Hypomnēmata were notes written to serve as memory aids,
and very often specially to help individuals to remember things that had been
heard orally in order to aid with their reproduction on a later occasion. These
memoranda recorded things that had been heard, so that the hearer could better
remember them later on for his or her own benefit or to share them orally with
someone else. They served as “physical extension” of memory, assisting the
survival of the living voice of oral tradition after the speaker was finished and
no longer present. We also find some instances where the term is used to
describe notes or drafts for a work in progress, compiled by someone with the
intent of seeing the notes turned into a more formal literary document at some
later point, perhaps even by another person. Thus, we have here a common kind
of writing that is used primarily to write things down that were learned
orally, in order that they might be more faithfully recalled at some later point.
Likewise, this type of reminder document was understood as being by definition
an open text, whose composition remained ongoing process, so that its contents
could be adjusted—things changed, added, deleted—as additional memories were
inventoried or older ones corrected in light of more recent developments. (Stephen
J. Shoemaker, Creating the Qur'an: A Historical-Critical Study [Oakland,
Calif.: University of California Press, 2022], 213)
