How many Companions were there?

People often ask how many Companions there were, and the figures handed down vary widely. Al-Dhahabi gathered the best known of them in the preface to [[work/tajrid-asma-al-sahaba|Tajrid Asma' al-Sahaba]] and commented on them. ¹

• Al-Shafi'i: the Prophet died when the Muslims numbered sixty thousand — thirty thousand in Medina and thirty thousand elsewhere. The editor notes that al-Saji reports it in his Manaqib al-Shafi'i, as cited in al-Taqyid wa-al-Idah, with a good chain according to al-'Iraqi. ¹
• Abu Zur'a al-Razi: when the Messenger of God died, more than a hundred thousand people had seen him and heard from him; al-Khatib reports it in al-Jami' li-Akhlaq al-Rawi. A gloss in one manuscript says that the hadith master 'Abd al-Qadir specified the excess in Tabaqat al-Hanafiyya: one hundred and fourteen thousand Companions who narrated from him and heard him. ¹
• Al-Hakim: four thousand people narrated from the Prophet. ¹
• Al-Dhahabi: "Rather, those who narrated from him were perhaps about fifteen hundred souls, never reaching two thousand; and I think those named in this book of mine come to eight thousand persons, most of them unknown." ¹
• Abu Musa al-Madini: Ibn Manda's book on the Companions comes close to three thousand eight hundred entries. ²

These statements measure different things: al-Shafi'i's concerns all Muslims at the Prophet's death; Abu Zur'a's those who saw and heard him; al-Hakim's and al-Dhahabi's those who narrated from him; and the estimates of al-Dhahabi and Abu Musa those whose names were recorded in books on the Companions. ² That is why al-Dhahabi distinguishes the number of narrators from the number named in his book, and describes most of the latter as little known. ¹