Banu Abd Shams

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born in Makkah in the Year of the Elephant, on a Monday. Only one report gives the time of day. Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, a scholar of the generation after the Companions, said he had been told that the birth was at high noon, without naming who told him. Others born around the same time later dated their own births by his. Qays ibn Makhramah said that he and the Prophet ﷺ were both born in the Year of the Elephant. Qubath ibn Ashyam RA said he was born before him, in a report found in al-Tirmidhi. Suwayd ibn Ghafala is reported to have said that he too was born in the Year of the Elephant, though another report has him say he was two years younger. According to Ibn Ishaq, on the seventh day his grandfather Abdul Muttalib held a feast for him and named him Muhammad ﷺ. Al-Bayhaqi relates a similar report, without a sound chain, that Abdul Muttalib slaughtered an animal for him. The Quraysh asked about the name, because no one in his family had been called it before. His uncle Abu Lahab freed his slave girl Thuwaybah, who later nursed the baby. It is narrated that he freed her because she brought him the good news of the birth, though not every source includes this detail.

After Surah al-Muddaththir commanded the Prophet ﷺ to arise and warn, he began quietly, with the people closest to him in Makkah. The first to believe was his wife Khadija RA. She believed before she even knew what she was believing in, out of trust in the man she knew. The second was her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal. There was no shahada to say yet, but he affirmed that Muhammad ﷺ was a prophet, and he died soon afterwards. Scholars differ over who came next among three people. A simple way to resolve this is to say that Ali RA was the first child to believe, Abu Bakr RA the first free man, and Zayd ibn Harithah RA the first freed slave. Ali was about ten years old and was being raised in the Prophet ﷺ's own household. No story of Abu Bakr's conversion has survived, only the manner of it. He accepted Islam the moment it was put to him. Years later in Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ was frustrated with something Umar RA had done. He said, "Allah sent me with the Truth, but all of you accused me of being a liar; and it was only Abu Bakr who said, 'You are telling the truth.'" In another hadith he said, "There was not a single person whom I invited to Islam except that he had some doubts before he converted, except for Abu Bakr." He also said that Allah had taken him as His khalil, His close friend, so he could have no other khalil, "but were I to choose a khalil, it would have been Abu Bakr." The Qur'an refers to Abu Bakr as the second of the two in the cave (9:40). Four men then became Muslims through Abu Bakr. All were noblemen of the Quraysh, and each became a great figure in Islam. The youngest was Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA, about sixteen years old. His mother refused to eat or drink until he returned to the idols, and she grew weaker and weaker. Finally he swore to her that even if he had a hundred souls and lost every one of them watching her die, he would not give up his religion. Seeing his resolve, she began eating again. Allah then revealed that if parents press you to worship others besides Him, you should not obey them, but should still treat them kindly in this world (31:15). The second was Uthman ibn Affan RA. The third was Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA, the Prophet ﷺ's cousin through his aunt Safiyyah. The Prophet ﷺ later said, "Every prophet has been given a hawari, and Allah has given me as my hawari Zubayr ibn al-Awwam." A hawari is a devoted disciple. The fourth was Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA, a trader of about thirty. Years later he would arrive in Madinah with nothing and ask only to be shown the marketplace. Next came Abdullah ibn Mas'ud RA. He was neither a nobleman nor a slave, but a young man from a Yemeni tribe hired to herd the sheep of Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt. One day two men came to him in the pasture and asked for milk. He told them he could not give it, because the sheep were not his. One of them asked him to point out a she-goat that had stopped giving milk. He did, and the man made du'a and rubbed its udder until it filled with milk. They milked it and drank. Amazed, Ibn Mas'ud asked who they were. He was told that this was Abu Bakr and this was the Prophet ﷺ, and he became a Muslim on the spot. He later said that he learned over seventy surahs directly from the Prophet ﷺ's mouth. The Prophet ﷺ said, "If you want to know how to read the Quran, read it the way Ibn Mas'ud does." After him came many from among the slaves and servants of Makkah. The best known are Bilal RA, Khabbab ibn al-Aratt RA, and Yasir, his wife Sumayyah and their son Ammar. Amr ibn Abasah, a man from Yemen, had already rejected idol worship on his own. He heard that a man in Makkah was preaching the same, so he travelled there. He found the Prophet ﷺ living in hiding and asked him what he was. The Prophet ﷺ said, "I am a prophet." Amr asked what a prophet was and what he had been sent with. The Prophet ﷺ told him he had been sent to keep the ties of kinship, to break all idols, and so that Allah alone would be worshipped. Amr asked who had followed him, and he answered, "One free man, and one slave." Amr said he wanted to follow him too. But the Prophet ﷺ said, "You cannot do this now. Don't you see my situation, that I have to hide from my own people?" He told Amr, "Go back to your people, and when you hear that I have been victorious over my people, come back to me." Years later, after the Hijrah, Amr came to the mosque in Madinah and asked the Prophet ﷺ whether he recognized him. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Yes, you are the man who came to me from Yemen in Makkah." In these first years, the call to Islam was private, and deliberately so.

Abu Dharr al-Ghifari RA narrated that he was in a gathering with the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, when the Prophet ﷺ took a group of pebbles in his hand and all present heard them praising Allah. He then passed the pebbles to Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Uthman, and in each of their hands the pebbles continued praising Allah and all present could hear it. When the Prophet ﷺ left and the pebbles were later picked up again, nothing could be heard from them.

One day the Prophet ﷺ was praying at the Ka'bah while Abu Jahal and other leaders of Makkah sat nearby. A camel had been slaughtered the day before. Abu Jahal asked which of them would bring its entrails and throw them on the Prophet ﷺ's back when he went down in prostration. Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt went and fetched them. When the Prophet ﷺ prostrated, Uqba dumped the entrails on his back. The load was so heavy that the Prophet ﷺ stayed pinned in prostration, and the onlookers laughed until they fell over. Ibn Mas'ud was watching from a distance. He had no tribe to protect him, so he could do nothing to help. Then someone went and told Fatima, the Prophet ﷺ's young daughter. She came running, crying, and pulled the entrails off her father's back.

The Quraysh were sitting together, cursing and mocking the Prophet ﷺ. Utbah ibn Rabi'ah, a wise elder of Quraysh, asked whether anyone had actually tried to negotiate with him. No one had, so Utbah offered to go as their representative. He found the Prophet ﷺ sitting in front of the Ka'bah. He began by asking whether the Prophet ﷺ thought he was better than his father Abdullah and his grandfather Abdul Muttalib. It was a trick question, and the Prophet ﷺ answered it with silence. Utbah then described the harm that the new message had done to the people of Makkah. He made the Prophet ﷺ an offer if he would give up his call. He could have more wealth than anyone, or become their king, or marry any woman he chose. If he thought he was unwell, they would pay doctors to cure him. When Utbah had finished, the Prophet ﷺ recited the opening of Surah Fussilat to him. The recitation reached the warning of a thunderbolt like the one that struck the peoples of Ad and Thamud (Qur'an 41:13). Utbah began to tremble. He put his hand over the Prophet ﷺ's mouth and begged him, by Allah and by their kinship, to stop. Utbah went back to the Quraysh visibly shaken. He told them he had heard speech unlike anything he had heard before, and that this man's affair would become something great. He urged them to leave the Prophet ﷺ alone. If the other Arabs got rid of him, he said, the hands of Quraysh would be clean. If he won over the Arabs, his victory would be the victory of Quraysh. The Quraysh rejected this advice. They told Utbah that Muhammad ﷺ had bewitched him, just as he had bewitched everyone else.

The Muslims in Makkah faced open persecution, threats and torture. In Rajab of the 5th year of the mission, the Prophet ﷺ said to his Companions, "This land has become too constricted for you, so for those of you who want to, why don't you emigrate to the neighboring land of Abyssinia? For there is a Christian king there, who is a just king. He shall allow you to worship without interference." That king was the Najashi (Negus) of Abyssinia, As'hama ibn Abjar. Fifteen people emigrated, 11 men and 4 women. They travelled for about a day and a half to the port of Juddah (today's Jeddah), and from there took a ship to Abyssinia. Among them were Uthman ibn Affan and his wife Ruqayyah, the Prophet ﷺ's daughter. Others included Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Uthman ibn Maz'un, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Mus'ab ibn Umayr. Abu Salama went with his wife Umm Salama, and Amir ibn Rabi'ah with his wife Layla. All of those who went were Muslims of high standing in the Quraysh, who had the freedom to leave. The lower-status believers, many of them slaves, could not go, even though they needed it most. These included Bilal, Khabbab, Ibn Mas'ud and Ammar.

About fifteen Muslims had emigrated to Abyssinia in the month of Rajab to escape persecution. A few months later, word reached them that the Quraysh had accepted Islam. The news was an exaggeration. What had really happened was that the Quraysh had joined the Muslims in prostrating when Surah al-Najm was recited in Makkah. The emigrants had not been persecuted in Abyssinia, but living in an unfamiliar land, with a strange language and culture, had been hard. They longed for home. So they quickly packed their belongings and set out for Makkah, with no way to confirm whether the rumor was true.

The first group of emigrants to Abyssinia had come back to Makkah after hearing a rumour that the Quraysh had accepted Islam. The rumour proved false, and the persecution of the Muslims went on as before. Meanwhile, news spread among the Muslims of the safety and freedom they had found in Abyssinia. So more than 80 Muslims set out for Abyssinia a second time. They were perhaps 40 to 50 percent of all the Muslims, and more than a tenth of Makkah's whole population. They were led by Ja'far ibn Abi Talib RA, a first cousin of the Prophet ﷺ. Uthman ibn Affan RA, who had gone the first time, stayed in Makkah and later emigrated to Madinah instead. Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA had also gone the first time, and he too did not return to Abyssinia.

The people of Ta'if rejected the call of the Prophet ﷺ to Islam. Their leaders then sent a mob to stone him and his companion Zayd ibn Harithah out of the city. The Prophet ﷺ bled so much that his sandals were soaked with blood. Zayd was injured from head to toe trying to shield him. The mob kept stoning them until they were out of the city, at Qarn al-Manazil, also called Qarn al-Tha'alib. The Prophet ﷺ later told Aisha RA, "I didn't notice where I was until I reached Qarn al-Tha'alib." There he found shade under a tree beside a walled garden, not knowing whose garden it was. He sat down and made a famous du'a, which Ibn Ishaq records. It is not in al-Bukhari or Muslim and its chain has gaps. But one scholar of our time says it needs no chain, because its words could only come from the heart of a prophet. In it the Prophet ﷺ said, "O Allah, to You I complain of my weakness, and my lack of resources, and my lowliness before man. You are the Most Merciful of all those who have mercy, and You are the Lord of those who are humble, and You are my Lord. To whom do You leave me with? To somebody who is a stranger who will treat me harshly? Or to a close relative whom You have given power over me? As long as You are not angry with me, I don't care. Except for the fact that Your protection from tribulations is easier for me. O Allah, I seek refuge in Your Face which is the source of the Light that gets rid of the darkness, and because of which all of the affairs of this world and the Next are rightly guided. (I seek refuge in Your Face) that Your anger comes down upon me, or Your wrath envelopes me. It is Your right to criticize until You are content. And there is no power or change except with You and through You." This is a complaint made to Allah, not against Him. What troubled the Prophet ﷺ most was not the stones, but the fear that he might have earned Allah's anger. The garden belonged to Utbah and Shaybah, the sons of Rabi'ah, who were distant cousins of his father. They had watched him being stoned out of Ta'if and felt pity for him. They also felt the old tribal pride, angry that Ta'if would do this to one of their own. So they sent their servant Addas, a Christian from Iraq, to him with a bowl of grapes. It was as if Allah answered his du'a the moment he made it. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Bismillah," meaning "In the name of Allah," and began to eat. Addas was surprised, because the Arabs of that area did not use this phrase, and he asked what it was. The Prophet ﷺ said, "This is something my Lord has taught me. And where are you from, O Addas?" Addas said he was from Nineveh. The Prophet ﷺ said, "The city of Yunus ibn Matta?" Addas was amazed, because no one in that land had ever heard of Yunus, and he asked how he knew him. The Prophet ﷺ said, "How do I not know Yunus? He is my brother; and I am his brother. We are both prophets of Allah." Addas began kissing the Prophet ﷺ's feet, as Christians did to honour their priests, and he believed in him then and there. Utbah and Shaybah watched in shock. When Addas came back, they asked him why he had kissed the man's hands and feet. Addas told them that there was no one on earth better than him, because he had told him things only a prophet could know. His masters said the man had bewitched him away from his religion, and that his own religion was better. Five years later, they tried to force Addas to fight against the Prophet ﷺ at Badr. Addas refused, swearing that even the mountains could not harm him. Both of his masters were killed at Badr. Al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ's own account of what happened next. He said, "When I reached Qarn al-Manazil, I looked up and there was a cloud that had given me shelter; and in this cloud, there was Jibril, and he said to me, 'O Muhammad ﷺ, your Lord has heard what your people have said to you and their rejection of you. And He has sent me with the Malak al-Jibal to put at your disposal and to do with as you please.'" The Malak al-Jibal is the angel of the mountains. Then the angel of the mountains greeted him with salam. He said that he was at the Prophet ﷺ's command, and that if he wished, he would crush the city between its two mountains. The Prophet ﷺ replied, "No. Rather, I hope Allah will extract from their progeny those who will eventually worship Him without associating partners with Him." He rested there, and on the way back to Makkah he camped in the valley of Nakhla, where a group of jinn heard him reciting the Qur'an.

After the death of Abu Talib, the Quraysh persecuted the Prophet ﷺ far more openly than before. Hostility that had been held back out of respect for Abu Talib was now on full display. Abu Lahab, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle, took over leadership of the Banu Hashim, since he was the most senior pagan of the clan still alive. Surprisingly, he offered the Prophet ﷺ his protection. When a man from outside the clan cursed the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Lahab went to the Prophet ﷺ and promised that he could live as he had in Abu Talib's time, for as long as Abu Lahab was alive. He did this not out of love, but from a chief's sense of duty to guard his own clan. People began to say that Abu Lahab had left his religion, which he denied. Abu Jahal and Utbah then saw a way to break the protection. They told Abu Lahab to ask his nephew about the fate of his father, Abdul Muttalib. The Prophet ﷺ answered that Abdul Muttalib was with his people. Abu Lahab came back pleased, until Abu Jahal pointed out that, according to the Prophet ﷺ, those people were in the Fire. Doubt took hold of Abu Lahab, and he withdrew his protection.

