Some report that they were fifteen in all. He had been assuring Quraysh that, should he face his own people, not two of them would differ about him. When the two armies engaged, Abū ʿĀmir was the first to confront the Muslims, together with the Ahābish and the slaves of Mecca. He shouted, “People of Aws! It is I, Abū ʿĀmir!”
They answered, “May Allah give you no joy of sight, you reprobate!” In the Days of Ignorance he had been called “the Monk,” but the Messenger of Allah ﷺ named him “the Debauchee.” Hearing their reply he said, “Evil has overtaken my people after me.” He then fought them fiercely and began pelting them with stones.

Ibn Isḥāq (1) says: The fighting continued until the battle blazed, and Abū Dujānah fought on, penetrating deep into the enemy lines.

Ibn Hishām (2) relates, on the authority of several scholars, that al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām said:
“I felt something in my heart when I asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for the sword and he withheld it from me and gave it to Abū Dujānah. I said to myself, ‘I am the son of Ṣafiyyah, his aunt, a man of Quraysh; I stepped forward and asked for it first, yet he gave it to Abū Dujānah and left me aside. By Allah, I will watch what he does with it.’
“So I followed him. He produced a red head-band and tied it round his head. The Anṣār exclaimed, ‘Abū Dujānah has donned the band of death!’—for that is what they always said when he bound it on. He advanced while chanting:

I am the man whose dearest friend once pledged to me,
While we were at the valley, by the palms in company,
That never all my life would I stand idle in the rear;
I strike with the sword of Allah and His Messenger.

al-Umawī adds: Abū ʿUbayd told me, in the account of the Prophet ﷺ (3), that a man came to him while he was fighting and asked him for a sword. The Prophet said, “Perhaps if I give it to you, you will fight in the kyūl?” The man replied, “No.” He therefore handed him a sword, and the man began to chant:

I am the man whose dearest friend once pledged to me
That never all my life would I stand idle in the rear.

This report is transmitted from Shuʿbah and also by Isrāʾīl, both from Abū Isḥāq, from Hunaydah ibn Khālid—or someone else—attributed to the Prophet. Kyūl means the back ranks of the lines; I heard this from several scholars, and I have encountered the word only in this ḥadīth.

Ibn Isḥāq (4) says: Abū Dujānah met no one without killing him. Among the idolaters there was a man who never left a wounded Muslim without finishing him off. Each of them kept edging toward the other, and I prayed that Allah would bring them together. They met and exchanged two blows: the polytheist struck Abū Dujānah, but he warded it off with his shield (5), which caught hold of the man’s sword; then Abū Dujānah struck him and killed him. After that I saw him raise the sword