Hamza’s fight with Hind’s brothers

Hamza’s fight with Hind’s brothers is a rescue that becomes a warning: on the last night of the Festival of Ibrahim in Jahilia, he drives off masked attackers threatening Khalid, Salman the Persian, and Bilal, only to recognize two dead assailants as Hind’s brothers. The scene moves from an apparently supernatural threat to a real confrontation, and from a momentary escape to the prospect of further violence against Mahound’s followers.

A festival night and a vision

The episode opens on a night marked by the recent triumph of the businessman in the camp of the unbelievers. Hamza, Mahound’s uncle, is walking home alone when he sees what appears to be a gigantic scarlet Manticore on the city battlements. He recognizes the beast as a creature of fable and, though unarmed, prepares to face it. His defiance is edged with awareness of age: the courage he recalls belongs in part to his younger self.

Laughter interrupts the encounter. The Manticore has vanished, and Hamza finds himself among Jahilians returning from the fair in costume. They mock the converts’ readiness to see new gods. Whether the apparition is a supernatural warning or a vision given shape by the night’s atmosphere remains unresolved; what is clear is that Hamza takes it seriously. He returns home and calls for the battle sword that has remained in its leather scabbard since his conversion by his nephew. He tells his old valet that peace must wait because the lion is loose.

Searching the masked city

The setting makes the search difficult to separate from the festival’s ordinary masquerade. Wrestlers have finished their performances, poems have been displayed at the House of the Black Stone, and singing and dancing courtesans have taken over the night’s entertainments. Masks and animal disguises fill the streets. Hamza passes through this revelry but does not find the threat he seeks there; he leaves the illuminated gathering places and searches the darker outskirts.

The distinction between costume and danger tightens as he goes. He has seen many disguises, but he is looking specifically for the red, lion-like masks associated with the Manticore of his vision. At a dark corner of the outer wall, he finds them. The attackers are masked, and the men they have cornered are Khalid, Salman the Persian, and Bilal. The scene’s delayed recognition turns the earlier, apparently unreal image into a practical alarm: Hamza’s search has led him to a genuine assault.

The rescue and its cause

The three followers are in danger partly because their own conduct has exposed them. In a state of unhappiness, they have begun drinking, though they are inexperienced with alcohol. Their intoxication leads them to abuse passersby in a small piazza. Khalid, the water-carrier, then brandishes his waterskin and boasts that water could cleanse Jahilia and erase the city, making room for a new beginning on purified sand. The lion-masked men pursue the trio; after a long chase, they corner them, and fear begins to sober them.

Hamza arrives as the three are facing the masked group. He draws the sword he had retrieved after seeing the Manticore and rushes to intervene. The fight is brief once he reaches them: two attackers flee and two are killed. Khalid, Salman the Persian, and Bilal have been cut, though their wounds are described as not severe. The rescue prevents the attack from killing them, but it does not undo the danger created by the encounter.

Recognition and consequence

The dead attackers’ masks conceal their identities until Hamza recognizes them as Hind’s brothers. That discovery changes the meaning of the fight. The assailants are not simply anonymous revellers or a passing threat; their identity connects the violence to a conflict involving Hind and Mahound’s community. Hamza understands the recognition as evidence that events are reaching a dangerous turning point.

The followers sit and weep in the shadow of the city wall. The aftermath holds together two very different kinds of exposure: Khalid’s boast about water has made the group conspicuous, while the masks have hidden the attackers’ identities until after the fighting. Hamza’s return to the sword and his timely intervention secure a narrow escape, but the deaths of Hind’s brothers make clear that this night has not restored safety. The episode’s movement from vision to rescue therefore ends not in reassurance but in foreboding for Mahound’s followers.