Banu al-Khazraj

In the early days of his dawah (calling people to Islam), the Prophet ﷺ spoke to a young man of the Khazraj, one of the two Arab tribes of Yathrib. The young man came close to accepting Islam. However, his chieftain talked him out of it, telling him to mind his own business and not to worry about the Prophet ﷺ. The young man was later killed in the Battle of Bu'ath, a war between the tribes of Yathrib. It is reported that as he was dying, he was glorifying, praising and magnifying Allah (saying the tasbih, tahmid and takbir).

The Battle of Bu'ath was the climax of a civil war between the two Arab tribes of Yathrib (later Madinah), the Aws and the Khazraj. The war had lasted more than ten years. It began as small clashes over land, water and grazing rights, which grew until they ended in this major battle. Most of the senior leaders of both tribes were killed. Those left were mostly younger men, tired of a decade of bloodshed. The one senior leader still standing was Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul.

In the 11th year of the Prophet ﷺ's mission, two years before the Hijrah, twelve pilgrims from Yathrib (later Madinah) came to Makkah for the pilgrimage. Ten were from the Khazraj and two from the Aws. It was the largest group yet to accept Islam from outside Makkah. They met the Prophet ﷺ on the Plains of Aqaba. There they formally became Muslims, placing their hands in his and taking an oath. They swore to worship Allah alone, and not to commit fornication, steal or kill their children. They also swore to obey him ﷺ in all good matters. The oath was later called the Oath of the Women (Bay'at al-Nisa), even though all twelve were men. This was because, as with the women who became Muslim, it covered only belief and morals. It had no political or military conditions. There was no need for secrecy, since this was simply a group of pilgrims talking with the Prophet ﷺ. It was also the first time the Aws and the Khazraj, who had long been enemies, came together on common ground.

In the 10th year of his mission, the Prophet ﷺ was going around the pilgrims' camps at Mina, looking for a tribe that would support him. Near Aqaba he came across a small group of six men without even a tent. He asked who they were, and they said they were from the Khazraj. He asked whether they were the Khazraj who lived as neighbors of the Jews, meaning the people of Yathrib (later called Madinah), and they said yes. Yathrib was home to three main groups. Two were Arab tribes, al-Aws and al-Khazraj. The third was made up of Jewish tribes, including Banu al-Nadir, Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Qurayza. Because they lived beside the Jews, the Aws and Khazraj were the only Arabs in the region who understood the idea of one God, prophets and a revealed scripture. During their wars, the Jews used to boast that a prophet was about to come, and that when he came they would defeat the Arabs completely. The Prophet ﷺ sat with the six men and explained the oneness of Allah (tawhid), warned them against worshiping others besides Him (shirk), and recited the Qur'an. He spoke with the same care and passion that he gave to the largest tribes. All six accepted Islam. Among them were Uqba ibn Amir al-Juhani, Jabir ibn Abdillah and As'ad ibn Zurarah. They went home and spread the message, and within a few months everyone in Yathrib had heard of it.

After the First Covenant of Aqaba, the Prophet ﷺ sent Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA to Yathrib (later Madinah) to teach the new Muslims there. Within a few weeks of his arrival, around 40 people had become Muslim. The Prophet ﷺ then told them they could hold the Friday congregational prayer (Salat al-Jumu'ah). So the first Friday sermon in the history of Islam was not given by the Prophet ﷺ himself. The Muslims in Makkah could not yet pray in public. Instead it was given by Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA, at the house of As'ad ibn Zurarah, who was hosting him.

