[...] I give you the reins of horses. He said: Is that all? He asked: What do you desire? He said: For me is the East, and for you is the West. He said: No. He said: Then for me is the fur [i.e., nomadic desert life], and for you is the mud [i.e., settled urban life]. He said: No. He said: Then I will surely fill it against you with horses and foot soldiers. He said: Allah will prevent you from that, O Ibn Qaylah—meaning the Aws and the Khazraj. He said: As an exile. So ‘Amir said to Arbad: If the man is for us, he is within our reach; if we killed him, no two goats would knock heads over it, and they would be content with him paying the blood money for them, as they love peace and hate war once they see a matter has occurred. The other said to him: If you wish. So they consulted, and he said: Return, for I will distract him from you with debate, and you stand behind him and strike him with the sword in one blow. And so it was. He took up a position behind the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, while the other debated with him. He said: Relate your stories to us. He said: What do you say? He said: Your Quran. He said: So he began to debate him and delay him until he said to him: What is the matter with you? You have become paralyzed? He said: I placed my hands on the hilt of the sword, but it withered [became paralyzed], so I could not release it, nor draw it, nor move it. He said: So we left. And when we were at al-Harrah, Sa‘d ibn Mu‘adh and Usayd ibn Hudayr heard of that, so they went out to him, each of them having his armor and his spear in his hand, and he [Usayd] had his sword hanging. They said to ‘Amir ibn al-Tufayl: O one-eyed, evil one, are you the one who imposes conditions upon the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace? [...] He said: Were it not that you are under the authority of the Messenger of Allah, you would not have departed this place until your eyes were struck. But do not kindle it [the fire of war]. The most intense of the two men against him was Usayd ibn Hudayr, and he said: Who is this? They said: This is Usayd ibn Hudayr. He said to him: If his father were alive, he would not have done this to me.

Then ‘Amir said to Arbad: You go out, O Arbad, to the area of ‘Adiyyah, and I will go out to Najd, and we will gather men and meet against him. Arbad went out, and when he was at al-Raqm, Allah sent upon him a summer cloud containing a thunderbolt, which burned him. ‘Amir went out, and when he was in a valley called al-Jarid, Allah sent the plague upon him, and he began to cry out: O ‘Amir, is it a gland like the gland of a young camel that kills you? O ‘Amir, a gland like the gland of a young camel that kills you! It also passed through the house of a Salulite woman, who was a woman from Qays. He said: That is the saying of Allah: "It is the same [to Him] concerning you whether one conceals [his] speech or one publicizes it, and one who is hidden by night and walking openly by day. For him are successive [angels] before and behind him"—for the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace— "protecting him by the command of Allah." These successive ones are the command of Allah, this is advanced and postponed for the Messenger of Allah. Successive ones protecting him from before him and from behind him. He said: Those are the successive ones by the command of Allah.