التابع
al-Tābiʿ
Group
A follower: a Muslim of the generation after the Companions who met and learned from them; the plural is al-tabiun.
What it means
Al-tābiʿ means “the follower”. The term names a Muslim of the generation after the Companions who met one or more of them, without meeting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) himself. The plural is al-tābiʿūn. They were the first to receive the Quran and the sunna from the Companions, and so they form the second link in the chain of transmission. The Quran praises “those who followed them in excellence” (9:100). The Prophet is reported to have said that the best generation is his own, then those who follow them, then those who follow the latter (Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim). Well-known followers include Sa‘id ibn al-Musayyib and al-Hasan al-Basri. Many early commentators and jurists belonged to this generation.
Often misunderstood as
The word is sometimes rendered “successors”, which suggests rulers, when it names scholars and pious Muslims who learned directly from the Companions.
What the sources say
Hadith scholars treat the followers as a key stage in the chain of narrators, since reports passed from the Prophet to a Companion and then to a follower. The next generation, who learned from the followers, are called atbāʿ al-tābiʿīn.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 26, listed as AL TĀBI'. The definition is restated here.