A few months before the Hijrah, about 75 Muslims from Yathrib came to Makkah for the Hajj. They travelled with relatives who were still pagans, and they hid their Islam from them. The Prophet ﷺ had arranged to meet them on the last night of the Hajj, in a valley behind Aqaba. In the last third of the night, they slipped out of their tents one by one so as not to arouse suspicion. The Prophet ﷺ came with his uncle al-Abbas, who was still a pagan himself. Al-Abbas spoke first, on the Prophet ﷺ's behalf. He did not know these young men and was uneasy about them. He told them that the Prophet ﷺ had honour and protection among his own clan. If they were sure they could protect him, they could take on that responsibility. If not, they should leave him be. The people then asked the Prophet ﷺ to speak and set out his conditions. He recited the Qur'an and urged them to fear Allah. Then he asked for their pledge of allegiance (bay'ah) in return for their protection, that they would protect him as one of their own. Al-Bara ibn Ma'rur RA accepted at once. Then Abu al-Haytham ibn al-Tayhan RA raised a concern. Their new allegiance would break their treaties with the Jews of Yathrib. Once Allah gave the Prophet ﷺ victory, would he leave them and go back to his own people in Makkah? The Prophet ﷺ smiled and replied, "No. My blood is your blood, and my destruction is your destruction." The Prophet ﷺ then set out the full terms. They were to hear and obey in hardship and in ease, and to spend in the way of Allah. They were to command good and forbid evil, and to speak the truth whatever the consequences. And once he came to Yathrib, they were to support him as they would their own families. When someone asked what they would receive in return, he answered with one word, "Al-Jannah," meaning Paradise. Before anyone could take the Prophet ﷺ's hand, As'ad ibn Zurarah held it back. He warned the people plainly of the cost. Taking in the Prophet ﷺ would mean war with the Quraysh, and fathers would lose sons and sons would lose fathers. If they were not ready, he said, they should stop now. The people told him he had said enough, and asked him to let go of the Prophet ﷺ's hand. All 72 men present then gave the pledge. Two women gave their oath by word alone, since the Prophet ﷺ never took the hand of a woman who was not related to him. Each was promised Paradise in return.

Sa'd ibn Mu'adh and Usayd ibn Hudayr were close friends and rising leaders of the Aws in Yathrib. At this time Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA, a Muslim from Makkah sent to teach the Qur'an, was spreading Islam in the city. He was staying with Sa'd's cousin, As'ad ibn Zurarah. Sa'd felt awkward confronting his own cousin, so he asked Usayd to go and expel Mus'ab from Yathrib. Usayd went armed with a spear and angrily told Mus'ab to leave. Mus'ab calmly asked him to sit and listen first, and then judge for himself. Usayd agreed. He listened to the basic message of Islam and became a Muslim on the spot. Usayd then went back and urged Sa'd to go himself. He added that he had heard another tribe was planning to kill As'ad for hosting Mus'ab. Alarmed, Sa'd took up his weapons and went to confront Mus'ab. Mus'ab made him the same offer to listen first. Sa'd sat down, and Mus'ab recited Surah al-Zukhruf to him. Sa'd became a Muslim as well. Sa'd and Usayd were the leaders of their clan, Banu Abd al-Ashhal. After they converted, nearly the whole clan embraced Islam.

