy Prophet said or did. His efforts were, from the first, directed towards the preservation of Ḥadīth. He himself
10 Thus Guillaume writes in the Traditions of Islam: “The ḥadīth last quoted do not invalidate the statements that traditions were written down from the mouth of the Prophet; the extraordinary importance attached to every utterance of his would naturally lead his followers who were able to write to record his words in order to repeat them to those who clamoured to know what he had said; and there is nothing at all in any demonstrably early writing to suggest that such a practice would be distasteful to Muḥammad” (p. 17).