The Army of Commanders

Al-Harith ibn Umayr al-Azdi was an envoy sent by the Prophet ﷺ with a letter for Heraclius, the Roman emperor. On the way he passed through the lands of the Ghassanids. They were the largest Arab Christian tribe, and they served the Romans as their Arab vassals. The Ghassanids captured al-Harith and took him to their chieftain, Shurahbil ibn Amr. Al-Harith told him that he was the envoy of the Prophet ﷺ, carrying a letter to Heraclius, and asked to be let go. Instead, Shurahbil mocked him and tortured him. Then he killed al-Harith with his own hands, thrusting a spear into him. This was a grave crime, because envoys and messengers were never to be harmed.

Placed here because: ~ Al-Waqidi's reason for the expedition (lecture 73).

As the Muslim army marched toward Mu'tah in Jumada al-Awwal, 8 AH, it reached Ma'an, in what is now Jordan. There news came that the Ghassanids, alarmed at their approach, had gathered a much larger force than expected. They had called on their Christian Arab allies, the tribes of Lakhm, Judham, al-Qayn, Bahra and Bali, and the Romans had also sent a contingent. The army halted at Ma'an for two days, debating what to do. Some wanted to send a messenger back to the Prophet ﷺ for further orders. Others wanted to turn back altogether. In the end, a speech by Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA persuaded them to press on and meet the enemy, whatever the odds.

Placed here because: On the march, before the plain of Mu'tah was chosen (lecture 73).