The Banu Qaynuqa were the largest of the three Jewish tribes of Madinah, with some seven hundred men. They were goldsmiths, and they had the biggest market in the city. They were also the first tribe to break with the Prophet ﷺ. Ibn Ishaq gives the affair less than a page, as the early historians did with every such falling-out. He records only that after Badr they became openly hostile, and that the Muslim victory upset them. The Prophet ﷺ went to their market and gathered them together. He reminded them of the Constitution they had signed, under which each side would protect the other against outsiders. One of their leaders answered him to his face. He told the Prophet ﷺ not to be fooled by beating a handful of nobodies at Badr. If he had fought real men, men like them, he said, he would have seen a different result. Then a crude incident lit the fuse. An Ansari woman had sold her goods in the market, and sat down at a goldsmith's shop to buy something. The goldsmith kept pestering her to uncover herself, and she refused. He signalled to a man behind her, who pinned her garment so that it would fall away when she stood up. When she rose, she was left uncovered, and the men of the market laughed. She screamed for help. A Muslim man who was there drew his sword and killed the goldsmith. The Banu Qaynuqa, who were on their own ground, surrounded him and killed him. The Prophet ﷺ sent them word that the treaty was at an end. Islam does not break a treaty in secret. The Qur'an says that if you fear betrayal from a people, you should throw their treaty back to them openly. They did not expect him to do any more than that, because they trusted in their numbers and their walls. But he marched against them at once, and they shut themselves inside their fortress. The Muslims had no way of breaking in, so they cut off its supplies. After fifteen days the Banu Qaynuqa surrendered. The Prophet ﷺ had the men tied up while their fate was decided. Before Islam, the tribe had had two allies among the Khazraj, and they appealed to both of them. The first was Ubadah ibn al-Samit. He went straight to the Prophet ﷺ and renounced the alliance. He said that his protectors now were Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, and that he had cut his ties with the Banu Qaynuqa. The second was Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul. He went to the camp where they were being held. He told the Companion guarding them to release them, or else he would do it himself. The guard told him that if he tried, he would be killed. So Ibn Ubayy went to find the Prophet ﷺ. He called him by his bare name, Muhammad ﷺ, as he always did, and asked him to be generous to his allies. The Prophet ﷺ said nothing. Ibn Ubayy asked again, and the Prophet ﷺ turned away. Then Ibn Ubayy pushed his hand into the neck of the Prophet ﷺ's armour and held on to him. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Let go of me." Ibn Ishaq says the anger showed in his face. Ibn Ubayy held on tighter, and the Prophet ﷺ said, "Woe to you, let go of me." Ibn Ubayy swore that he would not let go until the Prophet ﷺ promised to treat them well. He said they were seven hundred men, three hundred of them in armour. They had protected him from every enemy, white and black, and was the Prophet ﷺ going to cut them down in a single morning? He said he was afraid of a turn of fortune. The Prophet ﷺ answered, "I give them to you." The Prophet ﷺ had never said he would kill them. But he gave Ibn Ubayy their lives in public, and there was wisdom in that. Ibn Ubayy was still the most respected chief of old Yathrib, and there was still hope for him. The verdict was that they had three days to leave Madinah. They begged for more time. They tried asking Ubadah, who told them he would not even have given them three. Ibn Ubayy tried again to have the sentence lifted, and failed. Ubadah escorted them out of the city. They took their gold and whatever else they could carry, and left the rest behind. What they left passed to the Muslims. Allah then revealed the verses of Surah al-Ma'idah about not taking Jews and Christians as protectors. The verses quote Ibn Ubayy's fear of a turn of fortune, putting it in the mouths of those with sickness in their hearts. They also praise the choice Ubadah had made, saying that your only protectors are Allah, His Messenger ﷺ and the believers. It was the lightest of the three punishments that the Jewish tribes of Madinah brought on themselves. And the true colours of the hypocrites had begun to show.

