The expedition of Usama ibn Zayd ﵁ carried through

An Army on the Threshold of a Changed World

Three miles north of Medina, in a camp called al-Jurf, an army of several thousand men stood ready to march out. It had been raised by the express command of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in the last month of his life. He had knotted the standard himself, and he had appointed the commander himself, and the commander was a young man not yet twenty years old, Usama ibn Zayd ibn Harithah ﵁, son of the freedman the Prophet ﷺ had loved as his own son. The father had fallen at Mu’tah, four years earlier, struck down by a Roman sword, and the son would now, by the command of the same Messenger ﷺ, set out for the same frontier of ash-Sham.

The army was not small, and it did not contain the second rank of the community. ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ was among them, Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁ was among them, and Abu ʿUbaydah ibn al-Jarrah ﵁ was among them. Nearly all the prominent Muhajirun and a large part of the Ansar were drawn up beneath the standard of the young Usama ﵁. The Messenger ﷺ had wanted them there, precisely because they were great, and precisely because their presence under a young commander was an administrative statement that no one could ignore. This was no routine expedition; it was a testament in motion. Zayd’s son would walk ahead of the whole army, and Quraysh would keep silent behind him.

Then the Prophet ﷺ fell ill. The fever came one evening, persisted, grew worse. The army remained standing at al-Jurf, awaiting the new command: march out, or turn back. Usama ﵁ had himself informed each day of the condition of his foster-father, and ended at last in Medina at the bedside itself, his standard untouched and his horse unsaddled. The morning of his departure was postponed. And then, on Monday the twelfth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, came the news that the Prophet ﷺ had departed.

The News at Dhu Khushub

At that moment Usama ﵁ was no longer in Medina but back in his camp, or in the immediate region of al-Jurf. Other narrations place the news reaching him at Dhu Khushub, a place a day’s journey north of Medina toward Syria. The detail is that he was not in Medina when the Messenger ﷺ died, and that the tidings reached him on the way. He returned at once to Medina, planted his standard in the earth by the mosque, and joined the mourning city.

In the same hours in which the Saqifah did its work and Abu Bakr ﵁ was raised to the khilafah, the army of Usama ﵁ lay in effect without a helm. The commander was at the burial, the standard stood planted, the camp was without command. And in the hours and days that followed, requests came to Abu Bakr ﵁ from every side for the same decision: do not let the army march out.

The arguments were not unreasonable. The Messenger ﷺ had departed, the tribes around Medina were stirring, Banu Asad was in revolt in the north-east, Banu Ghatafan in Najd, and Musaylimah in al-Yamamah was claiming prophethood. The Roman frontier was no small undertaking, and all the prominent men had already been gathered at al-Jurf. If this army now marched out, Medina was virtually without defence. What if the apostates came upon the city while Usama ﵁ was far away in ash-Sham? What if the capital of Islam should fall without a defender in the first week of its existence without the Prophet ﷺ?

Some of the elders came with a second proposal: let the army march out, but replace the commander. Usama ﵁ was too young, too inexperienced. ʿUmar ﵁ had years of experience in battle, ʿUthman ﵁ had the trust of Quraysh, and Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁ had been through Mu’tah. Give the standard to one of them, and the army will march out the stronger.

Abu Bakr ﵁ listened. He let the council speak. He let the concern have its full weight. And then he spoke, in words that were the first true administrative confirmation of what he had proclaimed upon the minbar: the command of the Prophet ﷺ could be undone by no human being.

The Words That Rang Like Thunder

Abu Hurayrah ﵁ relates it, and Suyuti ﵀ preserves it in its precise form. It is one of the most decisive utterances of the whole khilafah of Abu Bakr ﵁, and he spoke it in the first week of his office.

The image is terrible. Dogs dragging the wives of the Messenger ﷺ by their feet through the streets of Medina. It is a metaphor so coarse, so deliberately unpleasant, that it leaves no room for compromise. Abu Bakr ﵁ says: it makes no difference how great the evil that comes upon us, it makes no difference how greatly my own beloved ones suffer, it makes no difference how unsafe this city becomes; I will not take back the standard the Prophet ﷺ has knotted.

This is not the language of a political strategist. A political strategist would reckon: the cost of dispatch against the cost of withholding, the risk to Medina against the risk to the prestige of Islam in ash-Sham. Abu Bakr ﵁ does not reckon so. He sets a simple standard: what the Messenger ﷺ has commanded remains commanded, even when the Messenger ﷺ is no longer there to confirm it. The command outlives the commander. The khilafah is no free act of creation; it is the carrying out of what was already laid down.

