As for their number, Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī compiled their history: they numbered some six or seven hundred, or thereabouts. They were not all present at the same time. Rather, on the northern side of the mosque there was a sheltered platform—the Suffa—where poor emigrants took refuge. Whoever married, travelled, or went out on a military expedition would leave it. At any one time, there might be seventy there, or fewer or more. Among them were Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqās, one of the Ten, Abū Hurayra, Khubayb, Salmān, and others.

As for the claim that they knew what Allah revealed to His Prophet on the night of the Ascension, it is a lie, and whoever makes it is accursed. How could that be, when the Ascension took place in Mecca before the emigration, whereas the people of the Suffa were only in Medina after the emigration and the construction of the Messenger’s mosque—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—in Medina, the Pure?

All this is clear to anyone who knows Allah and His Messenger and is a Muslim devoted to pure monotheism, or who knows the life of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the lives of his Companions alongside him. Only people whose faith is deficient, whose knowledge is scant, and whose souls have grown arrogant fall into such ignorance, until they become like Pharaoh and end up in a worse condition than the Christians.

May Allah accept our repentance and theirs, and that of all our Muslim brothers, and guide us and them to His straight path—the path of those He has blessed, not those who have incurred His wrath, nor those who have gone astray. And Allah Most High knows best.