Badr is a well on a plain about 130 km south-west of Madinah, where the road to Syria runs. It was named after the man of the Banu Damra who dug it. The battle fought there on Friday, 17 Ramadan 2 AH, was never meant to be a battle. In the year since the Hijrah, permission to fight had come down. The Muslims had begun to strike at the one thing that made the Quraysh what they were. That was their caravan road, which ran past Madinah. First came the expedition to al-Abwa, then the raid that saw the first arrow shot in the way of Allah, then al-Ushayra. At al-Ushayra, the Prophet ﷺ missed Abu Sufyan's great caravan, on its way north, by a single day. Then came Nakhla, where eight men killed a man of the Quraysh in the sacred month. That handed the Quraysh a grievance. Abu Jahl had once threatened Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA at the Ka'bah for sheltering the Muslims. Sa'd had then sworn in front of the Ka'bah to cut the Quraysh off from their trade, which was dearer to them than tawaf. Shortly before the battle, the qibla turned from Jerusalem to Makkah. Ibn Ishaq places this in Sha'ban. In Ramadan the same caravan was due back from Syria, led by Abu Sufyan. By some reports it had a thousand camels. It carried the money and goods of the Quraysh, and Ibn Ishaq says that thirty or forty men guarded it. The Prophet ﷺ sent out scouts. According to Muslim, one scout, Busaysah, brought his report to a house where only the boy Anas RA was present. Other reports name Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA and Sa'id ibn Zayd RA as the scouts, and Ibn Ishaq names Basbas ibn Amr and Adiy ibn Abi al-Zaghba' as the two sent ahead to Badr. The Prophet ﷺ then told the people that anyone whose mount was ready should ride with him at once. He would not wait for those whose animals were grazing outside the town. In Ibn Ishaq's telling, he named the Quraysh caravan as the target when he called them out. It was meant to be a quick seizure, so the men came as they were. There were around 313 or 315 of them. Of these, 83 were Muhajirun, 62 were from the Aws and 170 were from the Khazraj. By one report they had two horses, which belonged to Zubayr RA and al-Miqdad RA. Ali RA said that al-Miqdad was their only horseman. They had seventy camels, with three men sharing each one. In Ibn Mas'ud RA's report, the Prophet ﷺ shared his camel with Ali RA and Abu Lubaba RA. Ibn Ishaq names Ali RA and Marthad ibn Abi Marthad RA instead. His two companions begged him to ride. He answered that they were no stronger than he was, and that he needed the reward no less than they did. He judged al-Bara' ibn Azib RA and Abdullah ibn Umar RA too young to fight. Hudhayfah RA and his father were held back for another reason. The Quraysh had once made them swear never to fight against Muhammad ﷺ, and an oath is an oath, even to an enemy. A pagan of Madinah, famous for his courage, asked three times to join. He was refused twice, because the Muslims do not seek help from an idolater, until he took the shahada. The blind Ibn Umm Maktum stayed behind in Madinah. By one report, Abu Lubaba RA was sent back from the road to take charge of the city. Abu Sufyan had been on his guard since al-Ushayra. He found the scouts' campsite and broke open the camel droppings. Inside he recognised the date stones of Yathrib. He turned the caravan down to the coast road, and sent Damdam ibn Amr al-Ghifari racing to Makkah. Three days before Damdam arrived, Atikah bint Abdul Muttalib had a dream. In it, a crier on a camel called the Quraysh traitors and promised them death in three days. Then a rock rolled down from Abu Qubays and shattered against every house in the city. Her brother al-Abbas told her to keep the dream to herself. But he told one friend about it, and before long Abu Jahl was sneering at the Banu Abdul Muttalib for producing a prophetess. On the third day Damdam rode in. His camel's nose was slit and his shirt was torn, and he was crying out that Muhammad ﷺ was upon the caravan. Makkah raised an army at speed. Every household sent a man or hired one to go. By some reports the army set out 1,300 strong, with a hundred horses and six hundred coats of mail. Umar RA's report in Muslim and Ahmad says that it stood at Badr about a thousand strong. Abu Lahab stayed behind and paid a man who owed him money to go in his place. By some reports Utbah ibn Rabi'ah did not want to fight his own kin, until his brother Shaybah shamed him into it. The same reports say that Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt had once spat in the Prophet ﷺ's face and had been promised death outside Makkah. He did not dare to go until a kinsman lent him the fastest camel in the city. Umayyah ibn Khalaf, fat and fearful, meant to stay at home. According to al-Bukhari, Abu Jahl told him that if the chief of the valley stayed, the people would stay too. According to Ibn Ishaq, Uqba brought him an incense burner and told him to perfume himself, because he belonged with the women. Umayyah then bought the best camel in Makkah. He told his wife that he meant to go only a short way. Every one of these men was on the list the Prophet ﷺ had named in his prayer on the day the entrails were thrown on his back. By one report, before they marched, the Quraysh held the curtains of the Ka'bah. They asked Allah to give victory to the better of the two parties. The Qur'an says that this prayer was answered, against them. Outside Makkah the army nearly turned back. They were afraid that the Banu Bakr would raid the empty city. Then Iblis himself came to them in the shape of Suraqa ibn Malik, a chief of Kinanah. He promised them his protection and rode with them. At Juhfa, Juhaym ibn al-Salt of the Banu al-Muttalib had a dream. In it a crier named Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah among the dead. He also saw a camel stabbed in the chest, whose blood spattered every tent. Abu Jahl scoffed that here was another prophet from the Banu al-Muttalib. Then a messenger arrived from Abu Sufyan. He said that the caravan was safe and that the army should go home. Abu Jahl said they would go on to Badr anyway. They would camp there for three days, drink and be sung to, and let all Arabia hear that the Quraysh feared no one. Al-Akhnas ibn Shariq told the Banu Zuhrah to lay the charge of cowardice on him and go home. They did, and so did Talib ibn Abi Talib with some others. Meanwhile the Muslims had begun to hear of an army. The Prophet ﷺ had been shown in a dream that he would fight. By some reports he asked them twice what they thought of meeting the Quraysh instead of the caravan. Twice they answered that they had come for a caravan, with no armour and no supplies. The Qur'an records this reluctance, yet still calls them nothing but believers. The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA went scouting themselves. They met an old Bedouin and got from him the exact positions of both the Muslims and the Quraysh. All they told him about themselves was that they were "from water". Then two water carriers of the Quraysh were caught. When the boys said they were from the army, the Companions beat them. The beating went on until the boys said they were from the caravan. The Prophet ﷺ finished his prayer and told the Companions that they had beaten the boys for telling the truth, and let the lie stand. He asked the boys how many camels the Quraysh slaughtered each day. They said nine or ten, and he said the army was nine hundred to a thousand strong. The boys then named its leading men, Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah. The Prophet ﷺ told the Companions that Makkah had thrown them the pieces of its liver. He also pointed to the places on the ground where each of those men would fall. Earlier, at Dhafiran, news had come that the Quraysh had marched, and he had asked the army for its advice. Abu Bakr spoke and sat down. Umar RA spoke and sat down. Then al-Miqdad said that they would not speak as the Children of Israel had spoken to Musa. Instead they would fight at his right and his left, in front of him and behind him. Still the Prophet ﷺ asked again. At last Sa'd ibn Mu'adh understood that he was waiting to hear from the Ansar. In Muslim's report it was Sa'd ibn Ubadah. The Ansar's pledge at Aqaba had been to defend him in Madinah, not to march out to war. Sa'd told him to go wherever he wished. If he rode them into the sea, they would follow him, and perhaps Allah would show him through them something to comfort his eyes. The Prophet ﷺ was delighted. He told them to go forward, because Allah had promised him one of the two parties. It was as though he could already see the enemy lying slain. The Muslims reached the water of Badr before the Quraysh. Al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA asked whether this campsite had been chosen by revelation, or was simply a soldier's choice. He was told it was a soldier's choice. So he proposed camping beyond the wells, so that the water lay behind the Muslims and the enemy had only what they carried. The Prophet ﷺ took his advice. The other wells were stopped up, and a cistern was built and filled for the Muslims. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh had a shelter built, from which the Prophet ﷺ could watch the field. That night a light rain fell. It firmed the sand on the Muslim side and, by some reports, drenched the Quraysh. Ali said that all the Companions slept except the Prophet ﷺ. He prayed under a tree until dawn: "O Allah, if this band perishes, You will not be worshipped on earth." While he dozed, he was shown the enemy as few in number. The Qur'an says that this spared the Muslims from quarrelling and despair. At dawn on the 17th he drew the army up in ranks. He straightened the lines with an arrow in his hand. When he prodded Suwad RA in the belly, Suwad demanded his right to retaliate. The Prophet ﷺ bared his own stomach, and Suwad kissed it. Suwad said that if he was to die, he wanted his skin to have touched the Prophet ﷺ's. He had given the flag to Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Two black banners were carried, one by Ali and one by a man of the Ansar. He put Qays ibn Abi Sa'sa'a RA in charge of the rearguard. He also ordered that certain men were not to be killed. These were al-Abbas and the Banu Hashim who had been dragged out to fight, and Abu al-Bukhturi, who had helped to break the boycott. Across the plain the Prophet ﷺ saw a man on a red camel riding up and down the lines of the Quraysh. He said that if there was any good in them, it was in that man. The man was Utbah. He was offering to pay the blood money for Amr al-Hadrami, the man killed at Nakhla. He pleaded with the Quraysh not to kill their own sons and brothers, but to leave Muhammad ﷺ to the other Arabs. Hakim ibn Hizam carried the offer to Abu Jahl. Abu Jahl mocked Hakim as Utbah's errand boy. He stirred up al-Hadrami's brother, and called Utbah a coward who had lost his nerve at the sight of the Muslims. Utbah had told them they could blame him for cowardice, but he could not bear to hear it from Abu Jahl. He called for his brother and his son. The Quraysh scout Umayr ibn Wahab reported three hundred men with nothing but their swords. He warned that not one of them would die without taking a man of the Quraysh with him. By one report, Abu Jahl told him that no one had asked his opinion. As the armies closed in, Abu Jahl prayed aloud. He asked Allah to destroy whichever army had cut the ties of kinship and brought a strange religion. It was another prayer against himself. Al-Aswad ibn Abd al-Asad swore to drink from the Muslims' cistern or die trying. Hamzah RA cut him down at the water. He was the first man killed at Badr. Then Utbah, Shaybah and al-Walid ibn Utbah stepped out and called for champions to face them. Three young men of the Ansar answered. They were Awf and Muawwidh, the sons of Afra', and Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA. The Quraysh waved them away. They said they had no quarrel with them, and asked for their equals instead. So the Prophet ﷺ sent Ubaydah ibn al-Harith RA, Hamzah and Ali. In Ibn Ishaq's account, Hamzah and Ali killed Shaybah and al-Walid at once. Ubaydah and Utbah struck each other down, and Utbah cut off Ubaydah's leg. Then the other two turned and killed Utbah. Ali RA's own report in Abu Dawud pairs them differently. In it Hamzah faced Utbah, Ali faced Shaybah, and Ubaydah and al-Walid wounded each other. Ubaydah died of his wound at al-Safra on the way home. This duel is the Qur'an's "two adversaries who dispute about their Lord". The Prophet ﷺ faced the qibla and raised his hands to the sky. He pleaded for the help he had been promised, until his cloak fell from his shoulders. Abu Bakr put it back on him. He told him that it was enough, and that his Lord would give what He had promised. According to Muslim, Allah then revealed that He would help them with a thousand angels. Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ dozed in the shelter and then woke. He told Abu Bakr to be of good cheer. He said that Jibril was there, holding a horse by the rein and leading it, with dust on his front teeth. A thousand angels were coming in file. The Prophet ﷺ recited the verse "the host will be routed and turn their backs". Umar is reported to have said that he had not understood this verse until that morning. Then the Prophet ﷺ took up a handful of pebbles. He threw them at the Quraysh, saying "may these faces be disfigured". By reports in the tafsir, every one of them got grit in his eyes. The Qur'an says that it was not he who threw, but Allah. What happened next can only be told through the dozen stories the Companions left behind. The Prophet ﷺ called on them to rise up to a Paradise as wide as the heavens and the earth. Umayr ibn al-Humam RA was chewing dates at the time. He said that if he lived long enough to finish them, that would be too long a life. He threw them down and fought until he was killed. The Muslims held back their arrows until the enemy was in range. They kept their swords sheathed until the enemy was upon them. Ali said that the Prophet ﷺ was the closest of them all to the enemy. By another report, Ali said he found the Prophet ﷺ three times in his shelter, in prostration, crying "O Living, O Sustaining", with Abu Bakr at his side. The Prophet ﷺ moved between the two. Iblis saw the angels and ran. Al-Harith ibn Hisham grabbed at the man he took for Suraqa, and was thrown onto his back. A mursal report in the Muwatta' tells what the Prophet ﷺ said about this. Satan is never more humiliated than on the day of Arafah, he said, except for what Satan was shown on the day of Badr. On that day he saw Jibril arranging the angels in ranks. Some Companions heard a rider above them urging on his horse, Haizum. They saw the pagan in front of them lose his head before their own blow landed. The man who captured al-Abbas was a slightly built man of the Ansar. Al-Abbas insisted that he had been taken by a handsome horseman on a piebald horse. The Prophet ﷺ told the Ansari to be quiet, because an angel had helped him. By one report the angels wore yellow turbans like Zubayr's, while Ibn Ishaq's report from Ibn Abbas RA says their turbans were white. Ukasha ibn Mihsan RA broke his sword. He was handed a stick of wood, and found a blade in his hand. By a report with a broken chain, Abu Ubaydah RA kept away from his father, Abdullah ibn al-Jarrah. In the end the old man came at him, and Abu Ubaydah killed him. The closing verse of Surah al-Mujadilah came down about him. It says that no believer loves those who fight Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, even if they are his father. Abu al-Bukhturi refused to be taken prisoner without his friend. He was killed by a man of the Ansar who had tried to spare him. The three men of the duel were the father, uncle and brother of Abu Hudhayfah RA. He said aloud that the Muslims were killing their own kin while the Prophet ﷺ's uncle went untouched. He regretted those words until he died at Yamamah. Two boys of the Ansar had each asked Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA to point out Abu Jahl. One was Mu'adh ibn Amr ibn al-Jumuh RA. The other was a son of Afra', called Mu'adh in al-Bukhari and Muawwidh in Ibn Ishaq. When Abd al-Rahman pointed him out, the boys went through the crowd like hawks. Mu'adh leapt and cut off Abu Jahl's leg. It cost him his own arm to Ikrimah's sword, so he tore the arm off and fought on without it. Muawwidh struck the second blow. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud RA was the shepherd whom Abu Jahl had despised. He found Abu Jahl dying and put a foot on his neck. To the end, Abu Jahl said that a man killed by his own people was not disgraced, and that Ibn Mas'ud was standing on a high place. Ibn Mas'ud's own sword had been blunted by the day's fighting, so he took Abu Jahl's sword and finished him with it. By a report with a weak chain in Ahmad, the Prophet ﷺ made Ibn Mas'ud swear three times before going to look for himself. He called Abu Jahl the Pharaoh of this community. Umayyah ibn Khalaf begged his old friend Abd al-Rahman to take him and his son prisoner. He said he was worth more than the coats of mail Abd al-Rahman was carrying. Then Bilal RA saw the man who had tortured him on the sand of Makkah. He called out to the Ansar, and Umayyah and his son died under their spears. Abd al-Rahman was wounded in the foot trying to shield them. Umayyah's body was the only one that could not be moved to the well. It came apart when they lifted it, so they covered it with stones where it lay. Seventy of the Quraysh were dead and about seventy were taken prisoner. That was one man in seven of their army. Fourteen or fifteen Muslims had been killed, and none were taken. The Quraysh fled by the one road the Muslims had left open. The Prophet ﷺ stayed on the field for three days, to bury the martyrs and to make it plain who had won. The Quraysh dead, all except Umayyah, were thrown into a dry well and covered over. On the third day, before leaving, the Prophet ﷺ stood at the mouth of the well. He called the dead by name, Utbah, Shaybah, al-Walid, Abu Jahl and Umayyah. He asked whether they had found their Lord's promise true, for he had found his Lord's promise true. Umar asked how he could speak to bodies without souls. He answered that they heard him no worse than the living did, though they could not reply. While still on the field, the Companions had already started arguing over the spoils. The men who gathered the spoils, the men who chased the enemy and the Prophet ﷺ's bodyguard each claimed the better right. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA asked for the sword he had won. Then the opening verses of Surah al-Anfal came down there, saying that the spoils belong to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. Every man received an equal share. Shares also went to some who had been kept away on duty. Among them was Uthman RA, who was nursing his dying wife Ruqayyah. Looking over the prisoners, the Prophet ﷺ spoke of Mut'im ibn Adi, who had recently died. He said that if Mut'im had asked him for these prisoners, he would have freed every one of them. This was because of the shelter Mut'im had given him after Ta'if. Abu Bakr advised taking ransom, since the prisoners were their kin. Umar advised giving each Companion his own kinsman to kill. The Prophet ﷺ compared the first to Ibrahim and Isa, and the second to Nuh and Musa. He chose ransom. The next day Umar found him and Abu Bakr weeping under a tree, because of verses that had come down. The verses said that no prophet should take captives before he has subdued the land. They also said that but for a prior decree, a punishment would have touched them. Two prisoners were executed on the road home. One was al-Nadr ibn al-Harith, who had mocked the Qur'an as old fables that he could improve on. The other was Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt. Uqba asked who would look after his children, and the answer he was given was the Fire. Their execution was the only time captives of Badr were put to death. Zayd ibn Harithah RA carried the news to Lower Madinah, naming the dead one by one. Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA took it to Upper Madinah. By some reports Zayd was riding the Prophet ﷺ's own camel, and people thought he was mad. Abdullah ibn Ubayy heard him and said that the matter was now settled. The hypocrisy of Madinah dates from that day. Uthman heard the shouting just as he finished burying Ruqayyah. The prisoners were lodged with the men who had captured them. The captors were ordered to treat them well. They gave the prisoners their bread, and ate dates themselves. Suhayl ibn Amr was kept in the Prophet ﷺ's own house. There Sawda RA saw the chief of the Quraysh tied up in a corner, and cried out that he should have died a noble death. When the Prophet ﷺ rebuked her, she said she could not contain herself. Each man's ransom was set according to his means. The poor were freed for nothing. According to Ahmad, some who had nothing to pay with were freed for teaching the children of the Ansar to write. Al-Abbas protested that he was a Muslim. He was told that Allah knew his heart, but he had fought. Then he was told where he and Umm al-Fadl had set money aside when no one else was present. So he paid for himself, and for Aqil and Nawfal too. By one report, he used to say that Allah had given him twenty merchants in return for those twenty ounces. Abu Sufyan refused to pay for his son Amr, having already lost another son on the field. Later he kidnapped an old Ansari pilgrim in Makkah to force an exchange. Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi' was ransomed with a necklace. Khadija RA had given it to her daughter Zaynab RA as a wedding gift. When the Prophet ﷺ saw it, his face changed. At his word the captors returned it, and Abu al-As went home on his promise to send Zaynab to Madinah. In Makkah, the first survivor to arrive was al-Haysaman al-Khuza'i. He listed so many dead nobles that Safwan ibn Umayyah tested him by asking about himself. Al-Haysaman told him that he had watched Safwan's father and brother die. The Quraysh banned wailing for the dead, so that the Muslims would take no pleasure in it. Al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib, who had lost three sons, was overjoyed to hear a woman wailing. Then he learned that she was weeping for a camel. Abu Lahab heard from his nephew, Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, about men in white on piebald horses whom no one could withstand. Al-Abbas's slave Abu Rafi' said they were angels, and Abu Lahab beat him for it. Then Umm al-Fadl split Abu Lahab's head open with a tent pole. Within days he died of a foul sickness. According to a report in al-Tirmidhi, on the same day, far away, Rome defeated Persia, as Surah al-Rum had foretold. Years earlier, Abu Bakr had made a bet with a Makkan, Ubay ibn Khalaf, that this would happen within six years. The six years had passed, so Abu Bakr had already lost the bet. Within weeks, Umayr ibn Wahab came to Madinah with a poisoned sword to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and went home a Muslim. The Banu Qaynuqa told the Prophet ﷺ that he had beaten only men who knew nothing of war. They were besieged and sent out of Madinah. Jibril asked how the Muslims regarded those who had fought at Badr. He was told that they were the best of the Muslims. Jibril said that the angels regard the angels who were there in the same way.

