the Muslims were fighting Musaylimah the Liar and his followers, they drove them into their garden. The men then lifted al-Barā’ ibn Mālik and threw him over the wall into their midst, whereupon he opened the gate for them.

As for the account of Marhab, it is reported in the Sahīh that ‘Alī, may Allah be pleased with him, killed Marhab. It is also reported in the Sahīh that Muhammad ibn Maslamah killed Marhab. Some have said, “Rather, one of the two reports is mistaken.” As for the claim that the helmet on his head was a marble basin, that is a lie. Likewise, the claim that the blow split both the horseman and his horse and continued down into the ground—all of this is false. Scholars of the military campaigns and the Prophet’s biography have transmitted nothing of this kind; only ignorant people and liars relate it.

Even more obviously false is the account of the army crossing over ‘Alī’s forearm, the mule passing over it, and ‘Alī praying that it should have no offspring. Such stories are related only by people who are among the most ignorant of the Companions’ circumstances and of the realities of the world. Mules have always been sterile. There was no mule whatsoever in the army at Khaybar. Nor was there a mule with the Muslims, in Medina, or in the surrounding lands of Arabia, except the mule that al-Muqawqis, the ruler of Egypt, presented to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. He presented it to him after Khaybar; for when the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, concluded a peace agreement with the people of al-Hudaybiyah, he set out on his return journey