…the Quraysh.”

He then related the report transmitted from Ibn Masʿūd, the one we previously cited from Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and other collections: the nobles of Quraysh placed the carcass-filth of a slaughtered camel on the back of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while he was in prostration beside the Kaʿbah. They roared with laughter—some of them leaning upon one another from sheer hilarity—and the offal remained upon him until his daughter Fāṭimah ﵍ came, removed it from his back, and turned toward them cursing them. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ finished his prayer, he raised his hands and said,

“O Allah, take the chiefs of Quraysh to task!”

He then named them one by one: “O Allah, deal with Abū Jahl ibn Hishām, ʿUtbah, Shaybah, al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbah, Umayyah ibn Khalaf, ʿUqbah ibn Abī Muʿayṭ, and ʿAmārah ibn al-Walīd.”

ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd said, “By the One who sent him with the truth, I saw them all slain on the Day of Badr; afterwards they were dragged and thrown into the dry well of Badr.”

Likewise, when Quraysh came to Badr in full force and numbers, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, upon seeing them, raised his hands and prayed, “O Allah, here is Quraysh in its pride and arrogance, defying You and denying Your Messenger. O Allah, destroy them this morning!” Seventy of their nobles were killed and another seventy taken captive. Had Allah willed He could have annihilated them to the last man, but—out of forbearance and honor for His Prophet—He spared those for whom His decree had already passed that they would later believe in Him and in His Messenger ﷺ.

He also invoked against ʿUtbah ibn Abī Lahab, asking that Allah unleash His ‘dog’ upon him in Syria; a lion killed him at Wādī al-Zarqāʾ, just before the city of Buṣrā. And there are many other examples of the like—some already mentioned, others not. He likewise prayed for a seven-year drought upon Quraysh, like the seven years of Joseph. They were stricken with such famine that they ate al-ʿilhiz—blood mixed with hair—as well as bones and anything else they could find. Finally they sought refuge in his mercy, compassion, and kindness; he supplicated on their behalf, Allah relieved them, and rain was sent down by the blessing of his prayer.

The jurist-imām Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥāmid, in his extensive work Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah, writes under the heading, “The virtues bestowed upon Noah, and what was bestowed upon Muḥammad ﷺ that corresponds to and surpasses them”:

“When Noah’s people reached the limits of harming and mocking him, and persisted in disbelieving the message he brought from Allah, he invoked against them, saying, ‘My Lord, do not leave on earth a single dwelling of the disbelievers’ (Q 71:26). Allah answered his prayer, and his people were drowned, so that no living creature—human or beast—survived except those who boarded the Ark. This was a distinction granted to him: his supplication was accepted and his heart was relieved by the destruction of his people.

We say: Muḥammad ﷺ was granted the like of this when he endured from Quraysh all that he endured of denial and derision,