Ruqayyah RA, the daughter of the Prophet ﷺ and wife of Uthman ibn Affan RA, passed away in Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ had told Uthman RA to stay behind from the Battle of Badr to nurse her. Uthman RA had just finished burying her at Baqi' al-Gharqad when he heard cries of takbir ("Allahu akbar") in the city. It was Zayd ibn Harithah RA arriving with news of the victory at Badr.

After their defeat at Badr, the Quraysh spent a full year preparing for revenge. Four motives drove them together. The first was religious hatred of the new faith. The second was personal grief for the leaders they had lost, since the fathers of both Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal and Safwan ibn Umayyah had died at Badr. The third was economic, because the Muslims now controlled their trade route to Syria and that trade had collapsed. The fourth was political, the threat of a growing Muslim state. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, together with Safwan and Ikrimah, went from door to door. They collected the profits of the Badr caravan from every Qurashi household that had invested in it. They used this money to recruit allied tribes such as Kinana and Tihama. On the 7th of Shawwal, 3 AH, an army of 3,000 set out from Makkah. It had 200 horses and 700 suits of armour. Around two dozen women of the Quraysh came with it, among them Hind bint Utbah, to urge the men on with their songs. The journey to Madinah normally took two weeks, but the army covered it in seven days. Abu Sufyan held overall command. Khalid ibn al-Walid led the right flank, and Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal led the left. There is a report, not found in Ibn Ishaq, about al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, who had stayed behind in Makkah. He sent a trusted servant racing to Madinah with the exact numbers of the army. The servant covered the distance in three days. He found the Prophet ﷺ at Quba, and Ubay ibn Ka'b RA read the letter to him privately. The news was urgent, but the Prophet ﷺ did not act on a single report. He first sent scouts to confirm where the Quraysh were. Only then did he call a general meeting of the Muslims. The meeting took place at the Friday gathering, which was even larger than usual because a funeral had already brought many people out. The Prophet ﷺ explained the threat and asked for advice. He gave his own view first. He wanted to stay inside Madinah and use its natural defences. There were fields of volcanic rock to the east and west, Mount Uhud to the north, and date palm groves to the south. The Quraysh would then be forced into costly fighting in the streets. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the most experienced warrior in the city, agreed with this plan. He did so not out of any respect for the Prophet ﷺ, but because it was clearly the stronger position. A group of younger Companions argued the other way. Many of them had missed Badr and were eager to prove themselves, so they pressed to meet the Quraysh in open battle. The Prophet ﷺ judged that most people wanted this, so he agreed and went inside to put on his armour. The younger men then had second thoughts. They told him they would not oppose him if he wished to stay in the city. This is in Ibn Ishaq, and some retellings name Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA as the one who said it. The Prophet ﷺ replied that once a prophet has put on his armour, it is not fitting for him to take it off before he has fought. He marched out on Friday, the 14th of Shawwal, with roughly 700 Muslims. He divided them into three groups. Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA led the Muhajirun, Usayd ibn Hudayr RA led the Aws, and al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA led the Khazraj. Between them they had only a handful of horses and 100 suits of armour. The Prophet ﷺ led them along a secret route through the date palm groves instead of the main road, so that their position would not be revealed too early. The route passed through the garden of Mirba' ibn Qayzi, a blind hypocrite. He threw dust at the Muslims, and the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions to leave him alone. During the march, Abdullah ibn Ubayy turned back with about 300 men. He said publicly that his advice had been ignored. Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram RA confronted him for abandoning the Prophet ﷺ. Abdullah ibn Ubayy insisted that he did not believe there would be any fighting. The Qur'an later exposed this as a lie (Qur'an 3:167). Some of the Aws, from Banu Harithah, and some of the Khazraj, from Banu Salama, also wavered. In the end they stayed, and Qur'an 3:122 credits their steadfastness to Allah's protection. The roughly 700 who remained reached Uhud in the early afternoon of the 14th. The Prophet ﷺ chose the site with care. The mountain protected the army on two sides. The third side was covered by fifty archers under Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, posted on a hill called Jabal Aynayn. That hill was later renamed Jabal al-Ruma in their honour. The archers had strict orders never to leave their position, no matter how the battle seemed to be going. This left the much larger Quraysh army only one narrow approach to attack through. The Prophet ﷺ arranged the army for battle and sent home the boys he judged too young. Two boys, Rafi ibn Khadij RA and Samura ibn Jundub RA, were allowed to stay. Ibn Hisham says they were fifteen. Rafi' was allowed because he was a good archer, and Samurah because he could beat Rafi' at wrestling. On the morning of the 15th, the Prophet ﷺ offered his own sword to whoever would take it and give it its due. Abu Dujana RA accepted it. He put on his turban of death and walked along the ranks, giving the Muslims courage. Abu Sufyan first sent a message trying to split the Ansar away from the Muhajirun. Then he sent Abu Amir al-Rahib, a former leader of the Aws who had rejected Islam, to appeal directly to his own people. The Ansar refused both approaches. They gave Abu Amir a new name, Abu Amir al-Fasiq. The battle opened with single combat. Talha ibn Abi Talha came out first. He was of Banu Abd al-Dar, the clan that carried the standard of the Quraysh. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA struck him down. Ibn Ishaq counts him among the men Ali RA killed. Another report says that Talha begged Ali RA by the ties of kinship, so Ali RA left him, and he later died of his wounds. The Muslims then charged and broke the ranks of the Quraysh. They killed the standard bearers of Banu Abd al-Dar one after another, until the standard fell. The story of Usayrim belongs to this same morning. He was from Banu Abd al-Ashhal, and for three years he had been the only pagan left in his clan. He accepted Islam after the Fajr prayer and was martyred before Zuhr, without ever having prayed a single rak'ah. In this first phase the Quraysh broke and fled. The Companions became overconfident. They put down their weapons and began collecting the spoils of war. The rules for dividing spoils had not yet been fully settled, and many assumed the battle was over. The fifty archers on Jabal al-Ruma watched the spoils being gathered below. As the minutes passed, no word came from the Prophet ﷺ. The archers began to argue about whether to go down and join in. Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, their leader, refused to move without a direct command from the Prophet ﷺ. Even so, over perhaps the better part of an hour, forty of the fifty left the position and went down, leaving only ten. Khalid ibn al-Walid had not simply fled. He had been watching carefully, and now he saw his chance. He moved in along a low ditch on the army's right that could not be seen from ground level. He overran the ten archers who were left. Then he led his cavalry, estimated at 100 to 150 riders, around Jabal al-Ruma and attacked the Muslims from behind. This cut the Muslim army in two. On one side was the Prophet ﷺ's own camp. On the other were the scattered Muslims still collecting spoils, most of them unarmed. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ was the first to see Khalid's attack coming. The enemy was hunting for him personally, and shouting would reveal where he was. Even so, he stood up and shouted a warning to the Muslims. The surprise attack threw the Muslims into chaos. Many fled, unable to tell friend from foe. The sources say that shaytan stirred up the confusion, and some Muslims struck down other Muslims in the fighting. One of them was al-Yaman RA, the father of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA. His own side killed him before Hudhayfah's shouts to stop could be heard. Hudhayfah said, "May Allah forgive you." The Prophet ﷺ paid him the blood money for his father, and Hudhayfah gave it away as charity to the Muslims. As the Muslim army split apart, the Prophet ﷺ was left with a guard of only nine men. Two of them were Muhajirun, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA. The other seven were Ansar. Ibn Ishaq names Ziyad, or Umarah, ibn al-Sakan among them. A report from al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari gives the number as twelve. Meanwhile the rest of the army, believing the battle already won, was scattered across the field. One by one, the Ansar in that small group went out to stop the approaching enemy, and each was killed. In the end only Sa'd, Talha and the Prophet ﷺ himself remained. They pulled back into a narrow gap in the mountainside, barely wide enough for one or two people. From the opening, Sa'd and Talha fired arrow after arrow. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ picked spent arrows up off the ground and handed them back to Sa'd to shoot again. Abu Talha al-Ansari RA begged the Prophet ﷺ not to raise his head, for fear of a stray arrow. He offered his own neck and chest in place of the Prophet ﷺ's (al-Bukhari). It was here that the Prophet ﷺ said to Sa'd, "Fidaka abi wa ummi (may my mother and father be given in ransom for you)! Shoot, O Sa'd, shoot!" Ali RA said he never heard the Prophet ﷺ say these words to anyone else. However, al-Zubayr RA reports that the Prophet ﷺ said the same to him at Qurayzah. An attacker reached Talha and cut off several of his fingers, and Talha cried out in pain. The Prophet ﷺ told him that if he had said "Bismillah" instead, the angels would have lifted him up in front of everyone. Qatada ibn al-Nu'man al-Awsi RA took up the Prophet ﷺ's bow and shot with it until it broke. His eye was struck so badly that it hung down on his cheek. The Prophet ﷺ put it back in place with his hand, and it became the better and sharper of his two eyes (Ibn Ishaq). During this same period the Prophet ﷺ was wounded several times. Utbah ibn Abi Waqqas threw a stone that broke his lower right incisor and injured his lip. Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri wounded his forehead. Ibn Qami'ah struck his cheekbone and drove two rings of his helmet into his cheek. This account is from Ibn Hisham, on the authority of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA. Other reports describe the wounds differently. In them, an arrow shot by Utbah passed through his cheek and knocked out a tooth, and a sword blow from Ibn Qami'ah or Abdullah ibn Shihab drove his helmet into his cheekbone. With blood streaming down his face, the Prophet ﷺ was heard to say, "How can a people succeed who have wounded their own Prophet ﷺ while he called them to their Lord?" Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA later said that he saw two men dressed in brilliant white fighting fiercely at the Prophet ﷺ's side that day. He had never seen them before and never saw them again. Around the same time, Ubay ibn Khalaf charged straight at the Prophet ﷺ. Ubay was a Makkan who had long vowed to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and he had been fattening a horse for that purpose. Back then, the Prophet ﷺ had replied that he would be the one to kill Ubay instead. Now he reminded Ubay of that reply. He took a spear from a companion and struck Ubay in the neck. The wound looked minor, but Ubay himself insisted it would kill him. He died on the road home, before he reached Makkah. Ibn Qami'ah cut down Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA and thought he had killed the Prophet ﷺ. He shouted that Muhammad ﷺ was dead. The false news spread quickly and broke the spirit of part of the Muslim line. Some of them simply sat down in the middle of the battle. Anas ibn al-Nadr RA rallied a group of them back into the fight. He asked them what they would do with life after the Prophet ﷺ, and told them to die as he had died. Anas fought on until he was killed. His body was so disfigured that no one could recognise him, until his sister identified him by the tips of his fingers. Ka'b ibn Malik RA was the first to recognise the Prophet ﷺ, by his eyes. He was about to announce that the Prophet ﷺ was alive. The Prophet ﷺ signalled to him to stay silent, so as not to give away his position. A later report adds that the two of them exchanged armour. Abu Bakr RA, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA and Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA fought their way back to him. They found the two rings of his helmet still stuck in his cheek. Abu Ubaydah did not want to risk hurting him further with his hands. It is reported that he pulled each ring out with his own teeth instead, and lost a tooth each time. As the fighting died down, Abu Sufyan called out from a distance. He asked whether Muhammad ﷺ was still alive. Then he asked about Abu Bakr RA and Umar RA. The Prophet ﷺ told the Muslims not to answer him. Then Abu Sufyan declared victory and gave the credit to the idol Hubal. This time the Prophet ﷺ had the Muslims reply, "Allah is mightier and more worthy of honour." He stayed silent about his own survival, but he would not let shirk against Allah go unanswered. Abu Sufyan swore that the two sides would meet again the next year at Badr, and the Quraysh withdrew. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ walked over the battlefield. He found the body of his uncle, Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, mutilated by Hind bint Utbah RA. Her father and brother had been killed at Badr, and in revenge she had cut open Hamzah's stomach and taken his liver. The Prophet ﷺ wept. He vowed to mutilate thirty bodies of the Quraysh in return. Then Allah revealed Qur'an 16:126, which limits retaliation to no more than what was suffered. After that, the Prophet ﷺ forbade mutilation completely. On the way back, Hamnah bint Jahsh RA met the army. She was told, one after another, of the deaths of her brother Abdullah, her uncle Hamzah RA and her husband Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Wailing for the dead broke out across Madinah. When the Prophet ﷺ heard it, he allowed it once for Hamzah RA's sake. After that he forbade it as a general rule. The martyrs were reported to number around seventy, most of them Ansar. They were buried two, three or four to a grave, in the clothes they had died in, without being washed. The Prophet ﷺ instructed that whoever had memorised the most Qur'an should be placed in the grave first. According to Jabir RA's report in al-Bukhari, no funeral prayer was said over them. A report from Ibn Abbas RA in Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ did pray over Hamzah RA and the others. Only one prisoner was taken in the whole battle, Abu Azzah al-Jumahi. He had earlier been pardoned on condition that he never fight the Muslims again. Because he broke that condition, he was executed. Before all this, the Prophet ﷺ had sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to follow the Quraysh. Ali RA found them riding their camels and leading their horses, a sign that they were heading back to Makkah. The next morning, Sunday the 16th, the Prophet ﷺ called out the men who had fought the day before, wounded as they were. He led them to Hamra al-Asad, about eight miles from Madinah. They stayed there on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At some point before or during this period, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions about a dream. Accounts differ on exactly when he told it. He said, "I saw in a dream that I had struck with my sword, but my sword broke, and this is what afflicted the Muslims at Uhud. Then I hit it again, and it came back as good as it ever was, and this was the victory that Allah gave to the Muslims and the coming together of the believers." He went on, "I saw cows, and Allah is good, and this was the believers on the Day of Uhud." In a version in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, he also saw himself wearing protective armour, which he took to mean Madinah itself.