The sources disagree about when Dhat al-Riqa took place. Ibn Ishaq places it in Sha'ban of the fourth year, straight after the meeting at Badr that the Quraysh failed to turn up for. Al-Bukhari places it after Khaybar. The strongest evidence for the earlier date is the story of Jabir, told below. In it, Jabir has just married after his father's death at Uhud, and the Prophet ﷺ does not know about the marriage yet. News had come that Ghatafan meant to attack first. Ghatafan were a large Bedouin tribe to the north, known for raiding. The Prophet ﷺ marched out with seven hundred men. For a week or two the two sides camped within sight of each other. But Ghatafan never advanced, and no blow was struck. The expedition is remembered for four things that happened around it. The first is the prayer of fear. It was here that Allah revealed, in Surah al-Nisa, how to perform Salat al-Khawf. The imam prays the whole prayer, while the army prays in two shifts. One line stands guard with its weapons while the other line prostrates, and then they change places. This way the enemy never finds all of them with their backs turned. The second happened on the way home. It was high summer. In the late morning the sun became unbearable, so the army spread out to find whatever shade the valley offered, and they slept. The Prophet ﷺ slept under a tree, with his sword hanging from a branch. A Bedouin of Ghatafan named Ghawrath ibn al-Harith had been secretly following the army. He walked through the sleeping camp, took the sword down and drew it. Then he woke the Prophet ﷺ with the blade in his face. Ghawrath asked him whether he was afraid of him. The Prophet ﷺ said no. Ghawrath asked whether he was really not afraid, when Ghawrath was the one holding the sword. Again the Prophet ﷺ said no. In another telling, Ghawrath asked who would protect him now, and the Prophet ﷺ answered, "Allah." At that word the man began to shake, and the sword fell from his hand. The Prophet ﷺ picked it up, turned it on him, and asked who would protect him now. Ghawrath asked the Prophet ﷺ to be the better of the two men who had held the sword. The Prophet ﷺ asked him to testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad ﷺ is His Messenger ﷺ. Ghawrath refused. But he swore that he would never again fight the Prophet ﷺ, or help anyone who did. Only then did the Prophet ﷺ call out for the Companions. In Jabir's words, they woke to his voice and found him holding his sword at the Bedouin's neck. He let the man go. Ghawrath went back to his people and told them he had come from the best of men. The third happened that night. Ammar ibn Yasir and Abbad ibn Bishr were posted to keep watch for Ghatafan. Abbad took the first watch and stood up to pray. An archer from Ghatafan shot an arrow into him. Abbad pulled it out and carried on praying. A second arrow hit him, and he pulled that out too. Only when he felt he was about to faint did he wake Ammar. Ammar saw the blood and asked why he had not stopped praying. Abbad said he had been reciting a surah, said to have been Surah Yusuf, and had not wanted to leave it. He said that if it were not for the duty the Prophet ﷺ had given him, he would rather have died than stop. The fourth story is Jabir's. On the road back, his camel was the oldest and weakest in the army, and it left him trailing at the back. He rode alone with his worries. His father, Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram, had been killed at Uhud. His debts were unpaid. He had seven sisters to feed and no brother to help. Then a voice asked who was there at the back. It was the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ asked Jabir why he was so downcast, and heard the whole story. Then he asked whether Jabir had married. Jabir said he had. The Prophet ﷺ asked whether he had married a young girl or a widow. Jabir said a widow. The Prophet ﷺ asked why he had not married a young girl he could play and laugh with. Jabir answered that he had wanted someone to look after his sisters, not one more person for him to look after. The Prophet ﷺ told him he had done the right thing. Then the Prophet ﷺ had Jabir get down, and he mounted the old camel himself. He struck it, saying "Bismillah." Jabir watched it become the fastest camel he had ever seen. It raced ahead until Jabir, riding it, caught up with the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ at once asked to buy it. Jabir refused. Then he offered it as a gift. The Prophet ﷺ again told him to sell it. The bargaining went from one dirham up to forty. Jabir made one condition, that he could ride the camel home first. The Prophet ﷺ told Jabir not to burst in on his wife at night. Instead, he should let the crier announce the army's return, so that she could get ready for him. The next morning in the mosque, the Prophet ﷺ asked Jabir whether he had prayed two rak'at. He told Bilal to weigh out the forty dirhams and add some more. As Jabir turned to leave, the Prophet ﷺ called him back and told him he had forgotten his camel. Jabir said he had sold it. The Prophet ﷺ said, "O Jabir, did you think I will cheat you out of your camel? Take the money and take your camel!" Ibn Hajar said that a hundred lessons could be drawn from this story. Jurists cite it in rulings on bargaining and on conditions in a sale. But what it shows first is the care that noticed one grieving young man at the back of an army of seven hundred.