Mu'tah is a village between Amman and al-Karak, in what is now Jordan. The Arabs call it al-Mazar, meaning "the shrine", because the three commanders of this battle are buried there. It was the only battle the Muslims fought against the Romans in the Prophet ﷺ's lifetime. It was also the largest battle they fought in the north. Three thousand men marched, which was more than on most of the expeditions that the Prophet ﷺ led himself. For that reason the early scholars called it a ghazwa, a campaign of the Prophet ﷺ, even though he was not there. The Companions called it Jaysh al-Umara, the Army of Commanders. This was because it was the only time, before or after, that he named three commanders, each to take over from the one before. Why the battle was fought is less certain than what happened in it. The earliest account is al-Waqidi's. He says that the Prophet ﷺ's envoy, al-Harith ibn Umayr al-Azdi RA, was carrying a letter north. On the way he was seized by the Ghassanids, a Christian Arab people who served Rome. Their chief, Shurahbil ibn Amr, tortured him and speared him to death with his own hands. Everywhere, an envoy was held to be untouchable. A chief who killed one himself was announcing that no one could reach him. Ibn Kathir does not give a cause, but he points to a wisdom in it. Mu'tah was the first domino to fall. It taught the Companions that Islam would have to spread beyond Arabia. Tabuk followed the next year. After the Prophet ﷺ's death, al-Sham was the first land to be opened. In Jumada al-Awwal 8 AH, the Prophet ﷺ announced the target openly, because it was a month's march away. Around 3,000 men volunteered. That was ten times the size of the army at Badr six years before. He named Zayd ibn Harithah RA as commander. If Zayd fell, Ja'far ibn Abi Talib RA was to take over. After Ja'far, it was to be Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA. By one report, he said that after that the army should choose a leader for itself. All three men were among the people dearest to him. Zayd had once been his adopted son. Aisha RA said that Zayd was never sent out except as a commander. She also said that if Zayd had outlived the Prophet ﷺ, he would have been chosen over anyone. Ja'far had been back from Abyssinia for barely a year. Ibn Rawahah was a poet of the Ansar and had been at Aqaba. He was the one who had carried the news of Badr into Madinah. The army left on a Friday. Ibn Rawahah RA stayed behind to pray Jumu'ah with the Prophet ﷺ first. The Prophet ﷺ told him that even if he gave all the wealth of the world in charity, it would not buy back the reward of having set out with the others at dawn. The Prophet ﷺ handed the army a white banner. He walked with them to Thaniyat al-Wada', the place where travellers said their goodbyes. Ibn Rawahah was seen weeping. He said that he was not weeping for this world. He was weeping because of the verse that says every soul must pass over the Fire. On the road, he rode with Zayd ibn Arqam RA, an orphan boy whom he had raised. Ibn Rawahah sang about dying as a martyr until the boy cried. Then he teased the boy that, if he died, the boy would have the camel to himself on the way home. They marched to Ma'an. There they heard that the Ghassanids had taken alarm and called in the Christian tribes of Lakhm, Judham, al-Qayn, Bahra and Bali. A Roman force had also joined them. It was led by an officer called Theodore, who was said to be the brother of the emperor Heraclius. The books say the enemy numbered a hundred thousand. In fact, all the Arab tribes together did not number that many. A realistic figure is perhaps ten thousand, a thousand of them Roman. But Roman soldiers were in a different class in their weapons, horses and training, and the Muslims knew it. For two days the army halted and argued about what to do. Some wanted to send to the Prophet ﷺ for orders, though that meant a fortnight's journey each way. Some wanted to go home, since they had already shown their strength. Others wanted to go on. Zayd asked Ibn Rawahah for his opinion. He already knew what Ibn Rawahah would say, and he knew that Ibn Rawahah had the words to win the others over. Ibn Rawahah told them that the thing they feared was exactly what they had come out for. He said that Allah does not give help through numbers or weapons, but through this religion. He reminded them that one of two good things was waiting for them, either victory or martyrdom. So they went on. On the way, the people of a village showered the back of the army with arrows and killed a man. Zayd refused to be drawn into a fight there, because the enemy was ahead of them. It was the Muslims who chose where to fight. They chose the plain of Mu'tah, which had water and, as it turned out, a way to retreat. Abu Hurairah RA was fighting in his first battle. He stared at the huge army across the plain. Then a Companion who had fought at Badr told him that they had not won Badr by numbers either. Zayd charged with the banner in his hand. He was surrounded and killed. Ja'far took the banner, and fought harder than any Companion is recorded to have fought alone. His horse was crippled beneath him, so he fought on foot inside a ring of enemies. His right hand was cut off, and he caught the banner in his left. Then his left hand was cut off, and he held the banner to his chest with what was left of his arms. In the end a Roman soldier cut him in two from behind. Ibn Umar RA helped find Ja'far's body afterwards under a heap of the dead. He counted more than ninety stabs, wounds and cuts on it. For the rest of his life, Ibn Umar greeted Ja'far's sons as "the sons of the man with two wings". This was because the Prophet ﷺ said that he had seen Ja'far in Paradise with wings in place of his hands. Ibn Rawahah took the banner. For a moment he hesitated. Then he spoke to his own soul in verse. He told it that it would go forward, willingly or not, and that what it had longed for was here. Then he charged and was killed. Thabit ibn Arqam RA caught the banner as it fell and carried it out of the crush. He shouted for the Muslims to choose a leader, but he refused the post himself. Every eye turned to one man. He had been a Muslim for barely two months, and at Uhud he had done them more harm than anyone alive. This was Khalid ibn al-Walid RA. Khalid saw that the battle could not be won. The only victory left was to bring the army home. He posted archers to slow the Roman advance. One of them was the old man Waqid ibn Abdillah al-Tamimi RA. His eyesight had failed, so he had two younger men lift him up on a shield and point him at the enemy. Khalid himself led charge after charge. He later said that nine swords broke in his hand that day, and only a Yemeni blade survived. By nightfall the two armies had pulled apart, out of range of each other's arrows. Behind a hill, the Muslims buried their dead. The three commanders were buried in one grave. The early books do not say what happened the next morning. A later account says that Khalid sent men to raise dust in the distance, so that it looked as if more troops were coming from Madinah. He then used the pause to march the army away. However it was done, no more than twenty of the three thousand had been killed. On the way home, they punished the village that had shot at them. A volunteer from Yemen, protected only by armour he had made from an animal's skin, had killed a Roman officer in gilded armour. He claimed the officer's horse and weapons for himself, under a rule the Prophet ﷺ himself had laid down. Khalid did not know of that rule and held back part of the prize. In Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ had already told the Companions what was happening while it was happening. He wept as he spoke. He told them that Zayd took the banner and was killed, then Ja'far, then Ibn Rawahah. Then, he said, a sword from the swords of Allah took it, and Allah gave victory at his hands. When a messenger arrived with the news, he sat down. Aisha was watching from a corner of the house and saw the grief on his face. A man came to him three times to say that the women of Ja'far's family were wailing and could not be stopped. The third time, the Prophet ﷺ told him to throw dust in their mouths. This was a common Arab expression of exasperation. Aisha told the man that he had neither stopped the women nor spared the Prophet ﷺ the trouble. The Prophet ﷺ ordered food to be cooked for Ja'far's family, because their grief had left them unable to cook. After three days he went to see them himself. He told them that no one should weep for his brother after that day. He had the tangled hair of Ja'far's boys cut. He told Muhammad ibn Ja'far RA that he looked like their grandfather Abu Talib. He told Abdullah ibn Ja'far RA that he looked and behaved like the Prophet ﷺ himself. He prayed three times for Ja'far's descendants, and he prayed for blessing in Abdullah's business dealings. Asma bint Umays RA said that the children were orphans now. The Prophet ﷺ asked her whether she feared poverty for them, when he himself would be their guardian in this world and the next. Afterwards, whenever he saw Usama ibn Zayd RA, his eyes filled with tears. Some Companions were weeping in the mosque because the best of them were gone. He told them that his community was like a garden whose owner prunes it, so that each year's crop is better than the last. He also told them that Allah would not disgrace a community that had him at its beginning and the Messiah at its end. Within days, people began whispering against the men who had come back. They said that the soldiers had run away from the path of Allah. Salama ibn Hisham RA would not leave his house because of the taunts. The Prophet ﷺ answered the whispers from the mosque by changing a single letter. He said they were not furrar, deserters, but kurrar, men who would return to the attack. The man from Yemen came to complain about Khalid. The Prophet ﷺ ordered that the whole prize be given back to him. But then the man gloated over Khalid, and the Prophet ﷺ changed his decision. He told the man to leave his commanders to him, to take the good from them and overlook the rest. The Roman side remembered the battle too. The Byzantine historian Theophanes wrote about the Arab attack near Mu'tah. He recorded that the commanders were killed and that one escaped, "Khalid, whom they call the Sword of God". This was the very title the Prophet ﷺ had given him. Ibn Kathir and later scholars said that no one could break the Sword of Allah in battle. Only the One who had drawn it could put it back in its sheath. That, they said, is why Khalid died in his bed.

