Uyaynah ibn Hisn was the chieftain of the Banu Fizara, and later one of the leaders of the Ahzab, the confederate armies, at Khandaq. He was a crude Bedouin known for his bad manners. Before the verses of hijab were revealed, he came to Madinah to see whether a treaty could be made, not to accept Islam. He walked straight into the Prophet ﷺ's house without asking permission. When the Prophet ﷺ told him that he should ask before entering, Uyaynah replied that he had never in his life asked such permission. Then he saw Aisha RA and asked who she was. He offered to give the Prophet ﷺ one of his own wives instead, who he claimed was more beautiful. The Prophet ﷺ refused, saying, "Allah has made this haram."
"Khandaq" means "the trench", and "Ahzab" means "the confederates". The confederates were the coalition of tribes that marched on Madinah in the fifth year after the Hijrah. The whole affair, from the first spade in the ground to the flight of the confederates, lasted around forty days. That was a week or so of digging and close to a month of siege. Even the date of the battle is a matter of scholarly disagreement. Abdullah ibn Umar RA said that he was fourteen at Uhud and was turned away, and that he was fifteen at Khandaq and was allowed through. This led al-Bukhari, al-Zuhri, al-Nawawi and Ibn Hazm to place the battle in 4 AH. However, Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham, al-Tabari and the specialists of the Seerah place it in Shawwal 5 AH. Their reasoning is that the fourth year was taken up by Badr al-Maw'id, and that Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA is agreed to have died right after Khandaq, in the fifth year. Al-Waqidi and Ibn Sa'd give the month as Dhu al-Qa'dah rather than Shawwal. The instigators were the Banu al-Nadir. They had tried to kill the Prophet ﷺ with a rock. After that they were expelled from Madinah and allowed to take only what their camels could carry. They settled in Khaybar, but they still wanted their date groves back. A delegation of their leaders, among them Sallam ibn Abi al-Huqayq and Huyayy ibn Akhtab, went to the Quraysh in Makkah. They proposed a joint attack and offered money and food on top. The Quraysh seized on the idea. Their trade route to Syria had been all but destroyed, and they had failed to show up at Badr al-Maw'id. Abu Sufyan asked the Jewish delegation which religion was closer to their own, that of the Quraysh or that of Muhammad ﷺ. The delegation answered that the pagans were the better guided. The Qur'an quoted their answer back to them in 4:51. With the Quraysh on board, the Banu al-Nadir turned to the Ghatafan, the largest tribe of the north. The Ghatafan had no trade route at stake, so they had to be paid. The price was half of Khaybar's produce for a year, in return for a single battle. The Quraysh, for their part, called in the smaller tribes that had been hurt by the loss of the caravan road. These included the Banu Asad, the Banu Sulaym, the Banu Murrah, Ashja', Kinana and others. Each of them sent men, horses or weapons. Ibn Sa'd counts around 4,000 men and 300 horses from the Quraysh alone. To these he adds 700 from the Banu Sulaym, 1,000 from the Banu Fizara, 400 each from Ashja' and the Banu Murrah, and 700 from the Banu Asad. Ibn Ishaq puts the whole force at some 10,000 men. Against them, the Muslims had at most 2,500 fighting men. Abu Sufyan was the senior commander, but there was no single leader over the whole army, and this weakness would prove fatal. Never before had ten or fifteen Arab tribes marched together under one banner. Arabia was dividing into two camps, the banner of Islam and the banner of disbelief. An army that size cannot gather in secret. When the news reached the Prophet ﷺ, he consulted the Companions, as he had done before Badr and Uhud. Salman al-Farisi RA had recently been freed, and this was his first battle. He proposed a tactic the Arabs had never seen. He explained that back in Persia, people would dig a trench and shelter behind it. The Prophet ﷺ accepted the idea at once. According to Ibn Sa'd, he himself drew the lines to show where the trench should run. According to Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet ﷺ also had the women and children taken up into the forts. One of these was the fort of the Banu Harithah, one of the strongest in Madinah. He was already thinking several