The dispatch of Amr ibn Umayya al-Damri to kill Abu Sufyan, and what he did on the way

Ibn Hisham says that among the expeditions and raids of the Prophet that Ibn Ishaq did not mention is the dispatch of Amr ibn Umayya al-Damri. The Prophet sent him, "as I was told by one I trust among the people of knowledge", after the killing of Khubayb ibn Adi and his companions at Mecca, and ordered him to kill Abu Sufyan ibn Harb. He sent with him Jabbar ibn Sakhr al-Ansari. ¹ The editors note that al-Suhayli held that Ibn Hisham was wrong to claim that Ibn Ishaq omitted this expedition, since Ibn Ishaq mentioned it in another transmission. ¹

They left their camels in a ravine of Yajajj and entered Mecca by night. Jabbar proposed that they circle the House and pray two rak'as. Amr said that when the people had had their supper they sat in their courtyards. They circled and prayed, and went out to seek Abu Sufyan. A man of Mecca recognised Amr and said: by God, he has come only for evil. They fled running until they climbed a mountain and entered a cave, and they piled stones before them. ¹ In the morning a man of Quraysh went out leading his horse and gathering fodder for it, and came near the cave. Amr came out to him with a dagger he had prepared for Abu Sufyan and struck him in the breast; he shouted a cry that the people of Mecca heard. When asked who had struck him he said: Amr ibn Umayya. He died on the spot, and did not reveal where they were. ²

They left at night for Medina and passed the guards who were watching the corpse of Khubayb ibn Adi. One of them said: I have never seen anything so like the walk of Amr ibn Umayya, if only he were not in Medina. When Amr came level with the cross he rushed at it, carried it off and went out with it; they went after him until he came to a bank where the watercourse of Yajajj goes down, and threw it in there, and "God hid it from them". ² Then he told his companion, who had no strength for running, to escape to his camel, and said that he would occupy the people.

Amr went on until he came out at Dajnan and took shelter in a cave in a mountain. An old one-eyed man of the Banu al-Dil came in with a flock, and they recognised each other as Banu Bakr. The old man raised his voice in a verse saying that he would never be safe while he lived, nor would he submit to the religion of the Muslims. Amr said to himself: you will know; and he waited until he was asleep, then put the end of his bow into his sound eye and leaned on it until it reached the bone. ² He then took the road by al-Arj and Rakuba until he came down to al-Naqi', where he found two men from the polytheists of Quraysh, sent by Quraysh as spies to Medina. He invited them to surrender, and they refused. He shot one with an arrow and killed him, took the other captive and tied him up and brought him to Medina. ³

The report belongs to the stories of individual heroism in the expeditions, told by its hero of himself: in one road he killed three men and took a fourth prisoner. The museum gives it as Ibn Hisham relates it. Its root is "one I trust among the people of knowledge", without a named chain, and the main purpose of the mission was not achieved. ¹

• The report is in Ibn Hisham, not in Ibn Ishaq. Al-Suhayli's comment in "al-Rawd al-Unuf" on the claim of omission is recorded by the editors. ¹
• "I will occupy" appears in one copy as "occupying". ²
• The place names (Yajajj, Dajnan, al-Arj, Rakuba, al-Naqi') are vocalised in the editors' notes from the Qamus. ²