A subtribe of the Quraysh, whose members included al-Walid ibn al-Mughira and Abu Jahal; assigned the second most prestigious wall when the Ka'bah was rebuilt.
In the early Makkan period, Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah challenged the Prophet ﷺ in public. Abdullah was the Prophet ﷺ's first cousin, the son of his aunt Atikah. He made his challenge in front of the Nadi, the assembly of the Quraysh, to embarrass him. Abdullah said he would never believe until the Prophet ﷺ climbed a ladder into the sky in front of him and brought down a book from Allah. He also demanded to be shown the angels. He added that even if all this happened, he still would not believe. The Qur'an echoes the wording of this demand in 17:90-93.
When Muhammad ﷺ was around 35 years old, the Ka'bah in Makkah was badly damaged. First, a woman cooking near it let an ember fly, and it set the Ka'bah's cloth on fire. Later a great flood swept through Makkah and destroyed its roof and some of its walls. The Quraysh decided that the whole building had to be rebuilt. Around the same time, a Roman ship ran aground at Juddah, the port now called Jeddah. The Roman emperor had loaded it with the finest wood and marble, and with skilled craftsmen, to rebuild a church in Yemen that the Persians had destroyed. The books of Seerah say that Allah sent a wind that drove the ship onto the coast. Its crew needed money to get home, so they sold the cargo. The Quraysh pooled their wealth, bought the materials and hired the craftsmen. The Quraysh were still afraid to tear down the House of Allah. One report in Ibn Ishaq says that a large snake came out of the Well of Zamzam and hissed at anyone who came near, until a great bird carried it away. They took this as a sign to go ahead. Even so, no one wanted to strike first. At last al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, a nobleman of Quraysh, took an axe and began breaking down one of the walls. The others only watched, waiting to see whether he would come to harm. When he woke up unharmed the next morning, they all joined in. The Quraysh divided the four walls among four groups of clans. The Banu Abd Manaf, which included the Banu Hashim, took the most prestigious wall. The Banu Makhzum took the second. The Black Stone sits at a corner where two walls meet, and those two walls belonged to these two rival groups. When the work reached that corner, each side claimed the honour of putting the Black Stone back in place, and other clans joined the quarrel. The anger grew so great that building stopped for five days. The Banu Makhzum and some allies even dipped their hands in camel blood and swore to fight to the death over it. On the fifth day, Abu Umayya ibn al-Mughira, the oldest man in Makkah, said there would be no bloodshed. He proposed that the next man to walk in should decide. That man turned out to be the Prophet ﷺ. Every clan was delighted, because each believed he loved them most. He asked for a cloth and placed the Black Stone on it with his own hands. Then he had a representative of every clan take hold of the cloth and lift it together. When it reached its place, he set the Black Stone into the wall himself.
When the Muslims numbered around 20 or 30, the Prophet ﷺ saw that they needed a place to meet. It had to be secret. Many Muslims had not told their families and friends about their faith, and some converted slaves had not told their masters. He chose the house of al-Arqam ibn Abi al-Arqam, which stood behind Mount Safa in the center of Makkah. Al-Arqam was one of the first ten people to accept Islam. He was also a nobleman of Banu Makhzum, the clan of Abu Jahal, which was a rival of the Prophet ﷺ's own clan. The sources do not say why his house was chosen, but likely no one would suspect a Makhzumi of sheltering the Muslims. Its location near the Ka'bah also meant that people coming and going would not draw attention. The house, known as Dar al-Arqam, became the main meeting place of the early Muslims.
Abu Jahal, one of the fiercest enemies of Islam in Makkah, had bought something from a man but refused to pay him and kept putting him off. One day, as a joke, he told the man to go and get the money from Muhammad ﷺ instead. The man did not realize it was a joke. He went to the Prophet ﷺ and told him that Abu Jahal owed him money and had sent him to collect it from him. The Prophet ﷺ told the man not to worry, and that he would get his money back for him. He took the man by the hand and walked straight to Abu Jahal's house. When the door opened, he said, "O Abu Jahal, give the man his money back. Now." Abu Jahal's face went pale and he began to tremble. He ran back inside and threw the money at the man without even counting it. Abu Jahal later said that he had seen something behind the Prophet ﷺ that no one else could see, a herd of angry camels waiting to pounce on him, and that this was what terrified him.
One day the Prophet ﷺ was praying at the Ka'bah while Abu Jahal and other leaders of Makkah sat nearby. A camel had been slaughtered the day before. Abu Jahal asked which of them would bring its entrails and throw them on the Prophet ﷺ's back when he went down in prostration. Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt went and fetched them. When the Prophet ﷺ prostrated, Uqba dumped the entrails on his back. The load was so heavy that the Prophet ﷺ stayed pinned in prostration, and the onlookers laughed until they fell over. Ibn Mas'ud was watching from a distance. He had no tribe to protect him, so he could do nothing to help. Then someone went and told Fatima, the Prophet ﷺ's young daughter. She came running, crying, and pulled the entrails off her father's back.
Abu Jahal swore by al-Lat and al-Uzza that the next time he saw the Prophet ﷺ prostrating at the Ka'bah, he would put his foot on his neck and throw dust upon him. As the Prophet ﷺ prostrated in public prayer, Abu Jahal came forward to carry this out, but before reaching him he began retreating and pushing away with his hands. When asked what happened, he said he had seen a pit of fire between himself and the Prophet ﷺ, with wings hovering above it.
