Daws

Abu Jahal swore by al-Lat and al-Uzza that the next time he saw the Prophet ﷺ prostrating at the Ka'bah, he would put his foot on his neck and throw dust upon him. As the Prophet ﷺ prostrated in public prayer, Abu Jahal came forward to carry this out, but before reaching him he began retreating and pushing away with his hands. When asked what happened, he said he had seen a pit of fire between himself and the Prophet ﷺ, with wings hovering above it.

After their defeat at Badr, the Quraysh spent a full year preparing for revenge. Four motives drove them together. The first was religious hatred of the new faith. The second was personal grief for the leaders they had lost, since the fathers of both Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal and Safwan ibn Umayyah had died at Badr. The third was economic, because the Muslims now controlled their trade route to Syria and that trade had collapsed. The fourth was political, the threat of a growing Muslim state. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, together with Safwan and Ikrimah, went from door to door. They collected the profits of the Badr caravan from every Qurashi household that had invested in it. They used this money to recruit allied tribes such as Kinana and Tihama. On the 7th of Shawwal, 3 AH, an army of 3,000 set out from Makkah. It had 200 horses and 700 suits of armour. Around two dozen women of the Quraysh came with it, among them Hind bint Utbah, to urge the men on with their songs. The journey to Madinah normally took two weeks, but the army covered it in seven days. Abu Sufyan held overall command. Khalid ibn al-Walid led the right flank, and Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal led the left. There is a report, not found in Ibn Ishaq, about al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, who had stayed behind in Makkah. He sent a trusted servant racing to Madinah with the exact numbers of the army. The servant covered the distance in three days. He found the Prophet ﷺ at Quba, and Ubay ibn Ka'b RA read the letter to him privately. The news was urgent, but the Prophet ﷺ did not act on a single report. He first sent scouts to confirm where the Quraysh were. Only then did he call a general meeting of the Muslims. The meeting took place at the Friday gathering, which was even larger than usual because a funeral had already brought many people out. The Prophet ﷺ explained the threat and asked for advice. He gave his own view first. He wanted to stay inside Madinah and use its natural defences. There were fields of volcanic rock to the east and west, Mount Uhud to the north, and date palm groves to the south. The Quraysh would then be forced into costly fighting in the streets. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the most experienced warrior in the city, agreed with this plan. He did so not out of any respect for the Prophet ﷺ, but because it was clearly the stronger position. A group of younger Companions argued the other way. Many of them had missed Badr and were eager to prove themselves, so they pressed to meet the Quraysh in open battle. The Prophet ﷺ judged that most people wanted this, so he agreed and went inside to put on his armour. The younger men then had second thoughts. They told him they would not oppose him if he wished to stay in the city. This is in Ibn Ishaq, and some retellings name Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA as the one who said it. The Prophet ﷺ replied that once a prophet has put on his armour, it is not fitting for him to take it off before he has fought. He marched out on Friday, the 14th of Shawwal, with roughly 700 Muslims. He divided them into three groups. Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA led the Muhajirun, Usayd ibn Hudayr RA led the Aws, and al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA led the Khazraj. Between them they had only a handful of horses and 100 suits of armour. The Prophet ﷺ led them along a secret route through the date palm groves instead of the main road, so that their position would not be revealed too early. The route passed through the garden of Mirba' ibn Qayzi, a blind hypocrite. He threw dust at the Muslims, and the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions to leave him alone. During the march, Abdullah ibn Ubayy turned back with about 300 men. He said publicly that his advice had been ignored. Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram RA confronted him for abandoning the Prophet ﷺ. Abdullah ibn Ubayy insisted that he did not believe there would be any fighting. The Qur'an later exposed this as a lie (Qur'an 3:167). Some of the Aws, from Banu Harithah, and some of the Khazraj, from Banu Salama, also wavered. In the end they stayed, and Qur'an 3:122 credits their steadfastness to Allah's protection. The roughly 700 who remained reached Uhud in the early afternoon of the 14th. The Prophet ﷺ chose the site with care. The mountain protected the army on two sides. The third side was covered by fifty archers under Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, posted on a hill called Jabal Aynayn. That hill was later renamed Jabal al-Ruma in their honour. The archers had strict orders never to leave their position, no matter how the battle seemed to be going. This left the much larger Quraysh army only one narrow approach to attack through. The Prophet ﷺ arranged the army for battle and sent home the boys he judged too young. Two boys, Rafi ibn Khadij RA and Samura ibn Jundub RA, were allowed to stay. Ibn Hisham says they were fifteen. Rafi' was allowed because he was a good archer, and Samurah because he could beat Rafi' at wrestling. On the morning of the 15th, the Prophet ﷺ offered his own sword to whoever would take it and give it its due. Abu Dujana RA accepted it. He put on his turban of death and walked along the ranks, giving the Muslims courage. Abu Sufyan first sent a message trying to split the Ansar away from the Muhajirun. Then he sent Abu Amir al-Rahib, a former leader of the Aws who had rejected Islam, to appeal directly to his own people. The Ansar refused both approaches. They gave Abu Amir a new name, Abu Amir al-Fasiq. The battle opened with single combat. Talha ibn Abi Talha came out first. He was of Banu Abd al-Dar, the clan that carried the standard of the Quraysh. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA struck him down. Ibn Ishaq counts him among the men Ali RA killed. Another report says that Talha begged Ali RA by the ties of kinship, so Ali RA left him, and he later died of his wounds. The Muslims then charged and broke the ranks of the Quraysh. They killed the standard bearers of Banu Abd al-Dar one after another, until the standard fell. The story of Usayrim belongs to this same morning. He was from Banu Abd al-Ashhal, and for three years he had been the only pagan left in his clan. He accepted Islam after the Fajr prayer and was martyred before Zuhr, without ever having prayed a single rak'ah. In this first phase the Quraysh broke and fled. The Companions became overconfident. They put down their weapons and began collecting the spoils of war. The rules for dividing spoils had not yet been fully settled, and many assumed the battle was over. The fifty archers on Jabal al-Ruma watched the spoils being gathered below. As the minutes passed, no word came from the Prophet ﷺ. The archers began to argue about whether to go down and join in. Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, their leader, refused to move without a direct command from the Prophet ﷺ. Even so, over perhaps the better part of an hour, forty of the fifty left the position and went down, leaving only ten. Khalid ibn al-Walid had not simply fled. He had been watching carefully, and now he saw his chance. He moved in along a low ditch on the army's right that could not be seen from ground level. He overran the ten archers who were left. Then he led his cavalry, estimated at 100 to 150 riders, around Jabal al-Ruma and attacked the Muslims from behind. This cut the Muslim army in two. On one side was the Prophet ﷺ's own camp. On the other were the scattered Muslims still collecting spoils, most of them unarmed. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ was the first to see Khalid's attack coming. The enemy was hunting for him personally, and shouting would reveal where he was. Even so, he stood up and shouted a warning to the Muslims. The surprise attack threw the Muslims into chaos. Many fled, unable to tell friend from foe. The sources say that shaytan stirred up the confusion, and some Muslims struck down other Muslims in the fighting. One of them was al-Yaman RA, the father of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA. His own side killed him before Hudhayfah's shouts to stop could be heard. Hudhayfah said, "May Allah forgive you." The Prophet ﷺ paid him the blood money for his father, and Hudhayfah gave it away as charity to the Muslims. As the Muslim army split apart, the Prophet ﷺ was left with a guard of only nine men. Two of them were Muhajirun, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA. The other seven were Ansar. Ibn Ishaq names Ziyad, or Umarah, ibn al-Sakan among them. A report from al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari gives the number as twelve. Meanwhile the rest of the army, believing the battle already won, was scattered across the field. One by one, the Ansar in that small group went out to stop the approaching enemy, and each was killed. In the end only Sa'd, Talha and the Prophet ﷺ himself remained. They pulled back into a narrow gap in the mountainside, barely wide enough for one or two people. From the opening, Sa'd and Talha fired arrow after arrow. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ picked spent arrows up off the ground and handed them back to Sa'd to shoot again. Abu Talha al-Ansari RA begged the Prophet ﷺ not to raise his head, for fear of a stray arrow. He offered his own neck and chest in place of the Prophet ﷺ's (al-Bukhari). It was here that the Prophet ﷺ said to Sa'd, "Fidaka abi wa ummi (may my mother and father be given in ransom for you)! Shoot, O Sa'd, shoot!" Ali RA said he never heard the Prophet ﷺ say these words to anyone else. However, al-Zubayr RA reports that the Prophet ﷺ said the same to him at Qurayzah. An attacker reached Talha and cut off several of his fingers, and Talha cried out in pain. The Prophet ﷺ told him that if he had said "Bismillah" instead, the angels would have lifted him up in front of everyone. Qatada ibn al-Nu'man al-Awsi RA took up the Prophet ﷺ's bow and shot with it until it broke. His eye was struck so badly that it hung down on his cheek. The Prophet ﷺ put it back in place with his hand, and it became the better and sharper of his two eyes (Ibn Ishaq). During this same period the Prophet ﷺ was wounded several times. Utbah ibn Abi Waqqas threw a stone that broke his lower right incisor and injured his lip. Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri wounded his forehead. Ibn Qami'ah struck his cheekbone and drove two rings of his helmet into his cheek. This account is from Ibn Hisham, on the authority of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA. Other reports describe the wounds differently. In them, an arrow shot by Utbah passed through his cheek and knocked out a tooth, and a sword blow from Ibn Qami'ah or Abdullah ibn Shihab drove his helmet into his cheekbone. With blood streaming down his face, the Prophet ﷺ was heard to say, "How can a people succeed who have wounded their own Prophet ﷺ while he called them to their Lord?" Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA later said that he saw two men dressed in brilliant white fighting fiercely at the Prophet ﷺ's side that day. He had never seen them before and never saw them again. Around the same time, Ubay ibn Khalaf charged straight at the Prophet ﷺ. Ubay was a Makkan who had long vowed to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and he had been fattening a horse for that purpose. Back then, the Prophet ﷺ had replied that he would be the one to kill Ubay instead. Now he reminded Ubay of that reply. He took a spear from a companion and struck Ubay in the neck. The wound looked minor, but Ubay himself insisted it would kill him. He died on the road home, before he reached Makkah. Ibn Qami'ah cut down Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA and thought he had killed the Prophet ﷺ. He shouted that Muhammad ﷺ was dead. The false news spread quickly and broke the spirit of part of the Muslim line. Some of them simply sat down in the middle of the battle. Anas ibn al-Nadr RA rallied a group of them back into the fight. He asked them what they would do with life after the Prophet ﷺ, and told them to die as he had died. Anas fought on until he was killed. His body was so disfigured that no one could recognise him, until his sister identified him by the tips of his fingers. Ka'b ibn Malik RA was the first to recognise the Prophet ﷺ, by his eyes. He was about to announce that the Prophet ﷺ was alive. The Prophet ﷺ signalled to him to stay silent, so as not to give away his position. A later report adds that the two of them exchanged armour. Abu Bakr RA, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA and Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA fought their way back to him. They found the two rings of his helmet still stuck in his cheek. Abu Ubaydah did not want to risk hurting him further with his hands. It is reported that he pulled each ring out with his own teeth instead, and lost a tooth each time. As the fighting died down, Abu Sufyan called out from a distance. He asked whether Muhammad ﷺ was still alive. Then he asked about Abu Bakr RA and Umar RA. The Prophet ﷺ told the Muslims not to answer him. Then Abu Sufyan declared victory and gave the credit to the idol Hubal. This time the Prophet ﷺ had the Muslims reply, "Allah is mightier and more worthy of honour." He stayed silent about his own survival, but he would not let shirk against Allah go unanswered. Abu Sufyan swore that the two sides would meet again the next year at Badr, and the Quraysh withdrew. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ walked over the battlefield. He found the body of his uncle, Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, mutilated by Hind bint Utbah RA. Her father and brother had been killed at Badr, and in revenge she had cut open Hamzah's stomach and taken his liver. The Prophet ﷺ wept. He vowed to mutilate thirty bodies of the Quraysh in return. Then Allah revealed Qur'an 16:126, which limits retaliation to no more than what was suffered. After that, the Prophet ﷺ forbade mutilation completely. On the way back, Hamnah bint Jahsh RA met the army. She was told, one after another, of the deaths of her brother Abdullah, her uncle Hamzah RA and her husband Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Wailing for the dead broke out across Madinah. When the Prophet ﷺ heard it, he allowed it once for Hamzah RA's sake. After that he forbade it as a general rule. The martyrs were reported to number around seventy, most of them Ansar. They were buried two, three or four to a grave, in the clothes they had died in, without being washed. The Prophet ﷺ instructed that whoever had memorised the most Qur'an should be placed in the grave first. According to Jabir RA's report in al-Bukhari, no funeral prayer was said over them. A report from Ibn Abbas RA in Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ did pray over Hamzah RA and the others. Only one prisoner was taken in the whole battle, Abu Azzah al-Jumahi. He had earlier been pardoned on condition that he never fight the Muslims again. Because he broke that condition, he was executed. Before all this, the Prophet ﷺ had sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to follow the Quraysh. Ali RA found them riding their camels and leading their horses, a sign that they were heading back to Makkah. The next morning, Sunday the 16th, the Prophet ﷺ called out the men who had fought the day before, wounded as they were. He led them to Hamra al-Asad, about eight miles from Madinah. They stayed there on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At some point before or during this period, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions about a dream. Accounts differ on exactly when he told it. He said, "I saw in a dream that I had struck with my sword, but my sword broke, and this is what afflicted the Muslims at Uhud. Then I hit it again, and it came back as good as it ever was, and this was the victory that Allah gave to the Muslims and the coming together of the believers." He went on, "I saw cows, and Allah is good, and this was the believers on the Day of Uhud." In a version in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, he also saw himself wearing protective armour, which he took to mean Madinah itself.