And then came the question about the commander. Some asked Abu Bakr ﵁ to replace Usama ﵁ with an elder. Here his answer waited even less long, for he added it to his previous declaration, in the same breath.

Birds of prey snatching me away. In the Arab imagination this is the image of the one who dies in the desert, the fate of him who dies without burial: the body is left beneath the open sky, and the fowl of heaven descends upon it. Abu Bakr ﵁ says: let me rather end so, let my flesh rather be carried off by eagles and vultures, than that I should at any point contradict the wish of my Messenger ﷺ. He does not replace Usama ﵁. He lets the young commander carry the standard that the Prophet ﷺ had knotted in his hand.

The March Out: A Khalifah on Foot Beside a Commander on Horseback

When the day of the march finally comes, Abu Bakr ﵁ displays a conduct that will colour the history of Islamic command forever. The army makes ready at al-Jurf, Usama ﵁ mounts his horse, the standards are raised and the tribal chiefs take their places. And Abu Bakr ﵁, the khalifah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, the head of the whole ummah, walks beside Usama’s horse. He goes on foot. The young commander above, the old khalifah below. He does not have himself mounted, he does not climb up, he escorts the army out of the city like an ordinary companion.

Usama ﵁ sees what is happening, and he is dismayed. He asks Abu Bakr ﵁ to mount, or that he himself will dismount. Khalīfah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, he says, you must not go on foot while I sit on horseback. Either you mount, or I dismount. Abu Bakr ﵁ answers with a calm that neither rebels against the request of the commander nor yields to the status of his own position.

Here Suyuti ﵀ pauses, and with reason. What happens here can be found in no other administrative tradition of the ancient world. An emperor of Byzantium walking on foot beside a young commander is unthinkable in Roman history. A Sassanid shahanshah who humbles himself before an ordinary spahbod would be unthinkable. But here, in the second week of his khilafah, Abu Bakr ﵁ walks in the sun beside the horse of a man who has the age of his grandson. He does it because the Messenger ﷺ has set this young man as commander, and the khilafah is the carrying out of that command, not the relativising of it.

The Request About Ramah

And then, after this scene, Abu Bakr ﵁ adds one further act of which the narration preserves several versions. He asks Usama ﵁ whether he might release ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ from the army, to remain in Medina to help with the governance and the counsel. He asks it, he does not command it. He acknowledges that Usama ﵁ is the commander and that the men stand under his command, and he requests a favour, not obedience. Usama ﵁ gives his consent. ʿUmar ﵁ returns to Medina.

Another narration, also preserved by Suyuti ﵀, places here the famous detail of Ramah, the servant or freedman of Usama ﵁. Abu Bakr ﵁ asks Usama ﵁ to lend Ramah for a time into the service of the khalifah for help in Medina. He does not ask it as a command, and he would, if need be, have bought him himself or taken him into service, but he asks it as a favour to a commander over his own man. He asks it, writes Suyuti ﵀, to show that the command over the men in the army lies not with the khalifah but with the commander, even over the humblest servant.

The Barakah of the Command

The army marched out. It went to the region where the father of Usama ﵁, Zayd ibn Harithah ﵁, had fallen four years earlier at Mu’tah. It reached the Roman frontier, it fell upon a number of tribes that were bound to the Romans, and it returned, with spoils and without serious losses, in forty days to Medina. Forty days. In those forty days Abu Bakr ﵁ had, in a defenceless Medina, to wage the fight against the apostates around the capital itself. He had not gained ʿUmar ﵁ permanently at his side; he had gained him back only in part from Usama ﵁. He had no full garrison; he had the elderly and the newly converted and the women behind him. And yet Medina held firm.

The Arabs, who had expected that the city without the Prophet ﷺ would be susceptible to pressure and blackmail, saw the opposite. The khalifah of Medina sent his best army to the north, simply because the Prophet ﷺ had commanded it. He kept nothing in reserve, nothing as insurance, nothing as a rearguard. He trusted, and the trust was rewarded. For the tribes around Najd and Yamamah this was a wrong signal, for they had hoped for weakness. For the Muslims it was a right signal, for they saw what a community is that holds its prophetic command higher than its tactical burdens.

The later scholars of Islamic statecraft have treated this episode as an early study. What Abu Bakr ﵁ did here was not in the first place a military act; it was a theological act. He showed that the continuity of the prophetic charge is not interrupted by the death of the Prophet ﷺ. The command remains the command. The standard remains the standard. And the young commander whom the Prophet ﷺ had appointed remains the commander, even if the whole Arabian jazīrah should wish it otherwise.

