and explaining knowledge through speech and writing. If that is impossible, then neither can you do it—yet you speak and record your knowledge in books. If it is possible, then your claim that “the messengers were unable to do so” cannot be valid.

If you say, “These truths can be communicated to a select few, but not to people at large”—which is indeed what they say—then it is well known that the messengers’ knowledge would be possessed by their closest followers, just as your knowledge is possessed by yours. It is also well known that the more thoroughly someone knows a leader’s words, circumstances, and affairs, both private and public, and the more faithfully he upholds them, the stronger his claim to a close association with that leader.

There is no doubt that the people of hadith are the most knowledgeable members of the Muslim community and the most intimately acquainted with the knowledge of the Messenger and his closest followers: the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the rest of the Ten; Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd, Muʿādh ibn Jabal, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām, Salmān al-Fārisī, Abū al-Dardāʾ, ʿUbādah ibn al-Sāmit, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir, and Hudhayfah ibn al-Yamān; and Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, Usayd ibn Hudayr, Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah, ʿAbbād ibn Bishr, Sālim, the freedman of Abū Hudhayfah, and others. These were among those closest to the Messenger, most knowledgeable about his private affairs, and most faithful in following his example in them.

The scholars of hadith know these people and their private affairs better than anyone else and follow their example most faithfully. Thus, they possess this knowledge—the knowledge of the Messenger’s closest followers and inner circle—just as the closest followers of the philosophers possess the knowledge of