The Assassination of Khalid ibn Sufyan al-Hudhali

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

In the aftermath of Uḥud, some of the Bedouin tribes surrounding Madinah, whose livelihood traditionally depended on raiding, grew emboldened, sensing an opportunity to attack while conflict was increasingly hardening along religious lines rather than staying a purely tribal dispute with the Quraysh. One such threat came from Khālid ibn Sufyān al-Hudhalī, chieftain of the tribe of Hudhayl, who began assembling a force to launch a surprise attack on Madinah.

Rather than risk a defensive battle, the Prophet (ﷺ) opted for a pre-emptive, single-man mission: eliminate Khālid before he could gather his army, dismantling the plan at its root. He chose ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays al-Juhanī for the task and told him, through what had been shown to him by revelation, exactly where to find his target, the valley of ʿAranah. ʿAbdullāh had never seen Khālid and asked for a description; the Prophet (ﷺ), who had likewise never seen the man, told him he would recognize him instantly by the sheer terror his appearance inspired. ʿAbdullāh later confirmed this was exactly the case.

Carrying only his sword, no army, no support, a fully covert operation, ʿAbdullāh set out. Worried that the time for prayer would lapse before he reached Khālid, he prayed as he continued walking, substituting head gestures for the normal physical movements of ṣalāh. This is recorded as the earliest instance of what later scholars classified as one form of ṣalāt al-khawf (the prayer of fear), an ijtihād made independently by a Companion during the Prophet's (ﷺ) own lifetime, later upheld as legitimate. Dr. Qadhi draws a parallel to a separate, better-known example: ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir, finding himself in a state of ritual impurity in the desert with no water, reasoned by analogy from tayammum for wuḍūʾ that he should roll in the sand for ghusl as well; the Prophet (ﷺ), amused, corrected him by demonstrating the proper method of tayammum, but did not rebuke the underlying act of reasoning itself. Both incidents establish that ijtihād by the Companions was practiced, and permitted, even while the Prophet (ﷺ) was alive to consult directly.

ʿAbdullāh found Khālid exactly where he had been told, ingratiated himself under the pretense of wanting to join his cause, and killed him when the opportunity arose. On his return, the Prophet (ﷺ) gave him a staff, telling him it would serve as a sign of mutual recognition between them on the Day of Judgment. ʿAbdullāh kept the staff with him for the rest of his life, in war and at home, and left instructions that it be buried with him.