the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying, “You will fight me while you are the one doing me injustice”?” He replied, “Yes! I did not recall it until this very moment,” and he withdrew.

Al-Bayhaqī (2) also transmitted this report—from al-Ḥākim, from Abū al-Walīd the jurist, from al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān, from Qaṭn ibn Bashīr, from Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān, from ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muslim al-Raqāshī, from his grandfather, from Abū Jarūʾ (3) al-Māzinī—on the authority of both ʿAlī and al-Zubayr.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq (4) said: Maʿmar related to us, from Qatādah, who said: When al-Zubayr turned back on the Day of the Camel, word reached ʿAlī. He remarked, “Had the son of Ṣafiyyah known he was upon the truth and upon goodness, he would not have retreated. This is because the Messenger of Allah ﷺ met us (5) in the Saqīfah of Banū Sāʿidah and said, ‘Do you love him, O Zubayr?’ He answered, ‘What should prevent me [from loving him]?’ The Prophet said, ‘How will it be when you fight him while you are the one in the wrong toward him?’” Qatādah added: They hold that al-Zubayr withdrew for that very reason.

Al-Bayhaqī (6) commented, “This chain is mursal.”

It has, however, been reported with a connected chain by another route: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan (7) the judge informed us; Abū ʿĀmir (8) ibn Maṭar informed us; Abū al-ʿAbbās ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Sawwār al-Hāshimī al-Kūfī informed us; Minjāb ibn al-Ḥārith narrated to us; ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ajlāḥ narrated to us, from my father, from Yazīd al-Faqīr (9), from his father.

He said: I also heard al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Faḍālah relate—from Ḥarb ibn Abī al-Aswad al-Duʾalī, from his father (10) (the report of each of the two having merged with the other)—that when ʿAlī and his men drew near to Ṭalḥah and al-Zubayr, and the battle-lines closed in on one another, ʿAlī rode out on the she-mule of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and called, “Bring me al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām, for it is I, ʿAlī.” Al-Zubayr was summoned and advanced until the necks of their mounts touched. ʿAlī then said, “O Zubayr, I adjure you by Allah—do you remember the day the Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed by you while we were at such-and-such a place…?”