letters back and forth between us and them, when a dispatch reached us from al-Aswad that read: “Keep for us whatever land you have taken and husband what you have collected, for we are more entitled to it; remain just as you are.”

While we were still considering our position it was announced, “Al-Aswad is at Shaʿūb, and Shahr ibn Bādhām has gone out to face him.” Not long after, news reached us that he had killed Shahr, scattered the abnāʾ, and seized Ṣanʿāʾ in a little over twenty nights. Muʿādh fled, passed by Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī in Maʾrib, and together they entered Ḥaḍramawt.

Al-Aswad then overran everything from the districts of al-Ṭāʾif to Bahrain and beyond, sweeping across the land like a raging fire. On the day he met Shahr he commanded seven hundred horsemen. His field-commanders were Qays ibn ʿAbd Yaghūth, Yazīd ibn Makhzūm, and so-and-so and so-and-so. His power became formidable; he dominated most of Yemen, many people apostatized with him, and the Muslims dealt with him by practising taqiyyah (dissimulation). He appointed ʿAmr ibn Maʿdīkarib as his deputy over Madhḥij, gave overall command of the army to Qays ibn ʿAbd Yaghūth, and placed the affairs of the abnāʾ under Fayrūz al-Daylamī and Dhādawayh. Once he was firmly entrenched, however, he treated these men with disdain and even married Shahr’s widow, who was a cousin of Fayrūz.

The narrator continued: While we were in Ḥaḍramawt, uneasy lest al-Aswad march against us—Muʿādh having by then married among the Sakūn tribe—letters arrived from the Prophet ﷺ instructing us to send men to outmanoeuvre and engage him. Muʿādh rose to the task; we recognised our own strength and were confident of victory.

Sayf added: al-Mustanīr related to us, from ʿUrwah, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Fayrūz, from Jashnas al-Daylamī, who said: “Wabr ibn Yaḥnas arrived among us…”