steps ahead. Every man would be out on the perimeter, yet the Banu Qurayza still lived inside Madinah, at al-Awali. They had renewed their covenant three times, most recently only months earlier during the Banu al-Nadir affair. Even so, no one could be sure where their loyalty lay. If they turned, the Muslims would be caught between two fronts. The Prophet ﷺ assigned ten men to each stretch of the trench. Its exact course is unknown. The most careful modern estimates put it at around two kilometres long, ten to thirteen feet wide and seven to nine cubits deep. It cut across the one open approach to the city, from the north. Lava fields to the east and west and dense palm groves to the south already made Madinah impassable to an army from those sides. Ibn Sa'd says the digging took six days, while others say a fortnight. It was done by hand, without slaves or machines, in the cold of winter. The men were hungry from the start. Al-Bukhari records that they ate barley mixed with rancid oil. According to Jabir ibn Abdillah RA, they sometimes ate date stones. Anas ibn Malik RA remembered the Prophet ﷺ coming out to the trench on a cold evening and praying for the Ansar and the Muhajirun. Al-Bara' ibn Azib RA remembered him carrying earth until the dust covered his chest. He chanted a rajaz, a short rhythmic verse, together with the men. It ended with the words "when they want fitna, we refuse, we refuse", and every voice rose on the refrain. Jabir saw a stone tied against the Prophet ﷺ's stomach to dull his hunger. Jabir slaughtered the one small goat he owned. The Prophet ﷺ announced the meal to everyone and blessed it. Jabir then watched a pot meant for a handful of people feed the whole trench, around a thousand men, ten at a time. At one point a boulder on the marked line would not break. The Prophet ﷺ took the pickaxe himself and struck it three times, and each strike was greeted with a takbir. He told the men that he had been shown the red palaces of al-Sham, the white pillars of al-Mada'in in Persia and the gates of Sana'a in Yemen. These were three lands the Muslims would conquer within a generation. He also watched Ammar ibn Yasir RA doing the work of two men. He repeated a prophecy he had first made while building the mosque, that the transgressing party would kill Ammar. It was fulfilled decades later at Siffin. The confederates arrived to find a ditch they could not charge across. So they made camp and settled in to starve the city out. Their commanders included Abu Sufyan, Uyaynah ibn Hisn of the Banu Fizara, and Tulayha al-Asadi of the Banu Asad. Uyaynah was a chieftain so coarse that he had once barged into the Prophet ﷺ's house without asking permission. Tulayha would later claim prophethood, and later still he would die a martyr for Islam at al-Qadisiyyah. The Ghatafan were not eager to fight. They sent an envoy to the Muslims with an offer. They said they would go home if the Muslims gave them a third of Madinah's dates. In Ibn Ishaq's version, the offer came the other way. He says that the Prophet ﷺ sent word to the Ghatafan leaders, Uyaynah and al-Harith ibn Awf, and that a document was drafted but never signed. The Prophet ﷺ consulted Sa'd ibn Mu'adh and Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA, the leaders of the Aws and the Khazraj. They asked him whether this was something Allah had ordered, or something he was doing for their sake. He said it was for their sake, because the Arabs had united against them. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh replied that back when they were idolaters, these people had never eaten a date of theirs except as guests or by buying it. Now that Allah had honoured them with Islam, he said, they would give them nothing but the sword. The Prophet ﷺ was pleased with their answer, and the Ghatafan were sent away with nothing. In Ibn Ishaq's version, Sa'd erased the document himself. Ibn Sa'd dates the Prophet ﷺ's move from his house to a tent by the trench to 8 Dhu al-Qa'dah. The Muslims camped facing the ditch, with their backs to Jabal Sila', and were divided into shifts. All night, patrols walked the line shouting the takbir, so that anyone approaching would think it was heavily manned. The Prophet ﷺ took his own turn on watch. Umm Salama RA witnessed al-Muraysi', Khaybar, Hudaybiyyah, the Conquest and Hunayn. She is reported to have said that none of