Ubayda ibn al-Harith

Ubayda ibn al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib ibn Abd Manaf (c. 561 – 624 CE / c. 62 BH – 2 AH) was a Companion of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, among the earliest Muslims of Mecca, and the commander of the expedition the Prophet sent to the valley of Rabigh in the first year after the hijra — by several early reckonings the first detachment despatched against the Quraysh. At the Battle of Badr he was one of the three men who went out to meet the Meccan champions in single combat, and the wound he took there killed him. He was the first of the Prophet's kinsmen to die in battle.

He was a generation older than most of the men around him. Ten years the Prophet's senior, he was the eldest of the Banu Abd Manaf and its chief, and at Badr he and his opponent Utba ibn Rabi'a were the oldest warriors on either side. Two things gave him a standing in the early community out of proportion to the brevity of the record: he held the first or nearly the first field command in Islam, and he is one of the six men — three Muslim, three Meccan — about whom a passage of the Qur'an was held by the Companions to have been revealed.

Name, Lineage and the House of al-Muttalib

His full name is given in the Diyanet İslâm Ansiklopedisi as Abu al-Harith (Abu Muawiya) Ubayda ibn al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib al-Qurashi, so that he carried both kunyas. The same entry places his birth at about 561 CE, on the reckoning that he was ten years older than the Prophet, and names his mother as Suhayla bint Khuza'i ibn Huwayris.

His descent is the key to his position, and the approved library states it twice in the same work. In the alphabetical roll of those present at Badr that closes Ibn Kathir's Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, he appears as "Ubayda b. al-Harith b. al-Muttalib b. Abd Manaf, brother of al-Husayn and al-Tufayl", and his brother al-Tufayl appears under his own letter with the identical chain. Al-Muttalib and Hashim were both sons of Abd Manaf, and Hashim was the father of Abd al-Muttalib, the Prophet's grandfather. The Diyanet entry puts the relationship plainly from the other direction: Ubayda's father al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib was the son of the paternal uncle of the Prophet's grandfather. Ubayda therefore stood to the Prophet not as a first cousin but as a kinsman of the allied clan, a generation further out.

That distinction mattered far less in practice than the bare genealogy suggests, and the reason is not a matter of sentiment but of a recorded ruling.

Abd Manaf had four sons whose descendants formed the four clans at the centre of Meccan politics: Hashim, al-Muttalib, Abd Shams and Nawfal. They did not behave as an undifferentiated bloc. When the Quraysh moved against the Prophet, the Banu al-Muttalib went with the Banu Hashim and the other two did not. Sahih al-Bukhari preserves the Prophet's own reference to the agreement by which the pressure was applied: intending to enter Mecca at the conquest, he named as his destination the place where the Quraysh and the Banu Kinana had concluded a contract against Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib that they would neither intermarry with them nor trade with them until they surrendered him. Ibn Kathir, explaining in his Tafsir why the Qur'anic share for the Prophet's relatives (Quran 8:41) is paid to those two clans alone, states the ground directly: the children of al-Muttalib supported the Banu Hashim in the age of ignorance and after Islam came, and they went into the mountain pass of Abu Talib in support of the Messenger of Allah and to protect him during the three years of the boycott. Those of them who were Muslims did so in obedience to God and His Messenger; those who were not did so out of loyalty to their kin and to Abu Talib.

Ubayda was by then a Muslim and the senior man of Abd Manaf, so the clan that went into the pass was the clan he headed.

The principle was afterwards stated as a rule. Sunan Abi Dawud records, in a report graded sahih, that at Khaybar the Prophet gave the kinsmen's share to Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib and gave nothing to Nawfal or Banu Abd Shams, and that Uthman ibn Affan and Jubayr ibn Mut'im came to him and said: "O Messenger of Allah, we do not deny the virtue of Banu Hashim because of your relationship to them, but what about our brethren of Banu al-Muttalib? You have given to them and not to us, although our relationship is the same." He answered:

"There is no distinction between myself and Banu al-Muttalib, in Jahiliyyah nor in Islam. We and they are the same thing"

— and, the narration adds, he interlaced his fingers. Sahih al-Bukhari carries the same exchange in shorter form, with the answer "Only Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib are one thing", and Sahih Muslim states the consequence in its Book of Zakat, where zakat is forbidden to the Messenger of Allah and his family, and his family are Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib and no one else.

