Ibn Hishām said (1): Among the military missions that Ibn Isḥāq failed to mention here (2) were:

• The dispatch of ʿAmr ibn Umayya al-Ḍamrī to assassinate Abū Sufyān, Ṣakhr ibn Ḥarb, after the killing of Khubayb ibn ʿAdī and his companions. What befell him we have already related. ʿAmr ibn Umayya was accompanied by Jabbār ibn Ṣakhr; they did not succeed in killing Abū Sufyān, but slew another man instead and took Khubayb down from the stake on which he was hung.

• The dispatch of Sālim ibn ʿUmayr (3)⁠—one of the “Weepers”⁠—against Abū ʿAfak of Banū ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf. Abū ʿAfak’s hypocrisy had flared up when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ executed al-Ḥārith ibn Suwayd ibn al-Ṣāmit, as noted earlier. Abū ʿAfak then composed elegiac verses for him and vilified—may Allah curse him—the very idea of entering Islam:

I have lived an age, yet never have I seen
A people whose house or assembly is more true to its pledges,
More loyal to the one who makes a pact with them when he calls,
Than the sons of Qaylah when they gather—
A host that could topple mountains yet never yields.
But a lone rider came and scattered them,
Declaring lawful and unlawful—this and that together.
Had you sought honor, or pursued sovereignty,
You would have followed the rule of Tubbaʿ!

On hearing this, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Who will deal with this wretch (5) for me?” Sālim ibn ʿUmayr volunteered and killed him. Thereupon Umāmah al-Muraydiyyah (6) composed the following (7):

You belied the religion of Allah and the man, Aḥmad;
By the life of the One who granted you respite—how foul were your hopes!
A devotee of pure monotheism gifted you, Abū ʿAfak,
With a thrust in the dead of night—receive it in your dotage!

• The Prophet then dispatched ʿUmayr ibn ʿAdī al-Khaṭmī to kill al-ʿAṣmāʾ bint Marwān of the clan of Umayya ibn Zayd. She had been lampooning Islam and its people. When Abū ʿAfak was killed, she openly displayed her hypocrisy and said:

Shame on Banū Mālik, al-Nabīt, ʿAwf,
And shame on the sons of Khazraj!
You obeyed an outsider, none of your own—
Neither of Murād nor of Madhḥij!