I kept saying to myself, “I have never seen people flee from a situation like this—only women would do so. By Allah, had the women of Quraysh come out with nothing but their shawls (1), they would have driven Muhammad and his companions back.”
After the Battle of the Trench I said, “Why do I not go to Madinah and hear what Muhammad is saying?” for Islam had already taken root in my heart.
So I travelled there. When I asked after him, they said, “He is over there in the shade of the mosque, sitting among a group of his Companions.” I approached him—unable at first to distinguish him from those around him—and offered the greeting of peace.
He replied,
“O Qubāth ibn Ashyam, are you the one who said on the Day of Badr, ‘I have never seen anything like this; only women would run away from it’?”
I answered, “I bear witness that you are the Messenger of Allah, for those words never reached another human being; they were no more than a passing thought within myself. Had you not been a Prophet, Allah would not have disclosed them to you. Come, let me pledge my allegiance to you upon Islam.” And I accepted Islam.
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The Companions—may Allah be pleased with them—differed on the Day of Badr over the spoils taken from the idolaters and to whom they should belong. Once the idolaters turned to flee, the Muslims found themselves in three groups: one encircled the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, guarding him lest any of the enemy return; a second pursued the polytheists, killing and capturing them; and a third gathered the booty scattered about the field. Each group claimed a stronger right to the spoils because of the crucial part it had played.
Ibn Isḥāq (4) said: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith and others related to me from Sulaymān ibn Mūsā, from Makḥūl, from Abū Umāmah al-Bāhilī, who said:
I asked ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit about al-Anfāl. He replied, “The verse was revealed concerning us, the people of Badr, when we disagreed about the booty and our manners toward one another deteriorated. Allah took the matter out of our hands and placed it with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and he distributed it among the Muslims with perfect equity,” meaning, equally (5).
Aḥmad (6) recorded this in the same wording through Muḥammad ibn Salamah from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq.
His words “with perfect equity” mean that he placed on an equal footing those who had gathered the spoils, those who had pursued the enemy, and