my correspondence.”
Zayd said, “So I learned their script for him; not even fifteen nights had passed before I had mastered it. Whenever they wrote to him I would read their letters aloud, and whenever he dictated a reply I would write it for him.
Aḥmad also transmitted this report from Suraij ibn al-Nuʿmān, from Ibn Abī al-Zinād, from his father, from Khārijah, from his father, with wording to the same effect. Al-Bukhārī cited it in the chapter on Legal Rulings, affirmatively, on the authority of Khārijah ibn Zayd ibn Thābit, saying, “Khārijah ibn Zayd said …,” and related it. Abū Dāwūd narrated it through Aḥmad ibn Yūnus, and al-Tirmidhī through ʿAlī ibn Ḥujar—both chains running through ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī al-Zinād, from his father, from Khārijah, from his father—with similar wording. Al-Tirmidhī declared it “ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ.” Such quick mastery is evidence of extraordinary intelligence.
Zayd was also one of those Qurʾānic reciters who had gathered the Qurʾān during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, as is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs on the authority of Anas. Aḥmad and al-Nasāʾī likewise narrated—through Abū Qilābah, from Anas—that the Messenger of Allah said:
“The most compassionate of my community toward my community is Abū Bakr; the firmest of them in the religion of Allah is ʿUmar; the truest of them in modesty is ʿUthmān; the most capable of judgment among them is ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib; the most knowledgeable concerning what is lawful and unlawful is Muʿādh ibn Jabal; the one best versed in the laws of inheritance is Zayd ibn Thābit; and every nation has a trustee, and the trustee of this nation is Abū ʿUbaydah ibn al-Jarrāḥ.”
Some ḥadith scholars classify the report as mursal, except for the portion concerning Abū ʿUbaydah, which appears in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī through this very chain.
Zayd wrote down revelation in the presence of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on many occasions. One of the clearest examples is the authentic report in the Ṣaḥīḥ in which he said:
“When the verse,
‘Those of the believers who sit at home—other than those who have a disability—are not equal to those who strive in the path of Allah’ (al-Nisāʾ 4:95),
was revealed, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ summoned me and said, ‘Write: “Those of the believers who sit at home are not equal to those who strive in the path of Allah.”’ Then Ibn Umm Maktūm came complaining of his blindness, and revelation descended upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; his thigh grew so heavy on mine that I feared it would crush me. Then the words ‘except those who have a disability’ were revealed, and he ordered me to insert them.
“I can still point to the very place where that insertion appears, by a crack in that tablet”—meaning a tablet made of bone—“…,” and the ḥadith continues.