This is why Ali ibn Abi Talib could speak of Ubayda simply as his cousin; why Utba ibn Rabi'a, calling at Badr for opponents of his own rank, could ask for "our cousins of Banu Abd al-Muttalib" and be answered by Ubayda among others; and why Ubayda's own reply on that field, when asked to name himself, took the form it did.

The looser usage left a trace in the manuscripts. Ibn Kathir's own chapter heading for the Rabigh expedition reads "the expedition of Ubayda b. al-Harith b. Abd al-Muttalib", and the same form appears in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal and in the table of the Prophet's expeditions drawn from Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat. The two readings are not equally supported: the biographical entries, which exist precisely to fix a man's descent, give al-Muttalib, and the Diyanet entry states the relationship to Abd al-Muttalib explicitly as one of cousinage rather than sonship. This article follows al-Muttalib.

Two brothers emigrated with him and fought beside him at Badr, al-Tufayl and al-Husayn, both named in Ibn Kathir's roll. Ubayda left ten children, whose names the Diyanet entry gives on the authority of Ibn Sa'd: Muawiya, Awn, Munqidh, al-Harith, Muhammad, Ibrahim, Rayta, Khadija, Suhayla and Safiyya. The eldest of them, Muawiya, supplies his second kunya.

He should not be confused with Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, a different and longer-lived Companion, and the confusion is old enough to have entered the canonical text: in Sahih al-Bukhari's Book of al-Maghazi, Qays's enumeration of the six men of the Badr duel names "Ubayda or Abu Ubayda ibn al-Harith", carrying the uncertainty rather than resolving it.

Mecca: Among the Earliest Muslims

The Diyanet entry places his acceptance of Islam in the period before the Prophet's teaching moved to the house of al-Arqam, while it was still confined to those he trusted, and states that he came to it through Abu Bakr. It records the report that he was the ninth Muslim. Commanders of the Muslim Army, listing those who entered Islam after Khadijah and became, in its phrase, the pillars of the new community, includes Ubayda ibn al-Harith in that first group alongside Abu Bakr, Ali, Zayd ibn Harithah, Uthman, al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, Talha ibn Ubaydullah and Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah.

His position among the Quraysh makes this early commitment consequential. He was, on the Diyanet entry's account, the eldest of the Banu Abd Manaf and its chief — the senior man of the whole descent group from which the Prophet's own clan came. When the Prophet established bonds of brotherhood among the Muslims at Mecca, Ubayda was paired with Bilal ibn Rabah, an Abyssinian freedman: the chief of Abd Manaf and a man who had been someone's property, made brothers.

The Hijra and the First Months at Medina

He emigrated to Medina together with his two brothers. The Diyanet entry records that the three of them first lodged with Abdullah ibn Salama al-Ajlani of the Ansar, and that a place was afterwards allotted to them. At Medina a second brotherhood bond was made for him, with Umayr ibn Humam on Ibn Sa'd's authority, or with Amr ibn al-Jamuh on that of a separate Diyanet article; the two reports are given side by side and neither displaces the other.

The community he had joined was now a polity with enemies, and the Qur'an gave it permission to fight. Ibn Kathir transmits from al-Zuhri that the first verse revealed on the subject came after the Prophet's arrival at Medina: "Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory" (Quran 22:39). Within months of that, Ubayda was given a command.

The Expedition to Rabigh

Rabigh and the reason for the march

Rabigh lies on the road between Mecca and Medina, between al-Abwa and al-Juhfa, some nine kilometres from the Red Sea coast and, by the Diyanet article on the expedition, a hundred and eighty-six from Mecca. It was then inhabited by the tribe of Khuza'a; in later centuries it became one of the points at which pilgrims coming from the north and west enter the state of ihram without passing through Medina.

Behind the march lay a dispossession. Strategies of Prophet Muhammad records that the Quraysh, angered by the Prophet's escape from Mecca, confiscated the houses and the property of the Muslims who had got away, and that the Prophet's response was to form the Emigrants into small parties directed at the Quraysh trade caravans. Ma'ariful Quran draws out what the confiscation meant in law: most of the emigrants had been men of means at Mecca, and the Qur'an nevertheless describes them as poor, because the wealth they left behind had passed into the hands of those who seized it and they had lost the ownership of it. The men who rode out under Ubayda were not, for the most part, poor men seeking plunder; they were men who had been stripped of what they owned.

