The dating: three days before Khaybar, and the racing camel

Al-Bukhari and al-Bayhaqi mentioned this campaign after al-Hudaybiyya and before Khaybar, and that is more apparent than what Ibn Ishaq mentioned, and Allah knows best; so it should be deferred to the beginning of the seventh year of the Hijra, for Khaybar was in Safar of it. As for the story of the woman who escaped upon the Prophet’s she-camel and vowed to slaughter it for her deliverance upon it, Ibn Ishaq reported it in his version, from Abu az-Zubayr, from al-Hasan al-Basri, mursal; and it has come connected by other routes. The Imam Ahmad said: Affan narrated to us: Hammad ibn Zayd narrated to us: Ayyub narrated to us, from Abu Qilaba, from Abu l-Muhallab, from Imran ibn Husayn: the racing she-camel belonged to a man of the Banu Aqil, and she was among the swiftest of the pilgrims’, and the man was taken captive, and the racing camel taken with him. The Messenger of Allah passed by him while he was in chains, the Messenger of Allah riding a donkey covered with velvet, and he said: O Muhammad, why do you take me, and take the swiftest of the pilgrims?

The Messenger of Allah said: ’We take you for the crime of your allies, Thaqif’, and Thaqif had taken captive two of the companions of the Prophet. He said in what he said: and indeed I am a Muslim. The Messenger of Allah said: ’Had you said it while you owned your affair,

you would have attained every success.’ The Messenger of Allah went on, and he said: O Muhammad, I am hungry, so feed me, and I am thirsty, so give me drink. The Messenger of Allah said: ’that is your need.’ Then he was ransomed for the two men, and the Messenger of Allah kept the racing camel for his mount. Then the idolaters raided the herd of Medina and took it, and the racing camel was among it, and they took captive a Muslim woman; and when they alighted they watered their camels at their waterskins. The woman rose one night after they had been lulled to sleep and kept going from camel to camel bellowing them, until she came upon the racing camel, and she came upon a gentle camel of coarse hump and mounted it, then turned it toward Medina; and she vowed that if Allah saved her upon it she would surely slaughter it.

When she arrived in Medina the she-camel was recognized and it was said: the she-camel of the Messenger of Allah; and the Messenger of Allah was informed of her vow, or she came to him and told him, and he said: ’What an ill reward she gives it’, or ’what an ill repayment of it, that Allah saved her upon it and she would slaughter it’. Then the Messenger of Allah said: ’There is no fulfillment of a vow in disobedience of Allah, nor in what the son of Adam does not possess.’ Muslim reported it, from Abu ar-Rabi’ az-Zahrani, from Hammad ibn Zayd, likewise.

Ibn Ishaq said: of what was said as poetry in the campaign of Dhi Qarad is the word of Hassan ibn Thabit: ’Were it not what she met and her eagle touched in the south of yesterday’s shade as guide, we would have met you bearing every armored one, guardian of the truth, proud of grandfathers. And glad be the sons of Laqita that we are at peace the morning of the war of al-Miqdad. We were eight and they were a massed throng, and they confused with spears in disorder. We were of the people who bound them and advanced the rein of every steed. No, by the Lord of the dancers to Mina, they would cut across the locks of the columns, until we made the horses stumble in your parade grounds and returned with the queens and children in calm. Relaxed with every saddle and every hood, in every battlefield we turned and valley,

wearing out the hind legs and raising the palisades, a day driven by it and a day of banishment. So are our steeds shod and war kindled by the wind of a coquette, and our swords are white of iron unveiling the armors of iron and the crest of the apostate. God took oath upon them by His sanctity and by the might of the Merciful, with surest aid. They were in a home of ease, then were changed: the days of Dhi Qarad, faces of defiance.’ Ibn Ishaq said: Sa’d ibn Zayd, commander of the vanguard horsemen before the Messenger of Allah, was angry with Hassan and swore never to speak with him, and said: I go to my horses and my horsemen and give them to al-Miqdad. Hassan excused himself to him that the transmitter made the name of al-Miqdad coincide, then recited verses praising Sa’d ibn Zayd:

’If you desire the hardest of whip-hands, or one of plunder, then yours is Sa’d; Sa’d ibn Zayd, whom no overthrow overthrows.’ It did not strike him at all. Hassan ibn Thabit said on the day of Dhi Qarad: ’Does Uyayna think, when he visited her, that he would demolish palaces therein? You were belied, you who would have confirmed him, and you said: we shall plunder a great matter. You feared for Medina when you visited her, and sensed for the lion in her a roar; and they turned fleeing like the ostrich, and uncovered not a woven mat. A prince over us, the messenger of the King: love for us the prince dearest by that: a messenger we believe what came to him, and who recites a shining, luminous Book.’ Ka’b ibn Malik said on the day of Dhi Qarad, praising the horsemen of the Muslims that day:

’Do the sons of Laqita reckon that we, upon horses, are not like them among the horsemen? We are a people who see no slaying as disgrace, nor bend at the charging spears. We quarter the guest from the lair of the grain, and strike the head of the pale one nosing about. We turn back the marked companies when they choose, with a blow that calms the pride of the stooping one, at every youth guarding the truth, proud, generous as a herd of grazing does in velvet, defending their kin and their offspring with whites that guide the peaks beneath the helmets. So ask the sons of Badr when you meet them what the brothers did on the day of ambush. When you go out, be true to whom you meet, and hide not your reports in the assemblies, and say: we slipped from the talons of a heron, by whom a burn in the breast that brooks no dispute.’