by Allah, to dine on the meat of a plump camel taken from his ransom would be dearer to us than spilling his blood.”

I (the author) say: This shows that Thumamah’s conversion came after that of Abu Hurayrah, whose Islam was in the seventh year AH. The report states that after leaving Mecca he returned to al-Yamamah and stopped all shipments to Mecca until Quraysh were driven to desperation. They therefore wrote to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, appealing to their kinship, begging him to write to Thumamah instructing him to allow the transport of food. Al-Yamamah was Mecca’s agricultural hinterland. The Prophet ﷺ then granted permission.

In that same year, according to what al-Waqidi relates, the following expeditions also took place. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ dispatched, in Rabiʿ al-Awwal—or Rabiʿ al-Akhir—ʿUkkāshah ibn Miḥṣan with forty men to al-Ghamr; among them were Thābit ibn Aqram and Shujāʿ ibn Wahb. They advanced swiftly, but the people were alerted and fled. ʿUkkāshah camped by their water sources and sent out scouts who seized a guide, and he directed them to part of the tribe’s livestock. They found two hundred camels and drove them to Madinah.

Al-Waqidi also says that in the same year the Prophet ﷺ sent the detachment of Abū ʿUbaydah to al-Qassah, forty men in all. They travelled the night on foot and reached Dhu’l-Qassah in the darkness before dawn, launched a raid, and the inhabitants escaped helplessly into the mountains. They captured one man, who then accepted Islam.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ likewise dispatched Muḥammad ibn Maslamah with ten men. The enemy lay in wait for them until he and his companions fell asleep, then suddenly attacked. Muḥammad’s companions were killed, and he himself escaped, wounded.