them was as exhausting or as frightening as Khandaq. There is also a story of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA coming by night in his armour to guard the Prophet ﷺ, so that he could sleep. It is sometimes told as part of the siege. However, Aisha RA's report in al-Bukhari places it on a night after his arrival in Madinah. Then came the blow that changed everything. Huyayy ibn Akhtab slipped into Madinah, a city he had known all his life. He made for the fortress of the Banu Qurayza and their chieftain, Ka'b ibn Asad. At first Ka'b barred the door against him. He said he had a treaty with Muhammad ﷺ and had seen nothing from him but truthfulness. Huyayy shamed him into opening it by accusing him of not wanting to share his food. Huyayy then pressed Ka'b all through the night with promises of oceans of men. He swore that if the confederates left, he would share whatever fate befell the Banu Qurayza. Ka'b told him that he was like a cloud that promised rain but brought only thunder and lightning. Even so, by morning Ka'b had given way, and he tore up the covenant. The Prophet ﷺ sensed that something was wrong and asked for a volunteer to find out. Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA went. It was on this occasion that the Prophet ﷺ said that every prophet has a disciple, and that his disciple was Zubayr. Zubayr came back convinced that the Banu Qurayza had broken the treaty. But a war is not fought on presumption. So the Prophet ﷺ sent the four Ansar leaders who had been closest to the Banu Qurayza in the old days. They were Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, Sa'd ibn Ubadah, Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA and Khawwat ibn Jubayr RA. He told them that if there had been treachery, they should signal it indirectly, so as not to spread panic. If the treaty still held, they should announce it aloud. The four found the Banu Qurayza foul-mouthed and defiant. The Banu Qurayza denied that there was any Messenger of Allah ﷺ or any treaty. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, a man with a temper, cursed them, and they cursed him back, until Sa'd ibn Ubadah pulled him away. The envoys brought back a report of just two words, "Adl and al-Qarah". These were the tribes behind the treachery of al-Raji. The Prophet ﷺ answered, "Allahu akbar, good news!" It was a double-edged phrase, and it kept the camp calm. The news spread anyway. The Companions called it the worst night of their lives. There were ten thousand enemies outside the trench and two thousand more inside the city, and their families were in an unguarded fortress. The Qur'an describes that time in 33:10 and 33:11. It says that the enemy came from above them and from below them, that eyes rolled in terror and hearts rose into throats, and that the believers were shaken violently. According to a report not found in Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet ﷺ split his thin patrol. He sent Zayd ibn Harithah RA and Salama ibn Aslam RA with a small group to guard the forts. Around this time, the Banu Qurayza sent scouts to test whether the fortress was defended. Safiyyah bint Abdul Muttalib killed one of them with her own hands. This was the defence of al-Fari'. Meanwhile, the hypocrites asked permission to go home to "protect their families". One of them mocked aloud that Muhammad ﷺ had promised them the treasures of Khosrow and Caesar, yet now none of them dared to go out to relieve himself. For a siege of this size, the fighting was small. At most six or seven Muslims were killed, most of them by arrows, and three or four of the enemy. The Companions counted this as a sign from Allah (47:7). A handful of horsemen did get across at a narrow point. Amr ibn Abd Wud, an elder of the Quraysh famed for his ferocity, had put on a red turban, a known sign that he had come to kill. He called out for a challenger. