Portal: Muhammad's Companions and Contemporaries
Muhammad's contemporaries, companions, and successors play an elevated role in the lore of Islam. It is against many of his contemporaries that Muhammad defined his movement, it is through his companions that his tradition was passed forth, and it is by his immediate successors that his legacy was interpreted and formalized. Excepting those who opposed him, a hadith in Bukhari captures the general manner in which Muhammad's and following generations have been conceived by the Islamic tradition: "Narrated `Abdullah: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, 'The best people are those of my generation, and then those who will come after them (the next generation), and then those who will come after them (i.e. the next generation), and then after them, there will come people whose witness will precede their oaths, and whose oaths will precede their witness.'[1] The earliest generations of Muslims have in the recent past become a topic of renewed interest as a result of the various Salafi movements that have spread across the world and which seek, more than anything else, to restore Islam to the version of it that was practiced by Muhammad's companions and immediate successors.
Overview
Male companions
Female companions
Foes