Al-Haysaman Al-Khuzai

al-Ḥayṣamān al-Khuzāʿī was a member of the Khuzāʿah tribe who participated alongside the Quraysh in the Battle of Badr (2 AH / 624 CE). He holds the distinction, if it can be called that, of being the very first person to return to Makkah after the Qurayshī defeat at Badr.

The Quraysh had fought with absolute confidence of victory and had not prepared any contingency, any plan B, for what should happen if they lost. When the army broke and fled helter-skelter, its survivors staggered back to Makkah in groups and batches without any coordination. al-Ḥayṣamān was the first to arrive.

When the people of Makkah saw him in his state, disheveled, wounded, his horse or mount likely missing, they gathered and asked what had happened. He began answering in a dreary monotone, listing name after name of the Qurayshī elite who had been killed: ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah, Shaybah ibn Rabīʿah, Abū al-Ḥakam (Abū Jahl), Umayyah ibn Khalaf, Zumʿah ibn al-Aswad, Abū al-Bukhtarī... The list went on and on. The listeners could not process it. It was simply impossible, this was a who's who of Makkah. They began to whisper that he had gone mad, that the trauma had unhinged him.

It was Ṣafwān ibn Umayyah who devised a test: 'Go ask him where Ṣafwān ibn Umayyah is', pointing to himself at a distance, knowing that a madman would name someone alive as dead. When the question was relayed, al-Ḥayṣamān looked over, pointed, and said: 'Ṣafwān is right there, and I watched with my own eyes as they killed his father and his brother.' This proved he was not raving. The unthinkable was true.