The target was chosen accordingly. The Sealed Nectar describes a Quraysh economy resting on two annual caravan seasons — summer to Syria and winter to Abyssinia — and it was the Syrian road that ran past Rabigh. Strategies of Prophet Muhammad assesses the eight missions sent out before Badr as having achieved their object, effectively closing that route to the Quraysh.

The immediate occasion was intelligence from inside Mecca. Miqdad ibn Amr, among the first to accept Islam and one of those who, returning from Abyssinia, had found no way to make the hijra, sent word to the Prophet that the Quraysh were preparing an expedition, whether commercial or military. The Prophet's response, at the beginning of the eighth month after the hijra — Shawwal of 1 AH, April 623 CE — was to send a detachment into the inner reaches of the Rabigh valley. The Diyanet article sets out what it was for: to deter the Quraysh who were threatening the Muslims sheltering at Medina, to prevent Meccan trade caravans being turned against them, to demonstrate that the Muslims were now strong enough to defend themselves, and to show that in the event of an attack they could in turn endanger Mecca's own security and cut the trade route to Syria. It was, in other words, a demonstration rather than a raid.

The force and the encounter

The detachment was composed entirely of Muhajirun; Ibn Kathir, transmitting al-Waqidi through Ibn Jarir, is explicit that "there being no Helpers present". Its strength is given as sixty by Ibn Kathir and The Sealed Nectar, and as sixty or eighty in the Diyanet entries. The Prophet entrusted Ubayda with a white banner, and it was carried by Mistah ibn Uthatha, who had been his companion on the hijra.

The force followed the coast road and came down below Thaniyyat al-Marra, not far from al-Juhfa, camping beside a water called Ahya in the Rabigh valley. There it met the Quraysh caravan. Al-Waqidi gives the Meccan party as two hundred men under Abu Sufyan Sakhr ibn Harb, and adds that while this is what he took to be well established, it is also said that they were led by Mikraz ibn Hafs; the Diyanet article on the expedition, which knows both that variant and a further one naming Ikrima ibn Abi Jahl, judges neither to be correct.

What followed was brief. The two sides shot arrows at one another and did not come to swords. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas distinguished himself: on al-Waqidi's authority he loosed the first arrow of the engagement and used every one of his arrows accurately, so that the polytheists — three times the Muslims in number — concluded that reinforcements had reached the Muslim force, took alarm and withdrew at speed. The Diyanet entry on Ubayda records that Sa'd became the first Muslim wounded in war by the polytheists. Hayatus Sahabah, transmitting from al-Zuhri, preserves the same engagement from Sa'd's side, calling it the first battle fought in Islam and naming him the first man to shoot an arrow in the path of God; it gives the verses he composed afterwards, in which he asks whether the Messenger of God has yet been told that he defended his companions with his arrowheads.

Sa'd proposed pursuing the caravan. Ubayda refused, and brought his men back to Medina without a single loss. It was a judgement consistent with the purpose he had been given: the point had been made, and a force of sixty had no business chasing two hundred.

The expedition gained two men. Miqdad ibn Amr and Utba ibn Ghazwan had attached themselves to the Quraysh party for the sole purpose of reaching the Muslims, and at Thaniyyat al-Marra they crossed over and rode back to Medina with Ubayda. Commanders of the Muslim Army, telling it from the caravan's side, observes that the two thereby earned the distinction of having emigrated for Islam twice over.

Whether it was the first expedition of Islam

The sources divide on this, and the division is worth stating because the claim is often made flatly in either direction.

Two expeditions stand at the head of the record. Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib was sent in Ramadan of 1 AH with thirty Emigrants and a white standard carried by Abu Marthad al-Ghanawi, to the place called Is at Sif al-Bahr on the Red Sea coast; he came upon Abu Jahl at the head of three hundred men and Majdi ibn Amr intervened between them, so that no fighting occurred. The Sealed Nectar describes the flag given to Hamza as the first flag in the history of the Muslims. Ubayda's expedition followed in Shawwal, a month later.

