The People of the Bench
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣakhr al-Dawsī — known by the nickname Abū Hurayrah, “father of the kitten,” from a cat he used to carry as a boy — came to Madīnah in the seventh year after the Hijrah, at the time of Khaybar. He was among the last of the significant Companions to arrive, and he had nothing.1
He attached himself to the ahl al-ṣuffah, the people of the bench — the destitute who lived in the covered area of the mosque itself. His own explanation of his volume of transmission rests on exactly this: “The emigrants were busy with trade in the markets, and the Anṣār were busy with their property. Abū Hurayrah kept close to the Messenger of God ﷺ on a full stomach's worth of nothing, and was present when they were absent, and remembered when they forgot.”2
He described fainting from hunger between the pulpit and ʿĀʾishah's chamber and people putting their feet on his neck thinking he was mad — “and it was nothing but hunger.” He would ask men to recite a verse to him hoping they would understand and feed him.3
The Memory
He complained once to the Prophet ﷺ that he heard much from him and forgot it. He was told to spread out his cloak; the Prophet ﷺ made a gathering motion with his hands into it and told him to draw it to himself. “And I never forgot anything after that.”4
He transmitted 5,374 ḥadīth — more than any other Companion, more than double the next. That volume drew scrutiny in his own lifetime and ever since: ʿUmar questioned him about it, and some Companions who had been present for longer were surprised at how much he had. His answer was always the same argument from proximity and leisure, and he pointed out that he narrated in an era when others were busy earning.25
The ḥadīth critics later built a whole apparatus for testing exactly this kind of claim — checking a narrator's transmissions against those of others present at the same event. Abū Hurayrah's material was examined more heavily than anyone's, and the two Ṣaḥīḥ compilers, working two centuries later, accepted a great deal of it after that scrutiny.5
The Mother
His mother came with him to Madīnah and was not a Muslim. He invited her repeatedly and she refused; one day she said something about the Prophet ﷺ that he could not bear, and he came to him weeping and asked him to pray that she be guided. The Prophet ﷺ prayed. Abū Hurayrah went home and found the door shut and heard water; she came out and said the words of testimony.6
He went back weeping with joy and asked one more thing: “Pray to God that He make me and my mother beloved to His believing servants, and make them beloved to us.” He said the Prophet ﷺ prayed for it, and added: “No believer hears of me or sees me but loves me.”6
He served as governor of Baḥrayn under ʿUmar, was dismissed and later offered the post again and declined it. He died in Madīnah at about seventy-six.1