at Khaybar in the sixth year AH. He then fought on the day of the Conquest in Ramadan of the eighth year, followed by the encounter at Hunayn and the siege of the people of al-Ṭāʾif in Shawwāl of that same year. Abū Bakr performed the ḥajj in the ninth year, and the Messenger of God ﷺ performed the Farewell Pilgrimage in the tenth. Altogether he led twelve expeditions in which no fighting occurred. He added, “The first expedition he undertook was to al-Abwāʾ.”

Hanbal ibn Isḥāq (1) relates—through Hilāl ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (2), from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar al-Raqqī, from Muṭarrif ibn Māzin al-Yamānī, from Maʿmar, from al-Zuhrī (3)—that al-Zuhrī said: “The first verse revealed concerning fighting was, ‘Permission [to fight] has been granted to those who are being fought, because they have been wronged’ (al-Ḥajj 22:39), and that was after the Messenger of God ﷺ arrived in Madinah. The first engagement in which the Messenger of God ﷺ was present was Badr, on a Friday, the seventeenth of Ramadan.”

He went on: “Next he campaigned against Banū al-Naḍīr; then he fought at Uḥud in Shawwāl—that is, of the third year; then the Battle of the Trench in Shawwāl of the fourth; then against Banū Lihyān in Shaʿbān of the fifth; then Khaybar in the sixth; then the Conquest in Shaʿbān of the eighth; and Hunayn in Ramadan of that same year. The Messenger of God ﷺ also led eleven expeditions in which no fighting took place. The first of these was to al-Abwāʾ, followed by al-ʿUshayrah, the Ghaṭafān campaign, the expedition against Banū Sulaym, another march to al-Abwāʾ (4), the first Badr expedition, the expedition to al-Ṭāʾif, al-Ḥudaybiyah, al-Ṣafrāʾ, and finally the expedition of Tabūk, his last campaign.” After that he listed the various detachments.

“This,” he says, “is exactly what I copied from the History of the ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir (5). It is exceedingly unusual, and the correct arrangement will, God willing, be given later on.”

This branch of knowledge merits close attention, reflection, and preparation. Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī transmits—from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī, from his father—that he heard ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn say: “We used to teach the campaigns of the Prophet ﷺ just as we taught a sūrah of the Qur’an.”

Al-Wāqidī (6) also said: “I heard Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh say, ‘I heard my uncle al-Zuhrī remark that the knowledge of the campaigns is knowledge of both this world and the Hereafter.’”

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (7), may God have mercy on him, said in his Maghāzī, after citing the material we have already quoted from him concerning the identification