The Fall of Khaybar

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.

Placed here because: Dhu al-Qa'dah 6 AH; "barely two weeks after Hudaybiyyah" the Prophet ﷺ was planning Khaybar (lecture 68).

Ramla bint Abi Sufyan, known as Umm Habiba, was the daughter of Abu Sufyan, the leader of the Quraysh. She had emigrated to Abyssinia with her husband, Ubaydillah ibn Jahsh. He died there, leaving her a widow in a foreign land with no one to care for her. When her waiting period was over, the Prophet ﷺ sent her a proposal of marriage through the Najashi, the king of Abyssinia. The Najashi acted as her guardian and arranged the marriage. He also paid her dowry on the Prophet ﷺ's behalf, although the Prophet ﷺ had not asked him to. She later travelled to Madinah with a delegation the Najashi sent.

Placed here because: ~ "A month before Khaybar", contracted in Abyssinia (lecture 68).

Khaybar lies 180 km north of Madinah. It was the richest farmland in Arabia, a spread of date plantations watered from an underground water table. It belonged to Jewish tribes, who had built the largest fortresses in the peninsula there. There was not one citadel but a dozen or more, with each clan behind its own walls. The fortresses were split between two halves of the oasis, a few hours' march apart. After Badr, the Banu Qaynuqa had been expelled from Madinah. Later the Banu al-Nadir were expelled too, after their attempt on the Prophet ﷺ's life. Both tribes settled in Khaybar. From there, Huyayy ibn Akhtab and Sallam ibn Abi al-Huqayq raised the alliance of tribes that besieged Madinah at Khandaq. They also persuaded the Banu Qurayza to betray the Muslims. No treaty bound Khaybar and the Muslims, and it was the one real threat left in central Arabia. The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah had just removed the threat from the Quraysh. Within weeks, the Prophet ﷺ marched on Khaybar with around 1,700 men, among them the men who had been with him at Hudaybiyyah. Ibn Ishaq dates this to Muharram 7 AH, while al-Waqidi says Safar. The two can be reconciled if the campaign began in one month and ended in the next. The army set out in high spirits. The men shouted "Allahu akbar" so loudly that the Prophet ﷺ told them to go easy on themselves. He reminded them that the One they were calling on was not deaf or far away, but nearer to them than their jugular vein. A number of women of the Ansar came along to nurse the wounded. One of them was a girl of seven or eight who had no animal of her own to ride. She rode behind the Prophet ﷺ on his own camel. On the road she found that her first period had begun. He calmed her and told her how to wash and make herself clean. After the campaign he hung a necklace around her neck, and she later asked to be buried with it. He covered the distance in two days. On the last night he camped out of sight of the oasis, and he marched on before Fajr. At dawn the people of Khaybar came out with their spades and baskets, and only then did they see the Muslim army. They fled back inside, shouting, "Muhammad ﷺ and the army!" and they barred their gates. The Prophet ﷺ then said the words that every book records. "Allahu akbar, Khaybar is destroyed. When we come down into the courtyard of a people, evil is the morning of those who were warned." The layout of the oasis was its downfall. The fortresses were built to hold off a raiding party, and they could not join together against an army. So each clan, of a few hundred men, faced the whole Muslim force alone, and the Prophet ﷺ took them one at a time. The great fortress of Na'im held out for ten days. Abu Bakr RA led the assault for a few days, and then Umar RA took over. Mahmud ibn Maslamah RA was crushed to death by a beam dropped from its wall. The Muslims had never met this kind of fighting before. On the tenth night, the Prophet ﷺ made an announcement. He said that at Fajr he would give the banner to a man whom Allah and His Messenger ﷺ loved, and through whom Allah would give them victory. Umar said that he had never in his life wished to be given command as much as he did that night. In the morning, the Prophet ﷺ asked for Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. Ali was lying in his tent with sore, inflamed eyes. The Prophet ﷺ spat into his eyes and they were cured. Then he handed Ali the banner and ordered him to go forward and not turn back. Ali set off, then stopped. Rather than turn around, he shouted over his shoulder to ask on what terms he should fight them. The Prophet ﷺ called back that he should fight until they testified that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad ﷺ is His Messenger. He added that if Allah guided even one man through Ali, it would be better for him than a herd of red camels. Khaybar's champion, Mirhab, came out to fight in single combat. Amir ibn al-Akwa RA, a man of the Ansar, took up the challenge first and was killed in the duel. Sahih Muslim reports that Ali then killed Mirhab. Ibn Ishaq instead says that Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA killed him, to avenge his brother Mahmud. After that, the garrison came out to fight and was defeated. During this fighting, Ali's shield was knocked out of his hand. He tore the fortress door off its hinges and fought from behind it. Abu Rafi' RA said afterwards that seven of them together could not lift that door. The fortress of al-Sa'b fell next, after three days. It was full of grain and supplies, just when the Muslims' food had run out, and it fed the army for the rest of the campaign. The Castle