Uthman ibn Affan was married to Ruqayyah, a daughter of the Prophet ﷺ. She died shortly after the Battle of Badr, and Uthman, a shy man, remained unmarried for a time. During that time, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA offered him his widowed daughter Hafsa. Uthman told him he did not want to marry just then. He was keeping a secret, because the Prophet ﷺ had mentioned Hafsa to him. The Prophet ﷺ married Hafsa himself, and Uthman went on to marry Ruqayyah's sister, Umm Kulthum, another daughter of the Prophet ﷺ.

Hafsa bint Umar RA lost her first husband, Khunays ibn Hudhafah RA, in Madinah. Ibn Sa'd says he died soon after Badr. Ibn Abd al-Barr says he died of wounds he received at Uhud. Her father, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, felt her loss deeply. When her waiting period was over, he offered her in marriage to Uthman ibn Affan RA, whose wife Ruqayyah, the Prophet ﷺ's daughter, had recently died. Uthman said he did not want to marry just then. Umar RA then offered her to Abu Bakr RA, who gave him no answer at all. Umar RA was hurt by both refusals. Neither man could explain. The Prophet ﷺ had privately mentioned Hafsa RA to them, and they could not reveal his secret. Then the Prophet ﷺ proposed to Hafsa RA himself. Uthman RA later married another daughter of the Prophet ﷺ, Umm Kulthum.

Zaynab bint Jahsh RA was a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ through her mother. She had been married to his adopted son, Zayd ibn Harithah RA, but the marriage did not work and Zayd divorced her. According to the strongest opinion, the Prophet ﷺ married her at the beginning of Dhu al-Qa'dah in the 5th year after the Hijrah. When her waiting period was over, the Prophet ﷺ sent Zayd himself to tell her of his interest. She said she would not answer until she had prayed istikhara, the prayer for guidance. While she prayed, Allah revealed verse 33:37 of the Qur'an, which says, "We married her to you." There was no guardian, no dowry and no witnesses. It was the only marriage in history contracted by Allah Himself. The same verse gives the reason. It shows that there is no wrong in marrying the former wife of an adopted son, because an adopted son is not a blood relative. The verses of hijab were revealed on the night of this wedding (see Legislation of Hijab). The wedding feast was the most generous the Prophet ﷺ ever gave for any of his wives. He sent Anas ibn Malik RA to invite people, starting with Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali. Then Anas invited the poor who lived at the masjid, known as the People of Suffa, then anyone in the masjid or on the road, and anyone he met. Anas thought the small dish of food would feed two or three people, but more than seventy ate from it.

