The scribe

Zayd ibn Thābit (may Allah be pleased with him) was one of the people who wrote down the Quran as it was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ. After the Prophet's ﷺ death he was given the task of gathering it into one written copy, and later he was one of the four men who copied the codices sent to the regions. The reports below come from Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī. The Arabic is quoted as it stands in our texts; where no reviewed translation exists, we describe what it says in our own words instead of translating it.

The scribe of revelation

al-Barāʾ reports that when a verse of al-Nisāʾ (4:95) was revealed, the Prophet ﷺ asked for Zayd:

ادْعُ لِي زَيْدًا وَلْيَجِئْ بِاللَّوْحِ وَالدَّوَاةِ وَالْكَتِفِ أَوِ الْكَتِفِ وَالدَّوَاةِ

In our words: he asked that Zayd be called and come with the board, the inkpot and the shoulder blade, and then told him to write. (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4990)

Zayd also learned a second script for the Prophet ﷺ. In al-Tirmidhī's report Zayd says that the Prophet ﷺ told him to learn the writing of the Jews, that half a month had not passed before he had learned it, and that from then on he wrote the Prophet's ﷺ letters to them and read their letters to him. al-Tirmidhī grades it: «هَذَا حَدِيثٌ حَسَنٌ صَحِيحٌ» (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 2715).

Gathering the Quran after al-Yamāma

Zayd tells the story himself in al-Bukhārī. Many of those who knew the Quran by heart had been killed at the battle of al-Yamāma. ʿUmar urged Abū Bakr to have the Quran gathered, and Abū Bakr called Zayd. His words to Zayd:

إِنَّكَ رَجُلٌ شَابٌّ عَاقِلٌ لَا نَتَّهِمُكَ وَقَدْ كُنْتَ تَكْتُبُ الْوَحْيَ لِرَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ

In our words: Abū Bakr told him that he was young and sensible, that they had no doubts about him, and that he used to write the revelation for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Zayd's answer:

فَوَاللَّهِ لَوْ كَلَّفُونِي نَقْلَ جَبَلٍ مِنَ الْجِبَالِ مَا كَانَ أَثْقَلَ عَلَيَّ مِمَّا أَمَرَنِي بِهِ مِنْ جَمْعِ الْقُرْآنِ

In our words: had they asked him to move a mountain, it would not have weighed on him more than gathering the Quran.

Then he describes his method:

فَتَتَبَّعْتُ الْقُرْآنَ أَجْمَعُهُ مِنَ الْعُسُبِ وَاللِّخَافِ وَصُدُورِ الرِّجَالِ

In our words: he searched out the Quran and gathered it from palm-leaf stalks, thin stones and the memories of men. (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4986)

Ibn Ḥajar explains the materials: ʿusub are palm stalks, stripped of their leaves and written on at the broad end, and likhāf are thin flat stones («صفائح الحجارة الرقاق», quoting al-Khaṭṭābī) (Fatḥ al-Bārī, 9:14).

He continued until he found the last verses of al-Tawba with one man, Abū Khuzayma al-Anṣārī: «لَمْ أَجِدْهَا مَعَ أَحَدٍ غَيْرِهُ», in our words, he had not found them with anyone else, that is, in writing. Ibn Ḥajar: «والحق أن المراد بالنفي نفي وجودها مكتوبة، لا نفي كونها محفوظة», «the correct view is that what is denied is their being found written down, not their being known by heart» (Fatḥ al-Bārī, 9:15; translation ours). The sheets he produced stayed with Abū Bakr until his death, then with ʿUmar for his lifetime, then with Ḥafṣa bint ʿUmar (4986).

The «two witnesses»

A further report is often told with this story. Ibn Abī Dāwūd (d. 316 AH) gives it in his Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif from Hishām ibn ʿUrwa, from his father:

فقال لعمر بن الخطاب ولزيد بن ثابت: «اقعدوا على باب المسجد فمن جاءكما بشاهدين على شيء من كتاب الله فاكتباه»

In our words: Abū Bakr told ʿUmar and Zayd to sit at the door of the mosque and to write down anything from the Book of Allah that someone brought them with two witnesses. (al-Maṣāḥif, 1:51)

Ibn Ḥajar weighs this report and explains what the «two witnesses» could mean:

ورجاله ثقات مع انقطاعه، وكأن المراد بالشاهدين الحفظ والكتاب، أو المراد أنهما يشهدان على أن ذلك المكتوب كتب بين يدي رسول الله ﷺ أو المراد أنهما يشهدان على أن ذلك من الوجوه التي نزل بها القرآن.

Its narrators are trustworthy, though its chain is broken. It seems the two witnesses meant memory and writing; or that two people would testify that the written piece had been written in the presence of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; or that two people would testify that it was one of the ways in which the Quran was revealed. (Fatḥ al-Bārī, 9:14–15; translation ours)

He adds: «وكان غرضهم أن لا يكتب إلا من عين ما كتب بين يدي النبي ﷺ لا من مجرد الحفظ», «their aim was that nothing be written except from what had itself been written in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ, not from memory alone» (9:15). Ibn Ḥajar also cites another report from Ibn Abī Dāwūd, in which nothing was accepted from anyone until two witnesses testified to it. He comments that Zayd did not settle for finding a verse written down until someone who had received it by hearing testified to it, «مع كون زيد كان يحفظه، وكان يفعل ذلك مبالغة في الاحتياط», «although Zayd knew it by heart; he did this out of the utmost caution» (9:14).

The copies under ʿUthmān

Years later, Ḥudhayfa ibn al-Yamān came back from the campaigns in Armenia and Azerbaijan alarmed at how differently people recited. ʿUthmān asked Ḥafṣa for the sheets, and four men copied them into codices: Zayd ibn Thābit, ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Zubayr, Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām. ʿUthmān told the three Qurashī men:

إِذَا اخْتَلَفْتُمْ أَنْتُمْ وزَيْدُ بْنُ ثَابِتٍ فِي شَيْءٍ مِنَ الْقُرْآنِ، فَاكْتُبُوهُ بِلِسَانِ قُرَيْشٍ، فَإِنَّمَا نَزَلَ بِلِسَانِهِمْ

In our words: where they and Zayd differed on anything of the Quran, they were to write it in the dialect of Quraysh, for it was revealed in their tongue. The sheets went back to Ḥafṣa, and a copy was sent to every region (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4987).

In the next report (4988), which Ibn Shihāb heard from Zayd's son Khārija, Zayd remembers one more search. While copying, he missed a verse of al-Aḥzāb that he had heard the Prophet ﷺ recite:

فَقَدْتُ آيَةً مِنَ الْأَحْزَابِ حِينَ نَسَخْنَا الْمُصْحَفَ، قَدْ كُنْتُ أَسْمَعُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ يَقْرَأُ بِهَا

In our words: they looked for it and found it with Khuzayma ibn Thābit al-Anṣārī, and placed it in its sūra in the codex. The verse is al-Aḥzāb 33:23. (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4988)

What his method teaches

The same question runs through all of these reports: where exactly did this come from? Zayd knew what he was gathering by heart, as Ibn Ḥajar notes, and still looked for it in writing. He found pieces in writing, and still matched them with what people had memorised. Takhrij asks a smaller version of his question about a forwarded saying: where is it written, and who carried it?

The Arabic of the hadith reports is from Sanadset 650K (CC BY 4.0). Ibn Abī Dāwūd and Ibn Ḥajar are quoted from the editions named in the sources, read in turath.io's text of the printed edition on 25 October 2026. Descriptions «in our words» are not translations, and the quoted translations of Ibn Ḥajar are ours.