ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ to Syria, Ajnadayn & Marj as-Suffar

The Northwestern Gate

Whoever stood in Medina in the twelfth year after the Hijra and let his gaze travel across the horizon saw three principal directions in which the young ummah could meet its world. To the east, beyond Najd, lay the Sasanian empire with its palaces on the Tigris; to the south, beyond Yemen, lay the islands of the Indian trade; and to the northwest, beyond Tabuk, lay Syria. Not one Syria, but a Syria in layers: the Roman province along the Mediterranean with its Greek cities and its episcopal sees, the high plains of the interior with their Arab Ghassanid allies, and to the south the Negev and the Hauran, where for centuries the Arab tribes had crossed paths with Byzantine power.

The Prophet ﷺ had already seen Syria in his youth on the trading journey for Khadijah ﵂. Toward the end of his life he had dispatched Usama ﵁ in the direction of Syria, an expedition that Abu Bakr ﵁ had carried through after his passing as the first act of his caliphate. And in that same twelfth year, while Khalid ﵁ marched northeast toward Ubullah and opened the Iraqi campaign, Abu Bakr ﵁ sent ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ and his army to Syria. The Iraqi and Syrian campaigns run parallel in his caliphate, not sequentially; he did not wait for the completion of the one before he began the other, but gave the ummah its two directions at once.

Suyuti ﵀ summarizes the Syrian campaign in four sentences, and in those four sentences lies the heart of this chapter: the Battle of Ajnadayn in Jumada al-Ula of the thirteenth year, the martyrdom of ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁ and Hisham ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, and the subsequent Battle of Marj as-Suffar where al-Fadl ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁ fell among others. Four sentences in which two battles, one chief commander, and two especially weighty names are brought together.

The Choice of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁

Who was the man Abu Bakr ﵁ sent to the northwest? ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ was a Qurashi of rank. He had been one of the three most influential members of his tribe while he still stood against Islam, and his diplomatic skill had made him, in the years before his conversion, a key figure in the efforts of Quraysh to pressure the Muslims, not least through his mission to the Negus of Abyssinia to demand the return of the first muhajirun. When he accepted Islam in the eighth year of the Hijra, together with Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁ and ʿUthman ibn Talha ﵁, the Prophet ﷺ immediately placed him in office; he was sent out as commander of expeditions, and he was sent to Oman, where his diplomacy brought the sons of al-Julanda to Islam.

When Abu Bakr ﵁ turned his gaze toward Syria in the twelfth year, ʿAmr ﵁ was the logical choice. He knew the Arab tribes along the Syrian frontier from his trading days, and he spoke with the weight of Quraysh and with the calm of one who knew both war and treaty from within. Suyuti ﵀ names no other commanders in this connection. We hold to his pen: one commander, one army, one campaign.

Ajnadayn: Jumada al-Ula of the Thirteenth Year

Ajnadayn is a place that must first be located for the modern reader before it can rise out of the dust. It lies to the southwest of Bayt al-Maqdis, in the hills around Bayt Jibrin, in a geographical strip between the coastal plain and the mountain ranges of the West Bank. It is a region of olive groves, low hills, and open slopes, ideal terrain for a battle in which two armies can meet one another without either being able to conceal itself. The Byzantines, who had governed this province for centuries, had not fortified Ajnadayn as a stronghold, but used it as a staging ground, a rallying point for troops that could be drawn together from Caesarea, Bayt al-Maqdis, and Gaza.

The battle took place in Jumada al-Ula of the thirteenth year after the Hijra, in July of six-hundred-thirty-four by the Gregorian calendar. It was the first great encounter between the Muslims and Byzantine power in a battle of the caliber that history would later call “futuhat.” Earlier encounters, such as the Battle of Muʾtah under the Prophet ﷺ himself, had been limited in scale and in territorial ambition. Ajnadayn was different: here an Arab army collided with a Byzantine military force in a contest in which the victor would determine access to the interior of Syria.

Suyuti ﵀ summarizes the moment of outcome in a single sentence: “the Battle of Ajnadayn took place in Jumada al-Ula of the thirteenth year, and the Muslims were victorious.” He gives no list of numbers, no description of formations, no rendering of the geography of the battlefield. What he does give, and what he emphasizes, are the names.

ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁: An Arc That Closes

In the sentence that follows the outcome of Ajnadayn, Suyuti ﵀ writes: “ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁ was made a martyr therein, and Hisham ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ among a group of others.” Two names, and in both names lies an arc that closes upon the battlefield of Ajnadayn.

ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁ was the son of Abu Jahl, the man who had fought the Prophet ﷺ to his death in Mecca, who on the day of Badr had marched out to wipe away the muhajirun and the ansar, and who on that same battlefield had fallen beneath the swords of two young ansari. On that day of Badr ʿIkrimah ﵁ had lost his father, and on that day he became, in his own view, the heir to a vengeance that he would carry on for years to come.

