Ten Men Sent to Banū Liḥyān: The Day of al-Rajīʿ

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) sends a group of ten men for a mission, and their leader was ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit (may Allah be pleased with him). They reach the land of Banū Liḥyān, and they are ambushed by a hundred archers: a hundred against ten. They fled to a small hill. They climbed that hill, or a rock, and these hundred archers surrounded them. The archers told them, "Come down. We guarantee you that we wouldn't kill you. We pledge that we wouldn't kill you. This is our word." The Emir said, "I don't accept the pledges of mushrikīn. I don't accept your word; I don't accept your pledge." And he chose to fight. This was the Emir, ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit.

ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit, before he was killed, because he refused to give up (he said, "I am not going to take a pledge from a kāfir"), saw that when they were killing his men, they were stripping them naked. They would take everything off them. ʿĀṣim said, "O Allah, as I fought for Your religion when I am alive, protect my body when I am dead." He didn't want them to strip him as they would do with the rest of his men, so he made that duʿāʾ to Allah (swt). They fight; seven get killed. There are three remaining.

When ʿĀṣim died, they wanted to come and strip him. In addition to that, they also wanted to cut off his head, because there was a woman whose sons were killed by ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit, so she made an oath that if someone would bring her the skull of ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit, she would pay him a hundred camels, and she would drink wine in his skull. These men knew that the skull of this man was worth a hundred camels, so they really wanted to get it. Allah (swt) sends a swarm of wasps to protect the body of ʿĀṣim, and whenever somebody would come close to him, the wasps would jump on him and sting him. So they said, "Let us leave him, and come and claim his body tomorrow." At night, Allah (swt) sends a flood that takes the body away, and the body disappears, and they couldn't find him. This is a karāmah that happened with ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit (may Allah be pleased with him).

The three who remained surrendered, and they were tied up in ropes. One of them felt that they would be betrayed, and he was able to pull out his hand from the ropes, and he drew out his sword and tried to attack these men from Banū Liḥyān; but they kept a distance from him, and kept on pelting him with rocks until they killed him. They took the other two men and sold them to the people of Makkah. These two men were Khabbāb ibn al-Aratt^* and Zayd ibn al-Dathinah (may Allah be pleased with them).

Now, obviously one would know what the people of Quraysh would do with these two men: they would kill them. They decide that they are going to kill the two men. They take them out of Makkah, because Makkah is ḥaram and one isn't supposed to kill in Makkah; so they take them outside the boundaries of Makkah. And they ask these two men; they tell them, "Would you wish that Muḥammad is in your place, and you are safe with your family?" They respond by saying, "We don't wish to be safe with our family while Muḥammad (peace be upon him) is hurt by a thorn." They would rather die than the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) being hurt. Abū Sufyān said, "Mā raʾaytu aḥadan yuḥibbu aḥadan ka-ḥubbi aṣḥābi Muḥammadin Muḥammadan": "I have never seen a people who love their leader more than the people of Muḥammad love him."