When Abu Bakr رضي الله عنه decided the Qur'an had to be gathered into one written collection, he had to choose someone to do it. He chose a young man. The reasons are the subject of this biography.
The Scribe
Zaid ibn Thaabit embraced Islam as a boy, and his intelligence was evident quickly. He impressed the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with his memorization of the Qur'an and his appetite for knowledge, and was appointed one of the official scribes of revelation.
Every time verses came down, Zaid recorded them under the Prophet's ﷺ direct supervision. He is therefore among the primary preservers of Allah's final revelation, and his precision and trustworthiness were tested continuously over years before anyone asked him to do anything larger.
Learning Syriac
One episode gives the measure of him. At the Prophet's ﷺ request, he learned Syriac — so the Muslims would not have to depend on outsiders to read correspondence arriving in it. He was told to learn a language and he learned it, in a matter of weeks.
The Compilation
The task he is best remembered for is the one he initially resisted, considering it heavier than anything he had been asked to do. He gathered the Qur'an from written fragments and from the memories of those who had preserved it, verifying each portion against multiple sources, and produced the collection that Abu Bakr held and that later became the basis of the Uthmanic Mushaf.
He also became a leading jurist of Madinah and one of the foremost authorities in the recitation and sciences of the Qur'an, teaching for decades afterwards.
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