It is also reported that he divided the night into “three parts”: one third spent praying, one third reviewing hadith, and one third sleeping. He thus explained that his retention was due to his constant companionship with the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, his setting aside other attachments, and the Prophet’s supplication for him.

ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb would ask Abū Hurayrah to relate hadith and question him about them. He neither forbade him to transmit the knowledge people needed that he had heard from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, nor threatened him for doing so. Rather, ʿUmar favoured careful verification in narration, lest people grow audacious and additions be made to hadith. For this reason, he asked Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī to bring someone who could corroborate his narration concerning permission to enter, even though the leading scholars unanimously regarded Abū Mūsā as one of the foremost and most trustworthy Companions.

(Sixth:
On questions of Islamic law, the Companions would consult people less versed in it than Abū Hurayrah. Thus, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb consulted Hamal ibn Mālik and others concerning “compensation for the loss of a fetus”; ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān consulted al-Furayʿah bint Mālik concerning a widow’s obligation to remain in “the home she occupied when her husband died”; ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb and others consulted al-Dahhāk ibn Sufyān al-Kilābī concerning “a wife’s inheritance from the blood money paid for her husband”; and Zayd ibn Thābit and others consulted a woman from the Helpers concerning the exemption of a menstruating woman from the farewell circumambulation.