[2] According to Indian biographer of Muhammad, Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri, Dumat al-Jandal is located at about a distance of fifteen days' march from Medina and five from Damascus.
[3] According to The Sealed Nectar, after a six-month lull of military activities, Muhammad received intelligence that some tribes, in the vicinity of Dumat Al-Jandal, on the borders of Syria, were involved in highway robbery and plundering, and were on their way to muster troops and raid Medina itself.
He immediately appointed Siba‘ bin ‘Arfatah Al-Ghifari to dispose the affairs of Medina during his absence, and set out at the head of a thousand Muslims, a man named Madhkur, from Banu Udhrah, was his guide.
[1] William Montgomery Watt claims that this was the most significant expedition Muhammad ordered at the time, even though it received little notice in the primary sources.
Watt says "It is tempting to suppose that Muhammad was already envisaging something of the expansion which took place after his death", and that the rapid march of his troops must have "impressed all those who heard of it".