SAHABAH

In Islam, the Ṣaḥābah (Arabic: الصحابة‎, Ṣaḥābeh, "Companions") were the companions of the Islamic prophet Muḥammad. This form is plural; the singular is masculine ṣaḥābiyy, feminine ṣaḥābiyyah.

Definitions of companion

The most widespread definition of a companion is someone who saw Muhammad, believed in him and died a Muslim. Those that saw him but held off believing in him until after his passing are not considered Sahaba but Tabi`in.^[1]

Lists of prominent companions usually run to 50 or 60 names, being the people most closely associated with Muhammad. However, there were clearly many others who had some contact with Muhammad, and their names and biographies were recorded in religious reference texts such as Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi's (Muḥammad ibn Sa'd) early Kitāb at-Tabāqat al-Kabīr (The book of The Major Classes).

Muhammad ibn Ahmad Efendi (died 1622), who is also known with the sobriquet "Nişancızâde", 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."^{[citation needed]}

It was important to identify the companions because later scholars accepted their testimony (the hadith, or traditions) as to the words and deeds of Muhammad, 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 properly written down until many years after the death of Muhammad,although there were many individual written copies, the isnads, or chains of transmission, always have several links. The first link is preferably a companion, who had direct contact with Muhammad. The companion then related the tradition to a Tabi‘un, the companion of the companion. Tabi‘un had no direct contact with Muhammad, but did have direct contact with the Ṣahāba. The tradition then would have been passed from the Tabi‘un to the Tābi‘ at-Tābi‘īn, 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.

Number of companions

Some Muslims assert that there were more than 200,000. It is believed that 124,000 witnessed The Farewell Sermon Muhammad 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 2,770 biographies of male Sahaba and 381 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 Muhammad died. There were 10,000 Sahaba by the time Mecca was conquered and 70,000 Sahaba during the Battle of Tabouk in 630.

Views of the companions

The two largest Islamic denominations, the Sunni and Shi'a, take very different approaches in weighing the value of the companions' testimony.

Sunni views

Main article: Sunni view of the Sahaba

According to Sunni scholars, Muslims of the past should be considered companions if they had any contact with Muhammad, and they were not liars or opposed to him 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 Muhammad. Even unlearned Muslims are considered companions. However, anyone who died after rejecting Islam and becoming an apostate is not considered a companion. "Whom God is pleased with" (Arabic: رضي الله عنه‎ raḍiyu l-Lāhu ‘anhu) is usually mentioned by Sunnis after the names of the Sahaba.

Regard for the companions is evident from the ahadith:

It was narrated from ‘Abd-Allah ibn Mas’ud that Muhammad said: "The best of the people are my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them."^[2]

Sunni Muslim scholars classified companions into many categories, based on a number of criteria. The hadith quoted above shows the rank of ṣaḥābah, tābi‘īn, and tābi‘ at-tābi‘īn. Al-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

Main article: Shi'a view of the Sahaba

Shi'a Muslims do not accept all companions as just. The Shi'a believe that after the death of Muhammad, the majority of the sahabah turned aside from true Islam and deviated from Muhammad's family, instead electing the caliph by themselves. Although some of the sahabah repented later, only a few of the early Muslims held fast to Ali, whom Shi'a Muslims regard as the rightful successor to Muhammad. 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 Muhammad's family members and companions who supported Ali.