Zayd ibn Thabit Learns Hebrew

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Around this period, the Prophet (ﷺ) instructed Zayd ibn Thābit to learn Hebrew, explaining that he did not want to rely on outside translators for correspondence he could not personally verify. Zayd later said he mastered reading and writing the language in roughly fifteen days.

Dr. Qadhi highlights the wisdom in this choice of messenger: Zayd was still young, around eleven when the Prophet (ﷺ) first arrived in Madinah, already known for having memorized several sūrahs of the Qurʾān at that age, which gave him both a sharper capacity for absorbing a new language and, having grown up alongside Jewish neighbors in Madinah (by some accounts even attending their communal school as a child), a head start most adult Companions would not have had. This same Zayd would go on to become the primary compiler of the Qurʾān after the Prophet's (ﷺ) death, chosen by Abū Bakr and ʿUmar for the task that would preserve its written structure for all subsequent generations.