in a few years (bid‘, [usually means] between three and nine or ten years). So the two armies met again seven years after this former encounter and the Byzantines defeated the Persians. To God belongs the command before and after, that is, before the defeat of the Byzantines and thereafter, that is to say, the Persian victory at first and the Byzantine victory later were [the result of] God’s command, in other words, His will, and on that day, the day when the Byzantines will be victorious, the believers shall rejoice