of al-Zubayr had no well inside its walls. So the Muslims cut off its water, and its defenders came out and were beaten. Then the army crossed to the second half of the oasis and did it all again. There were at least nine sieges in all, some lasting a day and some lasting ten. Each time a fortress fell, its survivors fled into the next one. In the end only one of the largest fortresses was left, packed with everyone who had fled from the others. The Prophet ﷺ simply camped in front of it. After about two weeks, its people asked for terms. Scholars long argued over whether Khaybar ended as a conquest or a surrender. Most of them, including Ibn al-Qayyim, call it a conquest. They point out that the last fortress gave up only because all the others had been taken by force. Two stories from the fighting were told for ever after. In the first, a slave who herded his master's sheep came to ask what the Prophet ﷺ was calling people to. He accepted Islam on the spot. The Prophet ﷺ told him to return the flock to its owner, because it had been placed in his trust. The Prophet ﷺ passed his hand over the sheep, and they went home by themselves. The man then fought until an arrow killed him. As he was being buried, the Prophet ﷺ closed his eyes. He explained that the man's two wives from Paradise had come for him. In the second story, a Bedouin fought so fiercely that the Companions called him a man of Paradise. But the Prophet ﷺ said that he was a man of the Fire. A Companion followed the Bedouin. He saw him wounded in the hand, and then saw him throw himself on his own sword. The Companion came back repeating the shahada. The Prophet ﷺ then taught them a lesson. He said that a man may do the deeds of the people of Paradise until he is only an arm's length away from it, and then be overtaken by what was written for him. The people of Khaybar argued that the Muslims did not know how to farm the land. They offered to stay on as tenants, and a treaty was made. The Muslims would receive half the produce. The Jews would do all the work and bear all the costs. The arrangement would last only as long as the Muslims wished. It held until near the end of Umar's caliphate. Then they were resettled elsewhere, and the Jewish presence in central Arabia came to an end. The neighbouring lands of Wadi al-Qura accepted the same terms. No army had gone near the people of Fadak, but they wrote to accept the terms too. So Fadak came to the Prophet ﷺ without any fighting, and its income supported his household. Under the treaty, the tribes had to hand over their gold and weapons. Huyayy's relative Sa'ya claimed that the treasure Huyayy had carried out of Madinah had all been spent. Zubayr RA was given the task of questioning him. In the end Sa'ya named the valley where it was buried. After the terms had been agreed, a woman of Khaybar whose husband and family had been killed sent the Prophet ﷺ a roast lamb. She had asked which cut he liked best, and she had filled the shoulder with poison. He took one mouthful and told everyone to stop. He said that the shoulder had told him it was poisoned. But Bishr ibn al-Bara RA had already swallowed some, and he died within days. The Prophet ﷺ himself felt the effects of the poison for the rest of his life, and he spoke of it on his deathbed. The Prophet ﷺ called her clan and first showed them that he could tell when they were lying. Then he asked them whether they had poisoned the lamb, and they admitted it. They explained their reasoning. If he were lying about being a prophet, they would be rid of him. If he really was a prophet, the poison would not harm him anyway. They named the woman who had cooked it. She told him that she had done it because her husband, her uncle and others of her family had been killed in the battle. The reports differ on what happened to her. Ibn al-Qayyim brings them together. He says that the Prophet ﷺ forgave her for what she had done to him, but that when Bishr died, she was executed in retaliation for his death. The spoils were the greatest the Muslims had yet seen. There was food, weapons, armour and livestock. In land, it was the largest conquest of the whole Seerah. The men of Hudaybiyyah took their shares, as the Qur'an had promised them. The Muhajirun had lived for six years on gifts from the Ansar. Now they returned those gifts and at last had an income of their own. Ibn Umar RA said that they never ate their fill until Khaybar. On the very day the last fortress fell, Ja'far ibn Abi Talib RA arrived from Abyssinia. He came with the emigrants who had been away for more than ten years. The Prophet ﷺ kissed his forehead. He said that he did not know which made him happier, the conquest or Ja'far's return. The party from Abyssinia were given shares in Khaybar even though they had not fought. So were Abu Hurairah RA and the small group from the tribe of Daws who reached the camp at the same time. Among the captives was Safiyyah bint Huyayy. She was the daughter of Huyayy, the man who had raised the alliance against Madinah, and her husband had been killed in the fighting. The Prophet ﷺ freed her and married her on the way home, and her freedom was her dowry. Back in Madinah, Asma bint Umays RA won a ruling from the Prophet ﷺ. He ruled that the emigrants to Abyssinia had made two hijrahs, while Umar had made only one. Several rulings also date from this campaign. Eating donkey meat was forbidden, and so was temporary marriage. Exchanging dates for dates in unequal amounts was forbidden. The Khaybar treaty itself established the sharecropping contract.