The slander, known as al-ifk, was the last and most painful of three things that happened on the way home from the expedition of al-Muraysi'. That expedition was against the Banu al-Mustaliq, in Sha'ban of 5 AH. Most books of Seerah follow Ibn Ishaq and date it to 6 AH instead. More hypocrites marched with the Muslims on this expedition than on any other. The target was close, there was no harvest to keep men at home, and victory was certain. So Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul and his followers came along. On the way back, a Muhajir and a man of the Ansar scuffled at a well. The quarrel grew into a stand-off between the two halves of the army. It ended when the Prophet ﷺ condemned the old tribal war cries as rotten. Ibn Ubayy had hoped for a fight. In his tent he said that once they reached Madinah, the honourable would drive out the lowly. A boy, Zayd ibn Arqam RA, reported what Ibn Ubayy had said. Ibn Ubayy swore that he had said no such thing. That morning, Surah al-Munafiqun was revealed, quoting his own words back at him. The Prophet ﷺ then marched the army for twenty hours without stopping, so that the gossip had no time to spread. Ibn Ubayy had been exposed by the Qur'an itself, and he looked for revenge. He found it in the Prophet ﷺ's own household. Aisha RA told the whole story herself, in long narrations in Sahih al-Bukhari that run to several pages. Before a journey, the Prophet ﷺ would draw lots among his wives, and this time her name had come up. The verses about hijab had already been revealed, so she travelled inside a covered seat, called a howdah, on her camel. On the last night before Madinah, the order came to make camp. She walked out beyond the army to relieve herself. On the way back she felt at her neck and found that her necklace of Yemeni onyx had broken. She went back to look for it. While she was searching, the order came to move on. The men who carried her howdah lifted it onto the camel without noticing that she was not inside. Fifty years later she explained why, gently excusing them as she always did. She had been a slight young girl who ate little. The army moved off. She found the necklace under the spot where her camel had knelt, and returned to an empty camp. She was sure they would notice she was missing and come back. So she wrapped herself up and fell asleep. She woke to hear a man saying, "La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah." It was Safwan ibn al-Muattal RA, who had fallen behind the army and slept through its departure. He had seen her before the verses of hijab came, and he recognised her. She covered her face. He said nothing more. He made his camel kneel and turned his back while she climbed on. Then he led the camel on foot until they caught up with the army, which had stopped to rest in the heat of the day. The hypocrites always rode at the back of the column, and Abdullah ibn Ubayy was among them there. That was when the talk began. Out of respect for her, the books of Seerah never record what was said. They simply call it "the slander". Aisha herself heard none of it. She fell ill with a fever when they reached Madinah, and spent a month in bed. She only noticed that the Prophet ﷺ was not as tender with her as usual, and she did not know why. When she recovered, she went out one night with Umm Mistah bint Abi Ruhm RA, her father's cousin. They went to the open ground that people used before houses had their own toilets. Umm Mistah tripped on her cloak and cursed her own son, Mistah RA. Aisha scolded her for cursing a man who had fought at Badr. Umm Mistah asked whether she really had not heard. Then she told her. Aisha went home more ill than before. She asked the Prophet ﷺ's permission to go to her parents. There she asked her mother, Umm Ruman RA, what people were saying. Her mother tried to soften it. She said that a beautiful woman whose husband loves her, and who has co-wives, will always be talked about. Aisha understood that the rumours were real. She wept all night, until she thought her liver would burst. The story had been started by Ibn Ubayy and some of his followers from the Khazraj. Only three believers had repeated it. They were Mistah, the poet Hassan ibn Thabit RA, and Hamnah bint Jahsh. Hamnah was the sister of Zaynab bint Jahsh RA, Aisha's one real rival among the wives. The Prophet ﷺ asked Zaynab herself about Aisha. Zaynab said that she would protect her ears and her eyes, and that she knew nothing but good of Aisha. As Aisha later put it, Zaynab's religion protected her, while her sister was ruined for her sake. Meanwhile, no revelation had come to the Prophet ﷺ for a whole month. He asked the advice of the two young men closest to his household. Usama ibn Zayd RA had been born and raised in his house. He said plainly that the rumour was impossible. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA said that Allah had not limited him to one woman. He also advised him to question Aisha's maidservant, Barirah RA, who would know the truth. Barirah was terrified. The only fault she could find in her mistress was that she sometimes fell asleep while kneading dough and let the family goat eat it. The Prophet ﷺ then stood on the minbar. He asked who would defend him against a man who had hurt him through his own family. He said that he knew nothing but good of his wives, and nothing but good of the man they had named. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA, of the Aws, answered first, though some narrations name another young leader of the Aws. He said that if the man was from his own tribe, he would behead him. If the man was from the Khazraj, he only needed the order. Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA, of the Khazraj, was a righteous man. But as Aisha said, the old tribal feeling flared up in him for a moment. He called Sa'd ibn Mu'adh a liar and said he would never dare to do it. Usayd ibn Hudayr RA then called Sa'd ibn Ubadah a hypocrite who was defending hypocrites. The two tribes were on their feet before the Prophet ﷺ calmed them down. While Aisha was still weeping, the Prophet ﷺ came to her at her parents' house. A woman of the Ansar was sitting and weeping with her. He sat down and praised Allah. Then he told Aisha that if she was innocent, Allah would clear her name. If she had slipped, she should ask Allah's forgiveness, because He forgives whoever repents. At once her tears dried up. She asked her mother to answer for her, but her mother did not know what to say. She asked her father, Abu Bakr RA, but he did not know what to say either. So she answered for herself. She used the words of the father of Yusuf, though in her distress she could not remember his name. She said, "Patience is beautiful, and Allah is the One whose help is sought against what you describe" (Qur'an 12:18). Then she turned to face the wall. She had hoped that Allah might show her innocence in a dream. She never imagined that He would reveal Qur'an about her. But before the Prophet ﷺ had even left the room, the signs of revelation came over him. He felt the heaviness, and sweat ran down him on a cold day. When it lifted, he was laughing. He said, "O Aisha, Allah has declared you innocent." The opening passage of Surah al-Nur had been revealed, from 24:11 onwards. It called the affair a lie. It promised the worst of punishments to the man who led it. It set a punishment of eighty lashes for anyone who accuses a chaste woman without four witnesses. It also asked the believers why they had not simply said what Abu Ayyub al-Ansari RA had said. His wife had asked him whether he had heard the rumour. He had answered, "Glory be to You, this is a monstrous slander." Aisha's mother told her to get up and thank the Prophet ﷺ. Aisha said that she would get up and thank only Allah. The three believers who had repeated the story were flogged. The hypocrites who had invented it were left to be judged in the Hereafter. Abu Bakr had been supporting Mistah, a poor relative of his. He swore never to give him another coin. Then a verse was revealed asking whether he did not want Allah to forgive him. So he swore instead to support Mistah for the rest of his life. Before the matter was settled, Safwan had struck Hassan with the flat of his sword for repeating the rumour. The Prophet ﷺ ruled in Hassan's favour, because no man may take the law into his own hands. Then he asked Hassan to forgive Safwan. Hassan forgave him for the Prophet ﷺ's sake, and he was given a garden. Safwan swore that he had never lifted the veil of any woman. He married later, and he died a martyr in the time of Umar RA. When Aisha told the story, she made excuses for everyone in it. She would never allow anyone to speak ill of Hassan in her presence.