He fought at Uhud, where he forced the Muslims to give ground in the first hours of the battle, and he fought at the Khandaq, in the ranks of the coalition that besieged Medina. He stood, when the Fath of Mecca came in the eighth year, opposite the Prophet ﷺ as one of the men who still wished to defend the city, and he fled toward the sea when the city fell without a fight. It was his wife, Umm Hakim bint al-Harith ﵂, who pursued him, overtook him on the coast, and led him back to the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ received him as he received everyone who came: without rebuke, without reminder of what had been.

He embraced him as though there had never been a Badr.

From that embrace to Ajnadayn lie six years. In those six years ʿIkrimah ﵁ no longer fought against Islam; he fought for it. He was at Hunayn, when the Hawazin fell upon the Muslims in the mountain pass and Allah ﷻ gave them the victory. He was sent by Abu Bakr ﵁ to Oman in the Ridda, as the eighth chapter of this book recounts: the son of Abu Jahl who marched on behalf of Islam against those who had abandoned Islam. And from Oman he travelled on to Syria, and on the battlefield of Ajnadayn, in Jumada al-Ula of the thirteenth year, he fell.

The arc closes. What had begun at Badr as the fall of the father ends at Ajnadayn as the elevation of the son. The father died an idolater, fighting against the Messenger ﷺ; the son died a shahid, fighting for that same Messenger ﷺ and His message. No human pen could have drawn this symmetry so clearly. Allah ﷻ traced it across a human lifetime of nearly half a century, from Badr in the second year to Ajnadayn in the thirteenth, and Suyuti ﵀ summarizes it in a single sentence because he knows that a single sentence suffices. The heart of whoever reads his ﵀ pen completes for itself what the sentence does not pronounce.

Hisham ibn al-ʿAs ﵁: The Very Brother of the Commander

With ʿIkrimah ﵁ there fell Hisham ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ in the same battle. Whoever reads this name without context misses something that the seventh-century listener grasped at once: Hisham ﵁ was the brother of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, the commander of the army itself. The man whom Abu Bakr ﵁ had appointed to head the Syrian campaign lost his own brother on the battlefield.

Hisham ﵁ belonged to the early Muslims; he had taken part in the first hijra to Abyssinia, at a time when his brother ʿAmr ﵁ still stood against Islam. For years a religious gulf had run between the two brothers, for it was Hisham ﵁ who had made the hijra, while it was ʿAmr ﵁ who had been sent as an emissary of Quraysh to the Negus to demand the return of those same muhajirun. Two brothers, two paths. Only in the eighth year, with ʿAmr’s ﵁ conversion, did the paths come together. And five years after that, on the battlefield of Ajnadayn, they parted again: the one brother as commander on the field, the other as a shahid upon the earth of that same field.

The pain of ʿAmr ﵁ in that moment one can only surmise. Suyuti ﵀ gives him no lament, no word, no scene. He mentions only that Hisham ﵁ fell. But that he names him, alongside ʿIkrimah ﵁, in the same sentence, with the added clause “among a group of others” that silently acknowledges the broader roll of shuhada, is enough to indicate that the victory at Ajnadayn did not come without price. What the Muslims won on those hills to the west of Bayt al-Maqdis, they paid for with lives that were reckoned, in the annals of early Islam, among the highest.

The Glad Tidings Reach Medina

And then, in the same sequence of sentences, Suyuti ﵀ mentions something that links this chapter to the chapter that follows it: “Abu Bakr ﵁ received the glad tidings while he was drawing near to death.” The old khalifah ﵁ lay in his house in Medina. His body, after fifteen days of fever that had begun in Jumada al-Akhirah, had come to the end of its strength. Beside his bed sat Asmaʾ bint ʿUmays ﵂, and in and out of his room came ʿAʾishah ﵂, ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁, ʿUthman ﵁, and the men whom in his last days he had gathered about him for his testament to ʿUmar ﵁.

The messenger from the north must have ridden through the palm groves of Medina, past the mosque where the prayer was led by ʿUmar ﵁ in the absence of the ailing khalifah ﵁, and at the house of Abu Bakr ﵁ he must have knocked with the tidings he carried. The Muslims had won at Ajnadayn, the northwestern front was open, and ʿAmr ﵁ had opened Syria for the ummah. What Usama ﵁ had begun at the start of Abu Bakr’s ﵁ caliphate had now been pressed forward into a real victory over a great Byzantine army.

