Ubayy ibn Ka'b

Ubayy ibn Ka'b was a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad from Medina, a member of the Banu Khazraj clan of the Ansar ("helpers," the Medinan Muslims who hosted the early community). Tradition holds that he embraced Islam at the second Pledge of al-Aqaba, the agreement struck near Mecca by which Medinan delegates invited the Prophet to their city. He is reported to have served as a scribe who wrote down revelation and letters, and later sources count him among the first Ansari secretaries.

His lasting fame is as a reciter of the Qur'an. Hadith reports praise him as foremost among reciters, and the honorific "Sayyid al-Qurra" (master of the reciters) is attached to his name in the tradition. He is said to have kept his own written collection (mushaf) of the Qur'an; scholarly tradition records that it differed in some arrangement from the later standard codex. Several of the canonical "readings" of the Qur'an are traced back, in part, to his recitation.

What happened after the Prophet's death is genuinely uncertain. One body of reports places him on the commission that produced the standardized codex under the caliph Uthman; another holds that he died earlier, under the caliph Umar. His reported death year ranges widely across the sources — 19, 22, 30, and other dates appear — so any single figure should be read as an estimate. He is traditionally said to have died in Medina and been buried in its al-Baqi cemetery.