are you able to hide your face from me?’

So I withdrew.

When he passed away and Musaylimah emerged, I said, ‘I will certainly march out against him; perhaps I can kill him and thereby repay Hamzah.’

I went out with the army, and events unfolded as they did. Suddenly I saw a man standing in a breach in a wall; he looked like a pale, mottled camel (1), his hair bristling. I hurled my spear at him, driving it between his breasts until it came out between his shoulders. A man from the Anṣār then leapt upon him and struck the crown of his head with his sword.

Sulaymān ibn Yasār said: I heard Ibn ʿUmar relate:

‘A slave-girl standing on a rooftop cried out, “The Commander of the Believers has been killed by the black slave (2)!”’

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah said: After that the Muslims scattered in search of their dead. They did not find a single fallen man who had not been mutilated, except Hanzalah ibn Abī ʿĀmir. His father, Abū ʿĀmir, had been among the idolaters, so he was left untouched for his sake.

They say that his father came upon him where he lay slain and pushed his chest with his foot, then said, ‘Two debts have I now collected! I have reached this place of yours before you, O defiled one. By Allah, you were indeed one who upheld kinship ties and was dutiful to his parent.’

They also found that Hamzah’s abdomen had been ripped open. Wahshī had taken his liver to Hind in fulfilment of a vow she made when her father was killed at Badr. He was wrapped in a striped cloak; whenever they drew it over his head, his feet were exposed, so they covered his feet with some branches.

Ibn Isḥāq narrated: Buraydah told me, on the authority of Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī, that the Messenger of Allah (3) ﷺ said, ‘If I ever gain the upper hand over Quraysh, I will surely mutilate thirty of them.’