"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.

Sometime before the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, the Prophet ﷺ sent 300 men under Abu Ubaydah Amir ibn al-Jarrah RA to intercept a caravan of the Quraysh, most likely on its way to Syria. The Quraysh escaped them. As the Muslims gave chase, their supplies ran dangerously low. Abu Ubaydah collected all the food in the army and rationed it, until each man was getting a single date a day. When even that ran out, the companions were forced to eat khabat, the dried, withered leaves of thorn bushes. The expedition is named after these leaves. Eventually they reached the shore at Yanbu, not far from Madinah, and found an enormous whale washed up on the beach. Thirteen or fourteen of the companions could sit together in the socket of its eye. They set one of its bones upright, and Abu Ubaydah rode his largest camel underneath it without lowering his head. The army camped there for a month, living off the whale. They returned to Madinah with the leftover meat and asked the Prophet ﷺ whether it had been allowed to eat an animal they had found already dead. He asked whether any of the meat was left, had it brought to him, and ate from it himself.

Jabir ibn Abdillah RA went with the Prophet ﷺ on a military expedition. On the way, the Prophet ﷺ took Jabir along to help him while he relieved himself, by keeping watch and carrying water. The Prophet ﷺ could find nothing to screen himself with. Then he saw two shrubs standing apart in a valley. He went to one of the shrubs, took hold of it, and said, "Follow me by the permission of Allah." Jabir said the shrub began to follow him along the ground. He did the same with the second shrub. Then he brought the two together and said, "Stick together by the permission of Allah." They joined, and he relieved himself behind them. When he had finished and began walking back towards Jabir, Jabir saw the two shrubs go back to their places.

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.

Sallam ibn Abi al-Huqayq was a wealthy leader of Khaybar. He was the main funder of the Battle of Khandaq, and he had paid for the mercenaries of the Ghatafan tribe who fought in it. Some time earlier, men of the Aws had killed Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf. Men of the Khazraj felt that the Aws had outdone them, and they wanted to show the same devotion. They asked the Prophet ﷺ for permission to kill Sallam. He gave it, on condition that no women or children be harmed. Five men of the Khazraj set out, led by Abdullah ibn Atik RA, who spoke the language of Khaybar well. Just before sunset, as the city gates were being closed, Abdullah slipped inside. After nightfall he opened the gate and let the others in. The five made their way to Sallam's house and killed him. His wife screamed to raise the alarm. One of the men was about to strike her, but he remembered the Prophet ﷺ's order and spared her. As they fled, Abdullah ibn Atik slipped and sprained or broke his foot, and the others carried him out. They escaped with no other injury. When they returned, the Prophet ﷺ rubbed his hand over Abdullah's foot, and it was healed.