Placed here because: Muharram to Safar 7 AH (lectures 68 and 70).

After the terms of surrender at Khaybar were agreed, the Prophet ﷺ became the new ruler of the city. As was natural for a new ruler, the people sent him gifts, including a large tray of fine food with a roasted lamb. The Muslims did not know that it had been cooked by a woman whose husband, one of the leaders of Khaybar, had been killed in the fighting. She had asked which meat Muhammad ﷺ liked best, and was told the shoulder of a lamb. She poisoned the whole lamb, and the shoulder most of all. The Prophet ﷺ sat down to eat with his Companions and put a bite in his mouth. At once he said, "Everyone, stop eating. The shoulder of the lamb has told me it has been poisoned." Bishr ibn al-Bara had already swallowed some, and he died a few days later. Others spat the meat out and had to be treated. The Prophet ﷺ had not swallowed, yet he felt the pain of the poison for the rest of his life. On his deathbed four years later, he told Aisha, "I still feel the effects of the poison from the woman of Khaybar." He then called the Jews who had sent the gift. He asked whether they would tell him the truth, and they said they would. He asked who their ancestor was. They named a man, and he told them they were lying and named the right one, which they admitted. In this way he showed them that he knew when they lied. He then asked who would go to the Fire. They said they would go there for a short time before Allah saved them, while he and his people would stay there forever. He replied, "Remain humiliated and remain in the Fire of Hell. By Allah, we will not remain after you." A third time he asked whether they would tell the truth, and then asked whether they had poisoned the lamb. They admitted that they had. When he asked why, they said that if he were a liar they would be rid of him, and if he were a prophet it would not harm him. Perhaps their honesty is what saved them. They named the cook. Some books of seerah say that when the Prophet ﷺ asked her why, she said he had killed her husband, her uncle and others of her people, so she had wanted to kill him. Some Companions wanted her executed. The reports differ on what happened next. Ibn al-Qayyim reconciles them by saying that the Prophet ﷺ forgave her for what she had tried to do to him. But when Bishr died a few days later, she was executed in retaliation for him, because his blood was not the Prophet ﷺ's to forgive.

Placed here because: "After these negotiations took place" (lecture 68).

On the very day that the Prophet ﷺ finished the negotiations that completed the conquest of Khaybar, his cousin Ja'far ibn Abi Talib RA arrived from Abyssinia. He came with around fifty Muslim men and women who had been away for over a decade. The Prophet ﷺ stood up to greet Ja'far RA and kissed him on the forehead. The emigrants from Abyssinia had not fought at Khaybar, but they were all given a share of its spoils. This honoured the hardships of their long exile. They had lived for years in a foreign land, and had even lived through a civil war there, when the nephew of the Najashi (the king of Abyssinia) made war against him.

Placed here because: Ja'far arrived "on the same day" the last fortress fell (lecture 68).

