ʿUmar likewise reproached him, whereupon Khalid retorted, “I went after them in retaliation for your father’s killing.”

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān replied, “You are lying. I myself killed my father’s killer with my own hand, and had I not done so you would now be slaughtering a community of Muslims over something that happened to my father in the Age of Ignorance.”

Khalid said, “And who told you that they had embraced Islam?”

He answered, “Every man in the expedition.”

Khalid said, “A messenger from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came to me ordering me to attack them, so I attacked them.”

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān retorted, “You have lied about the Messenger of Allah!”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then turned away from Khalid in anger and said, “O Khalid, leave my Companions alone! Whenever a man’s close friend is hurt, the man himself is hurt.” ⦗1⦘

Al-Wāqidī relates—through Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Qatādah, from his family, from Abū Qatādah—who said:

When Khalid announced in the last part of the night, “Whoever has a captive, let him dispatch him,” I released my captive and said to Khalid, “Fear Allah, for death will surely come to you, and these people are Muslims.”

He replied, “You have no knowledge about these people.”

Its isnād contains al-Wāqidī, and Khalid acted according to his own ijtihād; for that reason the Prophet ﷺ did not demand the payment of their blood-money from him.

Al-Wāqidī also reports—from Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb ibn ʿUtbah, from ʿUthmān al-Akhnasī, from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī Bakr—who said:

The Prophet ﷺ dispatched Khalid to the tribe of al-Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb as commander and caller to Islam.

Khalid likewise accompanied the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the Farewell Pilgrimage. When the Prophet shaved his head, he gave Khalid a lock of his hair; Khalid fixed it to the front of his cap, and thereafter he never met an enemy without routing him. ⦗2⦘

The man who washed Khalid’s body in Ḥimṣ told me that when he looked beneath his garments he saw no intact part on him—every span bore the scar of a sword-cut, a spear-thrust, or an arrow-wound.