Placed here because: Jumada al-Awwal 8 AH (lectures 73 and 74).

A few weeks after the Battle of Mu'tah, around Jumada of 8 AH, the Prophet ﷺ sent an expedition against the tribe of Quda'a. Quda'a lived to the northeast of Madinah, between it and the Ghassanids, and had helped the Ghassanids at Mu'tah. The expedition takes its name from a pond in the area called Dhat al-Salasil. The Prophet ﷺ called for Amr ibn al-As, who had been a Muslim for only about three months, and told him to come in his armour. Amr later described the meeting. The Prophet ﷺ looked him up and down and said, "I wish to appoint you as a leader of an army, and Allah will protect you and give you much ghanima. And I am optimistic for you that you will get much wealth." Ghanima means the spoils of war. Amr felt hurt, as if the Prophet ﷺ thought he had become Muslim for money. He said that he had accepted Islam only to be a Muslim and to be with the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ replied, "O Amr, how beautiful is pure money for the righteous man." Amr was then given 300 men and told to launch a surprise attack on Quda'a. It was winter. Amr marched only by night, so that the enemy would not hear of his coming. Despite the bitter cold, he refused to let the army light any fire for the whole journey, and threatened to push into it anyone who did. He later explained that he did not want the enemy to see how few they were. When he reached the edge of Quda'a's lands, he decided that 300 men were not enough, and sent word to Madinah asking for more. The Prophet ﷺ sent 200 more men, bringing the force to 500. They were led by Abu Ubaydah Amir ibn al-Jarrah, and among them were Abu Bakr and Umar RA. The Prophet ﷺ told Abu Ubaydah to make sure that he and Amr agreed and did not disagree. When the reinforcements arrived, it was time to pray, and Abu Ubaydah stepped forward to lead the prayer. At that time, whoever led the prayer was understood to be the leader of the army. Amr objected that he was the appointed leader and that the 200 were only reinforcements. Some of Abu Ubaydah's men took his side. Abu Ubaydah was senior to Amr in every way, but he chose to step aside rather than divide the army. He reminded Amr of the Prophet ﷺ's instruction, and let Amr lead both the prayer and the army. Amr then led the whole force in a surprise attack. When Quda'a saw 500 armed men appear without warning, they dropped everything and fled. The tribe was too large for the Muslims to subdue entirely, but they took a great deal of booty and suffered no major casualties. On one night of the expedition, Amr woke in a state of major ritual impurity (janaba) after a wet dream. Normally this requires a full bath (ghusl) before prayer. But the desert night was freezing, and he feared that the cold water would kill him. So he performed tayammum, the dry ablution with clean earth, and led his companions in the Fajr prayer. When they returned, some of the companions complained to the Prophet ﷺ that Amr had led them while in janaba. The Prophet ﷺ asked Amr about it. Amr explained that he had remembered the verse "Do not kill yourselves. Surely, Allah is ever Merciful to you" (Qur'an 4:29), and feared that the bath would do exactly that. The Prophet ﷺ laughed and did not rebuke him.

Placed here because: ~ Narrated after Mu'tah in lecture 75; the next expedition north.