The campaign of the Banu al-Mustaliq: the crime of Miqyas

Al-Bukhari said: it is the campaign of al-Muraysi’. Muhammad ibn Ishaq said: that was in the year six, and Musa ibn Uqba said: the year four; and an-Nu’man ibn Rashid said, from az-Zuhri: the story of the lie was in the campaign of al-Muraysi’. Thus al-Bukhari relates, from the campaigns of Musa ibn Uqba, that it was in the year four; and what al-Bayhaqi relates of him and of Urwa is that it was in Sha’ban of the year five. Al-Waqidi said: it was two nights into Sha’ban of the year five, with seven hundred of his companions. Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar said, after reporting the story of Dhi Qarad: the Messenger of Allah stayed in Medina part of Jumada al-Akhira and Rajab, then made war upon the Banu al-Mustaliq of Khuza’a in Sha’ban of the year six. Ibn Hisham said: he appointed over Medina Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, though it is said Numayla ibn Abdallah al-Laythi. Ibn Ishaq said: Asim ibn Umar ibn Qatada, and Abdallah ibn Abi Bakr, and Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Hibban related to me,

each relating part of the hadith of the Banu al-Mustaliq. They said: it reached the Messenger of Allah that the Banu al-Mustaliq were gathering against him, their leader being al-Harith ibn Abi Dirar, father of Juwayriya bint al-Harith whom the Messenger of Allah married after this; and when he heard of them he went out toward them until he met them at one of their waters called al-Muraysi’, from the direction of Qudayd toward the coast. The people jostled and fought, and Allah routed the Banu al-Mustaliq, killing those He killed of them, and the Messenger of Allah distributed their sons and their women and their wealth, and they fell as spoils upon him. Al-Waqidi said: the Messenger of Allah went out two nights into Sha’ban of the year five of the Hijra, with seven hundred of his companions, toward the Banu al-Mustaliq, who were allies of the Banu Mudlij. When he reached them he gave the banner of the Muhajirun to Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, though it is said to Ammar ibn Yasir,

and the banner of the Ansar to Sa’d ibn Ubada; then he commanded Umar ibn al-Khattab, who proclaimed among the people: say ’there is no deity but Allah’; shield thereby yourselves and your wealth. They refused, so they exchanged arrows; then the Messenger of Allah commanded the Muslims, and they charged with the charge of one man, and not one man of them escaped, and ten of them were killed, and the rest of them taken captive, and of the Muslims only one man was slain. It is established in the two Sahihs, from Abdallah ibn Awn, who said: I wrote to Nafi’ asking him about the supplication before fighting, and he said: the Messenger of Allah raided the Banu al-Mustaliq while they were heedless and their flocks drinking at the water, and he killed their fighters and captured their captives, and there fell that day, I think he said, Juwayriya bint al-Harith; and Abdallah ibn Umar informed me of that, and he was in that army. Ibn Ishaq said: there was slain that day a man of the Muslims called Hisham ibn Subaba,

whom a man of the Ansar reached, thinking him of the enemy, and killed by mistake. Ibn Ishaq mentioned that his brother Miqyas ibn Subaba came from Mecca showing Islam and demanded the blood-price of his brother Hisham from the Messenger of Allah, because he had been slain by mistake, and he gave him his blood-price. He stayed a short while, then fell upon his brother’s killer by night and killed him, and returned an apostate to Mecca, declaiming thereupon: ’The soul is healed that I lay in the plain reclining, the weave of my two robes streaked with the bloods of skulls; and the soul’s sorrows before his slaying heaped and kept me from the resting of couches. I avenged my night and attained my vengeance, and I was to the idols the first to return. I avenged for Fihr and loaded the mind of the inmost Banu an-Najjar, lords of Fari’.’ I say: for this reason this Miqyas was among the four whose blood the Messenger of Allah declared forfeit on the day of the conquest were they found hanging to the cords of the Kaaba.