In the 6th year of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ had a dream. He saw himself doing tawaf around the Ka'bah in ihram, with his head shaved, completing the full rites of an Umrah. He understood the dream as Allah's command to go to Makkah. He announced his plan to the Muhajirun, the Ansar and the tribes around Madinah. Around 1,400 people set out with him. Most of them were Muhajirun who had not seen Makkah for six years. The Bedouin tribes around Madinah mostly refused to come, preferring to stay with their wealth and families. The Qur'an later exposed this hesitation as an excuse rather than a genuine reason (Qur'an 48:11-12). He set out in Dhu al-Qa'dah. This was one of the sacred months, in which fighting was traditionally forbidden even before Islam, in the Jahiliyyah. Travelling in this month was a deliberate signal that he came in peace. At the miqat of Dhu al-Hulayfah, he prayed two rak'ahs and entered ihram. He also dedicated seventy sacrificial camels, garlanded to mark them as offerings. Even pagan Arabs respected such animals as a sign of piety, as events would later prove. From there, he sent a single scout ahead to see how the Quraysh would react. The scout was Busr ibn Sufyan al-Khuza'i. He came from Khuza'a, a neutral tribe, and the Quraysh did not know him. At Asfan, roughly halfway to Makkah, Busr came back with his report. He said that the Quraysh had armed for war and brought their women with them, as they had at Uhud. They had also sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to block the road at Ghumaym. The Prophet ﷺ was grieved that his own people would rather fight than simply let him pass. He said, "Woe to the Quraysh, war has consumed them." He vowed that he would keep fighting with whatever Allah had sent him "until Allah grants victory or this neck of mine is cut off". At the same time, he made it clear that he did not want war or bloodshed. He asked the sahaba for their advice. Abu Bakr RA advised them to stick to their original purpose. They had come to visit the House of Allah, he said, and should not fight anyone unless they were attacked. The Prophet ﷺ agreed. He set aside his own first inclination, which had been to strike first at the tribes that were backing the Quraysh. Because Khalid was blocking the main road, one of the sahaba guided the army along another route. It ran through a valley of thorns and volcanic rock, and their feet were left bleeding. The Prophet ﷺ compared this passage to the gate that the Israelites had been commanded to enter humbly, in return for forgiveness (Qur'an 2:58). He promised that Allah would forgive everyone who passed through it, except for one man. That man had spent the whole way distracted by a camel he had lost. He replied that finding his camel mattered more to him than forgiveness. His answer showed that he was a hypocrite, marching in a caravan that was otherwise entirely sincere. As night fell, the army came out of the valley and reached the plain of Hudaybiyyah. There, the Prophet ﷺ's camel, Qaswa', suddenly knelt down and would not get up. The sahaba complained that she had turned stubborn. The Prophet ﷺ told them that this was not in her nature. "The One who stopped the Elephant has also stopped her," he said. He made camp where she had stopped. The well at the camp had almost run dry. The Prophet ﷺ rinsed his mouth with its water and returned the water to the well. After a while, the well gave enough water for the whole camp and their animals to drink their fill. This is reported by al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari. Another report in al-Bukhari says that he sent an arrow down into the well. The Prophet ﷺ expected the terms to be hard. He told the sahaba in advance that he would accept any condition the Quraysh proposed, as long as it did not compromise the sanctity of Allah's symbols. Quraysh scouts soon found the camp, and Khalid's force pulled back toward Makkah. At one point, eighty armed men from Makkah tried to make a surprise raid on the camp from the hills of Tan'im. Ibn Ishaq's report gives their number as forty or fifty. Muslim scouts spotted them first, and they were surrounded and captured. Not a drop of blood was spilled on either side. According to Qur'an 48:24, it was Allah who held back the hands of both sides. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ forgave all of them and sent them home. The negotiations began with Budayl ibn Warqa' of Khuza'a, a neutral tribe that was sympathetic to the Muslims. Budayl carried the Prophet ﷺ's message back to the Quraysh. The message was that he had come only to honour the House of Allah. He was willing to agree a truce with the Quraysh, and otherwise he was ready to fight. The more hot-headed Quraysh refused even to hear the message. The Quraysh as a whole still would not move. They did not want the Arabs to say that Muhammad ﷺ had got the better of them. Next, Urwah ibn Mas'ud al-Thaqafi volunteered to go. He was a leader of Thaqif with close ties to the Quraysh. He met the Prophet ﷺ in person and accused him of breaking family ties and threatening the sanctity of the Haram. As he spoke, Urwah kept taking hold of the Prophet ﷺ's beard, a customary gesture between equals. Each time, al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, who was guarding the Prophet ﷺ, struck his hand away with the hilt of his sword. Al-Mughira was Urwah's own grand-nephew. Urwah then mocked the loyalty of the Prophet ﷺ's followers, calling them a rootless "hodgepodge". Abu Bakr RA answered him with a curse so sharp that Urwah said he would have replied in kind, if he had not owed Abu Bakr a personal favour. Urwah went back to the Quraysh visibly shaken. He had watched the sahaba compete to catch the Prophet ﷺ's spit and the water he washed with, and lower their voices in his presence. He told the Quraysh that he had visited the courts of Caesar, Kisra and the Najashi. He had never seen a king honoured the way this man was honoured by his own people. He urged the Quraysh to accept the Prophet ﷺ's offer. The Prophet ﷺ then sent Khirash ibn Umayyah of Khuza'a to the Quraysh. As a gesture of goodwill, he sent him riding one of his own well-known camels. The Quraysh responded by hamstringing the camel. They were about to kill Khirash when the Ahabish protected him and let him go (Ibn Ishaq). The Quraysh's own next envoy was al-Hulays ibn Alqama al-Kinani. He came from a tribe that held sacrificial animals sacred. The Prophet ﷺ knew this, so he had the sahaba parade their garlanded camels and sheep in front of him. Al-Hulays never even entered the Muslim camp, because the sight alone was enough for him. He went back to the Quraysh and declared that it was forbidden to keep pilgrims and their offerings away from the House of Allah. The Quraysh mocked him as an ignorant Bedouin. In response, he swore that his own tribal confederation, the Ahabish, would no longer support them. The neutral envoys had now all been tried, so the Prophet ﷺ decided to send a Muslim of standing. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA was famous for his fearlessness, but he asked to be excused. He was not afraid for himself. His hostility toward the Quraysh was well known, and he had no kin in Makkah to protect him. He was therefore likely to be killed before any negotiation could take place. Umar RA suggested Uthman ibn Affan RA instead. Uthman was an Umayyad, related to Abu Sufyan, and this gave him a standing the Quraysh would respect. Uthman entered Makkah under the protection of his cousin Aban ibn Sa'id. He met Abu Sufyan and the leaders of the Quraysh and delivered his message. They told Uthman that he himself could go round the Ka'bah. He refused to do so before the Prophet ﷺ had done it, and so they held him (Ibn Ishaq). Uthman was away longer than expected, and a rumour spread through the camp that he had been killed. The Prophet ﷺ was not willing to leave this unanswered. Beneath a tree at Hudaybiyyah, he called the sahaba to make a fresh pledge of allegiance. In it they committed themselves to fight the Quraysh rather than retreat. The Qur'an later honoured this oath as the moment when "Allah's Hand was over their hands" (Qur'an 48:10). It also recorded Allah's pleasure with those who made it (Qur'an 48:18). Every man present made the pledge except one hypocrite, who hid behind his camel. Uthman was away in Makkah, so the Prophet ﷺ pledged on his behalf. He raised his right hand and said, "This is the hand of Uthman." Then he struck it on his other hand and said, "This is for Uthman" (al-Bukhari). News of the pledge reached Makkah. It seems to have pushed the Quraysh to negotiate seriously at last. Uthman came back to the camp. It is related that the sahaba asked him whether he had managed to do tawaf while he was in the city. He told them that he would never do it before the Prophet ﷺ, even if he had stayed in Makkah for a year. The Quraysh first sent Mikraz ibn Hafs, but he offered nothing workable. Then they sent their most capable negotiator, Suhayl ibn Amr. Suhayl was a senior speaker of the Quraysh. After Badr he had been held as a prisoner in the home of one of the sahaba. Years earlier, Umar RA had wanted to silence him, but the Prophet ﷺ refused to allow it. He told Umar that a day might come when Suhayl would say something that pleased him. When the Prophet ﷺ saw Suhayl approaching, he said to the sahaba, "Suhayl has come; things have been made easy for you." He was reading a good omen in the meaning of Suhayl's name. Suhayl came with a grievance of his own. One of his sons, Abdullah, had already gone over to Madinah years earlier. He had slipped away from the Quraysh's own ranks at Badr. His younger son, Abu Jandal RA, had become a Muslim. Suhayl had kept him in chains and tortured him, and he was still a prisoner back in Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ called for Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to write the treaty. Ali began with "In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful." Suhayl objected that he did not recognise "al-Rahman". He insisted on the old pagan formula, "Bismika Allahumma", instead. The Prophet ﷺ agreed, rather than let the wording block the treaty. Ali then wrote, "This is what Muhammad ﷺ, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, has agreed with Suhayl ibn Amr." Suhayl objected again. He said that if the Quraysh had believed in that title, they would never have opposed him in the first place. He demanded "Muhammad ibn Abdillah" instead. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ even if you deny it." Even so, he agreed to the change. Ali RA refused to strike out the words "Messenger of Allah ﷺ" with his own hand. The Prophet ﷺ could not write, so he asked Ali RA to point to the words, and he erased them himself. Suhayl then set out his central condition. Any man of the Quraysh who came over to the Muslims would be sent back, even if he came as a Muslim. But no Muslim would ever be handed over in the other direction. The sahaba objected loudly. Most of them had fled Makkah themselves to find exactly this protection. Reversing it now would shut the door on every future refugee. Before the clause had even been fully written, Abu Jandal RA broke free of his chains. He stumbled into the camp crying out for help, with the marks of torture visible on his body. Suhayl pointed to him as the first person the clause would apply to. The Prophet ﷺ pointed out that the treaty had not yet been written, and asked Suhayl to let him keep Abu Jandal. Suhayl refused outright. Mikraz ibn Hafs said, "We allow you to keep him," but Suhayl would not give way (al-Bukhari). Other reports say that Mikraz took Abu Jandal under his protection so that he would not be tortured again. The Prophet ﷺ told Abu Jandal to be patient, because Allah would make a way out for him. Umar RA was standing near Abu Jandal. Rather than see him sent back, Umar gestured toward his own sword. But Suhayl was still Abu Jandal's father, and Abu Jandal did not take the sword. He was led back to Makkah in chains. After that, the remaining terms were agreed. There would be no Umrah that year, only the next year. There would be a ten-year truce, with no fighting on either side. Both sides were free to make alliances with other tribes, and those tribes would be bound by the same terms. And any Muslim who went back over to the Quraysh would not be returned, unlike in the other direction. Ibn Ishaq names the witnesses as Abu Bakr RA, Umar RA, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA, Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA, Mahmud ibn Maslamah RA and Mikraz, who was then still a polytheist. Ali RA was the one who wrote the document. As Suhayl left, satisfied, Umar RA confronted the Prophet ﷺ directly. He was voicing what many of the sahaba felt. He asked whether the Prophet ﷺ was not the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He asked whether the Muslims were not on the truth and their enemies on falsehood. If so, he asked, how could they accept such humiliating terms? The Prophet ﷺ replied, "I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and I will not disobey Allah, and He will help me." Umar RA then asked whether the Prophet ﷺ had not told them that they would go round the House of Allah. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Indeed, I told you. But did I say we will do it this year?" Umar RA admitted that he had not. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "You will do it next year." Umar RA was still not satisfied, so he put the same questions to Abu Bakr RA. Abu Bakr rebuked him sharply. He told Umar to hold fast to the Prophet ﷺ's stirrup rather than question him. Umar RA later said that, because of what he had said that day, he kept on giving charity, fasting, praying and freeing slaves (Ibn Ishaq). It is also reported that, when he was khalifa, he admitted that no other leader could have made him accept such a condition. Once the treaty was written, the Prophet ﷺ told the sahaba to get up, slaughter their sacrificial animals and shave their heads. He said it three times, but not a single person moved. They were too crushed by what had just happened (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ went back to his tent. He told Umm Salama RA that he had given them a command and no one had obeyed. She advised him to go out and shave his own head first, without saying another word. Once they saw him do it, she said, they would follow. He did exactly that. The sahaba were freed from their paralysis and rushed to shave each other's heads. He made du'a for those who had shaved their heads rather than only trimming their hair. He repeated this du'a three times. On the fourth time, he finally included those who had only trimmed. The sacrificial animals were slaughtered there. Among them was a camel that had belonged to Abu Jahal and had been captured at Badr. It had a silver ring in its nose, and the sight of it enraged the polytheists (Ibn Ishaq). On the march home, Umar RA was still troubled by what had passed between him and the Prophet ﷺ. He rode up hoping to make peace. His greetings went unanswered, and he feared the worst. Then a rider came to call him back. He found the Prophet ﷺ's face lit up with joy as he recited Surah al-Fath, which had been revealed on the way back. It begins, "Indeed, We have granted you a clear triumph" (Qur'an 48:1). Umar RA asked in disbelief whether this really counted as a triumph. The Prophet ﷺ confirmed that it did. Umar RA is said to have ridden the whole length of the column, announcing the victory. The Prophet ﷺ said that this surah was dearer to him than everything the sun shines upon (al-Bukhari). Not long after the return to Madinah, the treaty faced its first real test. Abu Basir was a convert from Thaqif, allied to Banu Zuhrah, and he fled to Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ did not turn him away when he arrived. But then two men of the Quraysh came to invoke the treaty's return clause. The Prophet ﷺ honoured the treaty and sent Abu Basir back with them. On the road, Abu Basir killed one of his two escorts with the man's own sword. The other escort fled back to Madinah in terror. Then Abu Basir himself came back. He insisted that the Prophet ﷺ had fulfilled his obligation, and that it was Allah who had set him free. The Prophet ﷺ did not directly help him any further. Instead, he remarked to the people near him, "What a great warrior he is. If only he had someone else to help him." Abu Basir understood the hint. He left and set up camp at al-'Is, by the sea, on the road the Quraysh used to travel to Syria (Ibn Ishaq). Abu Jandal RA heard where Abu Basir had gone. He escaped from Makkah a second time and joined him. Word spread among the Muslims of Makkah who were still being persecuted. Eventually some seventy to eighty of them gathered there. They supported themselves by raiding Quraysh caravans. Under the treaty, the Muslims had no authority to stop them, and no obligation to. In time, the raids became so costly that the Quraysh themselves appealed to the Prophet ﷺ. Invoking their ties of kinship, they asked him to take the whole band into Madinah and put an end to the raids. He did so. A later report, though, says that Abu Basir died before he reached the city. Another test came with Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah. She was the daughter of Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt, the man who had once thrown animal entrails on the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah. She became a Muslim and fled to Madinah. The treaty's return clause spoke only of men. Allah revealed Qur'an 60:10, which exempted believing women from the clause entirely. So she stayed in Madinah. She is reported to have later married Zayd ibn Harithah RA. One night during the march home, everyone was exhausted. The Prophet ﷺ asked Bilal RA to stay awake and wake the camp for Fajr. Bilal fell asleep too, and the whole camp, including the Prophet ﷺ, slept past sunrise. Sahih Muslim places a night like this on the return from Khaybar instead. The Prophet ﷺ did not pray on the spot. He moved the camp on and led the late prayer at a new place, saying that Shaytan had a hand in that particular ground.

