This expedition was dispatched to attack a trade caravan under the leadership of Abū Sufyān—or, according to another view, under the leadership of Ṣafwān.
Yūnus b. Bukayr, narrating from Ibn Isḥāq, states that this expedition set out six months after the Battle of Badr.
Ibn Isḥāq said: After the calamity that befell the Quraysh at the Battle of Badr, they were afraid to travel the route to Syria (Shām) that they had always used. Therefore, they turned to the route through Iraq. A trade caravan, in which Abū Sufyān was also present, set out, carrying a large amount of silver. The majority of the Quraysh's trade consisted of silver. They hired a man named Furāt b. Ḥayyān from the Bakr b. Wāʾil tribe to guide them on the road.
Ibn Isḥāq said: The Messenger of God (peace be upon him) sent Zayd b. Ḥāritha at the head of an expedition. This expedition reached the caravan at the headwaters of a place called Khardah. They seized the caravan and its goods. The men escaped, and Zayd brought what they had captured to the Messenger of God. Regarding this, Ḥassān b. Thābit said:
"Leave the flowing springs of Syria.
Among them, ice has entered like the mouths of camels grazing among the arāk trees.
By the hands of a group of men who migrated to their Lord, the true Anṣār, and the angels.
When they walked through the low places of the valley of Ālic, say to that caravan: the road is not there."
Al-Wāqidī said: Zayd b. Ḥāritha set out from Medina as commander of this expedition at the beginning of the month of Jumādā al-Awwal, in the twenty-eighth month after the Hijra. The leader of the Quraysh caravan they were ordered to attack was Ṣafwān b. Umayya.
The reason for the dispatch of the expedition of Zayd b. Ḥāritha was as follows: Nuʿaym b. Masʿūd brought news of the caravan to Medina. Nuʿaym was still upon the religion of his own people, the polytheists. He met with Kināna b. Abī al-Ḥuqayq in the land of Banū Naḍīr. Sulayṭ b. Nuʿmān was also with them; Sulayṭ was from the Ashlam tribe. They sat and held a drinking gathering. This event occurred before wine was prohibited. Nuʿaym related the news of the caravan, informing them that a caravan carrying trade goods under the leadership of Ṣafwān b. Umayya had set out from Mecca. Sulayṭ immediately left them and went to the Messenger of God to inform him of the situation. The Messenger of God immediately dispatched Zayd b. Ḥāritha with his expedition. They caught up with the caravan and seized its goods, but the men of the caravan escaped. Only one or two men were taken captive. They brought the caravan's goods to Medina. The Messenger of God (peace be upon him) set aside one-fifth and distributed the remaining four-fifths among the members of the expedition. The one-fifth amounted to 20,000 dirhams. Among those taken captive was Furāt b. Ḥayyān, the guide. He became Muslim—may Allah be pleased with him.
Ibn Jarīr said: Al-Wāqidī claimed that in this year, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān married the Messenger of God's daughter, Umm Kulthūm, and that they consummated the marriage in the month of Jumādā al-Ākhirah of the same year.