A clan of the Aws of Yathrib, led by Sa'd ibn Mu'adh and Usayd ibn Hudayr. Every household of the clan embraced Islam following the conversion of its two leaders, except for Usayrim, who held out for three years.
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.
In 1 AH, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, a leading figure among the Ansar of Madinah, visited Makkah, perhaps on business. He stayed with his old business partner, Umayya ibn Khalaf. People in Makkah knew that Sa'd was protecting and helping the Muslims, although his own Islam was not yet known. So when Sa'd asked when he could perform tawaf around the Ka'bah, Umayya advised him to go at noon, in the heat of the day, when no one would be there. Even so, the two of them met Abu Jahal. He asked who Umayya's companion was, and became angry when he learned it was Sa'd. Abu Jahal accused Sa'd of sheltering and helping "the renegades," the name the Quraysh used for the Muslims. He threatened that if Sa'd were not Umayya's guest, he would not have returned home in one piece.
After the Hijrah, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA made one of his usual business trips to Makkah. As always, he stayed with Umayyah ibn Khalaf, his close friend from the days before Islam. The two called each other "business brothers." Because of the tension between Makkah and Madinah, Umayyah advised Sa'd to go out only at night. But Abu Jahal heard him and came out. He angrily asked how Sa'd dared come to Makkah after helping the Prophet ﷺ. The two men began shouting at each other. Umayyah sided with Abu Jahal, saying that he was their leader, and tried to hold Sa'd back. Sa'd told Umayyah to take his hands off him. He said that he had heard the Prophet ﷺ say that he would kill Umayyah. The warning shook Umayyah, because he knew the Prophet ﷺ had never told a lie. Because of it, he tried to stay away from the Battle of Badr. In the end he was persuaded to go, and he was killed there.
Badr is a well on a plain about 130 km south-west of Madinah, where the road to Syria runs. It was named after the man of the Banu Damra who dug it. The battle fought there on Friday, 17 Ramadan 2 AH, was never meant to be a battle. In the year since the Hijrah, permission to fight had come down. The Muslims had begun to strike at the one thing that made the Quraysh what they were. That was their caravan road, which ran past Madinah. First came the expedition to al-Abwa, then the raid that saw the first arrow shot in the way of Allah, then al-Ushayra. At al-Ushayra, the Prophet ﷺ missed Abu Sufyan's great caravan, on its way north, by a single day. Then came Nakhla, where eight men killed a man of the Quraysh in the sacred month. That handed the Quraysh a grievance. Abu Jahl had once threatened Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA at the Ka'bah for sheltering the Muslims. Sa'd had then sworn in front of the Ka'bah to cut the Quraysh off from their trade, which was dearer to them than tawaf. Shortly before the battle, the qibla turned from Jerusalem to Makkah. Ibn Ishaq places this in Sha'ban. In Ramadan the same caravan was due back from Syria, led by Abu Sufyan. By some reports it had a thousand camels. It carried the money and goods of the Quraysh, and Ibn Ishaq says that thirty or forty men guarded it. The Prophet ﷺ sent out scouts. According to Muslim, one scout, Busaysah, brought his report to a house where only the boy Anas RA was present. Other reports name Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA and Sa'id ibn Zayd RA as the scouts, and Ibn Ishaq names Basbas ibn Amr and Adiy ibn Abi al-Zaghba' as the two sent ahead to Badr. The Prophet ﷺ then told the people that anyone whose mount was ready should ride with him at once. He would not wait for those whose animals were grazing outside the town. In Ibn Ishaq's telling, he named the Quraysh caravan as the target when he called them out. It was meant to be a quick seizure, so the men came as they were. There were around 313 or 315 of them. Of these, 83 were Muhajirun, 62 were from the Aws and 170 were from the Khazraj. By one report they had two horses, which belonged to Zubayr RA and al-Miqdad RA. Ali RA said that al-Miqdad was their only horseman. They had seventy camels, with three men sharing each one. In Ibn Mas'ud RA's report, the Prophet ﷺ shared his camel with Ali RA and Abu Lubaba RA. Ibn Ishaq names Ali RA and Marthad ibn Abi Marthad RA instead. His two companions begged him to ride. He answered that they were no stronger than he was, and that he needed the reward no less than they did. He judged al-Bara' ibn Azib RA and Abdullah ibn Umar RA too young to fight. Hudhayfah RA and his father were held back for another reason. The Quraysh had once made them swear never to fight against Muhammad ﷺ, and an oath is an oath, even to an enemy. A pagan of Madinah, famous for his courage, asked three times to join. He was refused twice, because the Muslims do not seek help from an idolater, until he took the shahada. The blind Ibn Umm Maktum stayed behind in Madinah. By one report, Abu Lubaba RA was sent back from the road to take charge of the city. Abu Sufyan had been on his guard since al-Ushayra. He found the scouts' campsite and broke open the camel droppings. Inside he recognised the date stones of Yathrib. He turned the caravan down to the coast road, and sent Damdam ibn Amr al-Ghifari racing to Makkah. Three days before Damdam arrived, Atikah bint Abdul Muttalib