199 – Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: “The Prophet ﷺ dispatched a cavalry detachment; they returned with a man and tied him to one of the pillars of the mosque …” The ḥadith is agreed upon. (1)
Vocabulary of the ḥadith:
– “With a man”: The two Ṣaḥīḥs and other collections state that the man was Thumamah ibn Uthāl al-Ḥanafi, a chieftain of Banū Ḥanīfah, who later embraced Islam.
– “Khaylan” (a cavalry detachment): Al-Qurṭubī said that khayl is grammatically feminine and that what is meant here are the mounted horsemen. Its singular is given as khāʾil, though others say the word has no true singular. They are called khayl because of the horse’s proud gait.
– “To a pillar of the mosque” (bisāriyah min sawāri al-masjid): sāriyah is the singular, its plural sawāri—analogous to jāriyah / jawāri—and it refers to a column.
Lessons derived from the ḥadith:
- Thumamah ibn Uthāl, one of the notables of Banū Ḥanīfah, was captured by the Muslim cavalry. The Prophet ﷺ had him tied inside the mosque and, for three consecutive days, would pass by him saying, “What do you have to say, O Thumamah?”
- The narration shows the permissibility of fastening a prisoner in the mosque even when he is a non-Muslim.
- It further proves that idolaters and the People of the Book may enter the mosque when there is a need—such as performing work related to it that they can do better than others—for non-Muslims used to enter the Prophet’s mosque and remain there for long periods.