of al-Jabājib! What will you do about Mudhammam and the renegades with him who have banded together to fight you?’

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘That is the hairy fiend of the mountain pass, Ibn Uzayb. By Allah, I shall deal with you yet! Disperse to your tents.’

Al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿUbādah, the brother of Banū Sālim, exclaimed, ‘Messenger of Allah, by the One who sent you with the truth, if you wish we will descend upon the people of Mina tomorrow with our swords!’ He replied, ‘We have not been commanded to do that.’ So we went back to our lodgings and lay down.

When morning came, a delegation of Quraysh approached us. Among them was the young al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām wearing two brand-new sandals. They said, ‘O company of Khazraj, it has reached us that you have come to our companion to take him away from our midst. By Allah, there is no Arab people with whom we would more hate to have war break out than you.’

Some of our own clansmen who were still idolaters rose and swore to them by Allah that nothing of the sort had happened and that we had done no such thing. As the delegation was about to leave, I said—so as to join in the conversation—‘O Abū Jābir’—meaning ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmr—‘you are one of our chiefs and an elder among us, yet you cannot obtain sandals like those of this young man from Quraysh.’ Al-Ḥārith heard me, removed his sandals and tossed them to me, saying, ‘By Allah, you shall wear them!’ Abū Jābir said, ‘Gently! By Allah, you have shamed the man—give him back his sandals.’ I replied, ‘No, by Allah, I will not return them; it is a good omen, and I hope one day to strip them from him.’

Ibn Isḥāq said: ʿAbd Allah ibn Abī Bakr narrated to me that they then left those men and went to ʿAbd Allah ibn Ubayy—that is, Ibn Salūl—and questioned him. He said, ‘This is a serious matter, and my people would never allow something like this to be decided without me.’ So they left him.

And Ibn Idrīs, reporting from Ibn Isḥāq, said: ʿAbd Allah ibn Abī Bakr told me