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA offered to fight him. Amr called out three times. Each time Ali stood up, and each time the Prophet ﷺ held him back, reminding him that this was Amr ibn Abd Wud. The third time, Ali said that he would fight him even if he was Amr, and the Prophet ﷺ let him go. Amr sneered at the idea of fighting a youth, and Ali replied that he had every desire to kill him. Ibn Ishaq says that the dust raised by their horses hid the fight, and that a takbir rang out to announce Ali's victory. Another report says that Amr's blow split Ali's shield, and in the same instant Ali killed him with one stroke to the neck. Nawfal ibn Abdillah rolled down into the trench and was killed. In al-Tabari's report from Ibn Ishaq, it was Ali RA who killed him, while other retellings say it was Zubayr RA. Al-Tirmidhi reports that the Quraysh wanted to buy back Nawfal's body. The Prophet ﷺ refused to take money for it, but he told them to come and take the body and bury it. According to Ibn Ishaq, Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal fled back across, throwing away his spear. Later reports add Khalid ibn al-Walid as well. Both men were still pagans at the time. The costliest arrow was the one shot by Hiban ibn al-Ariqah. Aisha had watched Sa'd ibn Mu'adh say goodbye to his mother in the fortress, and she had wished aloud that his breastplate covered more of him. The arrow struck him exactly there, cutting the vein of his arm. Sa'd prayed that if the Quraysh were going to fight again, he might live to fight them. If this was the last time, he asked to be taken as a martyr, but not before his eyes had been comforted by what became of the Banu Qurayza. He was moved, bleeding, to the hospital tent of Rufayda al-Aslamiyyah RA. He would live just long enough for that prayer to be answered. On one of those days the fighting was so intense that the Muslims missed the Asr prayer altogether. After sunset, Umar RA came to the Prophet ﷺ to confess it. The Prophet ﷺ answered that he too had not prayed. He cursed the enemy for keeping them from the middle prayer mentioned in Qur'an 2:238. Then he prayed Asr and then Maghrib, in that order. The fiqh of making up missed prayers is derived from that evening. As the siege wore on, the tide was turned by a single man. Nuaym ibn Mas'ud RA was a second-rank noble of the Ghatafan. He had carried messages for Abu Sufyan in the past and had dealt with the Banu Qurayza for years. One night he walked into the Muslim camp and waited for the Prophet ﷺ to finish praying. Then he said that Allah had thrown Islam into his heart, and that he would do whatever he was told. He was the only Muslim in his tribe, and no one knew it. The Prophet ﷺ told him that he was only one man, but that he should do what he could. Nuaym asked whether he was allowed to say whatever he liked. The Prophet ﷺ gave his famous answer that war is khid'a, a ruse. A ruse is not khiyana, the betrayal of a trust. Nuaym went first to the Banu Qurayza. Speaking as an old friend, he advised them not to fight until the Quraysh handed over some of their nobles as hostages. Later accounts give the number as seventy. Otherwise, he warned, the Quraysh could ride away and leave the Banu Qurayza to face the consequences. The next morning he went to Abu Sufyan and warned him, in confidence, that the Banu Qurayza regretted their treachery. He said they had offered Muhammad ﷺ the heads of seventy men of the Quraysh to make amends, and that a request for hostages would be the sign. Then he told his own tribe the same thing. Within hours, Azzal ibn Samuel arrived from the Banu Qurayza. He demanded a date for a joint assault and seventy nobles as a guarantee. Abu Sufyan was hearing exactly what Nuaym had predicted. He sent Azzal away, saying "let me think about it", and then told the Quraysh not to hand anyone over. Nuaym went back to the Banu Qurayza and told them that Abu Sufyan had sworn not to give them even a baby camel. Ka'b ibn Asad began to lament that Huyayy had brought them nothing but ruin, and al-Zubayr ibn Batta saw plainly that if the confederates left, nothing awaited his people but the sword. Abu Sufyan now feared that the Banu Qurayza would switch sides again. He ordered a general attack for the next morning and sent Ikrimah to tell them so. It was Friday, after Asr. The Banu Qurayza answered that the next day was the Sabbath, on which they would not fight. Even on Sunday, they said, they would not move without the seventy hostages. The Quraysh had never lived beside Jews. To them, a day on which one may not fight sounded like an excuse to run to Muhammad ﷺ. Abu Sufyan demanded an explanation from Huyayy. He dismissed the Sabbath as just a day between Sunday and Friday, and he swore by al-Lat and al-Uzza that this was treachery. Huyayy was terrified. He crept away to beg the Banu Qurayza to break the Sabbath just this once, but Ka'b refused in fury. Huyayy was too afraid to go back to Abu Sufyan, so he stayed inside the fortress. That choice would cost him his life. That Friday night the weather broke. The Companions remembered it as the coldest, darkest and windiest night of their lives. It was so black that a man could not see his own fingertips, and the wind roared like thunder. Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA told the story as an old man in Iraq. He was speaking to a young man who boasted of what he would have done if he had been with the Prophet ﷺ. Hudhayfah recalled that the Prophet ﷺ asked three times who would bring him news of the enemy. He promised that whoever went would be his companion on the Day of Judgment. Three times, after a month of siege, no one answered. Then the Prophet ﷺ said, "O Hudhayfah". Hudhayfah admitted that after that he had no choice but to go. He stood up shivering. Yet, as Muslim reports, he felt warm, as if he were walking in a heated bath, until he reached the enemy. The Prophet ﷺ had prayed for his protection from every side, and Hudhayfah said that after that prayer his fear left him. He walked through the storm into the camp of the Quraysh, unrecognised in the dark. He found himself close enough to Abu Sufyan to shoot him, but he remembered his order to stay hidden. Abu Sufyan told every man to check who was sitting beside him. Hudhayfah seized the hand of the man next to him and demanded his name first. Then Abu Sufyan stood up and spoke to the Quraysh. He told them that their horses and camels were dying and that the Banu Qurayza had betrayed them. The wind would not let a pot stand or a fire burn. Whatever the rest of them decided, he said, he was leaving. He untied his camel and rode away, and the Quraysh went with him. Hudhayfah had a second clear shot at him, and again he let him go. Al-Bayhaqi reports that on the way back, Hudhayfah met twenty horsemen with veiled faces. They told him to tell his companion that they had fought on his behalf. These horsemen were the angels. Hudhayfah found the Prophet ﷺ standing in prayer, wrapped in a blanket belonging to one of his wives. He was drawn in under the blanket to warm himself until the prayer ended. Then he gave the news. The Prophet ﷺ had spent the night in supplication against the confederates. He called on Allah as the Sender of the Book, the Swift in reckoning, the Mover of the clouds and the Defeater of the confederates, asking Him to shake them and defeat them. Allah answered with the Saba wind. This is the eastern wind of mercy that gathers rain clouds, not the Dabur wind that destroyed the people of Ad. It broke the confederates' camp but killed none of them, and many of those men would one day become Muslims. The Qur'an speaks of it in 33:9, which mentions a wind and forces you could not see. When the Muslims woke the next morning, the plain was empty and every tent had been overturned. The Prophet ﷺ had barely laid down his armour when Jibril AS came to him. Jibril told him that the angels had not yet laid down theirs. So the army was sent on without pausing, to the fortress of the Banu Qurayza. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh lived long enough to give the judgment on them, and then he died of his wound. Sallam ibn Abi al-Huqayq, who had financed the confederacy, was killed in Khaybar in the months that followed. The Prophet ﷺ had said that from now on, the Muslims would be the ones to march. His words came true at Hudaybiyyah, Khaybar and finally Makkah itself.
After the Siege of Ta'if, the Prophet ﷺ returned to Ji'ranah. The ghanima, the spoils of war, and the prisoners taken at Hunayn had been kept there under guard. He camped there for over a week. He was waiting for the tribe of Hawazin to come and accept Islam, so that their families and property could be returned to them. The same thing had happened before with the Banu al-Mustaliq. Nearly a month after Hunayn, the Hawazin still had not come, so the Prophet ﷺ began to distribute the ghanima. Spoils left behind by a fleeing enemy, rather than taken from the slain, are given out at the ruler's discretion. So the soldiers had no guaranteed share of them. One by one, the Prophet ﷺ gave the largest gifts that had ever been seen in Islam up to that point. Most went to leading men of the Quraysh who