What does the matn of Early Hadiths tell us about the Spoils of Conquest? A textbook understanding of jihad neatly divides the theory of jihad into jus ad bellum (justifications to go to war) and jus in bello (justified conduct during warfare). However, when one returns to the earliest compiled chapters on jihad in hadith collections such as the Musannaf of 'Abd al Razzaq al San'ani (d.827), the corpus does not reveal such a neat picture. The 'Kitab al-Jihad' (a chapter in the fifth volume of Musannaf ‘Abd al Razzaq) provides different hadiths with varying isnads, and not all of them go back to the Prophet Muhammad. Although there is some internal consistency to the different sections of the chapter, there appears to be no overarching structure to the understanding of conquest and war. One can also sense that war was not perceived as one large scale, all-out venture. In fact, glossing through the matn of these hadiths, conquests are often presented as a cluster of smaller battles. This paper focuses on sections inside the chapter related to the rules regarding the spoils of war obtained during such battles. Most hadiths focus on maintaining a discipline regarding the spoils of war. Apparently, the code of conduct regarding the spoils of war evolves over time; some injunctions following a Prophetic precedent, but most follow a standard logic: i.e. the maintenance of a central depository for the spoils of war. Presumably, this was an important concern for the commanders and caliphs of the 7th-8th century. Moreover, it appears that attacks were waged through smaller battalions, but in a cumulative fashion. Can it be that the conquests in the first stage of the history of the Islamic empire were small scale, local, and limited in scope? I argue that the matn of the hadiths present in the Kitab al-Jihad can help us reconstruct the manner in which Muslims perceived war and empire in the first and second century of Islam. Additionally, I aim to investigate some of the hadith transmitters mentioned in the isnads to locate their time-period and location. Alongside the matn, the proximity of the transmitters to centers of power (such as Kufa or Baghdad) can also offer hints about the utility offered by hadiths compiled in the chapter on Jihad, especially as their timing coincided ongoing campaigns on the borders of the Abbasid empire.