The compilers of the Sunan have transmitted part of this report. As for the passage which states that Khuzaʿah were allowed to exact their revenge upon Banū Bakr until the afternoon of the Day of the Conquest, I have found it only in this narration. If it is authentic, it appears to have been a special concession granted to them because of what those people had done to them on the Night of al-Watīr. Allah knows best.

Imām Aḥmad also related—through Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, and Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd, all from Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, from ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī, from al-Ḥārith ibn Mālik ibn al-Barṣāʾ al-Khuzaʿī—that he said: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the day Mecca was conquered declare:

“From this day until the Day of Resurrection, this city shall never again be invaded.”

Al-Tirmidhī likewise transmitted it—from Bundār, through Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān—with the same chain, and he said, “A ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīth.”

I (the author) remark: If the wording is taken as a prohibition, there is no ambiguity. If it is understood as a statement of fact, al-Bayhaqī said: its purport applies while its people are unbelievers.

In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, through Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, from ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muṭīʿ, from his father Muṭīʿ ibn al-Aswad al-ʿAdawī, it is reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said on the Day of the Conquest of Mecca:

“No man of Quraysh shall ever again be executed in captivity from this day until the Day of Resurrection.”

The discussion of this wording is the same as that of the first.

Ibn Hishām said: It has reached me that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ conquered Mecca and entered it, he stood upon al-Ṣafā supplicating, while the Anṣār surrounded him. They said among themselves, “Do you think that, now that Allah has granted him victory over his homeland, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ will settle here?” When he had finished his supplication he asked,

“What were you saying?”

They replied, “Nothing, O Messenger of Allah.” He persisted until they told him, whereupon he said,

“Allah forbid! I shall live among you and die among you.”

This report, which Ibn Hishām cited in summary, has been supplied with a continuous chain by Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal in his Musnad. He said: Bihz and Hāshim narrated to us; they said: Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah narrated to us, from Thābit—and Hāshim said: Thābit al-Bunānī told me—[from] ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rabāḥ, who said: Delegations came to Muʿāwiyah—Abu Hurayrah and I were among them—during Ramadan, and each of us would prepare food for the others.

He added: Abu Hurayrah used frequently—Hāshim said: he often invited us—to invite us to his lodging.

He continued: I said