had a dream. In it, a crier on a camel called the Quraysh traitors and promised them death in three days. Then a rock rolled down from Abu Qubays and shattered against every house in the city. Her brother al-Abbas told her to keep the dream to herself. But he told one friend about it, and before long Abu Jahl was sneering at the Banu Abdul Muttalib for producing a prophetess. On the third day Damdam rode in. His camel's nose was slit and his shirt was torn, and he was crying out that Muhammad ﷺ was upon the caravan. Makkah raised an army at speed. Every household sent a man or hired one to go. By some reports the army set out 1,300 strong, with a hundred horses and six hundred coats of mail. Umar RA's report in Muslim and Ahmad says that it stood at Badr about a thousand strong. Abu Lahab stayed behind and paid a man who owed him money to go in his place. By some reports Utbah ibn Rabi'ah did not want to fight his own kin, until his brother Shaybah shamed him into it. The same reports say that Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt had once spat in the Prophet ﷺ's face and had been promised death outside Makkah. He did not dare to go until a kinsman lent him the fastest camel in the city. Umayyah ibn Khalaf, fat and fearful, meant to stay at home. According to al-Bukhari, Abu Jahl told him that if the chief of the valley stayed, the people would stay too. According to Ibn Ishaq, Uqba brought him an incense burner and told him to perfume himself, because he belonged with the women. Umayyah then bought the best camel in Makkah. He told his wife that he meant to go only a short way. Every one of these men was on the list the Prophet ﷺ had named in his prayer on the day the entrails were thrown on his back. By one report, before they marched, the Quraysh held the curtains of the Ka'bah. They asked Allah to give victory to the better of the two parties. The Qur'an says that this prayer was answered, against them. Outside Makkah the army nearly turned back. They were afraid that the Banu Bakr would raid the empty city. Then Iblis himself came to them in the shape of Suraqa ibn Malik, a chief of Kinanah. He promised them his protection and rode with them. At Juhfa, Juhaym ibn al-Salt of the Banu al-Muttalib had a dream. In it a crier named Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah among the dead. He also saw a camel stabbed in the chest, whose blood spattered every tent. Abu Jahl scoffed that here was another prophet from the Banu al-Muttalib. Then a messenger arrived from Abu Sufyan. He said that the caravan was safe and that the army should go home. Abu Jahl said they would go on to Badr anyway. They would camp there for three days, drink and be sung to, and let all Arabia hear that the Quraysh feared no one. Al-Akhnas ibn Shariq told the Banu Zuhrah to lay the charge of cowardice on him and go home. They did, and so did Talib ibn Abi Talib with some others. Meanwhile the Muslims had begun to hear of an army. The Prophet ﷺ had been shown in a dream that he would fight. By some reports he asked them twice what they thought of meeting the Quraysh instead of the caravan. Twice they answered that they had come for a caravan, with no armour and no supplies. The Qur'an records this reluctance, yet still calls them nothing but believers. The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA went scouting themselves. They met an old Bedouin and got from him the exact positions of both the Muslims and the Quraysh. All they told him about themselves was that they were "from water". Then two water carriers of the Quraysh were caught. When the boys said they were from the army, the Companions beat them. The beating went on until the boys said they were from the caravan. The Prophet ﷺ finished his prayer and told the Companions that they had beaten the boys for telling the truth, and let the lie stand. He asked the boys how many camels the Quraysh slaughtered each day. They said nine or ten, and he said the army was nine hundred to a thousand strong. The boys then named its leading men, Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah. The Prophet ﷺ told the Companions that Makkah had thrown them the pieces of its liver. He also pointed to the places on the ground where each of those men would fall. Earlier, at Dhafiran, news had come that the Quraysh had marched, and he had asked the army for its advice. Abu Bakr spoke and sat down. Umar RA spoke and sat down. Then al-Miqdad said that they would not speak as the Children of Israel had spoken to Musa. Instead they would fight at his right and his left, in front of him and behind him. Still the Prophet ﷺ asked again. At last Sa'd ibn Mu'adh understood that he was waiting to hear from the Ansar. In Muslim's report it was Sa'd ibn Ubadah. The Ansar's pledge at Aqaba had been to defend him in Madinah, not to march out to war. Sa'd told him to go wherever he wished. If he rode them into the sea, they would follow him, and perhaps Allah would show him through them something to comfort his eyes. The Prophet ﷺ was delighted. He told them to go forward, because Allah had promised him one of the two parties. It was as though he could already see the enemy lying slain. The Muslims reached the water of Badr before the Quraysh. Al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA asked whether this campsite had been chosen by revelation, or was simply a soldier's choice. He was told it was a soldier's choice. So he proposed camping beyond the wells, so that the water lay behind the Muslims and the enemy had only what they carried. The Prophet ﷺ took his advice. The other wells were stopped up, and a cistern was built and filled for the Muslims. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh had a shelter built, from which the Prophet ﷺ could watch the field. That night a light rain fell. It firmed the sand on the Muslim side and, by some reports, drenched the Quraysh. Ali said that all the Companions slept except the Prophet ﷺ. He prayed under a tree until dawn: "O Allah, if this band perishes, You will not be worshipped on earth." While he dozed, he was shown the enemy as few in number. The Qur'an says that this spared the Muslims from quarrelling and despair. At dawn on the 17th he drew the army up in ranks. He straightened the lines with an arrow in his hand. When he prodded Suwad RA in the belly, Suwad demanded his right to retaliate. The Prophet ﷺ bared his own stomach, and Suwad kissed it. Suwad said that if he was to die, he wanted his skin to have touched the Prophet ﷺ's. He had given the flag to Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Two black banners were carried, one by Ali and one by a man of the Ansar. He put Qays ibn Abi Sa'sa'a RA in charge of the rearguard. He also ordered that certain men were not to be killed. These were al-Abbas and the Banu Hashim who had been dragged out to fight, and Abu al-Bukhturi, who had helped to break the boycott. Across the plain the Prophet ﷺ saw a man on a red camel riding up and down the lines of the Quraysh. He said that if there was any good in them, it was in that man. The man was Utbah. He was offering to pay the blood money for Amr al-Hadrami, the man killed at Nakhla. He pleaded with the Quraysh not to kill their own sons and brothers, but to leave Muhammad ﷺ to the other Arabs. Hakim ibn Hizam carried the offer to Abu Jahl. Abu Jahl mocked Hakim as Utbah's errand boy. He stirred up al-Hadrami's brother, and called Utbah a coward who had lost his nerve at the sight of the Muslims. Utbah had told them they could blame him for cowardice, but he could not bear to hear it from Abu Jahl. He called for his brother and his son. The Quraysh scout Umayr ibn Wahab reported three hundred men with nothing but their swords. He warned that not one of them would die without taking a man of the Quraysh with him. By one report, Abu Jahl told him that no one had asked his opinion. As the armies closed in, Abu Jahl prayed aloud. He asked Allah to destroy whichever army had cut the ties of kinship and brought a strange religion. It was another prayer against himself. Al-Aswad ibn Abd al-Asad swore to drink from the Muslims' cistern or die trying. Hamzah RA cut him down at the water. He was the first man killed at Badr. Then Utbah, Shaybah and al-Walid ibn Utbah stepped out and called for champions to face them. Three young men of the Ansar answered. They were Awf and Muawwidh, the sons of Afra', and Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA. The Quraysh waved them away. They said they had no quarrel with them, and asked for their equals instead. So the Prophet ﷺ sent Ubaydah ibn al-Harith RA, Hamzah and Ali. In Ibn Ishaq's account, Hamzah and Ali killed Shaybah and al-Walid at once. Ubaydah and Utbah struck each other down, and Utbah cut off Ubaydah's leg. Then the other two turned and killed Utbah. Ali RA's own report in Abu Dawud pairs them differently. In it Hamzah faced Utbah, Ali faced Shaybah, and Ubaydah and al-Walid wounded each other. Ubaydah died of his wound at al-Safra on the way home. This duel is the Qur'an's "two adversaries who dispute about their Lord". The Prophet ﷺ faced the qibla and raised his hands to the sky. He pleaded for the help he had been promised, until his cloak fell from his shoulders. Abu Bakr put it back on him. He told him that it was enough, and that his Lord would give what He had promised. According to Muslim, Allah then revealed that He would help them with a thousand angels. Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ dozed in the shelter and then woke. He told Abu Bakr to be of good cheer. He said that Jibril was there, holding a horse by the rein and leading it, with dust on his front teeth. A thousand angels were coming in file. The Prophet ﷺ recited the verse "the host will be routed and turn their backs". Umar is reported to have said that he had not understood this verse until that morning. Then the Prophet ﷺ took up a handful of pebbles. He threw them at the Quraysh, saying "may these faces be disfigured". By reports in the tafsir, every one of them got grit in his eyes. The Qur'an says that it was not he who threw, but Allah. What happened next can only be told through the dozen stories the Companions left behind. The Prophet ﷺ called on them to rise up to a Paradise as wide as the heavens and the earth. Umayr ibn al-Humam RA was chewing dates at the time. He said that if he lived long enough to finish them, that would be too long a life. He threw them down and fought until he was killed. The Muslims held back their arrows until the enemy was in range. They kept their swords sheathed until the enemy was upon them. Ali said that the Prophet ﷺ was the closest of them all to the enemy. By another report, Ali said he found the Prophet ﷺ three times in his shelter, in prostration, crying "O Living, O Sustaining", with Abu Bakr at his side. The Prophet ﷺ moved between the two. Iblis saw the angels and ran. Al-Harith ibn Hisham