From me to you flow unrestrained tears—one pours down in torrents, another is choked inside.
Will al-Naḍr hear if I call to him? How can the dead—voiceless as they are—ever hear?
O Muḥammad, finest scion of a noble mother among her people—indeed, the stallion’s stock is pure—
What harm would it have done you to grant reprieve? A youth may pardon even while seething with anger.
Or had you accepted a ransom, let them pay the costliest price a man can pay.
Al-Naḍr was the nearest in kin of all those you captured, the most deserving—had any been set free.
Yet the swords of his own kinsmen kept hacking at him; by Allah, blood-ties were severed that day.
Steadfast, he was led—exhausted—toward death, dragging his fetters like a tightly bound captive.

Ibn Hishām says—and Allah knows best—that when these verses reached the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, he remarked, “Had they come to me before he was killed, I would have shown him clemency.”

Ibn Isḥāq relates: At that stopping-place the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was met by Abū Hind, the freedman of Farwah ibn ʿAmr al-Bayāḍī, who served as his cupper. He carried a leather skin filled with hays—dates mixed with ground barley and ghee—as a gift for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. The Prophet accepted the gift and commended its bearer to the care of the Anṣār.

Ibn Isḥāq adds: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then continued on until he reached Madinah a full day ahead of the prisoners.

He further reports—on the authority of Nuhayyah ibn Wahb of the Banū ʿAbd al-Dār—that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived with the captives, he distributed them among his Companions, saying, “Treat them well.”

Among those captives was Abū ʿAzīz ibn ʿUmayr ibn Hāshim, the full brother of Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr. Abū ʿAzīz recounts: “My brother Muṣʿab passed by me while an Anṣārī man held me prisoner. Muṣʿab said to him, ‘Bind him securely, for his mother is a woman of means—she may ransom him from you.’

“I was with a party of Anṣār who were bringing me back from Badr. Whenever they served their lunch or supper they would single me out for the bread and eat dates themselves, in obedience to the Messenger of Allah’s ﷺ instructions regarding us. If a morsel of bread fell into any man’s hand, he would give it to me; and if, out of shame, I tried to return it, he would insist on my taking it without even letting it touch his own hand.”

Ibn Hishām comments: This same Abū ʿAzīz had carried the banner of the polytheists at Badr after al-Naḍr ibn al-Ḥārith, and when he said