The Year of the Trench

In Safar of 4 AH, the Muslims suffered two massacres, at al-Raji and at Bir Ma'una. Amr ibn Umayyah RA, the only survivor of Bir Ma'una, killed two men on his way home, thinking they belonged to the guilty tribe. In fact they were innocent, so the Prophet ﷺ agreed to pay their blood money. This came to 200 camels, a huge sum. Under the Constitution of Madinah, a burden that fell on the whole city was to be shared by all its tribes. The Banu Nadir were a wealthy Jewish tribe living south of Madinah. Relations with them were already tense. The Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq reports that some of them had plotted to murder the People of the Suffa, a group of companions devoted to learning, but the plot was exposed in time. Musa ibn Uqba, an early historian, records that they had helped the Quraysh at the Battle of Uhud with supplies and knowledge of the land. One of their chieftains, Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, had also been killed for his open hostility to the Muslims. Even so, the Prophet ﷺ went to the Banu Nadir with Abu Bakr RA, Umar RA and others to ask for their share of the blood money. The leaders welcomed them and asked them to wait outside their fortress while they went inside. According to one report, they said they wanted to prepare a feast for their guests. Inside, one leader suggested dropping a rock from the top of the wall onto the Prophet ﷺ. Another warned that this would cause a serious backlash, but in the end the plan was approved. Before they could carry it out, the Prophet ﷺ suddenly stood up and walked back to Madinah without saying a word. His companions did not understand why he had left. They waited a long time for him to return, and finally went back to Madinah themselves. There the Prophet ﷺ explained that Jibril AS had come to him and told him to get up and leave at once.

Placed here because: Lecture 53; the cause of the expulsion that lecture 57 opens with.

The Banu Nadir were one of the Jewish tribes of Madinah. When the Prophet ﷺ visited them, some of their leaders plotted to kill him by dropping a rock on him while he waited outside their fortress. After he learned of the plot, he sent Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA to them with an ultimatum. They had ten days to leave Madinah, and anyone still found there after that would be put to death. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul was a powerful chieftain among the Arabs of Madinah, the Aws and Khazraj, and an old ally of the Banu Nadir. He secretly sent them a message promising his full support. He said 2,000 of his allies from Ghatafan would come to defend them. He vowed to fight alongside them, or to go into exile with them if they were expelled. The Banu Nadir argued among themselves about what to do. Their chieftain Huyayy ibn Akhtab trusted Ibn Ubayy's promises and wanted to stand firm. Many of his people disagreed, but Huyayy won the argument. They sent word to the Prophet ﷺ that they would stay. That same day, the Prophet ﷺ marched about 700 Muslims to their fortresses and laid siege to them. During the siege, the Prophet ﷺ went with most of his men to the Banu Qurayza, another Jewish tribe of Madinah. He asked them to renew their oaths under the Constitution of Madinah. They agreed to keep the treaty and not to help the Banu Nadir. Meanwhile, Abdullah ibn Ubayy never sent any help. The siege lasted seven to ten days, without any real fighting. To break the Banu Nadir's resolve, the Prophet ﷺ had some of their prized date palms cut down and burned. This distressed them greatly. It also troubled some of the Companions, until the Qur'an confirmed that it had been done by Allah's will. With no help coming, the Banu Nadir surrendered unconditionally. The Prophet ﷺ spared their lives and let them go into exile with as much as their camels could carry. The only thing they could not take was weapons. Out of spite, many of them hacked down their own houses rather than leave them for the Muslims. Two or three of them accepted Islam and were allowed to stay with their property. The land, orchards and goods left behind were fay', property gained without fighting. The Prophet ﷺ gave it mainly to the emigrants from Makkah (the Muhajirun) who had no land. Until then the Ansar of Madinah had been supporting them, so this made the two groups more equal. According to Ibn Ishaq, three landless men of the Ansar who had fought in several battles also received a share.

Placed here because: Lecture 57 opens the battle with the expelled Banu al-Nadir's delegation to Makkah.

"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.

Placed here because: Shawwal to Dhu al-Qa'dah 5 AH (lectures 57 to 60).

When the Muslims prepared to defend Madinah at the Battle of the Trench, the Prophet ﷺ sent the women and children to al-Fari'. This was the fortress of the Banu Harithah, a clan of the Ansar. Only a few men went with them. There were one or two blind old men, and one younger man in his sixties, the poet Hassan ibn Thabit. Hassan was known to have no courage for fighting. A report in Musnad Imam Ahmad calls him jaban, a man who could not bring himself to hold a sword. About a week later, the Quraysh and Ghatafan were camped outside Madinah, and the Banu Qurayza broke their covenant with the Muslims. They sent two scouts by night to see whether al-Fari' was defended. If it was not, they meant to attack. In the middle of the night, Safiyyah bint Abdul Muttalib, the aunt of the Prophet ﷺ, heard one of the scouts climbing. She woke Hassan, the only man there who might act, and told him to go out and do something. Hassan answered that she knew he could not, and asked her not to shame him. So Safiyyah wrapped herself in a man's shawl, took a dagger, and climbed out of the window in the dark. She took the scout by surprise and killed him. Then she threw his head down to his companion, who ran away believing the fortress was well guarded.

