Zayd ibn Thabit
Zayd ibn Thabit (Zaid Ibn Thabit) (زيد بن ثابت ) was the personal scribe of the Islamic prophet Muhammad [citation needed] and a Ansar [1].
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Biography
Early Life: ? – 610
Zayd Ibn Thabit was 13 years old when on the occasion of Battle of Badr he asked permission to participate in the battle. But as he was less than 15 years old, Prophet Muhammed did not allow him and sent him back. He then decided to get the company of Muhammed but learning Qur'an. Mohammed asked him to learn Hebrew and Assyrian languages. Later on he was appointed to write letters to non-muslims and collect and keep record of the Quranic verses.Zaid was among those chosen by the Prophet to write down the verses of the Qur'an whenever Allah revealed them to Mohammed. He used to spend most of his time reciting the Qur'an and he continued to learn all the Quranic verses that were revealed to the Prophet Mohammed.
Later on Zaid volunteered to fight when he was nineteen years old. This time the Prophet Mohammed accepted him in the ranks of the Muslim army. Zaid's time to fight had come nine years after the Prophet established the Muslim community in Medinah. Makkah had been taken over by the Muslims the previous year. When the news reached the Byzantine empire, the empire had mustered an army to invade the Arabic penninsula. Mohammed decided to assemble an army and march to meet the threatened attack. The Prophet sent orders to Makkah and the allied tribes for them to send all their available armed and mounted men to Madina.
Muhammad's era: 610 – 632
He most notably took the role of writing down many of the messages from God that were revealed to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. These messages later formed the Qur'an, and the wahy, the Prophet's words, public contracts and transactions.
Abu Bakr's era: 632 – 634
After the death of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, the task fell on this fortunate young man who specialized in the Quran to authenticate the first and most important reference for the ummah of Muhammad. This became an urgent task after the wars of apostasy and the Battle of Yamamah in particular in which a large number of those who had committed the Quran to memory perished.Umar convinced the Khalifah Abu Bakr that unless the Quran was collected in one manuscript.
During Abu Bakr's reign as caliph, he was given the task of collecting the Quranic verses from all over Arabia. Zayd finally accepted the task and, according to him, "started locating the Quranic material and collecting it from parchments, scapula, leafstalks of date palms and from the memories of men (who knew it by heart)".
It was a painstaking task and Zayd was careful that not a single error, however slight or unintentional, should creep into the work. When Zayd had completed his task, he left the prepared suhuf or sheets with Abu Bakr. Before he died, Abu Bakr left the suhuf with Umar who in turn left it with his daughter Hafsah. Hafsah, Umm Salamah and Aishah were wives of the Prophet, may Allah be pleased with them, who memorized the Quran.
He completed the task, compiling an authentic version of the Quran called Mushaf, and delivered the copy to Abu Bakr.
Umar's era: 634 – 644
Zayd ibn Thabit thus became one of the foremost authorities on the Quran. Umar ibn al-Khattab once addressed the Muslims and said: "O people, whoever wants to ask about the Quran, let him go to Zayd ibn Thabit.
Uthman's era: 644 – 656
During the time of Uthman, by which time Islam had spread far and wide, differences in reading the Quran became obvious. A group of companions of the Prophet, headed by Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman, who was then stationed in Iraq, came to Uthman and urged him to "save the Muslim ummah before they differ about the Quran".Uthman obtained the manuscript of the Quran from Hafsah and again summoned the leading authority, Zayd ibn Thabit, and some other companions to make copies of it [citation needed]. Zayd was put in charge of the operation [1]. The arabic style used was that of the Quraish tribe. Hence this style was emphasized over all other.
Zayd and his assistants wrote many copies. One of these were sent to every Muslim province with the order that all other Quranic materials whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies be burnt. This was important in order to eliminate any variations or differences from the standard text of the Quran. Caliph Uthman kept a copy for himself and returned the original manuscript to Hafsah.
Legacy
Zayd ibn Thabit had a freedman who became the father of Hasan al-Basri
Bernard Lewis, a 21th century non-Muslim Islamic scholar
| Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib said that when Zayd ibn Thabit died, he left ingots of gold and silver that were broken up with axes, in addition to property and estates to the value of 100,000 dinars [2]. |
Shi'a view
Ali Asgher Razwy, a 20th century Shi'a Twelver Islamic scholar states:
| Others were Muhammad bin Maslama, Bashir bin Saad, and Zayd bin Thabit. They had shown great zeal in taking the oath of loyalty to Abu Bakr in Saqifa ... Zayd bin Thabit was fanatically devoted to Uthman, and for this reason, he received many gifts and rewards from the treasury. He was the son of poor parents but during the caliphate of Uthman, became one of the richest men in Medina. Two officers of the public treasury in Medina and in Kufa who had been appointed by Abu Bakr, had thrown the keys of the treasuries in their charge, before Uthman, in protest against the plunder of the public funds by himself and by one of his governors. Uthman gave both keys to Zayd bin Thabit. Zayd bin Thabit was one of the few Ansaris who shared the bonanza in the times of Umar and Uthman. He was also one of the few Ansaris who did not take part in the campaigns of Ali in Basra, Siffin and Nehrwan. Most of the Ansaris fought on Ali's side against his enemies in these battles. [1] |
See also
External links
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