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Sahaba
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In Islam, the abah "Companions" were the companions of the Islamic prophet Muammad. This form is plural; the singular is masculine ?a?abiyy, feminine ?a?abiyyah. A list of the best-known companions can be found in the List of abah.
Sunnis regard anyone who, in the state of faith, saw Mu?ammad to be a abiyy. Lists of prominent companions usually run to fifty or sixty names, being the people most closely associated with Mu?ammad.
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In Islam, the abah "Companions" were the companions of the Islamic prophet Muammad. This form is plural; the singular is masculine ?a?abiyy, feminine ?a?abiyyah. A list of the best-known companions can be found in the List of abah.
Definitions of "Companion"
Most Sunnis regard anyone who, in the state of faith, saw Mu?ammad to be a abiyy. Lists of prominent companions usually run to fifty or sixty names, being the people most closely associated with Mu?ammad. However, there were clearly many others who had some contact with Mu?ammad, and their names and biographies were recorded in religious reference texts such as Mu?ammad ibn Sa'd's early Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir.
Muhammad bin Ahmad Efendi (death 1622), who is also known with the sobriquet "Nisancizâde", the author of the book entitled Mir’ât-i-kâinât (in Turkish), states as follows: "Once a male or female Muslim has seen Hadrat Muhammad only for a short time, no matter whether he/she is a child or an adult, he/she is called a Sahaba with the proviso of dying with as a believer; the same rule applies to blind Muslims who have talked with the Prophet at least once. If a disbeliever sees the Prophet and then joins the Believers after the demise of Muhammad, he is not a Sahaba; nor is a person called a Sahaba if he converted to Islam afterwards although he had seen the Prophet Muhammad as a Muslim. A person who converts to Islam after being a Sahaba and then becomes a Believer again after the demise of Prophet Muhammad, is a Sahaba."
It was important to identify the companions because later scholars accepted their testimony (the hadith, or traditions) as to the words and deeds of Mu?ammad, the occasions on which the Qur'an was revealed, and various important matters of Islamic history and practice (sunnah). The testimony of the companions, as it was passed down through chains of trusted narrators (isnads), was the basis of the developing Islamic tradition.
Other links in the chain of isnad
Because the hadith were not written down until many years after the death of Mu?ammad, the isnads, or chains of transmission, always have several links. The first link is preferably a companion, who had direct contact with Mu?ammad. The companion then related the tradition to a tabi‘in, the companion of the companion. Tabi‘in had no direct contact with Mu?ammad, but did have direct contact with the ?ahaba. The tradition then would have been passed from the Tabi‘in to the Tabi‘ at-Tabi‘in, the third link.
The second and third links in the chain of transmission were also of great interest to Muslim scholars, who treated of them in biographical dictionaries and evaluated them for bias and reliability. Shi'a and Sunni apply different metrics.
Numbers of companions
Some Muslims assert that there were more than one hundred thousand companions. One hundred twenty four thousand are believed to have witnessed the last sermon Mu?ammad delivered after making his last pilgrimage, or Hajj, to Mecca.
The book entitled Istî’âb fî ma’rifat-il-Ashâb by Hafidh Yusuf bin Muhammad bin Qurtubi (death 1071) consists of two thousand and seven hundred and seventy biographies of male Sahaba and three hundred and eighty-one biographies of female Sahaba. According to an observation in the book entitled Mawâhib-i-ladunniyya, an untold number of persons had already converted to Islam by the time Prophet Muhammad passed away. There were ten thousand Sahaba by the time Mecca was conquered and seventy thousand Sahaba during the Battle of Tabuk in 630.
Views of the companions
Soon after Mu?ammad's death the Muslim community, the ummah, was riven by conflicts over leadership. Companions took sides in the conflicts – or were forced to take sides – and later scholars considered their allegiances in weighing their testimony. The two largest Muslim denominations, the Shi'a and Sunni take very different approaches in weighing the value of the companions' testimony.
Sunni views
According to Sunni scholars, Muslims of the past should be considered companions if they had any contact with Mu?ammad, and they were not liars or opposed to the Prophet and his teachings. If they saw him, heard him, or were in his presence even briefly, they are companions. Blind people are considered companions even if they could not see Mu?ammad. Even unlearned Muslims are considered companions. However, anyone who died after rejecting Islam and becoming an apostate is not considered a companion. "God be pleased with him" ( ra?iyu l-Lahu ‘anhu) is usually mentioned by Sunnis after the names of the Sahaba.
Regard for the Companions is evident from the ahadith:Sunni Muslim scholars classified companions into many categories, based on a number of criteria. The hadith quoted above shows the rank of ?a?abah, tabi‘in and tabi‘ at-tabi‘in. Suyuti recognized eleven levels of companionship. However, all companions are assumed to be just (udul) unless they are proven otherwise; that is, Sunni scholars do not believe that companions would lie or fabricate hadith unless they were proven to be liars, untrustworthy or opposed to Islam.
Shi'a views
Shi'a Muslims do not accept all companions as just. The Shi'a believe that after the death of Mu?ammad, the majority of the sahabah turned aside from true Islam and deviated from the Prophet's family, instead electing the caliph by themselves. Only a few of the early Muslims held fast to Ali, whom Shi'a Muslims regard as the rightful successor to Mu?ammad. Shi'a scholars therefore deprecate hadith believed to have been transmitted through unjust companions, and place much more reliance on hadith believed to have been related by the Prophet's family members and companions who supported Ali.
External links
- includes the names of some Sahaba.
- gives support to the idea that Imam Abu Hanifa was a taba'een
- provides extensive information about the lives of some Sahaba.
- An online video lecture by Shaykh Sayyed Mu?ammad bin Yahya Al-Husayni Al-Ninowy
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