Ibn Isḥāq (1) relates that ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rawāḥah—or, as Ibn Hishām maintains, Abū Khaythamah of Banū Sālim ibn ʿAwf—composed the following verses (in the ṭawīl metre):

News has reached me—from him whose true worth men fail to gauge—
of the insolence and sin they have done to Zaynab among them.

Her expulsion brought no shame upon Muhammad,
though rancour smoulders and the baneful perfume of Minsham hangs between us.

By nightfall Abū Sufyān was clinging to Dumdam’s pact,
yet in our war he stands, nose in the dust, remorseful.

We yoked his son ʿAmr, and the client at his right hand,
to a mail-clad warrior whose ring-linked armour was firmly forged.

I swear our battalions shall never cease—
the noble vanguard of an army mounted on branded steeds—

until we strike terror into the idolatrous Quraysh
and brand their very noses with a searing mark of disgrace.

We shall drive them to the borders of Najd and Nakhlah;
and if they meet us with horse and foot, we will meet them in kind.

Through the hand of time we shall pursue them, our ranks unbent,
till we cast them in the wake of ʿĀd and Jurhum.

Those who refused to obey Muhammad will rue their choice—
and what a moment for regret it will be!

So tell Abū Sufyān, should you chance to meet him:
if you do not bow in pure devotion and embrace Islam,

then rejoice in a swift disgrace in this life
and in an everlasting garment of pitch within Hell.

Ibn Isḥāq (2) comments: the “client at Abu Sufyān’s right hand” to whom the poet refers was ʿĀmir ibn al-Ḥaḍramī.

Ibn Hishām, however, says: rather, he was ʿUqbah ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥārith ibn al-Ḥaḍramī, whereas ʿĀmir ibn al-Ḥaḍramī had been killed at Badr.

Ibn Isḥāq (3) further reports that Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb told him, on the authority of Bukayr ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ashajj, from Sulaymān ibn Yasār, from Abū Isḥāq ad-Dawsī, from Abū Hurayrah, who said:

“The Prophet ﷺ dispatched a detachment in which I was present and said, ‘If you overtake Hubbar ibn al-Aswad and the man who ran ahead with him to Zaynab, burn them both with fire.’ The next morning he sent word to us: ‘Yesterday I had ordered you to burn those two men if you seized them, but I have realised that none may punish with fire save Allah, Mighty and Exalted. If you capture them, then kill them.’ ”

This report is transmitted solely by Ibn Isḥāq; it satisfies the conditions of the compilers of the Sunan, yet none of them included it.

Al-Bukhārī (6) said: “Qutaybah narrated to us; al-Layth narrated to us, from Bukayr, from Sulaymān ibn Yasār, from Abū Hurayrah …”