Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁ against Tulayha at Buzakhah

When Abu Bakr ﵁ appointed the eleven brigades for the war against the apostates, the heaviest front fell to Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁. His orders were clear. March into Najd, break Tulayha before his movement could reach Medina, and then push on to the Banu Tamim and al-Yamamah.

The jama’a in Medina was exhausted. Many had returned from the failed expedition under ʿUsamah ibn Zayd ﵁, others were still on their way back from Syria. Khalid ﵁ set out nonetheless with a core force and received reinforcements along the way. He followed the old Najd route the Prophet ﷺ had once described, past wells and oases that every trader from Mecca knew.

At Dhul-Qassa, two days’ journey from Medina, Khalid ﵁ had his men make camp. He sent scouts ahead and waited for news of Tulayha’s position. The false claimant had established himself at Buzakhah, a well deep in Najd, and the Ghatafan under ʿUyaynah ibn Hisn had gone over to him. Together they formed the greatest threat in the southern Najd.

Khalid ﵁ chose a swift approach. A long siege would give other tribes time to pick a side. He ordered a forced march, leaving the women and children behind at Dhul-Qassa, and sent a vanguard ahead to scout the outer picket posts of Tulayha’s camp.

In Medina, Abu Bakr ﵁ received reports of Khalid ﵁'s progress. The khalifah stood on the minbar of the Prophet ﷺ and reminded the people of the words of Allah: “And those who turn away after him — Allah will bring a people whom He loves and who love Him.” For many in Medina this was no war against a foreign enemy. It was the first time the Sahabah ﵃ drew weapons against Arabs who had spoken the shahadah but refused the zakat.

The advance itself took less than two weeks. Khalid ﵁ kept discipline strict. No plundering on the way. No mercy for those who had tried to murder the zakat collectors. The tribes between Medina and Buzakhah who wavered were offered a return to Islam without retribution over the zakat itself. Many accepted. The army grew.

By the time Khalid ﵁ neared Buzakhah, his strength had doubled. The Najd lay open before him. But Tulayha knew he was coming, and he had made preparations of his own.

Khalid ﵁ sent a small reconnaissance detachment ahead, before the main force arrived at Buzakhah. Among them were two men whose names had stood for twenty years in every register of the Sahabah ﵃. ʿUkkashah ibn Mihsan ﵁, the man of whom the Prophet ﷺ had said that he would be among the seventy thousand who would enter Paradise without reckoning. And Thabit ibn Aqram ﵁, one of the first Ansar to have given the bayʿah at Aqaba.

What happened between them and Tulayha is transmitted differently in the sources, but the core is the same. On patrol, the two Sahabah ﵃ came unexpectedly upon Tulayha’s brother Salamah, not far from his tent. Salamah was an experienced warrior and he was not alone. Tulayha himself sat in his tent, wrapped in a cloak, giving out that he was listening to what he called “revelation.”

The fight was short and savage. ʿUkkashah ﵁ fell first, stabbed in the side by Salamah. Thabit ﵁ did not withdraw. He fought on, knowing he was alone, and fell beside his companion. Their bodies were later found by the main force, close together, their faces turned toward the qiblah as if the battle itself had set them so.

When Khalid ﵁ heard the news, he went himself to the place where they had fallen. He ordered that they be buried on the spot, with their blood and their weapons, for they were shuhada and the shuhada are not washed. Over their graves he spoke no long lament. He said what the Prophet ﷺ had taught about them and gave the order to press on with the attack.

On the night before the main battle, Khalid ﵁ gathered the commanders. He divided the force into three units. A center under his own command. A right wing under ʿAdi ibn Hatim ﵁, the son of the famed giver, whose father had accepted Islam not so long before. A left wing under ʿAsim ibn ʿAmr ﵁. He ordered that no man withdraw without command, for the deaths of ʿUkkashah ﵁ and Thabit ﵁ had struck the army, and anger is a dangerous counselor in an open field.

Before sunrise the Sahabah ﵃ prayed fajr behind Khalid ﵁. Then he drew up his lines and waited for Tulayha to come out. The morning wind came from the east. Khalid ﵁ had his standard raised, and on the standard was written: “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah.” Across the plain stood the tent of a man who claimed that Jibril ﵇ spoke to him.

After the fall of ʿUkkashah ﵁ and Thabit ﵁, Khalid ﵁ pulled his vanguard back to the main camp at Dhul-Qassa. The bodies of the two Sahabah ﵃ had been neither washed nor wrapped in shrouds, for they were shuhada, and their graves already lay behind him in the sand. But the army carried the shock with it. Some of the younger fighters spoke openly of vengeance; others kept silent with their jaws clenched.

