He then relieved Khālid ibn al-Walīd al-Makhzūmī of his command there, though he kept him on the military council.

That same year Bosrā was opened by treaty; it was the first Syrian city to come under Muslim rule.

According to Sayf and others—as mentioned earlier—Damascus was also taken that year, and Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān was appointed its governor, becoming the first of the Muslim commanders to hold authority over it (may Allah be pleased with her).

In that year the battle of Faḥl, in the lowlands of the Jordan Valley, was fought; a number of Companions and others were slain there.

The same year witnessed the engagement at the Bridge of Abū ʿUbayd, in which four thousand Muslims were killed, among them their commander Abū ʿUbayd ibn Masʿūd al-Thaqafī. He was the father of Ṣafiyyah, the wife of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar—a righteous woman, may Allah have mercy on them both—and the father as well of al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd, the notorious liar from Thaqīf. Al-Mukhtār later served as deputy over Iraq during some of that province’s campaigns, as will be discussed.

Ibn Isḥāq reports that in the same year al-Muthannā ibn Ḥārithah passed away. He had been deputy over Iraq, appointed by Khālid ibn al-Walīd when the latter marched to Syria. Al-Muthannā took part in well-known engagements, among them the famed day of al-Buwayb (1) after the battle of the Bridge of Abū ʿUbayd, where nearly one hundred thousand Persians were either killed or drowned in the Euphrates. The majority opinion (2) is that he actually lived on until the year 14 AH, as will be clarified.

Some claim that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb led the Pilgrimage that year, while others say it was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf who performed that duty.

In that same year ʿUmar mustered the Arab tribes for the campaigns in Iraq and Syria; they came from every direction, and he dispatched them to those two fronts.

Also that year, according to Ibn Isḥāq, the battle of Ajnādīn took place on Saturday, the third of Jumādā al-Ūlā. Al-Wāqidī likewise places it between al-Ramla and Bayt Jibrīn (3). The Byzantine forces were commanded by al-Qayqilān (4), while the Muslims were under ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who, according to one report, had twenty thousand men. Al-Qayqilān was killed, the Byzantines were routed, and vast numbers of them were slain. A number of Muslims also fell as martyrs, among them Hishām ibn al-ʿĀṣ, al-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAbbās, Abān ibn Saʿīd and his two brothers Khālid and ʿAmr, Naʿīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Nayyāḥam, al-Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr, ʿAbd Allāh and ʿAmr—the two Dawsīs—Ḍirār ibn al-Azwar, ʿIkrimah ibn Abī Jahl, his uncle Salamah ibn Hishām, Habbār ibn Sufyān (5), Ṣakhr ibn Naṣr, and Tamīm and Saʿīd, the two sons of al-Ḥārith ibn Qays (may Allah be pleased with them).