101 Hadith Qudsi by pImam ibn Arabi

Appendix
to Muhammad (born AD|570) from his fortieth year. Parts of the Qur¤an were
uttered by Muhammad at different times during the course of twenty-three
years, and on his instruction these were recorded by being committed to
memory by many people, and by being written down. The ¥rst collection of
the Qur¤an seems to have been a written copy of the entire text in the reign
of the ¥rst Caliph, Ab¬ Bakr. The form of the Qur¤an as we know it today
resulted from the action of the third Caliph, ¡Uthmån (ruled AD|644–56),
who had all the existing records collected together and written down less
than twenty years after the death of Muhammad. This de¥nitive version,
known as the Uthmanic codex, has remained essentially unchanged to the
present day. Although there is a record of the existence of some variants
prior to ¡Uthmån’s redaction, and there was some further development of
the text when vowel-marks were added to it (AD|688), there is a virtually total
consensus in traditional Islam about the authenticity and completeness of
the Quranic text as we have it.
While some ¢ad¨th were memorised and indeed may have been written
down during the life of Muhammad, this process was less systematic and
organised than in the case of the Quranic revelation. The record of the
Prophet’s example conveyed by ¢ad¨th, which is called the Sunna, is fundamental
to the life of Islam, as the natural complement to the Qur¤an, and
Muslims are encouraged to seek guidance from it in an effort to emulate
Muhammad. The ¢ad¨th corpus was reported by the Companions, those
who had enjoyed the privilege of having lived in the Prophet’s company. It
is upon their reliability and integrity that the trustworthiness of the huge
number of ¢ad¨th collected by later generations of Muslim scholars rests.
Of these Companions, only a small number took it upon themselves to
report ¢ad¨th: the vast majority of the traditions which have come down
to us are related by fewer than 300 Companions. A mere eleven are responsible
for handing down more than 500 ¢ad¨th each. Seven of these
Companions, each of whom reported more than 1,000 traditions, are
known as the mukaththir¬n, the narrators of many traditions; 3 all of them
enjoyed a long association with the Prophet, had a tremendous interest in
recording ¢ad¨th accurately, and could speak with great authority about what
he had said and done. They all outlived the Prophet, and thus were able to
pass on their knowledge to succeeding generations.
3. These seven are: Ab¬ Hurayra (5374 traditions), ¡Abdallåh b. ¡Umar (2630), Anas
b. Målik (2286), ¡Å¤isha Umm al-mu¤min¨n (2210), ¡Abdallåh b. ¡Abbås (1660), Jåbir b.
¡Abdallåh (1540) and Ab¬ Sa¡¨d al-Khudr¨ (1170).
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