الترجمة الإنجليزية

Jabir ibn 'Abdullah said: "The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) sent us on an expedition and appointed Abu 'Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah as our commander. We were to intercept a caravan of the Quraysh, and he gave us a bag of dates as provisions — he had nothing else to give us. Abu 'Ubaydah would give each of us one date at a time." It was asked: "What would you do with it?" He said: "We would suck on it like a child sucks, then drink water on top of it, and that would suffice us for our day until night. We would beat the leaves off the trees with our staffs, then moisten them with water and eat them. We went to the seashore and there appeared to us something like a great sand dune. We came to it and found it was a creature called al-'Anbar (a whale). Abu 'Ubaydah said: 'It is carrion (and thus unlawful).' Then he said: 'No, rather we are the messengers of the Messenger of Allah, in the cause of Allah, and you are in desperate need — so eat.' We stayed by it for a month — three hundred of us — until we grew fat. I saw us drawing pots of fat from the socket of its eye, and cutting pieces from it the size of a bull. Abu 'Ubaydah took thirteen men and seated them in the socket of its eye. He took one of its ribs and set it up, then saddled the largest camel we had, and it passed beneath it. We took provisions of dried meat from it. When we arrived in Madinah, we went to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and mentioned it to him. He said: 'It is provision that Allah brought out for you. Do you have any of its meat to feed us?' So we sent some to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and he ate from it."