Battle of Muʾtah

In Jumādā al-Ūlā 8 AH the Prophet ﷺ sent three thousand men north after the killing of his envoy to Buṣrā. At Muʾtah, east of the Jordan, they met a vastly larger Byzantine and Arab-client force.

The three commanders he had named fell in the order he had named them — Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, ʿAbdullāh ibn Rawāḥah — after which Khālid ibn al-Walīd took the standard and extracted the army in a fighting withdrawal the Prophet ﷺ called a victory of preservation. He announced the deaths in Madinah, the sources say, before the news arrived.

The chronicles give the month and no day, and this entry keeps that precision.