Yet Ibn Hisham and al-Baladhuri transmit that Ubayda commanded the first detachment sent against the Quraysh, and the Diyanet article explains how both positions arose: Ibn Hisham reports that the Prophet commissioned Hamza and Ubayda on the same day and at the same place, which makes the order of their despatch a matter of interpretation rather than of record; and since the first clash between Muslims and Meccans, however small, took place at Rabigh, precedence may have been given to Ubayda on that ground. The Diyanet entry on Ubayda leaves the two together, describing him and Hamza as the first commanders of the Prophet's era. A further report, in Khalifa ibn Khayyat, dates Ubayda's command later still, to Rabi al-Awwal of 2 AH; and Ibn Kathir notes that Ibn Jarir attributed to Ibn Ishaq the view that all these expeditions belong to the second year of the hijra, an attribution Ibn Kathir considered unsound.

One embellishment should be set aside. Verses praising Ubayda and his companions are attributed to Abu Bakr, with an answering poem from Abdullah ibn al-Ziba'ra, the noted poet of the Quraysh. Ibn Hisham reproduced both in his work and stated that the attributions to Abu Bakr and to Abdullah are not correct.

The Command He Did Not Take

Hayatus Sahabah preserves a narration of Jundub ibn Abdullah, transmitted through al-Bayhaqi, in which Ubayda was appointed to another expedition and did not lead it. The Prophet despatched a party with Ubayda ibn al-Harith as its commander; but as they were setting out he was overcome by his love for the Prophet and began to weep, and the Prophet sent Abdullah ibn Jahsh in his place. Abdullah was given a sealed letter with instructions not to read it until he reached a certain place, and was told to compel no one to march with him. On opening it at the appointed spot he said the words of resignation, "Indeed we belong to God, and to Him we return", and then, "I hear and obey the orders of God and His Messenger."

That expedition was the one whose consequences reached the Qur'an. The party met Ibn al-Hadrami and killed him, not knowing whether the sacred month of Rajab had begun or whether it was still Jumada al-Akhira. When the Meccans charged the Muslims with having killed a man in a sacred month, the reply came in Surah al-Baqara, that fighting in those months is a grave matter but that barring men from the way of God, disbelieving in Him, barring them from the Sacred Mosque and expelling its people are graver still in God's sight, and that corruption is worse than killing (Quran 2:217). When some Muslims then said that although the deed might have been permissible the party would earn no reward for it, the following verse came down promising God's mercy to those who believe, who migrate and who strive in His way (Quran 2:218).

Badr

The line and the challenge

The Quraysh and the Muslims met at Badr in Ramadan of 2 AH. History of Islam gives the Muslim line as roughly eighty Muhajirun with the remainder from the Ansar, sixty-one of them from the Aws and a hundred and seventy from the Khazraj, and records that the Prophet was dressing the ranks with an arrow in his hand and had ordered that the fighting not be begun.

The Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, in the Musnad of Ali, preserves the opening at length. Utba ibn Rabi'a — the father of Abu Hudhayfa, who stood in the Muslim ranks opposite him — rode among the Quraysh urging them not to fight, telling them that they faced men who would fight to the death and whom they would never be able to harm without ruinous cost, and offering to take the blame himself and be called a coward. Abu Jahl taunted him with fear, and Utba answered that the day would show which of them was the coward. Then Utba, his brother Shayba and his son al-Walid stepped out and called for single combat.

Six young men of the Ansar came forward. Utba refused them: "We do not want these; let some of our cousins of Banu Abd al-Muttalib come out." The Prophet then said: "Get up, O Ali; get up, O Hamza; get up, O Ubayda ibn al-Harith."

The duel

Ibn Kathir's account has the three Muslims give their names in turn, the Quraysh champions answer "Worthy peers", and then Ubayda step forward first, he being the oldest of them, to face Utba, while Hamza took Shayba and Ali stood before al-Walid. The Diyanet entry makes the same point about age from both sides of the field: Ubayda and Utba were the oldest warriors of the two armies.

Ibn Kathir also transmits, through al-Umawi, what each man said when asked to identify himself. Hamza answered, "I am the lion of God and the lion of the Messenger of God; I am Hamza, son of Abd al-Muttalib." Ali said, "I am the slave of God and the brother of the Messenger of God." Ubayda said, "I am he who is among the allies" — a reply that names his own standing exactly, as a man of the clan bound to Hashim rather than descended from it.

Hamza killed Shayba and Ali killed al-Walid. The third combat was the long one. Hayatus Sahabah, in the narration of Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Husayn, has the two men so evenly matched that the narrator compared them to a pair of pillars: Ubayda's blow left Utba's arm hanging, and Utba, closing, struck at Ubayda's leg with his sword and severed his calf. Al-Zuhri's parallel narration in the same collection says simply that the blow of each man disabled the other. Ali and Hamza then returned to the field, killed Utba, and carried their companion away.

