toward the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. When I arrived in Madinah some children, who were playing in the street, caught sight of me and heard their elders saying, “That is ʿAmr!” The youngsters hurried off to the Prophet ﷺ and informed him. I then came before him with the captive, having tied the man’s thumbs together with my bowstring, and I actually saw the Prophet ﷺ smiling. He invoked blessings for me. Salamah had reached Madinah three days before my arrival. Reported by al-Bayhaqī.

We mentioned earlier that when ʿAmr lowered Khu­bayb, he found no trace of flesh or body; it is therefore possible that Khu­bayb was buried where he fell—Allah knows best. Ibn Hishām is the one who appended the story of this expedition to the account of Ibn Isḥāq, relating it almost exactly as al-Wāqidī does, though in his version ʿAmr ibn Umayyah’s companion was Jabbār ibn Ṣakhr. Allah knows best, and to Him belongs all praise.

The Expedition of Biʾr Maʿūnah

This took place in the month of Ṣafar of that same year. Makẖūl advanced the unusual opinion that it occurred after the Battle of the Trench; Allah knows best.

Al-Bukhārī reports: Abū Maʿmar narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Wārith narrated to us; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz narrated to us from Anas ibn Mālik, who said:

“The Prophet ﷺ dispatched seventy men on an errand; they were known as the Reciters. Two clans of Banū Sulaym—Riʿl and Dhakwān—waylaid them at a well called Biʾr Maʿūnah. The men said, ‘By Allah, it is not you we seek; we are merely passing through on a mission for the Prophet ﷺ.’ Nevertheless they killed them. The Prophet ﷺ then invoked curses upon those tribes for an entire month during the dawn prayer; that was the beginning of the qunūt, for we had not practiced qunūt before that.”

Muslim transmits the report as well, through Ḥammād ibn Salamah from Thābit, from Anas, in similar wording.

Al-Bukhārī also says: ʿAbd al-Aʿlā ibn Ḥammād narrated to us; Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ narrated to us; Saʿīd narrated to us from Qatādah, from Anas ibn Mālik:

“Riʿl, Dhakwān, ʿUṣayyah, and Banū Lihyān asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for reinforcements against an enemy, so he supplied them with seventy men from the Anṣār. We used to call them the Reciters in those days: by day they gathered firewood, and by night they prayed. When they reached Biʾr Maʿūnah the tribes treacherously slew them. News reached the Prophet ﷺ, and he performed qunūt at dawn for a month, supplicating against those Arab clans…"