Abu Muʿāwiyah, reporting from ʿAmr, from Abū Isḥāq, said:
The enemy could not stand firm before the Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for even the span of a camel’s fuwāq (1) once the two forces met. When the beaten Romans reached Heraclius, who was then in Antioch (2), he exclaimed, “Woe to you! Tell me about these people who are fighting you—are they not human beings like yourselves?”
They replied, “Indeed, they are.”
He asked, “And which of you is the more numerous, you or they?”
They said, “In every engagement we outnumber them many times over.”
He said, “So why are you always routed?”
One of their elders replied, “Because they spend the night in prayer and fast by day; they keep their covenants, command what is right and forbid what is wrong, and deal justly among themselves. As for us, we drink wine, commit fornication, plunge into what is forbidden, break our pledges, arrogate and oppress, command what angers Allah, forbid what pleases Him, and spread corruption on earth.”
Heraclius answered, “You have spoken the truth.”
Al-Walīd ibn Muslim said: Someone who had heard Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Ghassānī told me, on the authority of two men from his own people, that they said: When the Muslims camped in the Jordan district, we supposed that Damascus would soon be besieged, so we went there to buy provisions beforehand. While we were in the city, its patrikios sent for us; we went to him and he asked, “Are you Arabs?” We said, “Yes.” He asked, “And you are Christians?” We said, “Yes.” He said, “Let one of you go and spy out these people and their intentions, and let the other stay behind to guard his companion’s goods.” One of us went.
After a long while he returned and said, “I come to you from men (3) slight of build, riding swift, high-bred horses: by night they are monks, by day they are warriors. They feather their arrows and straighten them and they hone their lances. Were you to tell the man beside you a story, he would not catch a word of it for the loudness of their recitation of the Quran and their remembrance.” The patrikios turned to his companions and said, “What is coming upon you from them is something you have no power to withstand.”
Transfer of the Governorship of Syria from Khālid to Abū ʿUbaydah [under the caliphate of ʿUmar]: this occurred after the Battle of Yarmouk, when the command in Syria passed to Abū ʿUbaydah, the first to be styled Amīr al-Umaraʾ (Commander of Commanders).
It has already been mentioned that the courier arrived with news of the death of al-Ṣiddīq (Abu Bakr) while the Muslims faced the Romans on the Day of Yarmouk, and that Khālid concealed the news so that no weakness would enter their ranks. When morning came he made the matter plain and spoke as he did. Thereafter Abū ʿUbaydah began collecting the spoils and setting aside the one-fifth, and he dispatched the glad tidings of victory together with the khums under Qubāth (4) ibn Ashyam to the Ḥijāz. Then the order was given to march on Damascus; they set out and halted at Marj al-Ṣuffar. Abū ʿUbaydah sent ahead a vanguard consisting of Abū Umāmah al-Bāhilī and two of his companions.
Abū Umāmah said: “We set out, and when we had gone part of the way I ordered one of the others to lie in ambush there while I continued alone until I reached the city gate. It was shut for the night and no one was about. I dismounted, planted my spear in the ground, and removed the bridle from my horse.”