Abu Hurayra

Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him) kept company with the Prophet ﷺ for only about three years, yet he narrated more of the hadith than anyone in the Sunni collections. How one man produced thousands of reports is a question scholars still ask.

A man of the tribe of Daws in the Yemeni highlands, he came to Medina and embraced Islam about 629 CE, around the time of Khaybar ¹. For the rest of the Prophet's life, the tradition pictures him at the edge of the mosque: poor, often hungry, and committing things to memory ¹.

After 632 CE he became a flood: reports from him fill the Sunni collections, on law, worship, the afterlife and the Prophet's sayings. He governed Bahrayn for a time on behalf of Umar, and died in Medina about 678–681 CE ¹.

However the reports are weighed, a large part of what the Sunni tradition knows of the Prophet's sayings reaches us through this one man's memory.

The Sheikh relates that a man asked Abu Hurayra about the interval between the two blasts; Abu Hurayra gave a figure and then drew back, and the telling is broken off (needs_source). ^{2 3}

Sheikh Omar Abdelkafy holds, as his own opinion, that accountability weakens when people hesitate to scrutinise officials, and he tells of Abu Hurayra, who was placed over Bahrain and was charged with trade ⁴.

He says Umar checked the matter and found the trade was far from his office. When Abu Hurayra's innocence was established, Abu Hurayra asked to be relieved, and Umar told him to return to his work (partly unclear) ⁵.

Sheikh Omar Abdelkafy holds, as his own opinion, that the Companions did not compete for seats of power, and that such ethics come from "la ilaha illa Allah"; he mentions Abu Hurayra in this context ⁶.

He sets the responses of Umar and Abu Hurayra to office against each other as opposite attitudes ⁷, and says these ethics bore fruit because God's tree was planted in the heart ⁸.