When the qibla changed, the front of the Prophet ﷺ's mosque became its back. He ordered that this old front be covered with a shade of palm branches. The roof was not yet waterproof, but it served a purpose. At first, every emigrant from Makkah had been taken in by an Ansari household in Madinah, which looked after him until he could stand on his own feet. But the emigrants and new converts kept coming, until the households could take no more. So around Ramadan of the second year after the Hijrah, the time of Badr, the newcomers were given this shaded area at the back of the mosque as a public shelter. It was called the Suffa, and the people who lived there were called Ahl al-Suffa, the People of the Suffa. Sometimes there were five or ten of them, and at other times up to seventy. They were among the best of the Companions in memorizing the Qur'an, in night prayer and in learning. They had given up everything to live in the mosque. The most famous of them was Abu Hurairah, of the tribe of Daws. Emigrants such as Abu Dharr, Suhayb, Bilal and Ibn Mas'ud lived there too. Even some of the Ansar, such as Hanzala and Ka'b ibn Malik, left their own homes to join them. The People of the Suffa were desperately poor. Some had so little clothing that the Prophet ﷺ told the women in the congregation not to raise their heads from prostration too quickly. Many went two days at a time without food, and some would collapse from weakness when he came in to lead the prayer. Anything given to him in charity went to them, and he shared any gift of food with them. He would often ask a Companion to take some of them home for supper. Sa'd ibn Ubadah sometimes hosted as many as eighty of them at once. They were always on the Prophet ﷺ's mind. When his grandson Hasan was born, he told his daughter Fatima to give charity to the People of the Suffa. Years later, Fatima asked him for one servant from a group of prisoners of war to help with her housework. He told her he could not give her a servant while the People of the Suffa were starving, and he swore he would sell the prisoners and spend the money on them. Abu Hurairah later admitted something about those days. He would stop a Companion leaving the mosque and ask him a question he already knew the answer to. He did this only to keep the man talking until they reached his door, in the hope of being invited in to eat. Abu Hurairah also told this story. One day the Prophet ﷺ saw that he was faint with hunger and took him home. He asked his wife Aisha whether there was anything to eat, and she said a neighbour had sent a cup of milk. Abu Hurairah was delighted, but the Prophet ﷺ then told him to go and call the People of the Suffa. Thirty or forty of them came. The Prophet ﷺ handed Abu Hurairah the cup and told him to pass it to each of them. Every man drank his fill, while Abu Hurairah wondered what would be left for him. In the end only he and the Prophet ﷺ remained. The Prophet ﷺ told him to sit and drink. He drank, and the cup was as full as when it started. The Prophet ﷺ told him to drink again and again, until Abu Hurairah swore he had no room left. Then the Prophet ﷺ took the cup and drank last. Later, a rope was strung between two of the Suffa's pillars. Dates were hung on it so that the poor could eat without having to ask. This custom survived in the mosque for about thirteen centuries. Abu Hurairah came to Madinah late, after Khaybar, yet he narrated more hadith than anyone. When people complained that he narrated too much, he explained why. The emigrants were busy trading in the market, and the Ansar were busy working their fields. He, meanwhile, stayed at the Prophet ﷺ's side with an empty stomach, and so he memorized what they did not. He was not a poor man by background, but he chose the Suffa to be near the Prophet ﷺ and learn from him.

