teen hundred in number. Al-Hudaybiya is a well; we had drawn its water dry, not leaving a single drop. When the Prophet ﷺ heard of this he came to the well, sat on its rim, asked for a container of its water, performed ablution, rinsed his mouth, supplicated, then poured the remainder back into the well and walked away only a short distance. Immediately it gushed forth, providing water for us and for our mounts. Al-Bukhari recorded this.

ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār related from Iyās ibn Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ, from his father, who said: We arrived with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ at al-Hudaybiya; we were fourteen hundred men, and about the well there grazed fifty sheep that could scarcely slake its thirst. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ sat on its brink; he either prayed over it or spat into it, whereupon it began to bubble and we drank and filled our water-skins. Muslim recorded this.

Al-Bakkāʾī reported that Ibn Isḥāq said: al-Zuhrī told me—on the authority of ʿUrwah, al-Miswar, and Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam—that they said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ set out in the year of al-Hudaybiya intending only to visit the Sacred House, not to fight. He drove with him seventy sacrificial camels, and the people numbered seven hundred men, so that each camel sufficed for ten persons.

Ibn Isḥāq said: Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allah, as I have heard, used to say, “We, the companions present at al-Hudaybiya, were fourteen hundred.”

I say: We have already cited the same figure from several other Companions, in agreement with Jābir.

Ibn Isḥāq then recounted al-Zuhrī’s tradition in full, which contains some unusual expressions, among them: ʿUrwah ibn Masʿūd kept addressing the Prophet ﷺ while al-Mughīrah stood over the Messenger of Allah ﷺ wearing armor, tapping ʿUrwah’s hand whenever he reached for the Prophet’s beard and saying, “Keep your hand away from the beard of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, for…"