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English translation
4357. It was narrated that 'Amr said: "I heard Jâbir say: 'The Messenger of Allâh ﷺ sent us, three hundred riders led by 'Ubaidah bin Al-Jarrâh, to lie in wait for the caravan of the Quraish. We stayed on the coast and became very hungry, so much so that we ate Khabat."[1] Then the sea cast ashore a beast called (Al-'Anbar), and we ate from it for half a month, and daubed our bodies with its fat, and our health was restored. Abû 'Ubaidah took one of its ribs and looked for the tallest camel and the tallest man in the army, and he passed beneath it. Then they got hungry again and a man slaughtered three camels, then they got hungry and a man slaughtered three camels, then they got hungry and a man slaughtered three camels. Then Abû 'Ubaidah told him not to do that." (One of the narrators) Sufyân said: "Abû Az-Zubair said, narrating from Jâbir: "We asked the Prophet ﷺ and he said: 'Do you have anything left of it?'" He said: "We took out, such-and-such an amount of fat from its (the whale's) eyes, and four men could fit into its eye socket. Abû 'Ubaidah had a sack of
dates and he used to give them out by the handful, then he started to give one date at a time, and when we ran out of dates it became very difficult for us.” (Sahih)
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Footnotes
1
[1] The leaves of a thorny desert tree.
Commentary
1. In this narration, there is an inversion of the sequence of events; the aquatic animal (the whale) already existed before the army reached the shore. In the same manner, the event of slaughtering the camels belongs to the period before the discovery of the aquatic animal. The incident of the distribution of the dates also belongs to the period prior to the discovery of the whale. The incident of extracting fat from the whale also is related to the seashore, and not to Al-Madinah, as is apparently explicit.
2. The purpose behind mentioning the rib, fat, and the cavity of the eye socket of the aquatic creature is to point out its huge size, that it was a colossal creature.
