The Massacre at Bi'r Ma'unah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧ABU AL-BARA'S OFFER

Abū al-Barāʾ ʿĀmir ibn Mālik, a respected chieftain of Najd, the vast Bedouin region north of the Ḥijāz, regarded at the time as far less settled and civilized than Makkah and Madinah, spent time in Madinah and was clearly moved by Islam, though he never formally accepted it. He proposed that the Prophet (ﷺ) send Companions to preach in Najd, personally guaranteeing their safety as a senior chieftain, under the tribal convention that an ally's protection extended automatically to all of that chieftain's own allies. Given that Najd was larger than the entire Ḥijāz and the potential for converts enormous, the Prophet (ﷺ) selected seventy Companions for the mission, the majority drawn from Ahl aṣ-Ṣuffah, among them Ḥarām ibn Milḥān, the maternal uncle of Anas ibn Mālik.

❧THE ASSASSINATION OF THE ENVOY

On reaching the well of Maʿūnah, the group sent Ḥarām ibn Milḥān ahead with a letter to ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl, a rival Najdī chieftain, reportedly a relative of Abū al-Barāʾ himself, who had earlier tried and failed to extract impossible political concessions from the Prophet (ﷺ) as the price of his own conversion. Disregarding both the universal convention of not harming envoys and Abū al-Barāʾ's guaranteed protection, ʿĀmir signaled a henchman to kill Ḥarām while he stood waiting to be received. Speared from behind without warning, Ḥarām's last words as the blade passed through him were "Fuztu wa Rabbi-l-Kaʿbah, I have won, by the Lord of the Kaʿbah", a declaration of martyrdom so immediate and joyful that at least one witness reportedly accepted Islam because of it.

❧THE MASSACRE

Knowing a single killing would provoke retaliation from the remaining sixty-nine, ʿĀmir moved to eliminate the entire delegation. Most tribes of Najd refused to break Abū al-Barāʾ's word and declined to join him, but three, ʿUṣayyah, Riʿl, and Dhakwān, agreed, assembling a force of some four to five hundred against the seventy unarmed preachers, who had come to teach, not to fight. All but three of the seventy were killed.

Kaʿb ibn Zayd, badly wounded, collapsed and was buried unnoticed beneath the bodies piling up around him, surviving the massacre by chance; he would be martyred roughly two years later at the Battle of al-Khandaq. ʿAmr ibn Umayyah al-Ḍamrī and al-Mundhir ibn Muḥammad had been away from camp on an errand; returning to find vultures circling overhead, they debated whether to retreat and report the disaster or advance regardless. Al-Mundhir refused to leave the place where his companions had won martyrdom and refused to merely survive as the one who told their story rather than share their fate; he advanced and was killed. ʿAmr argued for returning with the news and was ultimately captured and, unexpectedly, released, some accounts suggest ʿĀmir simply needed to free a slave and chose him for the purpose.

On his way back to Madinah, ʿAmr encountered two travelers from ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl's own tribe, unaware that they in fact held the Prophet's (ﷺ) personal protection. Fearing for his life after what he had just witnessed, he killed them both, only discovering their letter of protection afterward. Racked with guilt, he carried this alongside the news of the massacre back to the Prophet (ﷺ). Reports differ on the exact date, but al-Wāqidī records that the Prophet (ﷺ) received word of both ar-Rajīʿ and Biʼr Maʿūnah on the same night, a double blow of roughly eighty Companions lost within hours of each other.

❧THE AFTERMATH

Griefstricken, the Prophet (ﷺ) added a qunūt, a special supplication, to every one of the five daily prayers for a full month, naming Riʿl, Dhakwān, Banū Liḥyān (ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl's tribe), and ʿUṣayyah by name and calling on Allah to deal with them. Allah is also reported to have revealed verses concerning the martyrs at this time, including one recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Muslim on the theme of informing their people they had died content, that were later abrogated in recitation (naskh al-tilāwah) for a wisdom known only to Allah, though remembered and reported by the Companions who had recited them.

Despite ʿAmr ibn Umayyah's innocent error, the Prophet (ﷺ) paid blood money to the relatives of the two travelers he had mistakenly killed, taking on the Muslim community's collective responsibility for the breach of protection, even though ʿAmr himself bore no sin, illustrating the principle that no soul bears the burden of another's guilt (Q 6:164, "wa lā taziru wāziratun wizra ukhrā").

ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl, the architect of the massacre, later died a painful and humiliating death: afflicted with a disease resembling leprosy that spread across his body and left him delusional, he was abandoned by his own people and died alone in the desert.