His statement that the affair of Biʾr Maʿūnah came after Qurayẓah is open to objection; the sound view is that it occurred after Uḥud, as will be shown later.

Yaʿqūb (1) said: S al-ma b. Shabīb narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Razzāq related to us; Maʿmar informed us, from al-Zuhrī: I heard Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib say, “The Messenger of God ﷺ waged eighteen expeditions.” On another occasion I heard him say, “twenty-four.” I do not know whether that was a slip of the tongue or something he learned afterwards.

Al-Ṭabarānī, through al-Dabrī (2), transmits from ʿAbd al-Razzāq, from Maʿmar, from al-Zuhrī, who said: “The Messenger of God ﷺ undertook twenty-four expeditions.”

ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd states in his Musnad (3): Saʿīd ibn Sallām told us, Zakariyyā ibn Isḥāq related to us, Abū al-Zubayr narrated to us, from Jābir, who said: “The Messenger of God ﷺ fought in twenty-one expeditions.”

Al-Ḥākim (4) likewise recorded—on the authority of Hishām from Qatādah—that the campaigns and detachments of the Messenger of God ﷺ numbered forty-three; al-Ḥākim (5) then remarked: “Perhaps he meant only the detachments, not the major expeditions, for al-Iklīl lists, in order, more than one hundred of the Messenger’s missions and detachments.”

He added: “A trustworthy scholar among our companions in Bukhara informed me that he had read in the book of Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Naṣr that the detachments and missions, apart from the actual battles, numbered slightly over seventy. What al-Ḥākim reported is therefore most unusual, and construing Qatādah’s words as he did is open to question.”

Imām Aḥmad (6) recorded—through Azhar ibn al-Qāsim al-Rāsibī, from Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī, from Qatādah—that the campaigns and detachments of the Messenger of God ﷺ totaled forty-three: twenty-four dispatches and nineteen expeditions, of which he personally took part in eight: Badr, Uḥud, the Confederates, al-Muraysīʿ, Qudayd, Khaybar, the Conquest of Mecca, and Ḥunayn.

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah (7) reports, on the authority of al-Zuhrī: These are the campaigns in which the Messenger of God ﷺ actually fought: the day of Badr in Ramadan of the second year AH; the day of Uḥud in Shawwāl of the third; the day of the Trench—also called the day of the Confederates and Qurayẓah—in Shawwāl of the fourth; his engagement against Banū al-Muṣṭaliq and Banū Lihyān in Shaʿbān of the fifth; then he fought on the day