of Madinah; in my estimation that will count for most in the Hereafter, and if after it I still enter the Fire, then I am truly ruined. He then died—may Allah disgrace him—and was buried at al-Mushallal (1)(2).

Ḥusayn ibn Numayr set out with the army toward Mecca and, according to al-Wāqidī, reached it with four days remaining of Muḥarram; another report says he arrived seven days into the month. Groups from among the surviving nobles of Madinah had already joined Ibn al-Zubayr, and Najdah ibn ʿĀmir al-Ḥanafī, a man of al-Yamāmah, also came to him with a contingent of his people to defend the Sacred House against the Syrians.

Ḥusayn ibn Numayr encamped outside Mecca, and Ibn al-Zubayr marched out to meet him with the people of Mecca and those who had rallied to him. They fought a fierce battle that day. Al-Mundhir ibn al-Zubayr and a Syrian engaged in single combat, and each killed the other. The Syrians then launched a determined charge against the Meccans, who broke and fled. The mule of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr stumbled under him, whereupon al-Miswar ibn Makhramah, Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, and a group of others wheeled back and fought to protect him until they were all slain. Ibn al-Zubayr held his ground until nightfall, after which they withdrew.

The fighting resumed through the rest of Muḥarram and the whole of Ṣafar. Then, on Saturday, the third of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in the year 64 AH, they set up catapults against the Kaʿbah and bombarded it with fire, so that its wall was burned on that Saturday—this is al-Wāqidī’s account. As they launched their missiles they chanted:

“Swift-flying, like a foaming camel,
hurled against the walls of this mosque!” (3)

ʿAmr ibn Ḥuṭah al-Sadūsī kept repeating:

“What think you of the deed of Umm Farwah?
She strikes them between Ṣafā and Marwah!” (4)

(Umm Farwah was the name given to the catapult.)

Another report says the Kaʿbah caught fire because those in the Mosque had lit flames around it; the fire took hold of one of its curtains, spread to its timbers and roof, and the building was consumed. Yet another version states that Ibn al-Zubayr heard the takbīr on one of Mecca’s mountains on a dark night and, thinking it was the Syrians, ordered a torch to be raised on a spear so they could see who the men on the mountain were. A gust of wind carried a spark from the tip of the spear to the space between the Yemeni Corner and the Black Stone of… (5)