He severed their hands and feet and cast them upon the lava-field; they begged for water but were given none until they died, and their wounds were not cauterized.
In another narration Anas said, “I actually saw one of them biting the ground with his mouth from thirst.”
Abū Qilābah commented, “These men had killed, stolen, apostatized after believing, and made war upon Allah and His Messenger.”
Al-Bayhaqī reports, through the isnād of ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah—ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān—Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh—Abū al-Zubayr—from Jābir, that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent men in pursuit of them he prayed: “O Allah, obscure the road before them and make it tighter for them than the strap that secures a camel’s load.” Allah indeed blinded their way; they were overtaken, brought to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and he cut off their hands and feet and branded their eyes.
Sahih Muslim adds that he branded their eyes because they had branded the eyes of the shepherds.
Section: Events that took place in this same year, namely the sixth year after the Hijrah
• During this year the obligation of Hajj was revealed, according to the opinion of al-Shāfiʿī—may Allah have mercy on him—at the time of al-Hudaybiyah, in the divine statement, “And complete the pilgrimage and the ʿumrah for Allah” (al-Baqarah 2:196). On this basis he held that performing the Hajj may be deferred and is not required immediately, for the Prophet ﷺ did not perform it until the tenth year. The other three imams—Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah, and Aḥmad—disagreed, maintaining that Hajj becomes obligatory at once for anyone who is able. They denied that the obligation can be inferred from the verse just cited, arguing that it commands only completion after one has already entered into the rites. They supported their position with other proofs, many of which we have presented under our commentary on this verse in the Tafsīr; praise and thanks belong to Allah, and that suffices.
• In this same year Muslim women were declared unlawful for polytheists, as a specific ruling that qualified the general terms of the treaty concluded at al-Hudaybiyah.