483 In al-Ihya’ al-Ghazzali says...

483 In al-Ihya’ al-Ghazzali says: Verily the books and compilations are altogether produced recently as none of them was produced throughout the era of the Sahabah and early stage of the Tabi'un, but that was after the year 120 H.

That was after the death of all the and most of the Followers, Sa'd ibn al-Musayyab (d.105 H.), al-Hasan (d.110 H.) and the best of Tabi'un, rather the predecessors were averse to books of hadith, and compilation of books, so as not to let attention of people be diverted from the Qur'an, memorizing it, contemplation and remembrance, saying: Memorize as we used to memorize... 484 Out of all this we conclude that the first tadwin of hadith was done during the last days of the reign of Umayyads.

This task was executed at random from scattered suhuf (papers) that were folded up and circulated without being divided into sections and chapters. This might have been done in accordance with what was taught in the knowledge circles (majalis al-’ilm) at that time, as they were not specified for a certain science, but every majlis would include several sciences.

'Ata' 485 says: I have never seen a majlis nobler or more in fiqh or greater in prestige than that of Ibn Abbas, where Qur`an-bearers, grammarians, and poets inquiring him, all proceeding from a spacious valley. Umar ibn Dinar said: I have never seen a majlis more inclusive of every good than his (Ibn Abbas), containing the halal (lawful), haram (unlawful), Qur’an exegesis, Arabic grammar and poetry. And that was the first stage of tadwin of which no book reached us.

Tadwin during the Abbasid Era Al-Iskandari says: During the Abbasid reign the ulama’ started to revising and rectifying whatever was written in the suhuf, and writing what was kept in the breasts, arranging, classifying and compiling it in books. The strongest reason prompting the ulama’ to undertake the task of compilation during this epoch was the urging on the part of Abu Ja'far al-Mansur 486 and his impelling the leaders of fiqh to collect the hadith and fiqh.

Further it is reported that he — despite his parsimony — spent abundant fortunes to fulfil this task. It is also said that the attention he paid for knowledge was not confined only in supporting the Islamic sciences, but he impelled the ulama’ and Syriac and Iranian translators to translate into Arabic the Persian and Greek books on sciences of medicine, politics, wisdom, astronomy, astrology, arts and logic and other fields.