The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah allowed either side to make alliances with outside tribes. Any tribe that joined a side was automatically covered by the terms agreed at Hudaybiyyah. The Khuza'a took the side of the Muslims. They were kin to the Prophet ﷺ through his great-great-great-grandmother, and they were bound to Banu Hashim by an old alliance made by Abdul Muttalib. The Banu Bakr took the side of the Quraysh. In the 8th year of the Hijrah, the Banu Bakr raided the Khuza'a by night at the pond of al-Watir, just outside the boundary of the Haram. The Banu Bakr had old blood feuds to settle. The Quraysh knew the raid would break the treaty, yet they approved it. Some of their leaders, such as Suhayl ibn Amr and Safwan ibn Umayyah, gave the Banu Bakr weapons, and some men of Quraysh are reported to have fought beside them in the dark. In his verses, Hassan ibn Thabit later laid the blame on these two men. The raid turned into a massacre. More than twenty people of Khuza'a were killed, including women and children. One man of Khuza'a fled into the Haram and called on his pursuer from Banu Bakr to fear his God. The pursuer answered, "There is no God today," and killed him inside the sanctuary. The chieftain of Khuza'a, Amr ibn Salim al-Khuza'i, went to Madinah. There he recited a poem that called on the old treaty and described the massacre in the same breath. The Prophet ﷺ was moved, and he promised, "You shall be helped, O Amr ibn Salim." The Quraysh sent Abu Sufyan ibn Harb to Madinah to negotiate the treaty again, but he found every door closed to him. Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab RA both refused to speak for him. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and his infant son Hasan could offer him nothing. Even his own daughter, Umm Habiba RA, would not let him sit on the Prophet ﷺ's bedding. He went back to Makkah having achieved nothing. The Prophet ﷺ called for a full mobilization, but he did not say where the army was going. He told no one, not even Abu Bakr RA or Aisha RA. By some reports, he also sent a small decoy party of eight men north toward Batn Idam, to make it look as if Syria was the target. Then he told the people that he was going to Makkah. He prayed, "O Allah, take eyes and ears from the Quraysh so that we may take them by surprise in their land." It was at this point that Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah RA tried to warn the Quraysh. Hatib had fought at Badr. By the strongest opinion he was a mawla, a client member of a tribe, from Yemen, and his family in Makkah had no tribe to protect them. He paid a mawla woman of Banu Hashim to smuggle a warning letter to the Quraysh, hidden in the braids of her hair. News of this came to the Prophet ﷺ from heaven, and he told his men where to find her. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA caught up with her caravan at Rawdatu Khakh, outside Madinah. At first she denied carrying anything. Ali swore that neither the Prophet ﷺ nor Jibril AS could have been mistaken, and he threatened to search her by force. At that, she asked them to turn around out of modesty. Then she untied her hair and handed over the letter. When Hatib was confronted, he confessed. He explained that his loyalty to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ had never wavered. He had acted only out of fear for his unprotected family, not out of love for the Quraysh. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA had asked at once to execute him. But the Prophet ﷺ declared, "Hatib has spoken the truth. Nobody should say anything about Hatib anymore except good." Umar asked a second time, saying that Hatib had betrayed Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ refused again. He reminded Umar that Hatib had fought at Badr, and told him that Allah may already have forgiven everyone who took part in Badr. Umar was moved to tears. After this, Allah revealed the opening of Surah al-Mumtahanah (Qur'an 60:1), which tells the believers not to take His enemies as allies. The army moved remarkably fast. It left Madinah on the 10th of Ramadan and reached the outskirts of Makkah on the 19th, a march of nine days. By then the force had grown to more than 10,000. Every man of the Muhajirun and the Ansar marched, and allied tribes such as the Muzayna and Banu Sulaym joined along the way. Barely six years earlier, only 300 Muslims had fought at Badr. When the army reached Qudaid, the Prophet ﷺ broke his Ramadan fast, and the army broke theirs with him. At the valley of Juhfa, the army met al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle. He was riding out of Makkah with his family to make his own Hijrah, and he did not know that the Conquest was already under way. By a weak report, the Prophet ﷺ called him the last of the Muhajirun. At Niq al-Uqab, between Makkah and Madinah, two of the Prophet ﷺ's first cousins came out to ask to see him. Both had long mocked and opposed him. One was the poet Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith ibn Abdul Muttalib RA. The other was Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah RA, the brother of Umm Salama RA. At first the Prophet ﷺ refused to see them. He said that one had wounded his pride and the other had insulted him in Makkah. Then Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, with his young son at his side, threatened to go and die in the desert rather than be turned away. Only then was the Prophet ﷺ moved to give way. Both men accepted Islam. The army's last camp was at Marr al-Zahran, later known as Wadi Fatima. There its campfires lit up the plain. Al-Abbas RA had just joined the army, and he was anxious to spare his people needless bloodshed. That night he went out, hoping to persuade the Quraysh to surrender peacefully. On the way he came across three leaders of Quraysh and Khuza'a who were out looking for news. They were Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, Hakim ibn Hizam and Budayl ibn Warqa'. Al-Abbas brought Abu Sufyan into the camp on the Prophet ﷺ's own white mule. On the way they passed Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, who wanted Abu Sufyan executed on the spot. The Prophet ﷺ had Abu Sufyan spend the night in al-Abbas's tent. The next morning, pressed by both men, Abu Sufyan reluctantly testified to the shahada. The Prophet ﷺ then declared that anyone who entered the Haram, stayed in their own home, or entered the house of Abu Sufyan would be safe. He also had al-Abbas show Abu Sufyan the army as it marched past, tribe by tribe. Abu Sufyan marveled at its size and said to al-Abbas, "The kingdom of your nephew has become great." Al-Abbas corrected him, "It is not a kingdom. It is prophethood." The final entry came on the morning of the 20th of Ramadan. The people of Makkah still did not know what was coming. The secret had been kept so completely, over a force of more than 10,000, that it was remembered as nothing short of a miracle. At Dhu Tuwa, the Prophet ﷺ divided the army. According to Ibn Ishaq, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA took the left and Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA led the Ansar. Khalid ibn al-Walid RA took the right, with Aslam, Sulaym, Ghifar, Muzayna, Juhayna and other Arab tribes. Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA led the troops ahead of the Prophet ﷺ. As Sa'd ibn Ubadah passed Abu Sufyan, he called out, "Today is the day of a great battle, and today the Ka'bah will be made lawful!" Abu Sufyan reported this to the Prophet ﷺ. According to al-Bukhari, the Prophet ﷺ said that Sa'd was wrong. Today, he said, Allah would honour the Ka'bah, and today it would be covered. In Ibn Ishaq's account, the Prophet ﷺ had the banner taken from Sa'd and given to Ali RA. In al-Bukhari's account, Zubayr RA carried the Prophet ﷺ's own flag. Al-Abbas RA then sent Abu Sufyan back into the city to warn the Quraysh not to fight. Abu Sufyan ran through the streets calling, "Come to my house and you will be safe!" His wife, Hind bint Utbah, was still a pagan, and she was furious. She seized him by the moustache and called for him to be killed as a wretched protector of his people. But Abu Sufyan held his ground. When people pressed him on what one house could do for the whole city, he spelled out the full terms of safety. They would be safe in the Haram, in their own homes, or in his house. The army entered Makkah from the east and the west. The Prophet ﷺ ordered that no one be killed unless they attacked first. He named only a small number of people who were left out of this general amnesty. A handful of Quraysh made a brief, hopeless stand in the alleys of the city. They were led by Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal, Safwan ibn Umayyah and Suhayl ibn Amr. The books report that around 13 to 20 men of Quraysh were killed. Only two Muslims were killed, both in the flank of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA. The resistance soon collapsed. The Prophet ﷺ then entered the city on his camel, wearing armour. His head was bowed so low that it nearly touched the camel's back, and he was reciting Surah al-Fath (Qur'an 48:1). He rode to the Ka'bah and performed tawaf on his camel. There were more than 350 idols around it, and some say 360. As he passed each one, he pointed his staff at it, and it fell. All the while he was reciting, "Truth has come, and falsehood has departed" (Qur'an 17:81). He then had Uthman ibn Talha bring the key, and he cleared the idols and images out of the Ka'bah. One image showed Ibrahim AS with divination arrows. The Prophet ﷺ said, "May Allah curse them! By Allah, neither Ibrahim nor Isma'il practised divination by arrows." A report in Ibn Sa'd also mentions a picture of Mary and Jesus, but that report is very weak. The Prophet ﷺ is also reported to have prayed inside the Ka'bah, with Bilal RA beside him. Bilal RA said that he prayed two rak'ahs between the pillars, but Ibn Abbas RA reported that he did not pray inside. He once told Aisha RA that he would have rebuilt the Ka'bah on Ibrahim AS's original foundations, and lowered its door to the ground, if the Quraysh had not been so new to Islam. Even now, he chose not to force that renovation through. Speaking from the door of the Ka'bah, the Prophet ﷺ declared, "There is no God but Allah alone. He has fulfilled His promise, and He has aided His servant, and He has destroyed all the enemies by Himself." He abolished every claim of the Jahiliyyah, the age of ignorance before Islam, except two. These were the custodianship of the Ka'bah and the feeding of pilgrims. He also recited Qur'an 49:13, on the equality of all mankind before Allah. He asked the assembled Quraysh what they thought he would do with them. They answered, "Good. You are a noble brother, son of a noble brother." The Prophet ﷺ said, "Go your way, for you are the freed ones" (Ibn Ishaq). Some tellings add the words of Yusuf AS, "No blame on you today" (Qur'an 12:92). Ali ibn Abi Talib RA asked whether both the custodianship of the Ka'bah (sadana) and the feeding of pilgrims (siqaya) could be given to Banu Hashim. Instead, the Prophet ﷺ called for Uthman ibn Talha and said, "Here is your key; today is a day of good faith" (Ibn Ishaq). Other reports link this to Qur'an 4:58. The custodianship has stayed with Uthman's clan, the Banu Abd al-Dar, ever since. In the immediate aftermath of the conquest, by one report, the Prophet ﷺ allowed the Khuza'a to take revenge on the Banu Bakr until the time of Asr. After that he forbade any more bloodshed in the Haram. The next day, men of Khuza'a killed Ibn al-Athwa' of Hudhayl. The Prophet ﷺ told them to stop, and he paid the blood money himself. He ruled that from then on a victim's family could choose either retaliation or blood money. He stressed that Allah alone had allowed him to fight inside the sanctuary, and only for a short time. Unusually among the conquests of human history, no war booty, prisoners or land were taken. Almost no fighting took place at all. Out of the whole city, only a small number of people were denied the amnesty by name, and the lists differ. Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal fled to Yemen, meaning to sail for Abyssinia. He turned to Islam at the sea. In Ibn Ishaq's account this was because the ship's master demanded belief in one God, while other tellings say it happened during a storm. He came back under the protection that his wife, Umm Hakim, obtained for him. He later died a martyr fighting the Romans. Abdullah ibn Khatal had killed the Muslim freedman who served him, and he had turned murtad, leaving Islam. He clung to the curtain of the Ka'bah for protection, but he was executed. Miqyas ibn Subaba was executed for assassinating a sahabi in revenge for his brother's accidental death at al-Muraysi'. Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi al-Sarh had once been the Prophet ﷺ's scribe. He had turned murtad and slandered the revelation of the Qur'an. His foster brother, Uthman ibn Affan RA, pleaded for him, and he was pardoned. Ibn Khatal had two singing girls, Fartanah and her companion. One of them was killed, and the other fled and was later pardoned. Sarah had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, and she too was later pardoned. Habbar ibn al-Aswad had caused the miscarriage of Zaynab bint Muhammad ﷺ. He later repented and was forgiven. Al-Huwayrith ibn Nuqaydh was one of those who had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, and he was executed by Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. By another report, he had attacked Fatima and Umm Kulthum RA on their journey to Madinah. Wahshi, who had killed Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, fled to Ta'if and converted about a year later. In the end, four of those named were killed. They were Ibn Khatal, Miqyas, al-Huwayrith and one of the singing girls. After the khutbah, the Prophet ﷺ had Bilal ibn Rabah RA climb onto the Ka'bah and give the first adhan ever called in Makkah. Bilal was an Abyssinian former slave. Now he was raised, literally and symbolically, above the Quraysh who had once tortured him. As Bilal gave the adhan, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb was standing with two leading men of Quraysh, al-Harith ibn Hisham and Itab ibn Asid. Itab said that his late father had been spared the humiliation of seeing Bilal raised above them. Al-Harith said that if he thought this man was on the truth, he would follow him. Abu Sufyan, a new Muslim, would not say anything. He said that if he spoke, even the stones would tell the Prophet ﷺ. Later, as the Prophet ﷺ left the Haram, he repeated to each of the three, word for word, what they had said. Al-Harith accepted Islam on the spot, and Itab accepted it later. Al-Harith is the Companion who asked the Prophet ﷺ how revelation came to him. Al-Bukhari reports this without saying when it happened. By one report, al-Harith died a martyr at the Battle of Yarmouk in 15 AH. Water meant for him was passed on twice. He gave it to Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal RA, who passed it to Ayyash ibn Abi Rabi'ah RA. All three died before it could be drunk. The Prophet ﷺ then sat at Mount Safa, where the public call to Islam had begun two decades earlier. There he took the bay'ah, the pledge of allegiance, from the men of Quraysh, fulfilling Qur'an 110:2. Mujashi' ibn Mas'ud RA brought his brother to pledge to make the Hijrah. The Prophet ﷺ said that there was no migration after the Conquest, but that he would take his pledge for Islam. In Ibn Abbas RA's report, he said, "There is no emigration after the Conquest, but jihad and intention." He then took the pledge of the women of Quraysh, following Qur'an 60:12. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA administered it in person, since the Prophet ﷺ never touched the hand of a woman who was not related to him. Hind bint Utbah came veiled, and at first she was not recognized. She argued with each condition in turn. She objected that women were being asked for more than men. She admitted that she had secretly taken some of Abu Sufyan's wealth, and he forgave her on the spot. She protested that a free woman would never commit zina. When the pledge forbade killing children, Hind retorted that the Muslims had killed the sons of Quraysh as grown men at Badr. Umar laughed uncontrollably at that reply. The Prophet ﷺ had recognized her when Abu Sufyan spoke, and he asked, "Then you are Hind bint Utbah?" She asked him to forgive what was past, and he went on with the pledge. Meanwhile, some of the Ansar worried among themselves. They feared that now the Prophet ﷺ had returned to his own people, he had grown soft toward them. Revelation came to him, and he told the Ansar, "I migrated towards Allah and towards you. I will live with you and will die with you." They wept (Muslim). The Prophet ﷺ stayed in Makkah for 19 days. During that time, several notable figures held out for a while before finally accepting Islam. By a weak report, a young man named Fudala ibn Umayr was enraged at the defeat. He hid a dagger, meaning to kill the Prophet ﷺ during tawaf. The Prophet ﷺ confronted him by name, and Fudala lied about what he intended. The Prophet ﷺ laughed, asked Allah's forgiveness, and placed a hand on his chest. Fudala later said that from then on no one was more beloved to him. He accepted Islam on the spot. Safwan ibn Umayyah had joined the hopeless resistance. He fled to Jeddah, intending to drown himself. Umayr ibn Wahb RA begged the Prophet ﷺ to grant Safwan protection. Then he caught up with Safwan, carrying the Prophet ﷺ's own turban as proof. He talked him out of boarding the ship and brought him back toward Makkah. Safwan asked for two months to decide, and he was given four. He accepted Islam later, after Hunayn. By some reports, this was after he had lent the Muslims armour and had been given a large share of the spoils of Hunayn. Suhayl ibn Amr had been the Quraysh's negotiator at Hudaybiyyah. By a report not found in Ibn Ishaq, he locked himself in his house in terror. He sent his Muslim son, Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA, to beg for protection on his behalf. The Prophet ﷺ granted it at once. He told the sahaba to receive Suhayl with respect, since "he is too intelligent to be ignorant of Islam". Suhayl accepted Islam about a month later, after Hunayn and the Siege of Ta'if. Abu Quhafa was the blind, elderly father of Abu Bakr RA, and he had long opposed Islam. His granddaughter, Asma bint Abi Bakr RA, led him by the hand to the Prophet ﷺ, who was sitting with Abu Bakr. The Prophet ﷺ asked Abu Bakr why he had not left the old man at home, so that he could go to him there. Abu Bakr answered that it was more fitting for his father to come. The Prophet ﷺ stroked Abu Quhafa's chest and invited him to Islam. He told them to change the whiteness of his hair, but to avoid black. Umm Hani' bint Abi Talib RA also embraced Islam during this time. She was a daughter of Abu Talib, a full sister of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, and a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ. She had kept her old faith right up until the Conquest. Two of her in-laws from Banu Makhzum fled to her, and Ali RA swore that he would kill them. She bolted her door on them and went to the Prophet ﷺ. She found him bathing, screened by his daughter Fatima RA. He welcomed her and said, "O Umm Hani', we grant protection to whomever you have granted protection." The right to grant protection belongs to any Muslim, man or woman. Umm Hani' RA also narrated that she saw the Prophet ﷺ pray eight rak'ahs of Salat al-Duha that morning. It is the only surviving report of how many rak'ahs he himself prayed of that prayer. One of the last holdouts was Abdullah ibn al-Zab'ari of Banu Sahm, the official poet of the Quraysh. For years he had traded stinging verses with Hassan ibn Thabit RA. At the Conquest he fled to Najran rather than face the Muslims. Then a single verse that Hassan RA aimed at him stung him, and he resolved to return and embrace Islam. In some tellings his cousin objected, and he answered him, "Why should I not convert? ... Should I not go back to my own kith and kin, my own cousin? He is the best of all mankind." By reports not found in Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet ﷺ saw him approaching the Ka'bah from a distance. He remarked to the sahaba, "That is Ibn al-Zab'ari; and I see from him the nur of Iman." Ibn al-Zab'ari then gave the shahada and made a moving declaration of repentance for his years of hostile poetry. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "Islam wipes away all that you have done in the past." He spent the rest of his life writing poetry in praise of Islam. By one report, the Prophet ﷺ gave him his cloak for it. The Prophet ﷺ no longer had a house of his own in Makkah. Abu Talib had died a mushrik. Under the ruling that a Muslim does not inherit from a disbeliever, his house passed instead to his non-Muslim sons, Talib and Aqil, and Aqil later sold it. So the Prophet ﷺ set up a tent at al-Hujun for his 19 days in the city. Ali RA asked whether they would go back to their old family house, and the Prophet ﷺ replied, "And did Aqil leave any property for us to live in?" In al-Bukhari's report it was Usama ibn Zayd RA who asked where they would stay, and the reply is given as "Has Aqil left for us any house to lodge in?" He shortened his prayers throughout the stay. Ibn Abbas RA put the stay at nineteen days, and Ibn Ishaq at fifteen nights. During these 19 days, the Prophet ﷺ gave short sermons teaching the new Muslims the basics of the religion. He reaffirmed that Makkah would always be sacred. He declared, "Allah has made Makkah sacred the day that He created the heavens and the earth, and it shall remain sacred until the Day of Judgment ... Makkah was never halal before me, nor shall it be halal after me. And even for me, it was made halal just for an hour of the day." He forbade the sale of alcohol, carcasses, pigs and idols. This ended the Makkans' profitable trade in carving idols. It also established the fiqh principle that whatever is unlawful to use is also unlawful to sell. Scholars differ on when zawaj al-mut'ah was prohibited, but most place its final prohibition at the Conquest. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA fell ill in Makkah. In al-Bukhari's main report, this happened in the year of the Farewell Hajj. His only heir was one daughter, and he asked the Prophet ﷺ whether he could leave two-thirds of his wealth by will. The Prophet ﷺ said, "No, too much." Sa'd asked about half, and got the same answer. Then Sa'd proposed a third. This led to a ruling still followed in Islamic inheritance law. A bequest to anyone outside the Qur'anic heirs may not be more than one-third. A noblewoman of Banu Makhzum was caught stealing, and Usama ibn Zayd RA, who was beloved of the Prophet ﷺ, pleaded for her. The Prophet ﷺ became angry and answered, "Do you intercede in a case connected with Allah's prescribed punishments?" Then in a sermon he said that if Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad ﷺ, were to steal, he would cut off her hand. The woman later visited Aisha RA regularly, and Aisha passed on her requests to the Prophet ﷺ. This shows that a punishment does not brand a person a criminal for life. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Abd ibn Zam'ah RA also had a dispute over a boy born to the slave-girl of Zam'ah. Sa'd claimed the boy for his brother Utbah. Abd ibn Zam'ah claimed him as his own brother, born on his father's bed. The Prophet ﷺ settled the case with his verdict, "The boy is for the bed, and the stone is for the adulterer" (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ also sent small expeditions to destroy the remaining centres of idol worship. He commanded every household to destroy its own idols. He sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to destroy the great idol al-Uzza, which is mentioned in Qur'an 53:19. By other reports, he sent another party to destroy Manat (Qur'an 53:20). At Nakhla, al-Uzza's guardian, a man of Sulaym, hung his sword on the idol and climbed the mountain. He called on al-Uzza to strike Khalid down. Khalid destroyed the idol and returned (Ibn Ishaq). This success was spoiled by a mistake of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA, who was a very recent convert and did not yet know fiqh well. He was sent to invite the Banu Jadhimah to Islam, a tribe that had killed his uncle in the Jahiliyyah. They took up their weapons, and he told them to lay them down, since everyone had accepted Islam. They did so, saying "Saba'na, saba'na", because they could not say "Aslamna". Khalid then had them tied up, and he killed a number of them (Ibn Ishaq; al-Bukhari). Abdullah ibn Umar RA and his companions refused Khalid's order to kill their captives. Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA told Khalid that he had committed a pagan act in Islam. The two men quarrelled, and Khalid insulted him. When the Prophet ﷺ heard the news, he stood facing the Ka'bah, raised his hands, and declared, "O Allah, I am free from what Khalid has done." He then sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA with money to pay blood money and to apologize to the grieving families on his behalf. When he heard about the quarrel, the Prophet ﷺ said, "None should revile my Companions, for if one among you were to spend as much gold as Uhud, it would not amount to one mudd of one of them, or half of it" (Muslim). The 19 days secured only the area immediately around Makkah. Ta'if, the fortified city on a plateau that had once driven out and stoned the Prophet ﷺ, was still beyond the army's reach. It would be dealt with in the campaigns that followed.

