killing him outright and shattering his backbone. Saʿd kept watching in amazement, asking, “Who is that horseman?” Before long the enemy was routed, whereupon Abū Miḥjan returned, fastened the shackles back on himself, and sat down. Saʿd came to the woman and began recounting the battle: “Such-and-such befell us, until Allah sent a rider on a dappled horse. Had I not left Abū Miḥjan in irons I would have thought the man bore his hallmarks.” She said, “By Allah, it was Abū Miḥjan,” and told him the whole story. Saʿd summoned him, removed his fetters, and said, “We shall never again flog you for drinking wine.” Abū Miḥjan replied, “And by Allah I shall never drink it again. I had only been too proud to abandon it for fear of your lashes.” Thereafter he never touched it.

A similar report was transmitted by Abū Muʿāwiyah ad-Darīr, from ʿAmr ibn Muhājir, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿd, from his father, who said: “On the day of al-Qādisiyyah Abū Miḥjan was brought in drunk, so Saʿd chained him up,” and he related the rest of the story.

The historians also relate that Abū Miḥjan composed the following lines:

When I die, bury me beside a vine,
So its sap may refresh my bones after death;
And do not lay me in a barren waste—
I fear that, once I die, I shall taste it no more.

Al-Haytham ibn ʿAdī claimed that someone who had seen Abū Miḥjan’s grave—either in Azerbaijan or, he said, in the environs of Jurjān—told him that a vine had sprouted over it, grown lush, and borne fruit. The man was astonished and remembered these verses.