to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the Day of Uḥud when I was fourteen years old, but he did not allow me to fight. When the Day of the Trench came I presented myself to him again at the age of fifteen, and he permitted me.”

This statement should be understood to mean that at Uḥud he had already entered his fourteenth year, whereas by the time of the Trench he had completed fifteen years and some additional months, which he simply did not count. The Arabs often treat fractions of a year in this way when reckoning numbers, dates, and ages: sometimes they include the fraction and round it up to a full year, and sometimes they drop it altogether.

Some scholars took the ḥadith at its literal face value and buttressed it with the report of Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah and ʿUrwah that the Confederates episode occurred in Shawwāl of year 4 AH. This, however, contradicts the consensus, as well as Mūsā’s and ʿUrwah’s own admission that there were two full years between Uḥud and the Trench. Allah knows best.

Abū Isḥāq al-Fazārī narrated—from Ḥumayd, from Anas—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ went out on a cold morning to the trench. The Emigrants and the Helpers were digging it with their own hands, for they had no servants. When he saw how hungry and exhausted they were, he said:
“O Allah, true life is the life of the Hereafter,
so forgive the Helpers and the Emigrants.”

They answered him:
“We are the ones who pledged allegiance to Muhammad,
that we would wage jihad for as long as we live.”

Al-Bukhārī recorded this ḥadith, and Muslim relates a similar version through Ḥammād ibn Salamah, from Thābit.

ʿAbd al-Wārith said: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ṣuhayb narrated to us from Anas a similar account, adding: “They would be given about two handfuls of barley, from which rancid suet (ihālah sanikhah) was prepared for them …”