This is the story of a second letter between the Prophet ﷺ and Heraclius, the Roman emperor. Unlike the first, it is not in al-Bukhari. It is found in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad. It was told by the Tanukhi himself, a Christian Arab of the tribe of Tanukh whose name was never recorded. In his old age, at nearly a hundred, he lived in Hims, and a neighbor of his there, Sa'id ibn Abi Rashid, asked him about the letters. The Tanukhi said that when the Prophet ﷺ came to Tabuk, he sent Dihyah al-Kalbi to Heraclius with a letter. Heraclius had seen how much this man had achieved since the first letter. He locked himself in his palace with his patriarchs and priests, and suggested that they follow the Prophet ﷺ, or at least make peace with him. The priests were outraged and rushed for the door. Heraclius then told them he had only been testing how firm they were. After this, Heraclius asked for an Arabic speaker who could carry a message and remember what was said, and the Tanukhi was brought to him. Heraclius gave him a letter and told him to check three things. Would the Prophet ﷺ mention the letters he had written? Would he say anything about night when he read Heraclius's letter? And was there a mark on his back? The Tanukhi found the Prophet ﷺ sitting with his Companions by the well at Tabuk, and handed him the letter. The Prophet ﷺ put it aside and asked where he was from. Then he invited him to Islam, the hanifiyyah, the religion of his father Ibrahim. The Tanukhi replied that he was an ambassador for a people with their own religion, and would not change it while on their mission. He would go home and think about it. The Prophet ﷺ laughed and recited the verse, "You do not guide those whom you love, rather, Allah guides those whom He pleases" (28:56). Then the Prophet ﷺ said, "O you person of Tanukh, I wrote a letter to Kisra of Persia, and he ripped it apart, so Allah will rip his kingdom apart. And I wrote a letter to the Najashi, and he ripped it apart, so Allah will rip his kingdom apart. And I wrote my letter to your companion, and he kept it safe, so people will continue to see his strength as long as there is some good to life." This Najashi was not the righteous king who had sheltered the Muslims, but his son, who ruled after him. That was the first sign, and the Tanukhi scratched a mark on his parchment with an arrow from his quiver. He asked who could read the letter to the Prophet ﷺ, and Mu'awiyah was called to read it. In it, Heraclius asked where Hell could be, if the Prophet ﷺ was inviting him to a Garden as wide as the heavens and the earth. The Prophet ﷺ answered, "Subhan'Allah, where does the night go when the day comes?" That was the second sign, and the Tanukhi marked it down. The Prophet ﷺ then said that an ambassador had a right to a gift, but that they were traveling and had nothing to give. Uthman stood up and gave the Tanukhi a yellow robe, and an Ansari took him home as his guest for the night. The next day, when the Tanukhi stood up to leave, the third sign was still unchecked. The Prophet ﷺ called him, "Come here, O person of Tanukh." When he stood in front of him, the Prophet ﷺ pulled back his garment and said, "Come and look at what your master has told you to look at." The Tanukhi saw the Seal of Prophethood between his shoulder blades, and said it looked like a large cupping mark. He went back to Heraclius with all three signs confirmed. Some say he later became a Muslim, and others say he remained a Christian.

After the Conquest of Makkah, the tribe of Thaqif decided to fight. Thaqif was the tribe of the city of Ta'if, whose idol was al-Lat. They understood that the conquest meant the end of idol worship in Arabia unless they acted. With the Quraysh now defeated, they also wanted to take control of the Ka'bah for themselves. Thaqif sent messengers to every pagan tribe in the region. More than 20,000 pagan fighters gathered under their banner, the largest gathering of pagan Arabs in Arabian history. The two largest groups were Thaqif and the Bedouin tribe of Hawazin, who together made up about 10,000. The Prophet ﷺ sent Abdullah ibn Abi Hadrat RA, a new convert, to scout the forces of Ta'if. He came back and reported that he had never seen such a large gathering. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA doubted the report. Abdullah rebuked him, reminding him that Umar had once disbelieved the Prophet ﷺ himself. The Prophet ﷺ then gathered about 12,000 men. Of these, 10,000 had come with him from Madinah. The other 2,000 were new converts from Makkah, and some of them were not yet even Muslim. One of these was Safwan ibn Umayyah RA. The Prophet ﷺ borrowed a hundred coats of mail, with their weapons, from Safwan, as a loan to be returned. The Muslims left Makkah on the 6th of Shawwal, 8 AH. According to Sahih al-Bukhari they had stayed there about 19 days, though other reports give shorter periods. They reached the valley of Hunayn on the 10th. They camped there rather than at Ta'if itself, because Thaqif had already gathered their forces in that area. On the pagan side, the young chieftain Malik ibn Awf al-Nasri had just been chosen as leader. An old, blind nobleman named Durayd ibn al-Sima gave him advice. He urged Malik to send the tribe's women, children and livestock back to safety, and not to bring them onto the battlefield. He warned that having them there would not help the men fight. Malik refused. He even threatened to kill himself rather than be overruled. So the families and flocks stayed on the field. Thaqif and Hawazin had set a trap. They placed a small decoy force at the mouth of the valley that the Muslims had to cross. The main part of their army, with hundreds of archers, hid in the mountains on both sides. As the Muslims advanced, the decoy force ran away and drew the Muslim army deep into the pass. Then the hidden archers above let fly volleys of arrows, and the main pagan army charged. Many in the Muslim army were inexperienced new converts without proper armour. They panicked and fled in every direction. The Prophet ﷺ was left almost alone on his mule. Among the small group who stayed near him was Umm Sulaym, a woman of the Ansar. She jumped down from her mount and drew a small dagger. She told the Companions she would use it on anyone who reached her. The Prophet ﷺ called out, "Come to me! I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ! I am Muhammad ﷺ, the son of Abdullah!" He also declared, "I am the Prophet ﷺ, there is no lie about this! I am the son of Abdul Muttalib." In this way he called on both his prophethood and his family line. His uncle, al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, was known for his powerful voice. The Prophet ﷺ asked him to call the fleeing Muhajirun and Ansar back, by name and by tribe. Al-Abbas stood up on his mount and called on them to return. As they came back fighting, the Prophet ﷺ declared, "Now the real fight begins!" This is the first recorded use of that Arabic expression. Then he took a handful of dust and threw it towards Thaqif. He said, "May the faces be disfigured." After that the battle turned, and the Muslims surged forward. Allah then sent down His sakina, or tranquillity, upon the Prophet ﷺ and the believers. As Surah al-Tawbah 9:25-26 relates, He also sent unseen forces to help them. A number of people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, reported seeing these angels come down. One of them was Jubayr ibn Mut'im RA. He described a thick black cloud coming down from the sky and spreading out among the people like ants. In the middle of the chaos, there was another danger. Shayba ibn Uthman was a distant cousin of the Prophet ﷺ from the Banu Abd al-Dar, and he had only recently converted. His father, Uthman ibn Abi Talha, had been killed at Uhud fighting against the Muslims. Shayba rode at the Prophet ﷺ's unguarded back, meaning to avenge his father. A blinding light stopped him. The Prophet ﷺ turned, sensed what was happening, and made du'a for Shayba to be guided. Iman entered Shayba's heart at once. He turned and fought alongside the Muslims for the rest of the battle. Thaqif and Hawazin had relied completely on the ambush, and they had no backup plan. Once the Muslims regrouped and charged, the pagan coalition fled in every direction. The Prophet ﷺ ordered the Companions to chase them into the surrounding valleys and mountains before the scattered tribesmen could regroup. A long series of small expeditions followed. Several sahaba were wounded or killed in them. One of those killed was Abu Amir RA, the uncle of Abu Musa al-Ash'ari RA, who was fatally struck by a javelin. Afterwards, the Prophet ﷺ walked across the battlefield. He came upon the body of a woman who had been killed, and he said it was not right that she had been killed. He learned that Khalid ibn al-Walid RA had killed her. The Prophet ﷺ sent word to Khalid, forbidding him to kill any more women, children or other non-combatants. A second large part of the fleeing coalition regrouped at a place called Awtas. Another skirmish took place there. Some Muslims were killed or wounded before the Muslims won. Only four Muslims were killed in the Battle of Hunayn itself, though many were wounded. Famously, the wounded included all four of the future Khulafa al-Rashidun: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali RA. All four stood with the Prophet ﷺ, and all four were wounded that day.

