Death of Abu Lahab

When the Quraysh survivors began returning to Makkah with news of the crushing defeat at Badr, Abu Lahab refused to believe it and awaited Abu Sufyan ibn Harb's own account. The two met at the house of al-Abbas, whose wife Umm al-Fadl and household were there (al-Abbas himself was a prisoner of war in Madinah). Abu Sufyan described how the Muslims overpowered the Quraysh, taking prisoners and killing as they pleased, and how he saw riders with white faces on black-and-white horses, hovering between heaven and earth, whom no one could overpower. Al-Abbas's slave, overhearing, cried out with joy that these had been angels helping the Muslims. Abu Lahab, enraged at the slave's open joy over the Quraysh's defeat, threw him to the ground and beat him near to death; when Umm al-Fadl intervened, he beat her too, until she rebuked him for how he was treating her husband's household in al-Abbas's absence, shaming him into fleeing.