The pairings are given differently in one place. History of Islam has the Prophet send Hamza against Utba and Ubayda against Shayba, with Ubayda and Shayba wounding one another. The weight of the material runs the other way — Ibn Kathir, the Diyanet entry, Hayatus Sahabah, the order of battle in The Sealed Nectar and the age of the two men all set Ubayda against Utba — and this article follows it.

Carried to the Prophet

Hayatus Sahabah preserves what happened next in two narrations that agree on the substance. The two men carried Ubayda to the Prophet beneath a canopy; the Prophet had him laid down, took his head on his lap, and began to wipe the dust from his face. His leg had been severed and he was bleeding heavily. Ubayda said:

"O Messenger of Allah! Had Abu Talib seen me now, he would be convinced that his words are more applicable to me than to him, when he said: We shall protect him until we are wounded and fall dead around him, being totally oblivious of our own children and wives."

He then asked, "Am I not a martyr?" The Prophet answered, "Certainly — and I am witness to the fact."

Al-Safra

The army did not bury him at Badr. On the return march it halted in the valley of al-Safra, where the Prophet divided the spoils among the fighters; The Sealed Nectar, Haykal and History of Islam all place the division there. The Diyanet entry states that Ubayda, then sixty-three years old, died of the sword wound to his leg two days after the battle, as the army was coming back from Badr, at al-Safra, and was buried there. Ibn Kathir's list of the fallen says the same in its own compressed way: of the fourteen Muslims killed at Badr, six were Emigrants, and the first named is "Ubayda ibn al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib, who had his leg cut off and died at al-Safra".

One detail of the burial is recorded because it was without precedent. Hayatus Sahabah states that the Prophet buried him at Safra and himself went down into the grave to lay the body, and that he had never before entered the grave of any person.

The Diyanet entry adds the assessment that gives his death its place in the narrative: held in high regard by the Prophet, Ubayda is the first martyr among his relatives.

The Verse of the Two Adversaries

Of everything recorded about Ubayda, the most often cited is not an act of his but a judgement the Companions made about the encounter in which he was wounded. Surah al-Hajj opens a passage on the two parties of belief and unbelief:

"These are two adversaries who have disputed over their Lord. But those who disbelieved will have cut out for them garments of fire. Poured upon their heads will be scalding water" (Quran 22:19)

and closes it, four verses later, with the opposite destiny: "Indeed, Allah will admit those who believe and do righteous deeds to gardens beneath which rivers flow" (Quran 22:23).

Sahih al-Bukhari records in its Book of al-Maghazi that Abu Dharr used to swear that these verses were revealed concerning six men of the Quraysh, and names them: Ali, Hamza and Ubayda ibn al-Harith; and Shayba ibn Rabi'a, Utba ibn Rabi'a and al-Walid ibn Utba — the three Muslims and the three Meccans of the duel. In the same place al-Bukhari gives a short report from Ali himself: the verse "was revealed concerning us." The Book of Commentary carries the same tradition from Qays ibn Ubad, that Abu Dharr took an oath that the verse came down "in connection with Hamza and his two companions and Utba and his two companions on the day when they came out to combat" at Badr, and Sahih Muslim has a chapter on the verse to the same effect. As-Sallabi, treating the verses among those revealed concerning Ali, adds al-Bukhari's narration of Ali's words that he would be the first to kneel before the Most Merciful in a dispute on the Day of Resurrection.

The most complete form of Ali's reflection is preserved in Miracles of the Prophet, where, asked about the verse, he sets the three careers side by side:

"This verse was revealed in relation to me and my dignity and that of my uncle Hamza and my cousin Ubayda ibn al-Harith. So Ubayda performed his duty and was martyred on the day of Badr, and Hamza was martyred on the day of Uhud. So far as I am concerned, I am waiting for the most callous person of this Ummah who will redden my head with my blood."

Ubayda stands first in that sequence. Of the three who went out at Badr, he was the one who did not come back, and Ali — speaking decades later, after the Battle of Uhud had taken Hamza and while his own end was still ahead of him — counted the discharge of Ubayda's duty as complete.

