About The Book

This book, The Scribes of the Prophet (PBUH), provides an extensive list of those Companions who had the honor of acting as scribbles to the Messenger of Allah SAW in his differing capacities as a conduit of Revelation and head of the nascent Muslim State.

Through biographies focusing on their secretarial activities, the reader is afforded a vital insight into this aspect of service performed by a privileged number of Companions.

By synthesizing an extensive array of sources on Sirah, the author throws light on and reinvigorates the extant corpus documenting these secretarial activities, thus showcasing this branch of our Islamic heritage and the scholarship involved in interpreting it.

About The Author

Professor Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami, one of the world's premier scholars of Hadith, was born in Mau, India in the early 1930s and received his education successively at Dar al-Ulum Deoband, India (1952), al-Azhar University, Cairo (M.A., 1955), and University of Cambridge (Ph.D., 1966). 

He is Professor Emeritus at King Sa'ud University (Riyadh) where he also chaired the department of Islamic Studies; he holds Saudi citizenship. 

Al-Azami served as curator of the National Public Library, Qatar; Associate Professor at Umm al-Qura University (Makkah); Visiting Scholar at University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); Visiting Fellow at St. Cross College (University of Oxford); King Faisal Visiting Professor for Islamic Studies at Princeton; and Visiting Scholar at University of Colorado (Boulder). 

He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Wales (Lampeter). His publications include Studies in Early Hadith Literature, Hadith Methodology and Literature, On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, Dirasat fi al-Hadith an-Nabawi, Kuttab an-Nabi, Manhaj an-Naqd ind al-Muhaddithin, and al-Muhaddithun min al-Yamamah. 

Among his credited works are al-Ilal of Ibn al-Madini, Kitab at-Tamyiz of Imam Muslim, Maghazi Rasulullah of Urwah ibn Zubayr, Muwatta Imam Malik, Sahih ibn Khuzaimah, and Sunan ibn Majah. 

Many of al-Azami's works have been translated internationally, and his forthcoming works include The Qur'anic Challenge: A Promise Fulfilled, and The Isnad System: Its Origins and Authenticity. 

In 1980 he was the recipient of the prestigious King Faisal International Award for Islamic Studies.