The Battle of Tabuk has two names, and the sahaba used both. The first is Ghazwa Tabuk, because the Muslim army was saved at Tabuk. On the march the sahaba had run out of water. Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA reports that the Prophet ﷺ told them they would reach the spring of Tabuk the next day, at the hottest part of the day. He warned them not to touch its water until he arrived. Two men touched it before he came, and they were rebuked. The Prophet ﷺ then washed his hands and face in what water remained, and the water gushed out until the whole army drank from it. The army is traditionally reported as 20,000 men, though figures like this in the sources were often inflated. The second name is Jaysh al-Usrah, the Army of Difficulty. Imam al-Bukhari records this name alongside Ghazwa Tabuk in his own chapter heading. The army earned the name because this campaign was harsher than any other. Managing so large an army strained food, water and supplies. The march took place in the hottest part of the year, with temperatures around 110°F. It was also the longest distance any army led by the Prophet ﷺ ever marched, roughly 650 km northwest of Madinah. Finally, it fell during Madinah's August harvest. This was a farming society with no idea of a steady salary, so leaving meant giving up the year's main income. The expedition took place in the month of Rajab, 9 AH, exactly six months after the Siege of Ta'if. It was the Prophet ﷺ's final ghazwa, or military campaign. After it he made his Farewell Hajj and fell ill, and from there the seerah moves toward his death and the khilafa. No swords actually clashed at Tabuk. The difficulty was the march itself. Every able-bodied man was called to take part, even men from as far away as Makkah. The most famous story of the expedition, however, is not about the march. It is about the people who missed it. Ka'b ibn Malik RA was one of the earliest Ansari converts, from Banu Salama, and he had taken part in the Bay'at al-Aqaba. He owned two camels and was healthier and wealthier than he had ever been. Even so, he kept putting off his preparations day after day, until the army had gone too far to catch. Ka'b was not alone. Apart from the hypocrites and those with a genuine excuse, the whole city had marched. When the Prophet ﷺ returned, more than eighty of the men who had stayed behind came to him, swore oaths and offered excuses. He accepted what they said at face value and left their true intentions to Allah. Qur'an 9:43 later mildly rebuked him for this. Only three men refused to lie and told the Prophet ﷺ the plain truth. They were Ka'b, Murara ibn al-Rabi' al-Amri RA and Hilal ibn Umayyah al-Waqifi RA. Murara and Hilal were both veterans of Badr. The Prophet ﷺ forbade the whole community to speak to the three of them. For fifty nights everyone shunned them. In Ka'b's case, this included his own cousin Abu Qatada RA. During this time the King of Ghassan sent Ka'b a letter to lure him away. Ka'b burned it, seeing it as a test. Forty days in, the three men were also ordered to separate from their wives. On the fiftieth morning, Ka'b was praying Fajr on his rooftop. A man of the Aslam tribe climbed Jabal Sal', the mountain you can see as you leave the Masjid al-Nabawi. He called out that Allah had accepted their repentance. His voice reached Ka'b before a horseman who had been sent to bring the news in person. Ka'b gave that horseman the only clothes he owned. He then had to borrow a garment from a neighbour so that he could go to the Prophet ﷺ. The repentance of Ka'b and his two companions was announced across Madinah. It was the occasion for Qur'an 9:117-119, which speaks of Allah turning in mercy to "the three who were left behind." Of all the Muhajirun, only Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA stood up to congratulate Ka'b. From that day on, Ka'b resolved never again to knowingly tell a lie. Before the army set out, the Prophet ﷺ called for donations from the minbar, and the sahaba raced to give. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA thought he could finally outdo Abu Bakr RA. He brought half his wealth and told the Prophet ﷺ that he had left an equal amount for his family. This is narrated in Sunan al-Tirmidhi. Then Abu Bakr RA brought everything he owned. He said he had left his family only "Allah and His Messenger ﷺ." Umar admitted that he could never compete with him again. Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA had arrived in Madinah with nothing but the clothes on his back. Now he gave 200 uqiyas of grain. Uthman ibn Affan RA gave on two occasions that are remembered. The first was during the Prophet ﷺ's khutbah. Uthman pledged a hundred camels, then raised it to two hundred, and finally to three hundred with everything they carried. At that, the Prophet ﷺ came down from the minbar and declared, "Uthman has no sin after what he has done today." The second came when one of Uthman's trading caravans returned from Syria around the same time. He sold the whole caravan for roughly a thousand gold coins and poured the coins out before the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Whatever Uthman does after today, it will not harm him." Years later, when the neo-Kharijites turned against Uthman, Ibn Abbas RA reminded them of this promise in his defence. The hypocrites, by contrast, gave nothing and mocked those who did. A poor Ansari man had earned two handfuls of dates by drawing water all night, and he brought one of them. Two hypocrites jeered at him. They said that Allah had no need of so little, and that the man needed it more than anyone. This prompted Qur'an 9:79. Other hypocrites made excuses to avoid marching at all. Al-Jad ibn Qays asked to be let off, claiming he feared he would lose self-control around Roman women. The Prophet ﷺ simply turned away from him, and Qur'an 9:49 is tied to this. Qur'an 9:81-82 and 9:42 rebuke the wider group of hypocrites for rejoicing at staying behind and for finding the journey too far. On the other side were the Bakka'un, "the Criers." They were roughly seven men, including relatives of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari and Irbad ibn Sariya RA. They wanted to march but had no mount. When the Prophet ﷺ told them so, they wept (Qur'an 9:92). Later, at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ told the sahaba that sincere companions like these, back in Madinah, shared fully in the army's reward. Ulba ibn Zayd RA had no wealth to give. Instead, he pledged to defend the Prophet ﷺ with his own honour against the hypocrites' taunts. The Prophet ﷺ accepted this as charity. Wathila ibn al-Asqa' RA also had no money and no mount. Every day he went to the marketplace and offered his future share of the ghanima, the spoils of war, to anyone who would take him along. In the end, an elder of the Ansar agreed to share a camel and meals with him. Later, Wathila tried to hand over the very camels he had won as booty in payment, but the elder refused to accept them. Two other companions also put off their preparations, as Ka'b ibn Malik RA had, and nearly missed the expedition. But they recovered themselves at the last moment. Abu Khaythama al-Ansari RA delayed just as Ka'b did. Then he came home and found that his wife had prepared a shaded, watered rug and food for him. He rebuked himself for enjoying comfort while the Prophet ﷺ endured the heat, and he rushed out alone to catch up. The Prophet ﷺ spotted a lone rider in the distance and said, "Let it be Abu Khaythama." When he arrived, the Prophet ﷺ asked him why he had been delayed. Once he heard the story, he gently rebuked him, saying, "Woe to you, Abu Khaythama!" Abu Dharr al-Ghifari RA fell behind because his camel was unfit to travel. So he loaded its burden onto his own back and walked the whole distance alone. The Prophet ﷺ saw a solitary figure approaching on foot and said, "Let it be Abu Dharr!" Then he remarked, "May Allah have mercy upon Abu Dharr. He is walking by himself, he will die by himself, and he will be resurrected by himself." Years later, this was fulfilled almost exactly when Abu Dharr died alone in the desert. Ibn Sa'd places his death in the khilafa of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. His exile and death have their own separate event. The hypocrites also organised opposition during this same period. This included building Masjid al-Dirar as a rival headquarters. That story is treated as its own event (see Masjid al-Dirar), because it unfolded on a separate track at the same time as the march. Before leaving Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ put Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA in charge of the city's affairs. He always appointed someone to run the city whenever he left it. He told Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to stay behind and take charge of his household, the Mother of the Believers and the Ahl al-Bayt, since the journey would take more than a month. The munafiqun, the hypocrites, mocked Ali RA for staying behind and called him unfit to fight. Ali RA was well known for his bravery, but the taunt stung him. He armed himself and caught up with the army to protest. The Prophet ﷺ reassured him with what is known as the hadith of manzila. He said, "Are you not content to be with me like Harun was with Musa, except that there is no prophet after me?" Ali RA was left in charge only of the Prophet ﷺ's family, not of Madinah itself. Madinah was Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA's responsibility. Sunni scholars point to this detail against the Shia reading of the hadith, which takes it as evidence of a designated political succession. The army left by way of Thaniyat al-Wada'. This is the hill north of the Haram where Madinan families traditionally gathered to say farewell to travellers. There the Prophet ﷺ paused to organise the army into battalions by tribe, each with its own leader and flag. It was the largest army ever assembled under him. He had no military training, yet this organisation showed his skill. On the march, the sahaba began falling asleep on their mounts after Fajr, and their camels scattered. Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA found himself riding alone, close to the Prophet ﷺ. He took the chance to ask him privately what deed would gain him Jannah. This conversation is preserved at length in Musnad Imam Ahmad (see the Sayings & Actions below). The army camped at Tabuk for twenty days, and the Prophet ﷺ prayed qasr, the shortened prayer of a traveller, throughout. Later fiqh discussions cite this when asking how long a traveller (musafir) praying qasr may stay in one place. The morning after they arrived, he ﷺ also delivered a khutbah, which Uqba ibn Amir al-Juhani RA preserved (see the separate Khutbah at Tabuk event). During the twenty days at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ also sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to Dawmat al-Jandal. There Khalid captured Ukaydir ibn Abd al-Malik, the Kindah chieftain. Through treaties, he sealed the whole northern frontier against Rome (see the separate Dawmat al-Jandal expedition). Over the twenty days at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ gave many short khutbahs and khatirahs, or brief talks. Several of them are preserved in the books of hadith and seerah. In one, he ﷺ said that Allah had given him five things granted to no prophet before him. First, he ﷺ was sent to all of mankind, not to one people alone. Second, Allah made him victorious through the awe his enemies felt a month's journey away. Third, ghanima was made lawful for him ﷺ, though it had not been for earlier nations. Fourth, the whole earth was made a place of purification and prayer, so his ﷺ ummah could pray anywhere, not only in a house of worship. Fifth, he ﷺ had saved his own personal request to Allah for the Day of Judgment, and he promised it to whoever testifies la ilaha illallah. This is understood as the Great Intercession. In another talk, narrated by Awf ibn Malik RA, he ﷺ foretold six signs before the Day of Judgment. The last of them are a truce and then a betrayal by the Bani al-Asfar, the Romans. The stay also saw repeated miracles in which food and water increased when supplies ran low. These were reported four or five times on this expedition alone. There was also a karamah, in which a companion who was lost in the dark found his way back to camp by the light of his own glowing fingers. One Fajr, the Prophet ﷺ was delayed while performing wudu, so Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA led the salah. Al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA helped the Prophet ﷺ with his wudu and narrated what happened. His account includes the Prophet ﷺ's instruction to leave his khuff, his leather socks, on rather than take them off for washing. The Prophet ﷺ then prayed the rak'ah he had missed behind Abd al-Rahman. It was the only time in his life ﷺ that he prayed a full rak'ah led by a companion. During these days the companion Abdullah Dhu al-Bijadayn RA also died, and the Prophet ﷺ buried him with his own hands (see the separate event on his death and burial). The hadith literature also dates several fiqh rulings to Tabuk. One is that washing each limb once in wudu is enough when water is scarce. Another is that the Prophet ﷺ prayed with a sutrah roughly the size of a camel's saddle. A third is that he ﷺ combined salahs only while actually on the move, and not once he had settled, even briefly. He had done the same at the Conquest of Makkah the year before. At Tabuk he still prayed qasr for the whole twenty days, but he did not combine. The last is that the skin of a dead animal becomes pure, and so usable, once it is tanned. On the return march, the army passed through al-Hijr. These are the rock-carved dwellings of the ancient people of Thamud and of Prophet Saleh AS (see the separate event on passing by al-Hijr). At one point the animals grew too weak to carry the army. The Prophet ﷺ made a du'a over them, and they were strengthened. Decades later, at the Muslim conquest of Cyprus in 28 AH, the companion Fudala RA recognised that this du'a had been fulfilled. When water ran short, the Prophet ﷺ prayed for rain. After a night of rain, he gave a khutbah. In it he contrasted the believers, who credited the rain to Allah, with the hypocrites, who credited it to a star. Then the Prophet ﷺ's own camel went missing. A hypocrite mocked him ﷺ, saying that he claimed revelation from heaven yet did not know where his own camel was. The Prophet ﷺ then announced, through revelation, exactly where the camel was, and it was found there. A companion who learned who had made the mocking remark expelled the man from his unit. Elsewhere on the march, some hypocrites mocked the Prophet ﷺ's prophecies that Rome and Persia would be conquered. They were exposed when Qur'an 9:64-66 was revealed. The verses quoted the mocker's excuse before he could even finish giving it (see the separate event on the munafiqun's mockery). Separately, a group of some fourteen or fifteen hypocrites made a sudden, unplanned attempt to throw the Prophet ﷺ off a cliff at night. His own evasive action foiled them. Ammar ibn Yasir RA and Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA were watching, but did not realise what was happening (see the separate event on the assassination attempt). The army finally returned to Madinah after some fifty to sixty days away. The city's women and children came out to greet it at Thaniyat al-Wada'. Among them was the companion al-Sa'ib RA, who was then a child. This welcome is popularly linked to the Hijrah, but Sh. Yasir Qadhi and others hold that it belongs here instead (see the separate event on the return to Madinah). Also on the return march, one of the munafiqs was reported to have said that if Islam were true, it would mean that they themselves were more misguided than donkeys. He then swore under oath that he had never said it. Allah exposed the lie in Surat al-Tawba (Qur'an 9:74). Other hypocrites, who had stayed behind, told one another, "Do not march forth in the heat." The same surah replied that the Fire of Hell is far hotter (Qur'an 9:81-82). There is also a popular story that is widely repeated as the reason Qur'an 9:75-77 was revealed. In it, a named sahabi begs the Prophet ﷺ for wealth and promises to become generous. Once Allah grants him riches, he turns stingy. Later he repents, but his charity is refused. Sh. Yasir Qadhi rejects this story as unreliable. Its chain is weak, and it also has the Prophet ﷺ refusing the charity of a man who had repented. That contradicts the Qur'an's own teaching that Allah accepts repentance. The verses instead describe the hypocrites in general. Some of them vowed to give charity if they were made wealthy, then grew stingy once Allah provided for them.

Before Islam, the Arabs had no shared calendar. Each tribe counted years from its own local milestones, such as the death of a chieftain. On top of this, powerful tribes practised al-Nasi: they swapped the sacred months around to suit themselves, which threw the months out of order. The Qur'an condemns this practice (9:37). The Prophet ﷺ did not set up a calendar himself. The need for one came up most likely in the 17th year after the Hijrah, under the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab RA. Two men brought him a dispute over a debt that was due "by Sha'ban." One meant the Sha'ban just passed, and the other meant Sha'ban of the following year. Around the same time, Umar RA received a letter, reportedly from Abu Musa al-Ash'ari RA or one of his governors. It said that when Umar RA gave an instruction for a certain month, they could not tell which year he meant. Umar RA gathered the Companions (sahaba) to decide on a calendar. One or two suggested following the Roman or Persian calendar, but this was rejected. The Companions then differed over which event should mark year one. Some proposed the birth of the Prophet ﷺ, some his death, and some the Battle of Badr. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA suggested the year of the Hijrah, and Umar RA accepted this as the wisest opinion. Next they differed over which month should begin the year. Some suggested Ramadan, Dhu al-Hijjah or Rajab. In the end Uthman ibn Affan RA settled on Muharram.

Surat al-Tawba is the only surah of the Qur'an that does not begin with the Basmala, the words "In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful." It was one of the last surahs to be revealed, in the 9th year after the Hijrah. Two explanations for the missing Basmala are reported from the sahaba, the companions of the Prophet ﷺ. The first comes from Uthman ibn Affan RA, who compiled the written copy of the Qur'an (the mus'haf). According to a hadith in Sunan al-Tirmidhi, he was asked why he had placed al-Tawba straight after Surat al-Anfal. He explained that al-Tawba came very late, and the sahaba were not sure where it belonged. They put it after al-Anfal because both surahs deal with warfare. Since they did not know whether the two were one surah or two, they did not write a Basmala between them. Because of this, some of the next generation (the tabi'un) counted al-Anfal and al-Tawba as a single surah, giving 113 surahs in total. Hardly anyone else agreed. The great majority of the ummah, and the later consensus (ijma), holds that they are two separate surahs. The second explanation comes from Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. One of his sons asked him why al-Tawba has no Basmala. Ali RA answered that this is a surah in which Allah cuts off His ties with the pagans, so it is not fitting to begin it with His mercy. The surah's very first word is bara'ah, which means a complete cutting off. In another narration, Ali RA explained that the Basmala is what one writes at the start of a contract of protection, a promise of mercy. Al-Tawba is a surah of dissociation, so it should not open with "the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful."

During the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan RA, a man of the Khawarij (the rebel sect whose members would later kill Uthman) saw a large crowd around Abdullah ibn Umar RA in Makkah. The man wanted to find fault with Uthman. He pushed through the crowd and asked Ibn Umar, by Allah, whether Uthman had fled at the Battle of Uhud, whether he had been absent from Badr, and whether he had missed the Pledge of Ridwan (Bay'at al-Ridwan). Ibn Umar truthfully answered yes to each question. The man cried out Allahu akbar (Allah is the Greatest) and turned to leave. Ibn Umar called him back and explained each answer. Uthman had fled at Uhud, but Allah declared in the Qur'an that He had forgiven those who fled (Qur'an 3:155). Uthman missed Badr because his wife Ruqayyah, the daughter of the Prophet ﷺ, was gravely ill, and the Prophet ﷺ ordered him to stay in Madinah. He still received a share of the spoils and is counted among the people of Badr. As for the Pledge of Ridwan, it took place only because of Uthman, and the Prophet ﷺ used his own hand to take the pledge on Uthman's behalf. Ibn Umar then told the man to take all of this back to his people. The account is narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari.

In 35 AH, long after the expedition to Tabuk, a group of rebels later called the neo-Kharijites raised fabricated complaints against the caliph Uthman ibn Affan RA. Ibn Abbas RA answered them with a hadith from the time of Tabuk. When the army for Tabuk, known as the Jaysh al-Usrah ("the Army of Difficulty"), was being equipped, Uthman RA had donated thousands of gold coins. Turning the coins over in his hands, the Prophet ﷺ had said, "Wallahi, whatever Uthman does after today, it will not harm him." Ibn Abbas RA reminded the rebels of these words. If the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had said this about Uthman RA, he asked, then who were they to complain?