Abu Hurayra

Abū Hurayra ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣakhr al-Dawsī al-Zahrānī (Arabic: أبُو هُرَيْرَة عَبْد ٱلرَّحْمَٰن بْن صَخْر ٱلدَّوْسِيّ ٱلزَّهْرَانِيّ; c. 603–679), commonly known as Abu Hurayra (Arabic: أبُو هُرَيْرَة; lit. 'father of a kitten'), was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and is considered the most prolific hadith narrator. Born in al-Jabur in Arabia into the Banu Daws clan of the Zahran tribe, Abu Hurayra was a comparatively late convert to Islam, embracing the faith around 7 AH (c. 629 CE), following the Battle of Khaybar. He migrated to Medina, became a member of the Suffah, and lived in Muhammad's house. Muhammad is said to have recognized his powerful memory and intelligence and to have given him permission to record hadith in both written and oral form. Under Muhammad, Abu Hurayra was sent as a muezzin to al-Ala ibn al-Hadhrami in Bahrain. During the early Muslim conquests he is said to have refused administrative positions and preferred to live as a private citizen in Medina, although during the reign of the Rashidun caliph Umar (r. 634–644) he briefly served as governor of Bahrain. Abu Hurayra is said to have memorized more than 5,000 hadiths, while nearly 3,500 traditions have come down from him. These transmissions subsequently produced more than 500,000 narrator chains, and his activity as a transmitter became an important model for later Sunni hadith scholarship. Hadiths transmitted by him have been employed by all four major Sunni madhahib in significant jurisprudential decisions. His reliability has, however, been questioned by some non-Sunni scholars, including some Shia scholars.