Jabir reported, "The Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent us out, three hundred riders strong, with Abu Ubayda bin Jarra as our commander, to lie in wait for a caravan of Quraysh. We stayed on the coast for half a month, and severe hunger overtook us until we resorted to eating the leaves of the khabat tree, so the expedition came to be called the Army of Khabat.Then the sea cast up for us a creature called the anbar (whale). We ate from it for half a month and oiled ourselves with its fat until our bodies regained their strength.Abu Ubayda took one of its ribs and set it upright, then he looked for the tallest man in the army and the tallest camel, mounted the man on the camel, and the man passed beneath the rib without touching it.A group of men sat inside the socket of its eye, and we extracted from the cavity of its eye such-and-such jars of fat.We had with us a sack of dates, and Abu Ubayda would give each of us a handful at a time. Then he reduced it to a single date each. When the dates ran out, we truly felt their loss."
بعثنا رسول الله ﷺ ونحن ثلاثمائة راكب، وأميرنا أبو عبيدة بن الجراح، نرصد عيرا لقريش، فأقمنا بالساحل نصف شهر، فأصابنا جوع شديد، حتى أكلنا الخبط، فسمي جيش الخبط، فألقى لنا البحر دابة يقال لها: العنبر، فأكلنا منها نصف شهر، وأدهنا من ودكها حتى ثابت أجسامنا، قال: فأخذ أبو عبيدة ضلعا من أضلاعه فنصبه، ثم نظر إلى أطول رجل في الجيش، وأطول جمل فحمله عليه، فمر تحته، قال: وجلس في حجاج عينه نفر، قال: وأخرجنا من وقب عينه كذا وكذا قلة ودك، قال: وكان معنا جراب من تمر، فكان أبو عبيدة يعطي كل رجل منا قبضة قبضة، ثم أعطانا تمرة، فلما فني وجدنا فقده.
Narrated by Bukhari in the Book of Slaughtered Animals and Hunting (5494), and Muslim in the Book of Hunting and Slaughtered Animals (1935:18), both through Sufyan (that is, Ibn Uyayna), from Amr (that is, Ibn Dinar), who heard Jabir say what has been mentioned.The wording given is Muslim's. In Bukhari it is abridged, but he added at the end, "When hunger grew severe, he slaughtered three camels, then three more camels, until Abu Ubayda stopped him."His words, "until our bodies recovered," mean that they became sound again, as found in Bukhari. And his words, "in the socket of his eye" (hajjaj aynihi) mean the hollow of his eye, as in the narration that follows, that is, the inside of the eye and its cavity.