The Number of Companions

There is no exact information on the number of companions who had the honor to meet and to believe in the Prophet (pbuh) throughout his 23 year mission of prophethood. In connection with this matter, there is no precise number reaching us from the time of the Prophet and the period of companions. This is because the companions did not live at a time when periodic population studies were conducted; they were dispersed over different regions and villages; some living as city dwellers and others as nomads. Moreover, it was impossible to enumerate them individually because they lived in an integrated society of Jews, Christians and believers of other religions. In some sources, however, there is some general estimation that their number reached 60,000 or 70,000 while the number of people joining in the Farewell Pilgrimage – the last pilgrimage the Prophet made before his death – exceeded 100,000.

Despite the greatness of the estimated numbers, the actual number of companions revealed in the sources with sufficient information is very small. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani’s (d. 852/1448) al-Isaba fi tamyiz al-Companion, the richest and most voluminous treatise written on this subject, contains 11,000 biographies of companions. The number, of course, decreases when it is considered that some of the names were repetitions and that some were merely mentioned to prove that they were not companions. Consequently, it is safe to claim that the total number of identifiable companions is approximately 10,000.