You will soon learn which of us stands secure therein, and you will know which part of our land must suffer harm.
If the very date-palms could turn into riding beasts, they would have said, “This is no place for you—set out and be gone.”
I (the author) say: Abu Sufyān ibn al-Ḥārith penned these lines before he embraced Islam, and portions of them are cited in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Ibn Isḥāq also records the response that Ḥassān addressed to Jabal ibn Jawwāl al-Thaʿlabī; we have left it out intentionally.
Ibn Isḥāq said: Ḥassān ibn Thābit likewise composed verses mourning Saʿd and a number of those martyred on the day of Banū Qurayẓah, in the Ṭawīl metre:
O my people! Can what is decreed be driven back,
or can the good life that has passed ever return?
I remembered a bygone age, and the daughters of the heart collapsed,
while tears poured from me in streams.
Yearning passion brought my brothers to my mind—
the slain among whom were Tufayl and Rāfiʿ,
And Saʿd—now they dwell in the gardens, while their homes lie forlorn,
the earth emptied of them.
They kept faith with the Messenger on the day of Badr,
though the shadows of death and flashing blades loomed overhead.
He called, and they answered in truth; every one of them
obedient and attentive to his every command.
They never flinched until, together, they fell;
only the stroke of death cuts short appointed terms.
They hope to gain from him intercession
when none will intercede save the prophets.
Such, O best of God’s servants, is our trial:
we answered God’s call, and death is the draught we drink.
We were the first to take our stand with you, and after us
our forerunners in God’s religion follow in our wake.
We know that sovereignty belongs to God alone,
and that the decree of God must surely come to pass.
The Killing of Abū Rāfiʿ Sallām ibn Abī al-Ḥuqayq, the Jew—may God curse him
He was in a fortress of his in the territory of Khaybar, a merchant of great repute throughout the Ḥijāz.
Ibn Isḥāq said: When the affair of the Trench and the matter of Banū Qurayẓah had concluded, Sallām ibn Abī al-Ḥuqayq—who was