Khalid ﵁ knew that anger on an open field is a treacherous ally. He called the men together for the evening salat and addressed them after the taslim. He did not begin with the fall of his scouts. He began with the words of Abu Bakr ﵁ on the minbar of the Prophet ﷺ. No campaign for spoils. No campaign for revenge. A campaign for the right of Allah, for the zakat owed to the poor, for the unity of the ummah the Prophet ﷺ had left behind.

“The man who fights tomorrow because his brother has fallen,” he said, “fights for himself. The man who fights tomorrow because Allah commands it, fights for his Lord. Choose tonight which man you are.”

Then he reordered the line. No longer in loose contingents, but by tribe. The Muhajirun together under their own standard. The Ansar in two blocks, Aws on the right and Khazraj on the left. The Najdi converts who had joined along the way were given their own position in the second rank — not out of distrust, but so that their own sheikhs could command them in the tongue they understood. Thus every man became answerable for the man beside him, and every amir for the men he had known since his youth.

Scouts rode out in the last daylight. They returned after ʿisha with sharp reports. Tulayha and ʿUyaynah ibn Hisn had shifted their positions. The Ghatafan cavalry had moved north, beyond the well, as if expecting a weakened Muslim force from the south and meaning to close it in from above. Tulayha himself remained by his tent, wrapped in his cloak, waiting for the “revelation” his followers had been awaiting for days.

Khalid ﵁ had the scouts trace their route in the sand with the point of his sword. The two armies stood about ten kilometers apart, with the open plain of Buzakhah between them. No woods, no hills, no cover. Whoever attacked tomorrow would do so in full daylight, seen by everyone, standard against standard.

He gave three orders for the night. Double watches on the horses. No fires after midnight, so that the Ghatafan scouts could gauge no positions. And before fajr, a full ablution and two rakaʿat — not as a battlefield ritual, but as a return to the origin of the command.

The wind fell around the hour in which the Prophet ﷺ used to perform tahajjud. In the Muslim camp no fire burned. On the northern horizon, where Tulayha’s tent stood, a single lamp still glowed. Both armies waited. The next morning, Buzakhah lay between them.

When the sun rose over the plain of Buzakhah, both armies drew up. On the southern side Khalid ﵁ with the Muhajirun and the Ansar in three units. On the northern side Tulayha with the Banu Asad and, behind them, ʿUyaynah ibn Hisn with the seven hundred riders of Ghatafan. Tulayha himself withdrew into his tent. He declared that he could not fight so long as the “revelation” was not yet complete.

Khalid ﵁ opened with the cavalry on the flanks. His center held closed in a three-rank formation, shields in front, spears in the second rank, archers in the third. The Banu Asad vanguard charged first, awaiting no orders, and broke on the shield line. ʿAdi ibn Hatim ﵁ swung his wing in, and Tulayha’s first line began to bend backward.

Then came the decisive moment. ʿUyaynah, who had changed course more than once since Hudaybiyyah, sent a messenger to Tulayha’s tent. “Has Jibril ﵇ spoken yet?” The messenger came back with an answer that was no military command but a murmured sentence. ʿUyaynah sent a second messenger. The same answer. He sent a third. Then he lost his patience and rode to the tent himself. He found Tulayha wrapped in his cloak, eyes half closed, and asked him outright: “Is there a revelation or not?”

Tulayha answered, as it is transmitted: “No, by Allah, not yet.” ʿUyaynah returned to his riders and spoke the phrase that was preserved in all the later chronicles. “Hadhi hina.” This is a hina tribe, nothing more than sand. He turned his horse, and the Ghatafan cavalry rode back to the north — away from the battlefield, away from Tulayha, away from Buzakhah.

The loss of the Ghatafan right wing broke the Banu Asad line. Khalid ﵁ pushed through with his center. ʿAsim ﵁ rolled up the left wing. Within an hour the plain lay covered with wounded and dead. Tulayha, seeing that his army was broken, leapt onto his horse and fled north, first to the Banu Kalb, then onward to Syria, where later, after the death of the khalifah, he would return to Islam in sincere tawbah. His wife an-Nawwar stayed behind and was treated with mercy.

The rest of the Banu Asad submitted. Khalid ﵁ accepted their return, on condition that they hand over the murderers of the zakat collectors. Some were taken back to Medina, where Abu Bakr ﵁ passed judgment on them. Others received the death penalty on the battlefield for murder, not for apostasy alone.

For the war against the Ridda, Buzakhah was the first resounding victory. The news reached Medina within eight days. The khalifah bowed down in a sajdah of gratitude on the spot where he stood. The road to the Banu Tamim, and beyond them to Musaylimah in al-Yamamah, lay open. Khalid ﵁ rested his men for three days and turned his standard to the southeast.