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.

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!"

This was the Prophet ﷺ's only Hajj after the Hijrah, and his last. He undertook it in the 10th year of the Hijrah. Once word went out that he intended to go, tens of thousands of people flocked to Madinah. They swelled the caravan the whole way to Makkah. The sahaba said they could see nothing but riders and people on foot in every direction. It was the largest gathering the Prophet ﷺ ever addressed, and most of those present are not known to us by name. He ﷺ left Madinah on 25 Dhu al-Qa'dah. He prayed and entered ihram at Dhu al-Hulayfah. He reached Makkah ten days later, on the 4th of Dhu al-Hijjah. He camped outside the city overnight and entered it the next morning. Just as the caravan was setting out from Dhu al-Hulayfah, Asma bint Umays RA gave birth to Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr there. The Prophet ﷺ told her to bathe, bandage herself, and enter ihram all the same. After performing tawaf and the sa'i, the Prophet ﷺ made an announcement at Marwah. Anyone who had not brought an animal for sacrifice, he said, should end their ihram and treat their pilgrimage as an Umrah. This was a new and startling instruction. The pilgrims had set out with different intentions. Some had come for Hajj alone, some for Hajj and Umrah together, and some for Umrah. Between them, they performed all three recognised forms of Hajj, known as Ifrad, Qiran and Tamattu'. The Prophet ﷺ had asked Ali RA to bring one hundred sacrificial camels from Yemen, and Ali RA now arrived with them. Ali RA found that Fatima RA had already come out of ihram on the Prophet ﷺ's instruction. But Ali RA had entered ihram intending to match whatever intention the Prophet ﷺ held, which was Qiran. So he stayed in ihram until the sacrifice. On the 8th of Dhu al-Hijjah, called Yawm al-Tarwiyah, the company moved to Mina. On the 9th, the Prophet ﷺ went on to Namirah and then to Arafah. On the way he passed by al-Mash'ar al-Haram at Muzdalifah. In pre-Islamic times the Quraysh had stopped there, so as not to go outside the sanctuary. The Prophet ﷺ went past it to stand on the open plain of Arafah itself, which is the essence of the Hajj. He stood there making du'a from just after Zuhr until sunset. Then he moved on, slowly and deliberately, to Muzdalifah. There he prayed Maghrib and Isha together and rested until Fajr. Sawda bint Zam'a RA was elderly and slow-moving. She asked permission to leave Muzdalifah early to avoid the crowds, and it was given. The Prophet ﷺ also sent the weak members of his family ahead during the night, and Ibn Abbas RA was among them. This is the basis for the ruling in fiqh that the elderly and the weak may leave before everyone else. From Muzdalifah the Prophet ﷺ went to Mina and stoned Jamrah al-Kubra. He sacrificed 63 camels with his own hand. Ibn al-Qayyim observes that this number matched the years of his life. Then he had Ali RA sacrifice the remaining 37 of the 100. After that he returned to Makkah for tawaf al-ifadah. There he drank from the Zamzam water that the Banu Abdul Muttalib drew for him. The Prophet ﷺ stayed in Mina through the days of Tashriq. He spent three nights there, one more than most pilgrims do, and left on the 13th. Aisha RA had begun her menses just before entering Makkah. She was told to perform every rite except tawaf. Once she was pure again and had completed her Hajj, she asked to perform an Umrah as well, like the Prophet ﷺ's other wives. So she was sent with her brother, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr RA, to enter ihram at Tan'im for it. Then she rejoined the caravan back to Madinah. The name "Hajjat al-Wada'", the Farewell Hajj, was already in use during the Prophet ﷺ's own lifetime. On Yawm al-Nahr, while he was addressing the people, he asked Allah again and again to bear witness. The sahaba sensed that he was saying goodbye to them, though they did not yet fully grasp it. Later writers estimated the crowd at a round 100,000, but this figure is a guess. Every hadith on the fiqh of Hajj in the books goes back in the end to this one pilgrimage. That is because it was the only Hajj he performed after the Hijrah. On the night of the 13th, the last day of Hajj, the Prophet ﷺ performed Tawaf al-Wada', the Farewell Tawaf. Then he set out on the journey back to Madinah, and he arrived there in Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH. This was his final journey. Once he entered Madinah, he never left it again before his death.