the people.’

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ—so I have been informed—remarked, “Right now they are surely enjoying their evening drink among the Ghatafān.” He then slaughtered one camel for every hundred of his Companions, and they remained there over it; after that he turned back and travelled on until he entered Madinah.

The narrator continues: A woman of the Ghifār tribe arrived in Madinah riding a she-camel that belonged to the Prophet ﷺ and related to him what had happened. When she had finished she said, “O Messenger of Allah, I have vowed to Allah that I will sacrifice her if He delivers me safely upon her.”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ smiled and replied, “What a poor reward you would give her! Allah carried you on her back and saved you through her, and now you want to slaughter her. There is no vow that entails disobedience to Allah, nor a vow concerning something you do not own. She is but one of my camels—return to your family with the blessing of Allah.”

Ibn Isḥāq (1) said: The report on this matter is related by Abū az-Zubayr al-Makkī, from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. Thus Ibn Isḥāq presented the story with the chain and wording just mentioned.

Al-Bukhārī (2) recorded—after the narrative of al-Ḥudaybiyyah and before [the expedition of] Khaybar—the raid of Dhū Qarad, the expedition in which the Prophet’s milch-camels were carried off three days before Khaybar. He said: We were told by Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd, who was told by Ḥātim, from Yazīd ibn Abī ʿUbayd, who said, I heard Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ say:

“I went out before the call to the first (dawn) prayer while the Prophet’s milch-camels were grazing at Dhū Qarad. A slave-boy of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf met me and said, ‘The Prophet’s milch-camels have been seized.’ I asked, ‘Who took them?’ He answered, ‘Ghatafān.’ I shouted three times, ‘Yā Ṣabāḥāh!’—so loudly that everyone between the two lava plains of Madinah heard me—then dashed off until I caught up with them; they had already begun to water their animals. I started shooting them with my arrows, for I was an archer, chanting,

‘I am the son of al-Akwaʿ; today is the day of the sucklings!’

I kept reciting lines until I rescued the milch-camels from them and stripped thirty cloaks from them.

“Then the Prophet ﷺ and the people arrived. I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, I have kept the raiders from the water and they are parched; send after them now.’ He replied, ‘Son of al-Akwaʿ, now that you have prevailed, be lenient.’ We then turned back, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ let me ride behind him on his camel until we reached Madinah.”

Muslim (4) likewise recorded this from Qutaybah with the same chain, and al-Bukhārī (5) transmitted it through Abū ʿĀṣim an-Nabīl, from Yazīd ibn Abī ʿUbayd, from his patron Salamah, in similar fashion.

Imām Aḥmad (6) said: We were told by Hāshim ibn al-Qāsim, who was told by ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār; Iyās ibn Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ related to me from his father that:

“We arrived in Madinah during the year of al-Ḥudaybiyyah with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. I and Rabāḥ, the Prophet’s servant, went out along the back of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and I had taken a horse belonging to Ṭalḥah ibn ʿUbayd Allāh; I intended to exercise it among the camels. When the darkness just before dawn had settled…”