grabbed at the man he took for Suraqa, and was thrown onto his back. A mursal report in the Muwatta' tells what the Prophet ﷺ said about this. Satan is never more humiliated than on the day of Arafah, he said, except for what Satan was shown on the day of Badr. On that day he saw Jibril arranging the angels in ranks. Some Companions heard a rider above them urging on his horse, Haizum. They saw the pagan in front of them lose his head before their own blow landed. The man who captured al-Abbas was a slightly built man of the Ansar. Al-Abbas insisted that he had been taken by a handsome horseman on a piebald horse. The Prophet ﷺ told the Ansari to be quiet, because an angel had helped him. By one report the angels wore yellow turbans like Zubayr's, while Ibn Ishaq's report from Ibn Abbas RA says their turbans were white. Ukasha ibn Mihsan RA broke his sword. He was handed a stick of wood, and found a blade in his hand. By a report with a broken chain, Abu Ubaydah RA kept away from his father, Abdullah ibn al-Jarrah. In the end the old man came at him, and Abu Ubaydah killed him. The closing verse of Surah al-Mujadilah came down about him. It says that no believer loves those who fight Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, even if they are his father. Abu al-Bukhturi refused to be taken prisoner without his friend. He was killed by a man of the Ansar who had tried to spare him. The three men of the duel were the father, uncle and brother of Abu Hudhayfah RA. He said aloud that the Muslims were killing their own kin while the Prophet ﷺ's uncle went untouched. He regretted those words until he died at Yamamah. Two boys of the Ansar had each asked Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA to point out Abu Jahl. One was Mu'adh ibn Amr ibn al-Jumuh RA. The other was a son of Afra', called Mu'adh in al-Bukhari and Muawwidh in Ibn Ishaq. When Abd al-Rahman pointed him out, the boys went through the crowd like hawks. Mu'adh leapt and cut off Abu Jahl's leg. It cost him his own arm to Ikrimah's sword, so he tore the arm off and fought on without it. Muawwidh struck the second blow. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud RA was the shepherd whom Abu Jahl had despised. He found Abu Jahl dying and put a foot on his neck. To the end, Abu Jahl said that a man killed by his own people was not disgraced, and that Ibn Mas'ud was standing on a high place. Ibn Mas'ud's own sword had been blunted by the day's fighting, so he took Abu Jahl's sword and finished him with it. By a report with a weak chain in Ahmad, the Prophet ﷺ made Ibn Mas'ud swear three times before going to look for himself. He called Abu Jahl the Pharaoh of this community. Umayyah ibn Khalaf begged his old friend Abd al-Rahman to take him and his son prisoner. He said he was worth more than the coats of mail Abd al-Rahman was carrying. Then Bilal RA saw the man who had tortured him on the sand of Makkah. He called out to the Ansar, and Umayyah and his son died under their spears. Abd al-Rahman was wounded in the foot trying to shield them. Umayyah's body was the only one that could not be moved to the well. It came apart when they lifted it, so they covered it with stones where it lay. Seventy of the Quraysh were dead and about seventy were taken prisoner. That was one man in seven of their army. Fourteen or fifteen Muslims had been killed, and none were taken. The Quraysh fled by the one road the Muslims had left open. The Prophet ﷺ stayed on the field for three days, to bury the martyrs and to make it plain who had won. The Quraysh dead, all except Umayyah, were thrown into a dry well and covered over. On the third day, before leaving, the Prophet ﷺ stood at the mouth of the well. He called the dead by name, Utbah, Shaybah, al-Walid, Abu Jahl and Umayyah. He asked whether they had found their Lord's promise true, for he had found his Lord's promise true. Umar asked how he could speak to bodies without souls. He answered that they heard him no worse than the living did, though they could not reply. While still on the field, the Companions had already started arguing over the spoils. The men who gathered the spoils, the men who chased the enemy and the Prophet ﷺ's bodyguard each claimed the better right. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA asked for the sword he had won. Then the opening verses of Surah al-Anfal came down there, saying that the spoils belong to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. Every man received an equal share. Shares also went to some who had been kept away on duty. Among them was Uthman RA, who was nursing his dying wife Ruqayyah. Looking over the prisoners, the Prophet ﷺ spoke of Mut'im ibn Adi, who had recently died. He said that if Mut'im had asked him for these prisoners, he would have freed every one of them. This was because of the shelter Mut'im had given him after Ta'if. Abu Bakr advised taking ransom, since the prisoners were their kin. Umar advised giving each Companion his own kinsman to kill. The Prophet ﷺ compared the first to Ibrahim and Isa, and the second to Nuh and Musa. He chose ransom. The next day Umar found him and Abu Bakr weeping under a tree, because of verses that had come down. The verses said that no prophet should take captives before he has subdued the land. They also said that but for a prior decree, a punishment would have touched them. Two prisoners were executed on the road home. One was al-Nadr ibn al-Harith, who had mocked the Qur'an as old fables that he could improve on. The other was Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt. Uqba asked who would look after his children, and the answer he was given was the Fire. Their execution was the only time captives of Badr were put to death. Zayd ibn Harithah RA carried the news to Lower Madinah, naming the dead one by one. Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA took it to Upper Madinah. By some reports Zayd was riding the Prophet ﷺ's own camel, and people thought he was mad. Abdullah ibn Ubayy heard him and said that the matter was now settled. The hypocrisy of Madinah dates from that day. Uthman heard the shouting just as he finished burying Ruqayyah. The prisoners were lodged with the men who had captured them. The captors were ordered to treat them well. They gave the prisoners their bread, and ate dates themselves. Suhayl ibn Amr was kept in the Prophet ﷺ's own house. There Sawda RA saw the chief of the Quraysh tied up in a corner, and cried out that he should have died a noble death. When the Prophet ﷺ rebuked her, she said she could not contain herself. Each man's ransom was set according to his means. The poor were freed for nothing. According to Ahmad, some who had nothing to pay with were freed for teaching the children of the Ansar to write. Al-Abbas protested that he was a Muslim. He was told that Allah knew his heart, but he had fought. Then he was told where he and Umm al-Fadl had set money aside when no one else was present. So he paid for himself, and for Aqil and Nawfal too. By one report, he used to say that Allah had given him twenty merchants in return for those twenty ounces. Abu Sufyan refused to pay for his son Amr, having already lost another son on the field. Later he kidnapped an old Ansari pilgrim in Makkah to force an exchange. Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi' was ransomed with a necklace. Khadija RA had given it to her daughter Zaynab RA as a wedding gift. When the Prophet ﷺ saw it, his face changed. At his word the captors returned it, and Abu al-As went home on his promise to send Zaynab to Madinah. In Makkah, the first survivor to arrive was al-Haysaman al-Khuza'i. He listed so many dead nobles that Safwan ibn Umayyah tested him by asking about himself. Al-Haysaman told him that he had watched Safwan's father and brother die. The Quraysh banned wailing for the dead, so that the Muslims would take no pleasure in it. Al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib, who had lost three sons, was overjoyed to hear a woman wailing. Then he learned that she was weeping for a camel. Abu Lahab heard from his nephew, Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, about men in white on piebald horses whom no one could withstand. Al-Abbas's slave Abu Rafi' said they were angels, and Abu Lahab beat him for it. Then Umm al-Fadl split Abu Lahab's head open with a tent pole. Within days he died of a foul sickness. According to a report in al-Tirmidhi, on the same day, far away, Rome defeated Persia, as Surah al-Rum had foretold. Years earlier, Abu Bakr had made a bet with a Makkan, Ubay ibn Khalaf, that this would happen within six years. The six years had passed, so Abu Bakr had already lost the bet. Within weeks, Umayr ibn Wahab came to Madinah with a poisoned sword to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and went home a Muslim. The Banu Qaynuqa told the Prophet ﷺ that he had beaten only men who knew nothing of war. They were besieged and sent out of Madinah. Jibril asked how the Muslims regarded those who had fought at Badr. He was told that they were the best of the Muslims. Jibril said that the angels regard the angels who were there in the same way.
After their defeat at Badr, the Quraysh spent a full year preparing for revenge. Four motives drove them together. The first was religious hatred of the new faith. The second was personal grief for the leaders they had lost, since the fathers of both Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal and Safwan ibn Umayyah had died at Badr. The third was economic, because the Muslims now controlled their trade route to Syria and that trade had collapsed. The fourth was political, the threat of a growing Muslim state. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, together with Safwan and Ikrimah, went from door to door. They collected the profits of the Badr caravan from every Qurashi household that had invested in it. They used this money to recruit allied tribes such as Kinana and Tihama. On the 7th of Shawwal, 3 AH, an army of 3,000 set out from Makkah. It had 200 horses and 700 suits of armour. Around two dozen women of the Quraysh came with it, among them Hind bint Utbah, to urge the men on with their songs. The journey to Madinah normally took two weeks, but the army covered it in seven days. Abu Sufyan held overall command. Khalid ibn al-Walid led the right flank, and Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal led the left. There is a report, not found in Ibn Ishaq, about al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, who had stayed behind in Makkah. He sent a trusted servant racing to Madinah with the exact numbers of the army. The servant covered the distance in three days. He found the Prophet ﷺ at Quba, and Ubay ibn Ka'b RA read the letter to him privately. The news was urgent, but the Prophet ﷺ did not act on a single report. He first sent scouts to confirm where the Quraysh were. Only then did he call a general meeting of the Muslims. The meeting took place at the Friday gathering, which was even larger than usual because a funeral had already brought many people out. The Prophet ﷺ explained the threat and asked for advice. He gave his own view first. He wanted to stay inside Madinah and use its natural defences. There were fields of volcanic rock to the east and west, Mount Uhud to the north, and date palm groves to the south. The Quraysh would then be forced into costly fighting in the streets. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the most experienced warrior in the city, agreed with this plan. He did so not out of any respect for the Prophet ﷺ, but because it was clearly the stronger position. A group of younger Companions argued the other way. Many of them had missed Badr and were eager to prove themselves, so they pressed to meet the Quraysh in open battle. The Prophet ﷺ judged that most people wanted this, so he agreed and went inside to put on his armour. The younger men then had second thoughts. They told him they would not oppose him if he wished to stay in the city. This is in Ibn Ishaq, and some retellings name Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA as the one who said it. The Prophet ﷺ replied that once a prophet has put on his armour, it is not fitting for him to take it off before he has fought. He marched out on Friday, the 14th of Shawwal, with roughly 700 Muslims. He divided them into three groups. Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA led the Muhajirun, Usayd ibn Hudayr RA led the Aws, and al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA led the Khazraj. Between them they had only a handful of horses and 100 suits of armour. The Prophet ﷺ led them along a secret route through the date palm groves instead of the main road, so that their position would not be revealed too early. The route passed through the garden of Mirba' ibn Qayzi, a blind hypocrite. He threw dust at the Muslims, and the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions to leave him alone. During the march, Abdullah ibn Ubayy turned back with about 300 men. He said publicly that his advice had been ignored. Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram RA confronted him for abandoning the Prophet ﷺ. Abdullah ibn Ubayy insisted that he did not believe there would be any fighting. The Qur'an later exposed this as a lie (Qur'an 3:167). Some of the Aws, from Banu Harithah, and some of the Khazraj, from Banu Salama, also wavered. In the end they stayed, and Qur'an 3:122 credits their steadfastness to Allah's protection. The roughly 700 who remained reached Uhud in the early afternoon of the 14th. The Prophet ﷺ chose the site with care. The mountain protected the army on two sides. The third side was covered by fifty archers under Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, posted on a hill called Jabal Aynayn. That hill was later renamed Jabal al-Ruma in their honour. The archers had strict orders never to leave their position, no matter how the battle seemed to be going. This left the much larger Quraysh army only one narrow approach to attack through. The Prophet ﷺ arranged the army for battle and sent home the boys he judged too young. Two boys, Rafi ibn Khadij RA and Samura ibn Jundub RA, were allowed to stay. Ibn Hisham says they were fifteen. Rafi' was allowed because he was a good archer, and Samurah because he could beat Rafi' at wrestling. On the morning of the 15th, the Prophet ﷺ offered his own sword to whoever would take it and give it its due. Abu Dujana RA accepted it. He put on his turban of death and walked along the ranks, giving the Muslims courage. Abu Sufyan first sent a message trying to split the Ansar away from the Muhajirun. Then he sent Abu Amir al-Rahib, a former leader of the Aws who had rejected Islam, to appeal directly to his own people. The Ansar refused both approaches. They gave Abu Amir a new name, Abu Amir al-Fasiq. The battle opened with single combat. Talha ibn Abi Talha came out first. He was of Banu Abd al-Dar, the clan that carried the standard of the Quraysh. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA struck him down. Ibn Ishaq counts him among the men Ali RA killed. Another report says that Talha begged Ali RA by the ties of kinship, so Ali RA left him, and he later died of his wounds. The Muslims then charged and broke the ranks of the Quraysh. They killed the standard bearers of Banu Abd al-Dar one after another, until the standard fell. The story of Usayrim belongs to this same morning. He was from Banu Abd al-Ashhal, and for three years he had been the only pagan left in his clan. He accepted Islam after the Fajr prayer and was martyred before Zuhr, without ever having prayed a single rak'ah. In this first phase the Quraysh broke and fled. The Companions became overconfident. They put down their weapons and began collecting the spoils of war. The rules for dividing spoils had not yet been fully settled, and many assumed the battle was over. The fifty archers on Jabal al-Ruma watched the spoils being gathered below. As the minutes passed, no word came from the Prophet ﷺ. The archers began to argue about whether to go down and join in. Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, their leader, refused to move without a direct command from the Prophet ﷺ. Even so, over perhaps the better part of an hour, forty of the fifty left the position and went down, leaving only ten. Khalid ibn al-Walid had not simply fled. He had been watching carefully, and now he saw his chance. He moved in along a low ditch on the army's right that could not be seen from ground level. He overran the ten archers who were left. Then he led his cavalry, estimated at 100 to 150 riders, around Jabal al-Ruma and attacked the Muslims from behind. This cut the Muslim army in two. On one side was the Prophet ﷺ's own camp. On the other were the scattered Muslims still collecting spoils, most of them unarmed. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ was the first to see Khalid's attack coming. The enemy was hunting for him personally, and shouting would reveal where he was. Even so, he stood up and shouted a warning to the Muslims. The surprise attack threw the Muslims into chaos. Many fled, unable to tell friend from foe. The sources say that shaytan stirred up the confusion, and some Muslims struck down other Muslims in the fighting. One of them was al-Yaman RA, the father of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA. His own side killed him before Hudhayfah's shouts to stop could be heard. Hudhayfah said, "May Allah forgive you." The Prophet ﷺ paid him the blood money for his father, and Hudhayfah gave it away as charity to the Muslims. As the Muslim army split apart, the Prophet ﷺ was left with a guard of only nine men. Two of them were Muhajirun, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA. The other seven were Ansar. Ibn Ishaq names Ziyad, or Umarah, ibn al-Sakan among them. A report from al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari gives the number as twelve. Meanwhile the rest of the army, believing the battle already won, was scattered across the field. One by one, the Ansar in that small group went out to stop the approaching enemy, and each was killed. In the end only Sa'd, Talha and the Prophet ﷺ himself remained. They pulled back into a narrow gap in the mountainside, barely wide enough for one or two people. From the opening, Sa'd and Talha fired arrow after arrow. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ picked spent arrows up off the ground and handed them back to Sa'd to shoot again. Abu Talha al-Ansari RA begged the Prophet ﷺ not to raise his head, for fear of a stray arrow. He offered his own neck and chest in place of the Prophet ﷺ's (al-Bukhari). It was here that the Prophet ﷺ said to Sa'd, "Fidaka abi wa ummi (may my mother and father be given in ransom for you)! Shoot, O Sa'd, shoot!" Ali RA said he never heard the Prophet ﷺ say these words to anyone else. However, al-Zubayr RA reports that the Prophet ﷺ said the same to him at Qurayzah. An attacker reached Talha and cut off several of his fingers, and Talha cried out in pain. The Prophet ﷺ told him that if he had said "Bismillah" instead, the angels would have lifted him up in front of everyone. Qatada ibn al-Nu'man al-Awsi RA took up the Prophet ﷺ's bow and shot with it until it broke. His eye was struck so badly that it hung down on his cheek. The Prophet ﷺ put it back in place with his hand, and it became the better and sharper of his two eyes (Ibn Ishaq). During this same period the Prophet ﷺ was wounded several times. Utbah ibn Abi Waqqas threw a stone that broke his lower right incisor and injured his lip. Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri wounded his forehead. Ibn Qami'ah struck his cheekbone and drove two rings of his helmet into his cheek. This account is from Ibn Hisham, on the authority of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA. Other reports describe the wounds differently. In them, an arrow shot by Utbah passed through his cheek and knocked out a tooth, and a sword blow from Ibn Qami'ah or Abdullah ibn Shihab drove his helmet into his cheekbone. With blood streaming down his face, the Prophet ﷺ was heard to say, "How can a people succeed who have wounded their own Prophet ﷺ while he called them to their Lord?" Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA later said that he saw two men dressed in brilliant white fighting fiercely at the Prophet ﷺ's side that day. He had never seen them before and never saw them again. Around the same time, Ubay ibn Khalaf charged straight at the Prophet ﷺ. Ubay was a Makkan who had long vowed to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and he had been fattening a horse for that purpose. Back then, the Prophet ﷺ had replied that he would be the one to kill Ubay instead. Now he reminded Ubay of that reply. He took a spear from a companion and struck Ubay in the neck. The wound looked minor, but Ubay himself insisted it would kill him. He died on the road home, before he reached Makkah. Ibn Qami'ah cut down Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA and thought he had killed the Prophet ﷺ. He shouted that Muhammad ﷺ was dead. The false news spread quickly and broke the spirit of part of the Muslim line. Some of them simply sat down in the middle of the battle. Anas ibn al-Nadr RA rallied a group of them back into the fight. He asked them what they would do with life after the Prophet ﷺ, and told them to die as he had died. Anas fought on until he was killed. His body was so disfigured that no one could recognise him, until his sister identified him by the tips of his fingers. Ka'b ibn Malik RA was the first to recognise the Prophet ﷺ, by his eyes. He was about to announce that the Prophet ﷺ was alive. The Prophet ﷺ signalled to him to stay silent, so as not to give away