Ḥiṣn (1) ibn ʿAllāq, from Yazīd ibn ʿUbayda, who said: “Damascus was conquered in the year 14 AH.”
Duḥaym likewise transmitted it from al-Walīd. He said: “I heard a number of elders state that Damascus was taken in the year 14 AH.”
The same date was affirmed by Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Abū Maʿshar, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, Maʿmar, al-Umawī, who cited it from his teachers, as well as Ibn al-Kalbī, Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ (2), and Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām: all maintained that the conquest of Damascus occurred in 14 AH.
Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Abū Maʿshar, and al-Umawī add: “The battle of al-Yarmūk followed one year later.”
Some, however, said—rather—that the city fell in Shawwāl of that same year, 14 AH.
Khalīfa reported: “Abū ʿUbayda besieged them throughout Rajab, Shaʿbān, Ramaḍān, and Shawwāl, and the peace agreement was concluded in Dhū al-Qaʿda.”
Al-Umawī, in his Maghāzī, said: “The battle of Ajnādīn took place in Jumādā al-Ūlā, and the battle of Fiḥl in Dhū al-Qaʿda of 13 AH—meaning that the engagement at Damascus was in 14 AH.”
Duḥaym reported from al-Walīd: “Al-Umawī told me that the battles of Fiḥl and Ajnādīn occurred during the caliphate of Abū Bakr. The Muslims then marched to Damascus and encamped before it in Rajab of 13 AH, so that they captured it in 14 AH. Al-Yarmūk was in 15 AH, and ʿUmar entered Bayt al-Maqdis in 16 AH.”
Section
[Was Damascus taken by treaty or by force?]
The scholars differed over whether Damascus was opened by treaty (ṣulḥ) or by force (ʿanwatan). Most of them hold that the final settlement rested upon a treaty, because they were unsure which event preceded the other: was the city first stormed and then the Byzantines opted for negotiation, was it originally opened by treaty, or did the Muslims seize part of it by compulsion from another side? In view of this uncertainty, they treated it as a treaty territory as a precaution.
Others said that half of it was placed under treaty terms and half was taken by force. This view seems borne out by what the Companions did with the Great Church, the largest of their sanctuaries, when they took half of it and left the other half to the Christians—Allah knows best (3).
It was further said that Abū ʿUbayda was the one who drafted the deed of peace for them, and this is the more fitting and better-known opinion, for Khālid had by then been relieved of command. Still others maintain that Khālid ibn al-Walīd was the one who wrote the treaty, but that Abū ʿUbayda ratified it—Allah knows best (4).
Abū Ḥudhayfa Isḥāq ibn Bishr related that al-Ṣiddīq (Abū Bakr) passed away before the conquest of Damascus, and that ʿUmar wrote to Abū ʿUbayda offering him condolences.