Ibn Ishaq said: The Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him—as it has been related to me—used to speak of how Allah preserved him in his childhood. He said: “I once saw myself among a group of Quraysh lads carrying stones for one of the games boys play. We had all stripped down and placed our waist-wrappers over our shoulders to cushion the stones. I was moving back and forth with them like that when someone I could not see struck me a painful blow and said, ‘Fasten your waist-wrapper tightly!’ I therefore took it, tied it firmly, and continued to carry the stones on my neck.”

Ibn Ishaq added: The Fijar War broke out when the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, was twenty years old. It was called “the War of the Violators” because the tribes of Kinana and Qays ‘Aylan violated the customary sanctities during their fighting. The Messenger of Allah said, “I used to hand arrows to my uncles,” meaning that he would retrieve and pass back to them the arrows launched by the enemy. The leader of Quraysh in that engagement was Harb ibn Umayya.