his position. A later report adds that the two of them exchanged armour. Abu Bakr RA, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA and Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA fought their way back to him. They found the two rings of his helmet still stuck in his cheek. Abu Ubaydah did not want to risk hurting him further with his hands. It is reported that he pulled each ring out with his own teeth instead, and lost a tooth each time. As the fighting died down, Abu Sufyan called out from a distance. He asked whether Muhammad ﷺ was still alive. Then he asked about Abu Bakr RA and Umar RA. The Prophet ﷺ told the Muslims not to answer him. Then Abu Sufyan declared victory and gave the credit to the idol Hubal. This time the Prophet ﷺ had the Muslims reply, "Allah is mightier and more worthy of honour." He stayed silent about his own survival, but he would not let shirk against Allah go unanswered. Abu Sufyan swore that the two sides would meet again the next year at Badr, and the Quraysh withdrew. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ walked over the battlefield. He found the body of his uncle, Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, mutilated by Hind bint Utbah RA. Her father and brother had been killed at Badr, and in revenge she had cut open Hamzah's stomach and taken his liver. The Prophet ﷺ wept. He vowed to mutilate thirty bodies of the Quraysh in return. Then Allah revealed Qur'an 16:126, which limits retaliation to no more than what was suffered. After that, the Prophet ﷺ forbade mutilation completely. On the way back, Hamnah bint Jahsh RA met the army. She was told, one after another, of the deaths of her brother Abdullah, her uncle Hamzah RA and her husband Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Wailing for the dead broke out across Madinah. When the Prophet ﷺ heard it, he allowed it once for Hamzah RA's sake. After that he forbade it as a general rule. The martyrs were reported to number around seventy, most of them Ansar. They were buried two, three or four to a grave, in the clothes they had died in, without being washed. The Prophet ﷺ instructed that whoever had memorised the most Qur'an should be placed in the grave first. According to Jabir RA's report in al-Bukhari, no funeral prayer was said over them. A report from Ibn Abbas RA in Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ did pray over Hamzah RA and the others. Only one prisoner was taken in the whole battle, Abu Azzah al-Jumahi. He had earlier been pardoned on condition that he never fight the Muslims again. Because he broke that condition, he was executed. Before all this, the Prophet ﷺ had sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to follow the Quraysh. Ali RA found them riding their camels and leading their horses, a sign that they were heading back to Makkah. The next morning, Sunday the 16th, the Prophet ﷺ called out the men who had fought the day before, wounded as they were. He led them to Hamra al-Asad, about eight miles from Madinah. They stayed there on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At some point before or during this period, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions about a dream. Accounts differ on exactly when he told it. He said, "I saw in a dream that I had struck with my sword, but my sword broke, and this is what afflicted the Muslims at Uhud. Then I hit it again, and it came back as good as it ever was, and this was the victory that Allah gave to the Muslims and the coming together of the believers." He went on, "I saw cows, and Allah is good, and this was the believers on the Day of Uhud." In a version in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, he also saw himself wearing protective armour, which he took to mean Madinah itself.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Around 7 or 8 AH, the Prophet ﷺ sent letters to the kings and rulers around Arabia. Among the replies was one from the ruler of the province of Bahrain. He wrote back sympathetically and sent the Prophet ﷺ a robe as a gift. It was one of the finest garments the Prophet ﷺ ever wore, and it is said to have been decorated with gold. The companions gathered around the Prophet ﷺ to look at it, amazed at its quality.
While the Prophet ﷺ was camped at Tabuk, he sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA with a few hundred sahaba (companions) on a small expedition to Dawmat al-Jandal. This was the home of the Christian Arab tribe of Kindah, which had close ties with the Roman emperor. Their chieftain, Ukaydir ibn Abd al-Malik, was called a king (malik). The Prophet ﷺ told Khalid that he would find Ukaydir away from his entourage, in the middle of some cows. That is exactly what happened. One night Ukaydir's herd of cows kept barging against the door of his palace. His wife grew fed up and told him to deal with it, so he went out himself with a few servants. Khalid found him there in the open and captured him. Ukaydir was brought before the Prophet ﷺ. He did not embrace Islam at that time. He did agree to break off his ties with the Romans, to pay the jizya (a tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim protection), and not to attack the Muslims. To show his loyalty, he later sent gifts to the Muslim camp. Among them was a hulla, a fine two-piece garment with gold thread, more beautiful than anything the companions had seen. The Prophet ﷺ wore it, and the companions gathered around it in awe.