were new Muslims or not yet Muslim at all. These were the muallafati qulubuhum, "those whose hearts needed reconciling to Islam". Among those who received 100 camels each were four men. The first was Abu Sufyan ibn Harb RA. The second was Safwan ibn Umayyah RA, who was still not a Muslim and was moved to accept Islam by this generosity. The third was Uyaynah ibn Hisn of the Ghatafan tribe, and the fourth was al-Aqra' ibn Habis of the Tamim tribe. He also gave large gifts to Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan and to al-Harith ibn Hisham RA, the full brother of Abu Jahal. Perhaps 60 to 70 people received gifts in total. Smaller shares were also given to the Muhajirun. The Ansar received nothing from this particular large share. Some of the younger Ansar began to grumble. Their swords were still dripping with the enemy's blood, they said, and yet they had earned nothing, while the Quraysh went home with fortunes. Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA, the chief of the Ansar, told the Prophet ﷺ about this. The Prophet ﷺ gathered the Ansar alone in a tent. There he gave one of the most moving speeches of his life, in praise of them. He said, "I give to some people because I fear for their greed and desires; and I don't give to others because I trust what Allah has given in their hearts is more than what I can give them." Then he asked them a question. Others would go home with sheep and camels. Were they not content to go home with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ himself? The Ansar wept, and said that they were content with Islam and with him. As word of the Prophet ﷺ's generosity spread, Bedouins flocked in asking for money. One chieftain grabbed the Prophet ﷺ's collar and demanded a share. The Prophet ﷺ only smiled and told those handing out the wealth to give him some. On another occasion, Bedouins crowded around him begging, so closely that his garment caught on a thorn bush. When the money was gone, he told them that if he had as many camels as there were shrubs around them, he would give them all away. He would never be found to be miserly. It was also here that a man with a straggly beard accused the Prophet ﷺ of being unjust in the distribution. This was the beginning of what would become the mindset of the Khawarij. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA asked permission to execute him for it. The Prophet ﷺ refused, for the sake of the community's wellbeing. He foretold that from this man's kind would come people who recite the Qur'an without it going beyond their throats, and who leave Islam as an arrow passes through its target. Eventually the Hawazin came and accepted Islam. They hoped their property could still be returned. The Prophet ﷺ told them it was too late for their property. He let them choose between their property and their families, and they chose their families. The next day, after the Zuhr prayer, the Prophet ﷺ gave up his own tribe's share of the prisoners first. This led the other Quraysh leaders to follow his example and release their captives freely. A few Bedouin tribes who had newly become Muslim asked to be paid for their captives instead. The Prophet ﷺ promised to compensate them from future revenue. In this way, all of the Hawazin's families were restored to them, though not their property. Before leaving Ji'ranah for Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ entered ihram there and performed an Umrah. It was the third of the four Umrahs he performed in his lifetime. Among the Hawazin who came to Ji'ranah, the Prophet ﷺ asked in particular about their chieftain, Malik ibn Awf al-Nasri. Malik had fled into Ta'if with the Thaqif tribe rather than surrender. The Prophet ﷺ sent word to him with an offer. If Malik came to him as a Muslim, his family and property would be restored to him, along with a hundred camels besides. Malik was unwilling to live on without his tribe, his family and his wealth. So he accepted, came to the Prophet ﷺ and embraced Islam. He was made chieftain over his own people again. Malik then composed verses declaring that the Prophet ﷺ was a true prophet. The Tamimi chieftain al-Aqra' ibn Habis also reflected on how vast the Prophet ﷺ's generosity had been. He said, "I have just come from a man who doesn't care about poverty! Wallahi, this man is a prophet, for no king would do what he has done!"