Quote · during his years at the Suffa
Anytime anyone came to us, the Prophet ﷺ would assign one of us to the newcomer to teach him the Qur'an and salah.
withMuhammad ﷺ
~Ramadan, after the Battle of Badr (2 AH) · 2 AH
In brief
When Madinah's households could no longer absorb the emigrants, around Ramadan 2 AH after Badr, the Prophet ﷺ roofed the old front of his mosque as a shelter, the Suffa. Its people, at times seventy, were among the most devoted Companions and the poorest: some had too little to wear to prostrate decently, most went two days without food. Whatever charity or gifts reached the Prophet ﷺ went to them; he told Fatima RA to give to them at Hasan's birth and refused her a servant while their bellies were empty. Abu Hurairah, its most famous resident, lived on the hope of being asked to a meal, and once carried a single cup of milk round forty of them and drank last, the cup still full. A rope of dates between its pillars fed the mosque's poor for thirteen centuries.
The Suffa became, in effect, the first university of Islam: people travelled from distant villages to learn the Qur'an, fiqh, and salah there before returning to teach their own people. In the Wars of Ridda (11-12 AH) against Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab, so many of the Suffa's Qur'an-memorizers were killed that Umar ibn al-Khattab RA grew alarmed enough to urge Abu Bakr RA to have the Qur'an formally compiled.
The First Year in Madinah·Chapter 12 of 12The Suffa
See the whole storyThe old front of the mosque, made its back by the new qibla, was roofed as the shelter.
Only after Badr, when the households of Madinah were full, did the People of the Suffa become known.
Other events recorded in 2 AH. Their order within the year is not established; use the storyline above for the sequence.
The emigrants outgrow the households of Madinah.
Anytime anyone came to us, the Prophet ﷺ would assign one of us to the newcomer to teach him the Qur'an and salah.
Give some charity to the People of the Suffa.
At the birth of his grandson Hasan RA.
O my father, I have so much housework to do. Can you give me one servant?
Some years later, when a large batch of war captives arrived who were going to become slaves.
How can I give you a servant when the People of the Suffa's stomachs have collapsed? They have nothing to eat. By Allah, I will sell all of them and spend the money on the People of the Suffa.
A question at the door, and a cup of milk for forty.
Many times I would ask a Companion a question when he went out of the masjid, and wallahi, I knew the answer better than him. But the only reason I was asking was to drag out the conversation until I reached his doorstep, hoping he might invite me in for a meal.
Is there anything to eat or drink?
The Prophet ﷺ had seen Abu Hurairah RA weak with hunger and invited him into his house.
Yes: one of the neighbouring Ansar has given us a glass of milk.
Go and call the People of the Suffa.
I had to obey the command.
So I gathered all thirty or forty of them together and brought them in, thinking to myself: what will be left for me?
Go to every one of them and give them the cup.
So I went to every one of them, giving them the cup, until finally there was only the Prophet ﷺ and I left who had not drunk from it.
Sit down. Drink.
I drank, and the cup seemed even more full than the first time he ﷺ had handed it to me.
Drink.
Wallahi, O Messenger of Allah ﷺ! There is not a single space left in my stomach for this milk.
Why he narrated so much.
The people are complaining that I narrate too many ahadith. But were it not for the fact that Allah has criticized those who withhold knowledge, I would not have narrated a single hadith. And I will tell you why I know more than our brothers of the Muhajirun and the Ansar: the Muhajirun were busy buying and selling in the marketplace, and the Ansar were busy harvesting in the fields, while I stuck to the Prophet ﷺ with my hungry stomach, so I memorized what they would not memorize.
A later reflection on his years at the Suffa.
Abu Hurairah RA's own words in the post cite this ayah's warning against concealing knowledge as the reason he narrated so much hadith.