Placed here because: "This particular incident happens another week or later" than the women's move to the fortress, after the Banu Qurayza flipped (lecture 57).

The Muslims had only just returned home from Khandaq, and the Prophet ﷺ had barely set down his sword, when Jibril AS arrived. Jibril said that the angels had not yet put their swords down. He brought Allah's command to march on the Banu Qurayza at once. The Prophet ﷺ sent a crier through Madinah to announce, "Whoever hears must obey! And nobody is allowed to pray Asr except at Banu Qurayza!" The sahaba set out in groups, and some of them were caught by sunset before they arrived. They could not agree whether the order meant they should hurry or should be taken literally. Some prayed Asr where they were. Others delayed it until they reached the Banu Qurayza, and so missed its time. When the Prophet ﷺ was told about this on their arrival, he criticised neither group. A report that he said "both of you have done correctly" is not authentic. But his silence itself became a foundational example for later scholars. It showed how equally qualified mujtahids, scholars able to reason out rulings for themselves, may reach different conclusions without either being blameworthy. This holds even when the conclusions exclude each other, and even though only one of them can match the truth in Allah's sight. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA was the first to reach the massive fortress of the Banu Qurayza. He planted the Prophet ﷺ's flag outside it. The Banu Qurayza were shouting insults at the Prophet ﷺ from the walls. When he arrived, Ali RA tried to steer him away so that he would not hear them. But the Prophet ﷺ set up his camp directly in front of the fortress anyway. He called out, "O group of the Jews! Didn't Allah humiliate you? Hasn't Allah's anger come upon you?" He then called on them to surrender, and they refused. The siege lasted 25 days. Two leaders were inside the fortress. One was Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the exiled leader of the Banu Nadir. He had chosen to stay and face their fate rather than risk the anger of Abu Sufyan. The other was Ka'b ibn Asad, the chieftain of the Banu Qurayza. As their supplies ran low, Ka'b ibn Asad put three choices to his people, one after another. The first was to accept the Prophet ﷺ's message. They all knew, and none of them denied, that he was the very messenger foretold in their own scripture. The second was to kill their own families and make one desperate final attack. The third was to break their own Sabbath and launch a surprise attack on a Saturday. His people refused all three. They refused the last one because they believed Allah would punish them for breaking the Sabbath. Ka'b despaired of them ever making a decision. Twice the Banu Qurayza sent messengers offering to leave with their wealth, as the Banu Nadir had been allowed to do. The Prophet ﷺ refused both offers. He would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. On the 25th day the Banu Qurayza surrendered. The Aws had been allies of the Banu Qurayza since Jahiliyyah, the time before Islam. They pleaded with the Prophet ﷺ to be as merciful to their ally as he had been to the ally of the Khazraj, the Banu Qaynuqa. The Prophet ﷺ asked the Aws whether they would accept one of their own as judge. When they agreed, he named Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, their own leader, who was dying of the wound he had received at Khandaq. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA was carried to the fortress on a mule. All the way there, the Aws pressed him to show mercy. When he arrived, he gave his judgment. The fighting men were to be executed, their property was to be distributed, and their women and children were to be taken captive. The Prophet ﷺ declared that Sa'd had given the very judgment of Allah from above the seven heavens. Trenches were dug on land that belonged to a woman of the Banu Najjar. The men of the Banu Qurayza were executed there in groups. The Seerah sources vary widely on how many died. Ibn Ishaq, the most authoritative of them, gives 600 to 700, and notes that some exaggerate the number to 800 or 900. A hadith in Musnad Imam Ahmad gives around 400. No children were executed. Only one woman was put to death. During the siege she had killed a Muslim by dropping a grinding stone on him from the fortress wall. Some of the Banu Qurayza had already embraced Islam, and they were spared. So was anyone a Muslim vouched for because he owed that man a personal debt of honour. A great deal of booty was taken. According to one report, it included some 1,500 swords, 1,500 shields, 2,000 spears, 300 suits of armour, and large numbers of livestock. According to one version, it was around this time that the shares of ghanima, the spoils of war, were fixed. A rider on horseback received three shares, one for his mount and two for himself. A man on foot received one. A fifth was reserved for the Islamic state, as Surah al-Anfal sets out.

Placed here because: Jibril AS came "the next morning" at Zuhr after the confederates left (lecture 61).

