In that same year Abū ʿUbayda said: Twenty thousand men from Ḥarūrāʾ set out under the command of Shabath ibn Ribʿī. ʿAlī addressed them, bested them in argument, and they went back.

Sulaymān al-Taymī relates—through Anas—that Shabath ibn Ribʿī once declared, “I am the first man to unleash the Ḥarūrites!” Someone retorted, “There is nothing in that for you to boast about.”

Al-Mughīrah reported: The first to raise the cry of arbitration were Ibn al-Kawwāʾ and Shabath.

I say: His statement “ḥakkama” refers to a slogan that has become the hallmark of the Kharijites. A man is said to have “ḥakkama” when he revolts and proclaims, “Judgement belongs to God alone.”

Those who died in that year included:

• Jahjah ibn Qays—some say ibn Saʿīd—al-Ghifārī, a Medinan Companion who witnessed the Pledge of Riḍwān. During the expedition of al-Muraysīʿ he was working as a hired hand for ʿUmar. A quarrel broke out between him and Sinān al-Juhanī; Jahjah cried, “O Emigrants!” and Sinān cried, “O Helpers!”

ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār transmits from Jahjah that before he accepted Islam he drank the milk of seven goats, but once he entered Islam he could not finish even the milk of one.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: He was the man who snatched the staff from ʿUthmān—may Allah be pleased with him—while the Caliph was addressing the people, and broke it across his knee; gangrene then set in. That staff had belonged to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. He died one year after ʿUthmān.

• Ḥābis ibn Saʿd al-Ṭāʾī: He served as the judge of Ḥimṣ during ʿUmar’s caliphate, and Abū Bakr had earlier dispatched him to Syria.