Whoever reads Suyuti’s ﵀ sentence hears its double edge. The victory came, the tidings reached the khalifah ﵁ in Medina, and he was near to death. It was as though Allah ﷻ would not withhold from him the fruit of his movement before he departed. The old man who had held the ummah together through the storms of the Ridda, who had taken the decision to have the mushaf gathered, who had sent the generals out to Bahrain, Oman, Hadramawt, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, was granted before his passing the knowledge that the northwestern gate stood open. The full turning of this moment, and how Abu Bakr ﵁ received it in his last words, is developed in the following chapter; here we mention only that the tidings reached him and that he heard them.

Marj as-Suffar: al-Fadl ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁

Suyuti ﵀ concludes his four sentences on the Syrian campaign with mention of a second battle in that same year: “In that year the Battle of Marj as-Suffar took place, the idolaters were defeated, and al-Fadl ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁, among others, was made a martyr.” Marj as-Suffar lies to the south of Damascus, in the plain that separates the capital of the Roman province of Syria from the Hauran. Whoever wished to take Damascus had first to cross the plain of Marj as-Suffar; whoever controlled Marj as-Suffar stood at the gate of Damascus itself.

The Muslims won, and the idolaters were defeated. Suyuti’s ﵀ choice of the word “idolaters” here, where elsewhere he uses a different designation for the Byzantines, may indicate either a local Arab ally of Rome or a more general designation for whoever stood opposite Islam on this plain. We follow his pen.

The price was paid in a name that weighs heavily for the history of the Prophetic family: al-Fadl ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁. He was the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, the son of his uncle al-ʿAbbas ﵁, and he had served the Prophet ﷺ personally in his last years of life. He had been with the Prophet ﷺ on the day of the Farewell Hajj, and he had ridden beside him on the camel when the Prophet ﷺ, between ʿArafat and Muzdalifah, spoke his famous word concerning the prohibition of the deliberate shedding of Muslim blood. Al-Fadl ﵁ had known the Prophet ﷺ, in short, as closely as only a few had, and he fell on the plain to the south of Damascus.

The Prophet ﷺ had left behind sons of Quraysh who would complete the futuhat, but at Marj as-Suffar there fell one of his own cousins. That is no detail; it is a deeper testimony. The community the Messenger ﷺ had raised paid with its own most beloved sons for what it won. No victory came without that reckoning. Whoever reads the names of those who fell at Yamamah, at Ajnadayn, and at Marj as-Suffar reads a list that the heart of the first ummah had written in blood upon the earth of the peninsula, of Iraq, and of Syria.

Four Sentences, Two Battles, One Opening

What Suyuti ﵀ summarizes in his four sentences is the opening of the northwestern front of Islam. One commander, ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, sent by Abu Bakr ﵁. One great battle, Ajnadayn, in Jumada al-Ula of the thirteenth year. One subsequent battle, Marj as-Suffar, in that same year. Three names that rise out of the account: ʿIkrimah ﵁, Hisham ﵁, al-Fadl ﵁. Three lives that intertwine with the name of the Prophet ﷺ himself, whether through conversion, through family ties, or through service.

The Syrian campaign was, like the Iraqi one, not a conquest that would be completed in the twelfth or thirteenth year. Damascus would fall later, under ʿUmar ﵁; the Battle of Yarmuk would break Byzantine power in Syria, not the battle at Ajnadayn. But Ajnadayn was the first great thrust, and Marj as-Suffar the second. What Abu Bakr ﵁ had opened by sending ʿAmr ﵁ out would be accomplished under his successor. He died not as the man who had conquered Syria; he died as the man who had opened it.

A Tiding at a Deathbed

The chapter ends where Suyuti ﵀ himself lets it end: at the tiding that reaches Medina while Abu Bakr ﵁ draws near to death. It is no coincidence that the chronicler joins these two moments in a single sentence. What he does is show how the history of a person and the history of a community interlock. Abu Bakr ﵁ did not die before he knew that Islam, after his movement, had broken out on two fronts. The Ridda was defeated, the mushaf was being gathered, and the borders had gone forth. He closed his eyes knowing that what he had served lived on beyond him.

In the following chapter we come to that deathbed. There Suyuti ﵀ will be more expansive, and there the pen will be able to open itself to the words, the dictations, the testaments, and the quiet burial in the Hujrah of the Prophet ﷺ. Here, in this tenth chapter, we join ourselves to Suyuti’s ﵀ pen where it closes: at the glad tidings of Ajnadayn that reached Medina while Abu Bakr ﵁ drew near to death. The old khalifah ﵁ heard the victory, and he held it in his heart for the short time that remained to him. What he had begun on the morning of his baiʿah at Saqifah, he did not complete himself; but he knew, in that one moment, that it would be completed. And with that, for his rest, it was enough.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (tr. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), p. 64.