…Gabriel?’ He would answer, ‘No,’ whereupon ʿUyayna would go back and fight, then return again, ask the same question and receive the same reply. When he came to him a third time he said, ‘Has Gabriel come to you?’ ‘Yes,’ Ṭulayḥa responded. ‘And what did he say to you?’ ‘He told me, “You have a mill-stone like his mill-stone, and a tale you will never forget.”’ ʿUyayna remarked, ‘I think Allah already knows you are destined for a tale you will not forget.’ Then he cried out, ‘Sons of Fazārah, fall back!’ He fled, and the people broke and fled from around Ṭulayḥa. When the Muslims pressed forward, Ṭulayḥa mounted a horse he had kept ready, seated his wife al-Nuwwār on one of his camels, and rode off with her toward Syria; his force scattered, and Allah killed a number of those who had been with him. Once Allah had dealt His blow to Ṭulayḥa and the Fazārah, the clans of ʿĀmir, Sulaym and Hawāzin said, ‘We shall return to what we abandoned; we believe in Allah and His Messenger and submit to His judgment concerning our wealth and our lives.’
I say: Ṭulayḥa al-Asadī had apostasised during the Prophet’s lifetime ﷺ. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ died, ʿUyayna ibn Ḥiṣn of Badr lent him support and himself left Islam, saying to his people, ‘By Allah, a prophet from Banū Asad is dearer to me than a prophet from Banū Hāshim. Muḥammad is dead, and this is Ṭulayḥa—so follow him.’ His clan, the Banū Fazārah, agreed. When Khālid defeated them both, Ṭulayḥa fled with his wife to Syria and settled among Banū Kalb, while Khālid captured ʿUyayna ibn Ḥiṣn, bound his hands to his neck and sent him to Madinah. Entering the city in that state, he was jabbed at by the boys and youths, who said, ‘Enemy of Allah, you turned back from Islam!’ He replied, ‘By Allah, I had never believed in the first place.’ When he stood before al-Ṣiddīq, Abu Bakr ordered him to repent and spared his life, after which his Islam became sound. Abu Bakr likewise pardoned Qurrah ibn Hubayrah—one of the commanders with Ṭulayḥa—who had been captured together with ʿUyayna.
As for Ṭulayḥa, he too returned to Islam later on. In Abu Bakr’s caliphate he went to Makkah for ʿumrah, but was too ashamed to face Abu Bakr for the remainder of the latter’s life. Afterwards he came back, fought alongside Khālid, and Abu Bakr wrote to Khālid: ‘Consult him in war, but do not appoint him commander’—treating him in the very opposite way to the leadership he had secretly coveted. Such was the insight of al-Ṣiddīq, may Allah be pleased with him and grant him contentment.
Khālid ibn al-Walīd asked some of Ṭulayḥa’s former followers who had embraced Islam and whose Islam had since become sound, ‘Tell us what “revelation” Ṭulayḥa used to recite to you.’ They replied, ‘He would say:
“The pigeons and the doves,
The watchful sand-grouse,
Fasted many years before you
That our dominion might reach Iraq and Syria,”
and other such absurd, senseless ravings.’
Abu Bakr al-Ṣiddīq wrote to Khālid ibn al-Walīd when news reached him that he had crushed Ṭulayḥa and those who stood with him, saying, ‘May the favour that Allah has bestowed upon you increase you in goodness. Fear Allah in your charge, for Allah is with those who are mindful of Him and those who excel in good. Press on resolutely; do not yield. If you capture any idolater who has killed a Muslim, mete out a deterrent punishment. Anyone you seize from those who have defied or opposed Allah, whom you deem it right to execute, then execute him.’
Khālid (1) then remained at Buzākhah for a month, riding over its high ground and its low, continually returning there in pursuit of those about whom al-Ṣiddīq had instructed him. For a full month he went back and forth seeking them out, exacting vengeance for the Muslims who had been killed among them when they had apostasised.