Abu Hurairah

Abu Hurairah stands at the top of the list of Hadith transmitters. This is because of the sheer bulk of his narrations. He was regarded by the Prophet himself as the most eager, among all Muslims, to acquire the knowledge of Hadith.

Belonging to the tribe of Daws, an offshoot of the great clan of Azd, Abu Hurairah came to Madinah in the seventh year of the Hijrah (the Prophet's migration to Madinah). On being told that the Prophet was in Khaybar, he went there and accepted Islam. Since that time and until the death of the Prophet, Abu Hurairah constantly remained in the company of the Prophet, attending him and memorizing his words during the day, thereby sacrificing all worldly pursuits and pleasures.

We are told that Abu Hurairah would divide his nights into three parts: one for sleeping, one for praying, and one for studying. After the death of the Prophet, he was appointed governor of Bahrain for a while during the caliphate of `Umar ibn Al-Khattab. He also acted as governor of Madinah under the early Umayyad caliphs. He died in AH 59 (678 CE).

When the Prophet died, information about religion and jurisprudential judgments had to be sought indirectly. At that time, Abu Hurairah (who instructed more than 800 students in Hadith) poured out the store of knowledge he had so meticulously accumulated. At times he was taken to task for reporting certain hadiths unknown to other Companions. But he would reply that he had simply learned what the Ansar (Muslims of Madinah) had missed because they had been attending to their lands and properties, and what the Muhajirun (Immigrants to Madinah) had failed to learn because of their commercial activities.

Once he was taken to task by `Abdullah ibn `Umar for relating a particular hadith, so Abu Hurairah took him to `A'ishah, who bore witness to the truth of what Abu Hurairah had related. His knowledge and memory were also tested by Marwan ibn Al-Hakam, the then governor of Madinah. Having written down some hadiths related by Abu Hurairah, Ibn Al-Hakam wanted him to relate the same after a year. He found them to be exactly identical to Abu Hurairah's earlier narration.

When one considers Abu Hurairah's intense dedication to learning Hadith, his devotion to the Prophet, and the various tests applied to his memory and scholarship by his contemporaries, one finds it inconceivable that he would have fabricated any hadith. This does not mean, however, that some material was not falsely imputed to him at a later time. The fact that he narrated a uniquely large number of hadiths did make inventing hadiths in his name an attractive proposition.

Reference: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&pagename=Zone-English-Living_Shariah%2FLSELayout&cid=1258880642916