Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 248
MUHAMMAD : SEAL OF THE PROPHETS 248 at him by Ibn Qami’a struck his cheek and forced two rings of his helmet to be buried in his flesh. Finally Ibn Qami’a pierced the line of the Muslims and, arriving close to the Holy Prophet, hit him in the side with his sword. The Holy Prophet escaped injury because of his double coat of mail, but the shock felled him down and Ibn Qami’a shouted that he had killed Muhammad. But Ali and Talha raised him up and the Muslims were much cheered that he was safe. The degree of confusion among the Muslims about this time may be gauged from the fact that many of the Companions of the Holy Prophet, imagining that the Holy Prophet had been martyred, had withdrawn from the field and had thrown aside their arms. Umar was one of them. A group of them were sitting on one side when Ans bin Nadhar Ansari came upon them and asked them what they were doing there. They replied, ‘The Holy Prophet having become a martyr, what purpose is there now in fighting?’ Ans retorted, ‘This is the time to fight so that we too should achieve martyrdom and, in any case, life is not worth living after him. ’ He then noticed S’ad bin Muaz and said to him, ‘S’ad, I smell the fragrance of paradise issuing from yonder hill. ’ Saying this, he rushed in to the enemy ranks and was killed fighting. After the battle, it was observed that his body bore the marks of eighty injuries and could not be identified till his sister identified him from one of his fingers. Gradually the force of the battle subsided, as Quraish, imagining that the Holy Prophet had been slain, felt that their purpose had been achieved and they became occupied with looking after their dead and mutilating the corpses of the