with battle-axes, urging it to rise, but it refused. They thrust the points of their hooks into its flanks and gouged at it to make it stand, yet it still refused. When they turned it back toward Yemen it rose and broke into a trot; when they directed it toward Syria it did the same, and when they pointed it toward the east it behaved likewise. But each time they aimed it toward Mecca it collapsed and would not move.

Then Allah sent against them birds from over the sea, small like swallows and balasan. Each bird carried three stones—one in its beak and two in its claws—stones no larger than chick-peas or lentils. Whomever a stone struck was destroyed, though not every man was hit. Panic-stricken, they fled, scrambling for the road by which they had come, all the while asking after Nufayl ibn Ḥabīb to guide them back to Yemen. On that occasion Nufayl recited:

Hail from us, O Rudayna—
we rejoiced to behold you at the break of day.
Rudayna, were you to see—though you do not—
beside al-Muḥaṣṣab what we beheld there,
You would pardon me then and praise my deed,
nor would you grieve for what has slipped between us.
I praised God when I spied the birds,
and I feared the stones that might rain upon us.
Now every man is asking after Nufayl,
as though I owed the Abyssinians a debt!

Ibn Isḥāq continues: They kept falling along every path and perishing at every watering place. Abraha himself was struck in his very body; they carried him with them, yet as they went pieces the size of a fingertip kept dropping from him, each time followed by a discharge of pus and blood. When they finally brought him to Ṣanʿāʾ he was like a fledgling bird, and he did not die until his chest split apart.