were under the command of ʿAbd Allah ibn Wahb al-Rāsibī. He told his followers, “Cast down your lances, draw your swords, and smash their scabbards (1); I fear they will appeal to you just as they did on the day of Ḥarūrāʾ.” They withdrew, brandished their spears, drew their swords, and the Muslims closed in on them with their own lances.

He said: They fell one upon another in death, and only two men from our side were struck that day. ʿAlī then said (2), “Search among them for the mukhdaj (the maimed one) (3).” They searched but did not find him. ʿAlī rose and went himself to a heap of corpses piled upon each other and said, “Move them aside.” When they did so, they found him at the very bottom, lying against the earth (4). ʿAlī proclaimed, “Allāhu akbar!” and added, “Allah has spoken the truth and His Messenger has conveyed it.”

ʿUbeydah al-Salmanī then stood up and said, “O Commander of the Believers, by Allah—there is no deity but Him—I certainly heard this from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” ʿAlī replied, “Yes, by Allah, besides Whom there is no deity.” He made him swear three times, and each time he swore that he had indeed heard it from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. This is Muslim’s wording. Abu Dāwūd (5) also narrated it through al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Khallāl, from ʿAbd al-Razzāq (6) with a similar wording.

Another chain from ʿAlī (7):

Imām Aḥmad (8) reported: Wakiʿ narrated to us; al-Aʿmash and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated, from Sufyān, from al-Aʿmash, from Khaythama, from Suwayd ibn Ghafla, who said that ʿAlī declared:

“If I relate something to you from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, then falling from the sky would be dearer to me than to lie about him. But if I speak to you about matters between us, [remember that] war is deception. I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say:

‘Toward the end of time a people will appear: young in years, shallow in understanding. They will quote the words of the best of creation. They will recite the Qur’an, yet it will not pass beyond their throats—ʿAbd al-Raḥmān said: their faith will not go beyond their throats. They will dart out of the religion just as an arrow darts through its prey (9). Whenever you meet them, kill them, for killing them brings a reward with Allah on the Day of Resurrection.’”

Al-Bukhārī and Muslim both recorded it in their Ṣaḥīḥs (10) through several chains from al-Aʿmash.