Abu Hurairah, whose name was Abd al-Rahman ibn Sakhr, came from the tribe of Daws in Yemen. He had set out to emigrate to Madinah. On the way he heard that the Prophet ﷺ was at Khaybar, so he went there instead with two or three other Muslims of Daws. They arrived after Khaybar had been conquered. The Muslims returning from Abyssinia also arrived after the fighting was over. Neither group had fought at Khaybar. Even so, the Prophet ﷺ gave the emigrants from Abyssinia a share of the spoils. He also asked the Companions whether the men of Daws could have a share, and they agreed. The emigration from Daws was led by Tufayl ibn Amr al-Dawsi RA, the chief of the tribe, at whose hands Abu Hurairah had become Muslim. Tufayl gave up his position as chief and left his tribe to settle in Madinah for good. Many of his people, moved by the strength of his faith, emigrated with him.

Placed here because: ~ The Daws reached Khaybar with the Abyssinians, after the conquest (lecture 70).

After the conquest of Khaybar, the nearby Jewish community of Fadak heard of the Muslims' victory and became afraid. No army marched against them and no threat was made. Even so, they sent a letter to the Prophet ﷺ on their own initiative. In it they agreed to the same terms that had been set for Khaybar, under which half of their produce would go to the Muslims.

Placed here because: ~ A letter sent after the fall of Khaybar, before the return (lecture 68).

After Khaybar was taken, its Jewish tribes made a treaty with the Muslims. They could stay on their lands for the time being, but they had to hand over all their gold, silver, weapons and armour. Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the former leader of Banu al-Nadir, had left Madinah with a great deal of gold. So the Prophet ﷺ asked Sa'ya, Huyayy's uncle (or, by one report, his brother), "Where is the gold of Huyayy?" Sa'ya said that it had all been spent. The Prophet ﷺ replied, "It's only been a recent time since he left Madinah, and the money is too much to have been spent in such a short period of time." Sa'ya kept insisting that he knew nothing. The Prophet ﷺ then handed him over to Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA and said, "Extract the information from him." Before long, Sa'ya said that he had seen Huyayy go to a certain valley, and that he might have hidden the gold there. The Muslims went to that valley and found all the gold.

Placed here because: ~ "Post-Khaybar", told before the marriage to Safiyyah (lecture 70).

Safiyyah was a young girl in Madinah on the day the Prophet ﷺ arrived there. Her father was Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the chief of the Banu Nadir. She was his favourite child, and the favourite of her uncle Abu Yasir too. One day the two men came home from going to see the Prophet ﷺ. Safiyyah ran to greet them, but they walked straight past her with their shoulders slumped. Then she overheard them talking. Her uncle asked whether it was really him. Her father answered, "By the Lord of Moses, it is him." Her uncle asked what they would do now. Her father said they would oppose him for as long as he lived. Later Safiyyah was exiled along with her tribe. She settled in Khaybar and married there. In the fighting at Khaybar, the Banu Nadir threw themselves into the front line of its defence. More of them died than of Khaybar's own people, and her husband Kinana was among the dead. When the fighting ended, Safiyyah was a widow and a captive. When the captives were divided, she was given to Dihyah al-Kalbi. Some Companions told the Prophet ﷺ that the daughter of the chief of the Banu Nadir should be his, not left with Dihyah. So he paid Dihyah her price and took her. At first no one knew whether he had taken her as a servant or as a wife, so they watched. When it was time to leave Khaybar, he made his camel kneel. He knelt down himself and made his thigh into a step to help her mount. Out of respect, she placed her knee on it rather than her foot. Then he covered her with his cloak. At that the Companions understood, because that veil was only for his wives. Safiyyah herself did not yet know what it meant. When he went to her on the first night, she refused him, and he left her alone. When they were a night's journey from Madinah, she agreed. He asked Umm Sulaym to prepare her. Umm Sulaym hung two cloths between some trees, and the women did what they could with the little they had. They worried that they had no perfume or jewellery for her. But when they had finished, they smelt a scent finer than any they knew. When the Prophet ﷺ came in, he said the hard thing first. He said to her, "Your father Huyayy was the most open of the Jews in their animosity against me until Allah caused his death." This was a test of what was in her heart. She answered with a teaching of the Qur'an, that no soul bears the burden of another. Then he said to her, "You have a choice. If you accept Islam, I shall keep you for me; if you remain in your faith, then perhaps I will free you and you can return to your people." As she understood it, staying with him meant remaining a captive. She told him that she had been drawn to Islam even before he offered it, and had already believed in him. She said she had no people to go back to, since her father and her brother were gone. And she said that Allah and His Messenger ﷺ were dearer to her than her own family. So he freed her, made her freedom her dowry, and married her. He had noticed a bruise on her face and asked her about it. She explained that she had once told her husband about a dream. In it, the moon rose from Yathrib and fell into her lap. Her husband struck her and asked whether she expected the king of the Arabs to marry her. He had understood the dream correctly. Later she was asked why she had refused him on the first night. She said that they were still so close to Khaybar that she had feared the Jews would retaliate. The Prophet ﷺ loved her all the more for it. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari stood outside the tent all night with his sword drawn. He was afraid of what a woman whose family had died at Muslim hands might do. In the morning the Prophet ﷺ found him there. He laughed and prayed for him. The wedding feast was made of whatever anyone had. There were dates, a little clarified butter and barley, all mixed together. On the road home, the walls of Madinah came into sight. As was the custom in Madinah, the riders whipped their camels forward. The Prophet ﷺ's camel stumbled and threw both him and Safiyyah to the ground. Every Companion turned his face away. Only Abu Talha cried out to ask whether he was all right. The Prophet ﷺ replied, "I am okay; I am not hurt." He was on his feet at once and put his cloak over her. In Madinah the other wives came to look at her. Zaynab bint Jahsh said to Juwayriyya that this one would be trouble. Safiyyah belonged to neither of the groups among the wives, since she had no family of her own there. Perhaps that is why the Prophet ﷺ was so tender with her. Once Hafsa called her "the daughter of a Jew", and Safiyyah wept. The Prophet ﷺ asked her, "Why didn't you defend yourself?" She asked how. He said, "You should have said your father was a prophet (Harun), and your uncle was a prophet (Musa), and you are married to a prophet. What do they have over you?" On the Farewell Hajj, he stopped speaking to Zaynab because she refused Safiyyah a camel. In his last illness, Safiyyah said she wished she could take his fever on herself. The other wives said something unkind to her. He told them to rinse their mouths, and when they asked why, he said, "Because you have made fun of Safiyyah, and wallahi, she has spoken the truth." She died in 52 AH.