Standing in the Early Community

The written record of Ubayda ibn al-Harith is short, and almost all of it falls within eighteen months. He appears as a name in the lists of the first believers, as the commander of one small expedition that fired a few arrows and went home, and as the third of three men in a duel. Set against the long careers of the Companions who survived to govern provinces and transmit hadith, it is very little.

What it amounts to is nonetheless specific. He is one of the two men — with Hamza — whom the Diyanet entry identifies as the first commanders of the Prophet's era, and the one to whom Ibn Hisham and al-Baladhuri give precedence. The engagement he led was the first in which Muslims and Meccans exchanged fire, and it produced the first Muslim wounded in war and, on the reckoning preserved in Hayatus Sahabah, the first arrow shot in the path of God. He commanded the first force to march under a banner, and he brought it back intact by declining to press an advantage he did not have. He was, at sixty-three, the senior man of Abd Manaf, and he went out to fight a duel that younger men had been refused. He is the first of the Prophet's kin to be killed for the religion, and the first person into whose grave the Prophet descended. And he is named in the two most authoritative hadith collections, on the oath of a Companion, as one of the six about whom a passage of the Qur'an came down.

No hadith of any consequence is transmitted from him, and no saying of his survives beyond the few words he spoke on the field and in the Prophet's lap. The judgement he asked for there — "Am I not a martyr?" — was answered in his hearing, and it is the answer the tradition has kept.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Quran, Surah al-Hajj (22:19) — "These are two adversaries who have disputed over their Lord", the verse the Companions associated with the single combat at Badr.
• Quran, Surah al-Hajj (22:23) — the closing of the same passage, on those admitted to gardens beneath which rivers flow.
• Quran, Surah al-Hajj (22:39) — "Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged", identified by al-Zuhri as the first verse revealed on warfare after the arrival at Medina.
• Quran, Surah al-Baqara (2:217-218) — the verses occasioned by the expedition of Abdullah ibn Jahsh, to which Ubayda had first been appointed.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3966, 3967 and 3968, Book of al-Maghazi, from Abu Dharr, Ali and Qays ibn Ubad — Quran 22:19 revealed concerning the six men of the Badr duel, with Qays's enumeration in the preceding chapter text carrying the variant "Ubayda or Abu Ubayda ibn al-Harith".
• Sahih al-Bukhari 4743, Book of Commentary on Quran 22:19, from Qays ibn Ubad — Abu Dharr's oath that the verse came down in connection with Hamza and his two companions and Utba and his two companions on the day they came out to combat.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3502, Book of Virtues, from Jubayr ibn Mut'im — Uthman's question about the property given to Banu al-Muttalib, and the Prophet's answer that Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib are one thing.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 803 (Summarized), from Abu Hurayrah — the Prophet naming, on the eve of the conquest of Mecca, the place where the Quraysh and Banu Kinana had contracted against Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib that they would neither intermarry nor trade with them until he was handed over.
• Sunan Abi Dawud 2980, from Jubayr ibn Mut'im, graded sahih — the kinsmen's share at Khaybar, and the Prophet's answer, "There is no distinction between myself and Banu al-Muttalib, in Jahiliyyah nor in Islam. We and they are the same thing", with the interlacing of his fingers.
• Quran, Surah al-Anfal (8:41) — the verse assigning a share of the spoils to the Prophet's relatives, which Ibn Kathir explains by reference to the stand of Banu al-Muttalib in the boycott.
• Sahih Muslim, Book of Zakat, the chapter stating that zakat is forbidden to the Messenger of Allah and his family, who are Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib and no one else; and the Book of Commentary, the chapter on Quran 22:19.
• Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Musnad of Ali ibn Abi Talib — the long narration of the opening of Badr, including Utba's plea against the battle, the refusal of the six young men of the Ansar, and the Prophet's summons of Ali, Hamza and Ubayda ibn al-Harith.

