Zayd ibn Thabit

Zayd ibn Thabit was an Ansari boy who learned writing and languages in Medina, became the Prophet's scribe of revelation — and the editor-in-chief of the Qur'an as a book, twice over.

Eleven years old at the Hijra ¹, Zayd was set to letters and — in a famous report — to learning Syriac and Hebrew at the Prophet's direction. He grew into the community's principal scribe, writing down revelation as it came.

After the Prophet's death, when the Ridda wars had killed many reciters, Abu Bakr charged Zayd — a young man, as he himself later told it, with a task "like carrying a mountain" — with gathering the Qur'an from written fragments and memories ¹. The sheets he assembled passed to Hafsa's keeping; a decade later Uthman named a committee headed by Zayd, which produced the single standard recension sent to the cities ¹. He died in Medina about 660.

Between spoken revelation and printed Qur'an stands an editor — and the tradition names him. Every recitation in the world today descends from the text Zayd ibn Thabit wrote out.