During the siege of the Banu Qurayza, the Prophet ﷺ refused every offer the tribe made except unconditional surrender. Then their messenger asked that Abu Lubaba be sent in to them. Abu Lubaba belonged to the Aws, who had been allies of the Banu Qurayza before Islam, and he was a close friend of theirs. They hoped he would speak up for them. He was also a respected Companion, counted among the men of Badr, who had fought at Uhud and in later battles. The Prophet ﷺ sent him in. Ibn Ishaq says that inside the fortress the women and children ran to him, weeping and begging for mercy, and his heart softened. They asked him whether they should surrender. He told them yes, but as he said it he made a gesture at his throat, as if to say that surrender meant death. Abu Lubaba later said that before his feet had even moved from that spot, he knew he had betrayed Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. He had spoken without knowledge, because the Prophet ﷺ had told him nothing about their fate. And at the tensest moment of the siege, he had shown sympathy for the enemy rather than for the Muslims. He left the fortress and walked past the army and the Prophet ﷺ without stopping. He went straight to the Prophet ﷺ's mosque in Madinah and tied himself to one of its pillars. He swore that he would stay tied there until Allah accepted his repentance. He also swore never again to set foot among the Banu Qurayza, where he had disobeyed Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. When the Prophet ﷺ heard what had happened, he said that if Abu Lubaba had come to him, he would have asked Allah to forgive him. But since Abu Lubaba had bound himself by a vow, only Allah could release him. Abu Lubaba stayed tied to the pillar for probably more than a week. Then one morning the Prophet ﷺ woke for the Fajr prayer laughing. His wife Umm Salama prayed that Allah would keep him laughing all his life, and asked him why he was laughing. He told her that Allah had accepted Abu Lubaba's repentance. She asked whether she could go and tell him, and he said she could if she wished. Her house had a door that opened straight onto the mosque, and the verses of hijab had not yet been revealed. So she rushed out and called to Abu Lubaba to rejoice, because Allah had accepted his repentance. The Companions waiting for Fajr came to untie him, but he refused. He wanted the Prophet ﷺ to untie him himself, to be sure his repentance had been accepted. So the Prophet ﷺ came and untied him with his own hands. Two verses are said to have been revealed about him. The first, in Surah al-Anfal, warns the believers not to betray Allah and the Messenger ﷺ, nor the trusts they carry. The second, in Surah al-Tawbah, speaks of others who confessed their sins and mixed a good deed with a bad one, and says that perhaps Allah will forgive them. Ibn Abbas said that whenever Allah says "perhaps" in this way, He will do it. Al-Hasan al-Basri called it the most hopeful verse in the whole Qur'an.

Placed here because: During the twenty-five-day siege, after the envoys' pleas and before the surrender (lecture 61).

Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA was the chieftain of the Aws, one of the two Arab tribes of Madinah. He had been among the earliest people of Madinah to accept Islam, at the hands of Mus'ab ibn Umayr, and his whole clan had followed him into Islam. Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa'd describe him as tall, broad-shouldered, fair and handsome, with a full beard. During the Battle of Khandaq, Sa'd came to say goodbye to his mother before going to the front line. Aisha RA was sitting with her, and she remarked how little of his body his armour covered. An arrow later struck him exactly where she had worried, in the upper arm beside the neck. It was shot by Hiban ibn al-Ariqah, one of the enemy. Sa'd then made a du'a. He asked Allah that if the Quraysh would ever fight again, he be kept alive to fight them. If not, he asked to be taken as a martyr, but only after his eyes had been comforted by seeing what became of the Banu Qurayza. They were a Jewish tribe of Madinah who had broken their treaty with the Muslims during the battle. He was carried to the hospital tent of Rufayda al-Aslamiyyah RA, a woman who cared for the wounded. He lay there bleeding through the twenty-five days of the siege of the Banu Qurayza. Then the Prophet ﷺ named him as judge over them. He was brought to them on a mule, since he could not walk, to give his verdict. The Prophet ﷺ said that he had judged with the judgment of Allah from above the seven heavens. Sa'd died a few days later, at the age of thirty-seven. The Prophet ﷺ said that the Throne of Allah shook at his death, and that the angels prayed over him. Scholars explain the shaking either as joy in welcoming him or as anger that he had been killed. When the companions carried his body, they found it strangely light. The Prophet ﷺ told them that seventy thousand angels, who had never come down to the earth before, were carrying it with them. At the grave, the Prophet ﷺ spoke to him, "Jazak'Allahu khayran from the leader of the people. You have fulfilled your promise to Allah, and Allah will fulfill His promise to you." As the body was laid down, the Prophet ﷺ's face changed and he began repeating "subhan Allah." Everyone at al-Baqi' repeated it with him, until he said "Allahu akbar." The companions asked him why. He explained that even this righteous servant had been squeezed once in the grave and then released. This was a man for whom the Throne had shaken and the gates of heaven had opened. If anyone were to be spared that squeeze, it would have been Sa'd. A few years later, the ruler of Bahrain sent the Prophet ﷺ a robe. It was so fine that the companions crowded round to touch it. The Prophet ﷺ told them that Sa'd's handkerchief in Paradise was better than it.

Placed here because: "As soon as the Battle of Khandaq finished, a few days later, he died", after giving the verdict (lectures 59 and 61).

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

Placed here because: ~ "Around this time", end of 5 AH (lecture 62); the details are in lecture 69.

The verses of hijab were revealed around the beginning of Dhu al-Qa'dah in the 5th year after the Hijrah, according to the strongest opinion. Anas ibn Malik RA reports in Sahih al-Bukhari that they came down on the very night of the Prophet ﷺ's marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh RA.

Placed here because: ~ "End of 5th year/beginning of 6th" (lecture 62); Aisha RA notes the verses had not yet come down at Khandaq (lecture 59).