How the Prophet ﷺ Had Foreseen This Decision

It is worth mentioning here what in the narrations was said about this same army just before the death of the Prophet ﷺ. When some complained to the Prophet ﷺ about the appointment of Usama ﵁, so young a commander over so many elders, the Prophet ﷺ himself had answered upon the minbar. He had said that they had also criticised his appointment of Usama’s father Zayd ibn Harithah ﵁ as commander, and that Zayd ﵁ had in every respect been worthy of his trust. Usama ﵁, he added, was no less beloved to him, and his appointment was not by habit but by insight.

Abu Bakr ﵁ had heard that address, ʿUmar ﵁ had heard it, and the community had heard it. When Abu Bakr ﵁ in the week after the death of the Prophet ﷺ refused to replace the commander, he was not merely carrying out a command; he was giving, with his own actions, a commentary on the words they all had fresh in memory. I will not set above the command of the Messenger ﷺ what I wish. This was no slogan; it was the second half of what the Prophet ﷺ had said upon the minbar about his commander.

The Detail of the Age

A word still about Usama ﵁ himself. He was, at the time he received this command, not yet twenty years old. Some narrations give him seventeen, others eighteen, a few nineteen. He was dark of skin, as his father Zayd ﵁ had been dark, and he had the features of his mother Umm Ayman ﵂, the old servant of the mother of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ had raised him upon his lap. He had treated him as a grandson, and in some narrations as a son, because his foster-father Zayd ﵁ had once been taken up as a son by the Prophet ﷺ before the verse Name them after their fathers undid that adoption.

That Abu Bakr ﵁ maintained this young man in his rank was therefore not only the carrying out of a command. It was also an honour to the memory of Zayd ﵁ and to the love of the Prophet ﷺ for the house of Zayd ﵁. The Messenger ﷺ had honoured the father by making him commander, and honoured the son by making him commander. A khalifah who would break this chain of honour would himself be the second link of the chain of honour. Abu Bakr ﵁ did not wish to be that.

ʿUmar ﵁ himself, decades later, upon the minbar of Medina, remembered the moment. He told how he had served under Usama ﵁ at al-Jurf, and how he knew that no man on earth could have been removed from the office of commander more easily than this young man. He also told how he later, when he himself was khalifah, every time he met Usama ﵁, greeted him with the words: Peace be upon you, amīr. When someone asked him why he called Usama ﵁ amīr, he answered: Because the Messenger of Allah ﷺ appointed him as such, and no one has ever taken that rank from him.

The Legacy of a Principle

For the generations that would follow, the marching out of the army of Usama ﵁ became a paradigm. When a later ruler of the Muslims was faced with the choice between pragmatic caution and faithfulness to a command given earlier, this episode was held up to him. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ﵀, in the second century of the Hijra, cited the words of Abu Bakr ﵁ several times in his letters to his governors. Imam Ahmad ﵀, for his part, wrote that a ruler who undoes the command of his predecessor without a Sharʿi ground does not act in the manner of as-Siddiq, and thereby harms his office.

The deepest thing in this episode is perhaps this. The Prophet ﷺ had appointed Usama ﵁. Abu Bakr ﵁ had not chosen Usama ﵁ himself. It would have been easy for him to replace the commander to honourable applause, with the justification of his youth, and no one in Medina would have reproached him for it. But he refused, because the appointment was not his, and he had no say over the appointments of his predecessor. A man who frames his own office so narrowly, a man who guards his own will so narrowly, will in no other matter set himself above the command. That is what khilafah means in the mouth of Abu Bakr ﵁: to succeed, not to take over.

And so the army marched out. The standard fluttered, the dust rose, and Abu Bakr ﵁ returned on foot to Medina, and the world learned that Islam without its Prophet ﷺ would not be without his command.

Postscript: The Forty Days

During the absence of Usama’s army, Medina was, as foretold, tested. Tribes that had given the baiʿah to the Prophet ﷺ now turned a deaf ear to the call of Abu Bakr ﵁. Others came to the very outskirts of the city to gauge the disposition of the capital. Abu Bakr ﵁ had the watches doubled on the access roads, kept men on the rooftops at night, and himself performed the ʿishā’ prayers in full armour to let the city see that her khalifah did not sleep.

When the army of Usama ﵁ returned after forty days with spoils and safety, the psychological gain was on the side of Medina. The tribes that had watched for weakness saw strength. The tribes that had counted on a withdrawal saw a community that had carried out its Prophet’s ﷺ command without a day of hesitation. And the whole matter of the Ridda, which in the months thereafter would break over the heads of the Muslims, was already influenced in its starting point by what Medina had shown in those forty days.

A command carried out in fear of its consequences could have weakened the whole of history. A command carried out in trust of its sender, despite all consequences, established the tone of the first khilafah forever.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (tr. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 60–61.