Abu Hurairah, whose name was Abd al-Rahman ibn Sakhr, came from the tribe of Daws in Yemen. He had set out to emigrate to Madinah. On the way he heard that the Prophet ﷺ was at Khaybar, so he went there instead with two or three other Muslims of Daws. They arrived after Khaybar had been conquered. The Muslims returning from Abyssinia also arrived after the fighting was over. Neither group had fought at Khaybar. Even so, the Prophet ﷺ gave the emigrants from Abyssinia a share of the spoils. He also asked the Companions whether the men of Daws could have a share, and they agreed. The emigration from Daws was led by Tufayl ibn Amr al-Dawsi RA, the chief of the tribe, at whose hands Abu Hurairah had become Muslim. Tufayl gave up his position as chief and left his tribe to settle in Madinah for good. Many of his people, moved by the strength of his faith, emigrated with him.

Abu Hurairah RA came from Yemen. After he emigrated to Madinah, he sent for his mother so that he could look after her. She came, but she was deeply hurt that her son had left the religion of their forefathers. She often cursed Islam and said bad things about the Prophet ﷺ in front of him. One day Abu Hurairah RA came to the Prophet ﷺ in tears. He said that he could no longer bear what his mother was saying, and he asked the Prophet ﷺ to make du'a that Allah would guide her. The Prophet ﷺ raised his hands right then and said, "O Allah, guide the mother of Abu Hurairah." Abu Hurairah RA went home. Before he could enter, his mother called out that he should not come in because she was bathing. It was the ritual bath (ghusl) of someone entering Islam. As soon as he came into the house, she declared the shahada, the testimony of faith.

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.

Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab, "Musaylimah the Liar", was an elderly and highly respected leader of Banu Hanifa in al-Yamamah. He watched his tribe split as Islam spread. The nobleman Thumamah ibn Uthal RA and his followers became Muslims, while others held to the old ways. Musaylimah told his people that he would follow the Prophet ﷺ on two conditions. The Prophet ﷺ must give him power after his death, and must share prophethood with him "like Musa shared with his brother Harun." He then travelled to Madinah to negotiate. His followers brought him into the mosque shielded with fine cloth, as if he were a king. He put his conditions to the Prophet ﷺ directly. The Prophet ﷺ was holding a tree branch, and he said, "Wallahi, if you asked me for this stick, I wouldn't even give this to you." After returning home, Musaylimah wrote to the Prophet ﷺ, calling himself a Messenger of Allah alongside him. He claimed that the Quraysh had half of "the matter" and he had the other half. The Prophet ﷺ asked the two men who delivered the letter what they said about Musaylimah, and they said they agreed with the letter. The Prophet ﷺ told them that, were it not that envoys are never harmed, he would have had them executed, because their claim was open disbelief. Musaylimah also composed imitations of the Qur'an. One was a reworking of Surah al-Kawthar. Another, which he called Surah al-Difda', "the Chapter of the Frog", was addressed to a frog. When he recited his own version of Surah al-Fil to a passing Arab who was not even a Muslim, the man told him, "Wallahi, you know that I know that you are a liar."

By the end of the 9th year of the Hijrah, Thaqif had accepted Islam, the expedition to Tabuk was over, and the matter of Najran had been settled. The Prophet ﷺ then sent Abu Bakr al-Siddiq RA from Madinah to Makkah at the head of an official delegation of 300 Muslims. Their task was to prepare the way for the Prophet ﷺ's own Hajj the following year, Hajjat al-Wada', the only Hajj he ever performed. The Prophet ﷺ did not go himself. He explained to Abu Bakr RA that the mushrikun (idol-worshippers) still performed tawaf around the Ka'bah naked, and that he did not wish to perform Hajj until that was ended. This was the only year in which pagans and an official Muslim delegation performed Hajj and tawaf side by side. Since the Prophet ﷺ had not yet shown the correct rites of Hajj, Abu Bakr RA performed them in the old way. Soon after the delegation left, the opening verses of Surat al-Tawba were revealed. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA caught up with the delegation at Dhu al-Hulayfah, riding the Prophet ﷺ's own camel. Abu Bakr RA asked him whether he had been sent to take command over him. Ali RA replied that Abu Bakr RA was still the amir (leader), and that he had come only to recite Surat al-Tawba. At Mina, Ali RA and Abu Hurairah RA recited the opening of Surat al-Tawba to the pagans and Muslims gathered there. They then made four announcements. No one but a believer would enter Jannah. No one would ever again perform tawaf naked. After this year, no mushrik would perform Hajj again. And any existing treaty with the pagans would last four more months and then end, unless it already had its own fixed term.

During his caliphate, Umar ibn al-Khattab once heard Hassan ibn Thabit reciting poetry in the Prophet ﷺ's mosque, and he struck him with his stick. Hassan asked why he was hitting him. Umar replied that he was reciting poetry in the Prophet ﷺ's mosque. Hassan answered that he had recited poetry in that very mosque when someone far better than Umar was present. He then turned to Abu Hurairah and asked him, by Allah, whether he had not heard the Prophet ﷺ say, "Stand up, O Hassan, and write poetry, and the angel Jibril will help you." Abu Hurairah confirmed that he had.