The Virtue of the People of Hadith and Their Care in Collecting the Sunnah

They are known, and praise be to Allah, by the path that Allah inspired in a group of Muslim scholars, namely the scholars of hadith, whom Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) employed to serve this Islam by their care, first of all, in collecting the hadiths of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) over the course of at least the first three centuries, which are attested to be the best. They collected the hadiths of the Messenger from various lands and from the memories of people, because the bearers of these Prophetic hadiths, from among the Companions, the Successors, and those after them, were not settled in one single town where a scholar eager to collect knowledge could receive the Sunnah from that one place. Rather, they were scattered across the lands, east, west, north, and south. So one of them would devote himself to traveling through the lands to receive knowledge from various scholars in all those lands. This is a provision from Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) for these scholars, so that they collected for us the hadiths of the Messenger (peace be upon him) that were scattered across the lands due to the scattering of their bearers. You can easily imagine with me that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) spent ten years in Makkah and the rest of the call, thirteen years, in al-Madinah al-Munawwarah. Those who came to the Messenger in Makkah and al-Madinah were the Companions of the Messenger (peace be upon him), and they were the bearers of the hadiths they had heard. Understand with me clearly also that these Companions, during his lifetime (peace be upon him), let alone after his passing, were scattered across the lands. A person from Makkah would come to al-Madinah to pledge allegiance to him in Islam, from Jeddah, from Najran, from various lands, and then return to his country having carried with him some knowledge from him (peace be upon him). As came in Sahih al-Bukhari from the hadith of Malik ibn al-Huwayrith (may Allah be pleased with him) that he came with some of his companions to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and stayed with him for about twenty days, as I recall. He said, "Then we missed our families, so we asked the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) for permission to leave." He said to them: , and he said to Malik: . And he set out to his tribe. So this man is the one who is able to narrate such a hadith, and that is the one who goes to him. So it is necessary that he go to this tribe, and this tribe to this town, and this village, and so on. Therefore, it was a favor from Allah (Mighty and Majestic) that He employed the scholars of hadith to travel to various lands to meet those whom they knew had even one hadith, so they would hear it directly from them. Indeed, among these were some of his Companions (peace be upon him). One of them, whose name was 'Uqbah ibn 'Amir, heard that Jabir ibn 'Abd Allah al-Ansari, who was famous for a hadith known to him, was in Egypt. So he traveled from his country, which I think was al-Madinah at that time, to Egypt. Why? To hear that hadith which he was told Jabir had heard from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). So Jabir went out to meet him, and they embraced each other. He said, "I did not come for anything except that it reached me that you heard a hadith from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). The text of the hadith, as I recall part of it now, is: ." And this hadith is one of the hadiths by which the people of the Sunnah truly hold fast, and by them I mean the people of hadith who do not show partisanship for a school of creed, such as the Maturidiyyah, the Asha'irah, the Mu'tazilah, or the Jabriyyah. Nor do they show partisanship for a school of legal rulings, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, or Hanbali schools, let alone other schools that are far removed from the first ones. The people of hadith do not show partisanship except for the hadith, and for that reason they were named after it and affiliated with it, as one of their poets said:
"The people of hadith are the people of the Messenger, they are the people of the Prophet, even if they did not accompany his person, they accompanied his breaths"
And this is the answer to that ignorant person who said, "You did not meet the Messenger." He did not meet the Messenger, but those who occupy themselves with the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) are as if they are living with him. The people of hadith are the people of the Prophet, even if they did not accompany his person, they accompanied his breaths. And for this reason, it became known among all scholars, without exception or exclusion, jurists and exegetes, that they all said what the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) indicated. The one who said: , the scholars all say this. And for this reason, we see the radiance in the people of hadith because they occupy themselves with the words of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) day and night. So the saying of that scholar-poet is true of them:
"The people of hadith are the people of the Prophet, even if they did not accompany his person, they accompanied his breaths"
This hadith is the hadith of Jabir to 'Uqbah ibn 'Amir...