Ambush in the Valley

It was a very hot day. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Fihrī said: fa-sirnā fī yawmin qāʾiẓin shadīdi al-ḥarr — we marched on a scorching day of intense heat. Look at the climate on the battlefield: it was a very hot day, and this heat causes exhaustion and affects the fighter. One can see the difficulty involved in this battle. So it started out as a hot day. They took a nap under whatever trees they could find, and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) called Bilāl, and it says that Bilāl stood up from beneath a tree ẓilluhā ka-ẓilli ṭāʾir — and the shade this tree offered was like the shade of a bird. The shade was useless; but this was the climate they had on that day.

They started marching in this mountainous terrain — so it was hot, and it was rough, mountainous terrain — and they were suddenly shocked by the attack of the horsemen of Hawāzin from in front, and then they were attacked by the archers of Hawāzin from the sides. And it says in the books of sīrah: wa kānū qawman rumāh — the people of Hawāzin were good archers. And the arrows were falling on the Muslims from every direction, and the horses were attacking from the front. So the Muslims were caught by surprise. The front of the army was Banū Sulaym, a tribe near Madīnah; they retreated; they could not handle the shock, so they started fleeing from the battlefield. And behind them were al-ṭulaqāʾ, the ones who had been released, and these were new to Islam; their tawakkul and yaqīn in Allah (ʿazza wa jall) were weak; so they also retreated, and their number was large, about two thousand.

And then it says in the narration: fa-rakibat al-ibilu baʿḍuhā baʿḍā — the camels were stumbling over one another. So it was a chaotic scene: camels were crowded, and they were stumbling and stepping over one another, so the alignment of the army was gone; the organisation of the different battalions was gone; and it was a chaotic state. The two groups at the front were already fleeing from their positions, and then chaos spread to the rest of the army, and now everybody was fleeing. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was calling them, saying: ayna ayyuhā al-nās? Halummū ilayy! Ana Rasūlu Allāh, ana Rasūlu Allāh, ana Muḥammadu bnu ʿAbdillāh — where to, O people? Come to me! I am the Messenger of Allah; I am the Messenger of Allah; I am Muḥammad, the son of ʿAbdullāh. The narrator of the hadith, Jābir ibn ʿAbdullāh, says: fa-lā shayʾ — nothing. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was calling them, and no one — they were running away.

Abū Sufyān, when he saw this, said: wa-llāhi lā tantahī hazīmatuhum dūna al-baḥr — by Allah, their defeat will not end except at the sea; meaning, they are going to keep on running until they reach the sea. And Kaladah ibn al-Ḥanbal said: baṭala al-siḥr — the magic is gone; that is it. The magic of Muḥammad worked until this day, but now it is not working any more; that is it; this is the end of the magic. One can see how these people who were new to Islam, when they saw what was happening, lost their trust in the truth: that is it; they saw that the Muslims were defeated, and there was no use.

Ṣafwān, however, did not like what he heard; he was not happy with it. And he said: I would rather have a man from Quraysh rule over me than a Bedouin from Hawāzin. So even though his intentions were not for al-ḥaqq — even though it was out of tribalism and nationalism — he still took a better position than Abū Sufyān and Kaladah ibn al-Ḥanbal, when he criticised them for their words and said: I would rather have the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) win than have a Bedouin rule over me. So one can see that there was some background sensitivity between the people of Quraysh and the people of Thaqīf, or Hawāzin.