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim. Consulted in the approved library — on Quran 8:41, for the kinsmen's share belonging to Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib, and for the entry of the Banu al-Muttalib into the pass of Abu Talib during the boycott.
• Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, 4 vols., trans. Trevor Le Gassick. Consulted in the approved library — the chapter on the Rabigh expedition with al-Waqidi's account transmitted through Ibn Jarir; the narrative of the Badr duel and al-Umawi's report of the words each champion spoke; the alphabetical roll of those present at Badr, which gives the lineage followed in this article and names his brothers; and the list of the fourteen Muslims killed at Badr.
• Al-Waqidi, Muhammad ibn Umar. Kitab al-Maghazi — the underlying account of the Rabigh expedition, its strength, banner, standard-bearer and the composition of the Quraysh party, cited here through Ibn Kathir and through the Diyanet articles rather than consulted directly.
• Ibn Hisham, Abd al-Malik. Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah [on the recension of Ibn Ishaq] — the report that Hamza and Ubayda were commissioned on the same day and at the same place, the statement that Ubayda commanded the first detachment sent against the Quraysh, the crossing over of Miqdad ibn Amr and Utba ibn Ghazwan, and Ibn Hisham's rejection of the verses attributed to Abu Bakr; cited through the Diyanet articles.
• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra — the biographical notice, the names of his ten children, and the brotherhood with Umayr ibn Humam; cited through the Diyanet entry and through the table of expeditions in Atlas of the Quran.
• Al-Baladhuri, Ahmad ibn Yahya. Ansab al-Ashraf; Khalifa ibn Khayyat, al-Tarikh; Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba; Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba — further early notices of Ubayda and of the Rabigh expedition, including the variant dating to 2 AH, cited through the Diyanet articles.
• Kandhlawi, Muhammad Yusuf. Hayatus Sahabah, Vols 1-2. Consulted in the approved library — the two narrations of the duel and of his death, the burial at Safra, the account of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas at Rabigh, and the report of Jundub ibn Abdullah on the command given to Abdullah ibn Jahsh.

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• SİFİL, Ebubekir. "UBEYDE b. HÂRİS." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 42. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2012, p. 17. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/ubeyde-b-haris — the only dedicated encyclopaedia treatment consulted, and the source for his kunyas, his birth and age, his descent, his mother, his standing among the Banu Abd Manaf, his early acceptance of Islam, the brotherhood bonds, his death at al-Safra and his position as the first martyr among the Prophet's relatives.
• KÜÇÜKAŞCI, Mustafa Sabri. "RÂBİĞ SERİYYESİ." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/rabig-seriyyesi — the fullest treatment of the expedition consulted: the geography of Rabigh, Miqdad ibn Amr's intelligence, the purposes of the march, the encounter and Sa'd's archery, Ubayda's refusal to pursue, and the question of which expedition was the first.
• Al-Mubarakpuri, Safi-ur-Rahman. Ar-Raheeq al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar) — the Sif al-Bahr and Rabigh missions of the first year, the defection of al-Miqdad and Utba ibn Ghazwan, the order of battle at Badr, and the halt at al-Safra.
• As-Sallabi, Ali Muhammad. 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, vol. 1 — Quran 22:19-23 among the verses revealed concerning Ali, with al-Bukhari's narration and Qays ibn Ubada's naming of the six.
• Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. The Life of Muhammad, trans. Isma'il Razi A. al-Faruqi — the halt in the valley of al-Safra on the return from Badr and the division of the spoils.
• History of Islam, vol. 1 — the Muslim order of battle at Badr, the refusal of the three Ansar, the variant pairing of Ubayda against Shayba, and the division of the spoils at al-Safra.
• Commanders of the Muslim Army — Ubayda among the earliest Muslims of Mecca, and the Rabigh encounter as seen from the Quraysh caravan.
• Atlas of the Quran — the table of the Prophet's expeditions drawn from Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat, giving the Rabigh mission its date, place and numbers.
• Miracles of the Prophet — Ali's fullest statement on the verse and on the three men to whom he applied it.
• Strategies of Prophet Muhammad — the confiscation of the emigrants' property at Mecca, the purpose of the small parties sent out from Medina, and the effect of the pre-Badr missions on the Syrian trade route.
• Usmani, Mufti Muhammad Shafi. Ma'ariful Quran, vol. 8 — the standing of the emigrants' confiscated property and the juristic consequence drawn from it.

Further Reading

• Guillaume, Alfred, trans. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955. The standard English translation of the narration underlying the Rabigh expedition and the Badr duel.
• Faizer, Rizwi, ed. The Life of Muhammad: Al-Waqidi's Kitab al-Maghazi. London: Routledge, 2011. The English translation of the work from which most of the detail of the early expeditions descends.
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba. The fullest classical compendium of Companion biographies, with the notices on Ubayda and on his brothers al-Tufayl and al-Husayn.
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. For the strategic setting of the first expeditions from Medina and the caravan route they were directed against.