Abu Hurayra
Abū Hurayra ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣakhr al-Dawsī al-Zahrānī (; –679), commonly known as
Abū Hurayra (; ), was a
companion of the
Islamic prophet Muhammad and considered the
most prolific hadith narrator. Born in al-Jabur, Arabia to the
Banu Daws clan of the
Zahran tribe, he was among the first people to accept
Islam, and later became a member of the
Suffah after the
migration of Muhammad.
Under Muhammad, Hurayra was sent as a
muezzin to
al-Ala al-Hadhrami in
Bahrain. Under the reign of the
Rashidun caliph
Umar (r. 634-644), he briefly served as a governor of Bahrain. After being accused of
corruption by Umar, he left the governorship and returned to Medina.
Acknowledged by
Sunni scholars for his notable
photographic memory, he memorized massive numbers of over 5,000 hadiths, which later produced more than 500,000
narrator chains, making him an example followed by Sunni
Hadith scholars today. The four major
Sunni madhahib have all used hadith narrated by Hurayra in major jurisprudential decisions. However,
non-Sunni scholars, including several
Shia scholars, have regarded Hurayra as unreliable and telling lies.
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