and further bounty, for no harm had touched them. The narrator adds, “They did not encounter any enemy.” Both al-Bukhārī and Muslim relate this report.

Ibn Isḥāq said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ḥazm told me that Maʿbad al-Khuzāʿī passed by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while he was encamped at Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad. The tribe of Khuzaʿah—its Muslims and idolaters alike—were a storehouse of loyalty to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; they were wholly on his side and hid from him nothing that took place in Mecca. Maʿbad, however, was still a polytheist at the time. He said, “O Muhammad, by Allah, what befell your Companions has grieved us, and we would have loved it had Allah preserved you from such loss.”

Maʿbad then went on until he met Abū Sufyān and those with him at al-Rawḥāʾ. They had resolved to turn back, saying, “We have struck at the cutting edge of Muhammad’s men and their leaders; shall we go home before finishing them off? Let us return and make an end of the rest of them!”

When Abū Sufyān saw Maʿbad he asked, “What news do you bring?”

Maʿbad answered, “Muhammad has come out after you with a force the like of which I have never seen. They are burning with fury against you. Everyone who stayed behind on the day of the battle has now joined him, repenting of what they did; never have I seen people so angry with an enemy.”

“Woe to you!” Abū Sufyān exclaimed. “What are you saying?”

Maʿbad replied, “By Allah, I do not think you will set off again before you see the manes of their horses.”

Abū Sufyān said, “By Allah, we had already agreed to wheel round and wipe them out.”

Maʿbad responded, “I strongly advise you against it. By Allah, what I have just witnessed moved me to compose some lines of verse about them.”

“What did you say?” asked Abū Sufyān. Maʿbad recited:

The tumult almost toppled my camel to the ground
when the earth swarmed with smooth-coated chargers in flocks.
They are led by noble lions, not worthless idlers;
at the clash they neither falter nor turn aside.