—unaltered and uncorrupted—but I feared that people might come to rely on what it contains. Instead, say: “There is no god but Allah,” and prompt your dying ones to utter it.
This is how Ibn Abī Khaythamah related the report in his History, from Hudbah, from Hammām.
Shahr never met Kaʿb.
Kaʿb’s remark proves that that particular copy had undergone no alteration or distortion, whereas every other copy was different. Who today would deem it permissible to cite anything from the Torah as proof while believing it to be the very scripture that was revealed? Never, by Allah.
- Ziyād ibn Abīh — Ziyād ibn ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī*
He is Ziyād ibn ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī; he is also Ziyād, son of Sumayyah—she being his mother—and he is the same Ziyād ibn Abī Sufyān whom Muʿāwiyah acknowledged as his brother (1).
Sumayyah was a freedwoman of al-Ḥārith ibn Kaladah al-Thaqafī, the physician of the Arabs.
His kunya was Abū al-Mughīrah.
He lived in the Prophet’s era, having been born in the year of the Hijrah, and embraced Islam during the caliphate of al-Ṣiddīq while still in his teens.
Through his mother he was the half-brother of the Companion Abū Bakrah al-Thaqafī.
Later he served as the scribe of Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī during the latter’s governorship of Basra.