Placed here because: On the road home; consummated a night's march from Madinah (lecture 70).

Asma bint Umays RA was one of the Muslims who had emigrated from Makkah to Abyssinia years earlier. A day or two after the Muslims came back to Madinah from Khaybar, she visited her friend Hafsa bint Umar RA, a wife of the Prophet ﷺ. The two had not seen each other for ten to fifteen years. Hafsa's father, Umar RA, was there and asked who the visitor was. When he heard it was Asma bint Umays, he half-teasingly called her "the Abyssinian." He told her that those who had emigrated to Madinah with the Prophet ﷺ had more right to him than the emigrants to Abyssinia. Asma RA was deeply hurt. She told Umar RA that he was wrong. He and the others had been with the Prophet ﷺ for these ten years, while the emigrants had suffered as strangers in a foreign land. She swore she would not eat or drink until she had told the Prophet ﷺ what Umar RA had said. She went straight to the masjid and, in front of the sahaba, repeated Umar RA's words to the Prophet ﷺ. He said, "He (Umar) does not have any more right over us than you; go back and tell him, he made one Hijrah, (but) you people made two Hijrahs." Asma RA went back with this answer. The news spread quickly, and all day the emigrants from Abyssinia came to her to hear exactly what the Prophet ﷺ had said.

Placed here because: "After a day or two" back in Madinah (lecture 68).

Several rulings of Islamic law date from the time of the campaign against Khaybar. First, eating donkey meat was forbidden, as narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari. Second, a man who had a concubine was not allowed to be intimate with her until she had gone through her monthly cycle (her waiting period, or iddah). Third, temporary marriage (zawaj al-mut'ah) was forbidden for the first time. This was a marriage contracted for a fixed period. All four major Sunni schools of law agree that it is not permitted. Fourth, riba al-fadl was forbidden. This is the bartering of certain staple goods, such as dates, in unequal amounts. The ruling came about when a man brought the Prophet ﷺ a bag of especially fine Khaybar dates. He explained that they bought one measure of these dates for three measures of ordinary dates. Fifth, sharecropping (al-muzara'ah) was allowed. This was the arrangement the Prophet ﷺ made with the people of Khaybar. They kept working the land and paid a share of its produce in return.

Placed here because: ~ "Around the time of the incident of Khaybar" (lecture 70).