Ḥassān ibn Thābit (1) also composed verses—so Ibn Isḥāq relates, and Allah knows best—lamenting the martyrs of Biʾr Maʿūnah:
[from the Wāfir metre]
Over the slain at Maʿūnah, break forth and weep,
let the eyes pour torrents, not a meagre flow.
For the Prophet’s chargers, on the dawn they faced the foe
and destiny met them with its preordained decree.
Annihilation reached them through a covenant with a people
whose rope of pledge they cut by treacherous deceit.
Alas for Mundhir! How he pressed ahead, then sped
to meet his destined death with steadfast heart.
And how many a noble, radiant warrior fell that morn—
a proud scion of the honoured house of ʿAmr.
The Expedition against Banū al-Naḍīr (2)
It was on this occasion that Allah revealed Sūrat al-Ḥashr. In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (3) Ibn ʿAbbās used to call it “the Sūrah of Banū al-Naḍīr.”
Al-Bukhārī (4) also relates from az-Zuhrī, on the authority of ʿUrwah, that he said: “Banū al-Naḍīr occurred six months after Badr and before Uḥud.” Ibn Abī Ḥātim transmitted the report in his Tafsīr (5) from his father, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣāliḥ, from al-Layth, from ʿAqīl, from az-Zuhrī in the same wording.
Similarly, Hanbal ibn Isḥāq narrated—from Hilāl ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar al-Raqqī, from Muṭarrif ibn Māzin al-Yamānī, from Maʿmar, from az-Zuhrī—who dated the Battle of Badr to the seventeenth of Ramaḍān in the second year AH, then said: “Next he campaigned against Banū al-Naḍīr, then fought at Uḥud in Shawwāl of the third year, and then battled at the Trench in Shawwāl of the fourth year.”
Al-Bayhaqī (6) remarked: “Az-Zuhrī used to maintain that it was before Uḥud,” adding, “while others held that it was after Uḥud and also after Biʾr Maʿūnah.”
I say: This is indeed how Ibn Isḥāq arranged the events, as mentioned earlier: he places the expedition after his account of Biʾr Maʿūnah, the return of ʿAmr ibn Umayyah, and his killing of the two men of Banū ʿĀmir—unaware that they bore the covenant of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. For that reason the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to him, “You have slain two men; I must pay their blood money.”