The Expedition of al-Muraysi' (Banu al-Mustaliq)
battleShaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:
Banū al-Muṣṭaliq, a clan of Khuzāʿah settled at the pool of al-Muraysīʿ between Mecca and Madinah, had sided with the Quraysh at Uḥud despite an old pre-Islamic alliance between their tribe and ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the Prophet's (ﷺ) own grandfather. Their position on the trade route between the two cities made them strategically valuable to the Quraysh, and reports reached Madinah through scouts that their chieftain, al-Ḥārith ibn Abī Ḍirār, was mobilizing an attack against the Muslims.
Rather than acting on rumor, the Prophet (ﷺ) sent Buraydah ibn al-Ḥaṣīb undercover, posing as an independent Bedouin seeking a share of plunder. Buraydah gained al-Ḥārith's trust, confirmed the mobilization was real, and slipped away at night to report back. Acting on confirmed intelligence, the Prophet (ﷺ) led out roughly 700 men, most likely on the 2nd of Shaʿbān, and struck Banū al-Muṣṭaliq completely by surprise shortly after Fajr, while shepherds and children were still going about their normal morning routines. With virtually no warning, the tribe barely resisted: fewer than ten were killed, the rest, some two thousand camels, five thousand sheep, and roughly a thousand captives, mostly women and children, surrendered or were taken.
A notable feature of this expedition was the participation, for the first time, of many of the Munāfiqūn, including ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl, absent from both Badr and Uḥud. The near-guaranteed, low-risk nature of the campaign against a badly outmatched target drew hypocrites who had avoided every previous engagement.
The only Muslim casualty was Hishām ibn Ṣubābah, an Anṣārī killed by mistaken friendly fire in the confusion. His non-Muslim brother in Mecca, Miqyas ibn Ṣubābah, feigned conversion to Islam in order to claim the standard blood-money, one hundred camels, properly owed under Islamic law for accidental manslaughter, then murdered the responsible Companion that same night and fled back to Mecca with the payment, openly reverting to disbelief. He would later be named among the small handful of individuals specifically excluded from amnesty at the Conquest of Mecca.
❧DATING CONTROVERSY
The year of this expedition is a genuine point of dispute among the classical authorities: al-Zuhrī, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Kathīr, and Ibn Ḥajar place it in Shaʿbān of the fifth year, while Ibn Isḥāq (followed by al-Ṭabarī and Ibn al-Athīr) places it in the sixth. This matters because the expedition's aftermath includes the slander of ʿĀʾishah, and the reported involvement of Saʿd ibn Muʿādh in that later incident, who is independently established to have died shortly after the Battle of al-Khandaq, itself dated to the fifth year, creates a serious chronological conflict with the sixth-year dating. Some later scholars reconcile the small number of sources placing it in the fourth year by noting that a minority of very early historians began the Hijrī calendar one year earlier than the standard reckoning. The strongest position places the expedition, and the events that followed it, in the fifth year of the Hijrah.