Damdam ibn Amr Al-Ghifari

Damdam ibn ʿAmr al-Ghifārī was a member of the Banū Ghifār tribe hired by Abū Sufyān to ride at speed from the coast road to Makkah and raise the alarm that the caravan was threatened. The Ghifār were a tribe that frequently traveled the Ḥijāz routes and were known as experienced desert guides.

Damdam arrived in Makkah on a she-camel whose nose he had slit, with its saddle reversed, tearing his own shirt, and calling out at the top of his voice: "O Quraysh! Your caravan, your caravan! Abū Sufyān and your goods are being intercepted by Muḥammad and his companions! Help! Help!", the traditional distress cry used in Arabia to summon tribal response.

His arrival set off the entire chain of events that brought the Qurayshī army to Badr. Remarkably, he arrived precisely three days after Ātikah bint ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib's prophetic dream, in which a rider on a camel had called out three times in Makkah's valley. Scholars regard his arrival as one of the visible signs fulfilling that dream.