From the start, therefore, Muslims tried to rely on their memories of the Prophet to fill in any gaps in the Qur’an’s guidelines. It was Omar who really set the course here. Whenever a question came up for which no explicit answer could be found in the Qur’an, he asked, “Did Mohammed ever have to deal with a situation like this one? What did he decide?” Omar’s approach got people motivated to collect everything Mohammed had ever said and done, quotations and anecdotes known to Muslims as hadith.
