6. The Official Collection and Organization of the Sunnah:

As mentioned in the previous section, thousands of hadith, documents and agreements were written by the companions during the life of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh). These documents and books of hadith remained with the companions who wrote them after the death of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh). These books were scattered amongst the companions and were not collected in large collections. In addition to that, many hadith were memorized by the companions, and were transmitted to their students during halaqa (classes) of studying Islam orally.

During this time, the Muslims did not see a great need to collect the hadith into organized books. After all, the companions were available, and they used to memorize the hadith and teach it to their students who used to memorize it as well. And since writing was not easy at the time, after all every book would have to be written by hand, most people depended on memorization in their teaching and not writing. It is true till this day: a student who memorizes the hadith perfectly can benefit from it much more than one who hears the hadith once and writes it in his notes never to remember it again.

The hadith continued to be memorized by the hearts, and much of it also written in the books of individual companions. It was also being taught to the next generation of Muslims, the followers of the companions, and to the vast numbers of people who were entering Islam every year.

The first collection of hadith officially sanctioned by a leader of the Muslims, that we know of, was done by the Ameer of Misr (Misr is also known by its un-Islamic name egypt). His name was Abdul Aziz ibn Marwan, and he was the Ameer of Misr around the year of 80 after the hijra. He wrote to Katheer ibn Morra Al-Hadrami telling him to send him all the hadith he can collect, except the hadith narrated by Abu Hurayra, since he already had it collected. Katheer had met with over 70 of the companions who had fought in the battle of badr, so he had a wealth of hadith from them.

Of course, from this historical record we can also deduce that the Ameer had already begun to collect the hadith before that, since he already had the hadith narrated by Abu Hurayra. Therefore, the action pointed to by this historical record is in fact that the Ameer wanted to build up and increase his existing collection of hadith.

Another major effort to collect the hadith was made during the rule of the fifth guided khalifah, Omar ibn Abdul Aziz, around the year 100 after the hijra. This was a widespread and concerted effort that was started by the Khalifah, top leader of the Muslims. This effort to collect the hadith was special because it had the following qualities:

1. All governors of the Muslim nation were asked to send the hadith that they have in their provinces to the Khalifah.

2. The scholars of Islam were gathered in order to help verify and write the Sunnah, and help to spread it across the Muslim world.

3. The extraordinary effort put into ensuring the accuracy of all that was written. This was done by gathering the best scholars who memorized the Sunnah in order to verify everything that is written.

4. After the Sunnah was collected and written, copies of it were made and sent to all Muslim lands and nations.

After this action by Omar ibn Abdul Aziz, Muslim scholars continued to spend a lot of efforts to continue gathering, verifying, classifying and writing books about the Sunnah. They developed sciences on how to verify the hadith, and how to classify it and so on.

Therefore, from what we have mentioned above, it is clear to anyone who studied Islam and the history of Islam that the Sunnah was preserved by both memorization and by writing since the time of Prophet Mohammad. However, some of the anti-Islamic elements try to shake Muslims belief in the Sunnah by saying that the Sunnah was not written until 200 or even 300 years after the death of Prophet Mohammad! It is obvious to everyone who has spent some time to study the issue that these claims are blatant lies!

Muslims should not be surprised that these people who have no religion, or those who have distorted their own religion, would have no problem in lying. Muslims should fear Allah (swt) and not take any news or information from non-Muslims, especially when this information is about our own religion of Islam or about a group of Muslims. We all know how hard the enemies of Islam work in the media and in their books in order to tarnish the images of certain groups of Muslims, or Islam in general, and we should not believe anything they say without clear and incontrovertible evidence.