Tribal protection did not cover slaves or mawali (freed slaves who still owed loyalty to their former masters). So the Quraysh turned from social pressure to outright torture of these weak believers. The campaign was led by Abu Jahal, whom the Prophet ﷺ called the fir'awn (Pharaoh) of this ummah. He treated converts differently according to their standing. Converts from the Quraysh nobility were insulted and abused with words. Those who did business with the Quraysh were boycotted. Slaves and mawali, who had no tribe to protect them, were tortured. Ibn Abbas later described this time to his student Sa'id ibn Jubayr. He said the believers were tortured, starved and deprived of water so badly that they could not even sit up from the pain. When their tormentors asked them, "Is al-Lat and al-Uzza your god?", some would answer "Yes" just to end the torture. If an insect passed by and they were told to call it their god, they would do so. Islam allows a person to say such things under torture, as long as the heart remains firm in faith. The first seven people to declare Islam publicly were the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr, Ammar ibn Yasir, Sumayyah, Suhayb al-Rumi, Bilal ibn Rabah and al-Miqdad. The Prophet ﷺ was protected through his uncle Abu Talib, and Abu Bakr was protected by his own tribe. The Quraysh rounded up the other five and tortured them. They put irons on their bodies and left them out on the desert sand.
Al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, chief of Banu Makhzum and regarded as the greatest poet in Makkah, managed to listen to the Prophet ﷺ recite the Qur'an uninterrupted for the first time. He was mesmerized, and walked away afterward a changed man, muttering to himself a description of the Qur'an's beauty.
Three leaders of Quraysh, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, Abu Jahal ibn Hisham and al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq, each went out alone one night to listen secretly outside the Prophet ﷺ's house. He was praying at night and reciting the Qur'an. None of them knew that the others were there, and they listened until dawn. On the way home they met on the road and blamed one another, saying they must not come back. The same thing happened on the second night, and again on the third. On the third morning they made a firm promise never to return. Later that morning, al-Akhnas went to Abu Sufyan and asked him privately what he thought of what he had heard. Abu Sufyan said he had understood some of it but not all of it. Al-Akhnas then asked Abu Jahal the same question. Abu Jahal said that his clan had always competed with the Prophet ﷺ's clan for honour. Now that they claimed a prophet who received revelation from heaven, there was no way to compete with them, and he swore he would never believe in him.
Word spread through Makkah that al-Walid ibn al-Mughira had praised the Qur'an. The Quraysh grew anxious that their greatest poet had admitted defeat. Abu Jahal went to al-Walid and warned him that his people would not be satisfied until he dissociated himself from Muhammad ﷺ. Al-Walid asked what Abu Jahal wanted him to say. Abu Jahal suggested one accusation after another. He told al-Walid to call Muhammad ﷺ a madman, then a fortune-teller, then a magician, then a poet. Al-Walid rejected each one, saying he knew it was not true. As the best poet among them, he said this was not the kind of poetry they knew. Abu Jahal insisted that he had to say something. Al-Walid asked to be left alone for a few days. Al-Walid paced his house, frowning, as he thought about what he would say. Before he could say it, Allah revealed the second portion of Surah al-Muddaththir (Qur'an 74:11-26). The verses described his private thoughts and the expression on his face before he had spoken a word to anyone.
When Uthman ibn Maz'un RA returned to Makkah, he was given protection by his friend al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, one of the most powerful men in the city. Under this protection no one could touch him. But he saw his fellow Muslims still being persecuted while he was safe, and his conscience troubled him. So he asked al-Walid to take the protection back. As he walked back without protection, he passed the famous poet Labid ibn Rabi'ah, who was reciting verses to a gathering of the Quraysh. Labid recited that everything other than Allah is worthless, and Uthman called out that he had spoken the truth. Then Labid recited that every blessing will one day disappear. Uthman called out that this was a lie, because the blessings of Jannah (Paradise) will never end. Labid was offended at being interrupted, and a man from the crowd punched Uthman and blackened his eye. When al-Walid heard what had happened, he offered to give Uthman his protection again. Uthman refused. He said that his other eye now needed the same blessing his injured eye had received.
Abu Salama RA was the husband of Umm Salama RA. He was also a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, since his mother was a sister of the Prophet ﷺ's father, Abdullah. Abu Salama belonged to Banu Makhzum, the clan of Abu Jahal. On returning to Makkah, he asked for protection from his maternal uncle, Abu Talib, who agreed. Abu Jahal was angry and sent people to object. Abu Talib replied that if he could protect one nephew, he could protect the other. An argument broke out. Then help came from an unexpected source. Abu Lahab stood up for his brother Abu Talib. He told Abu Jahal to stop troubling the old man, or he would take his brother's side. Abu Jahal backed down.
The Muslims in Makkah faced open persecution, threats and torture. In Rajab of the 5th year of the mission, the Prophet ﷺ said to his Companions, "This land has become too constricted for you, so for those of you who want to, why don't you emigrate to the neighboring land of Abyssinia? For there is a Christian king there, who is a just king. He shall allow you to worship without interference." That king was the Najashi (Negus) of Abyssinia, As'hama ibn Abjar. Fifteen people emigrated, 11 men and 4 women. They travelled for about a day and a half to the port of Juddah (today's Jeddah), and from there took a ship to Abyssinia. Among them were Uthman ibn Affan and his wife Ruqayyah, the Prophet ﷺ's daughter. Others included Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Uthman ibn Maz'un, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Mus'ab ibn Umayr. Abu Salama went with his wife Umm Salama, and Amir ibn Rabi'ah with his wife Layla. All of those who went were Muslims of high standing in the Quraysh, who had the freedom to leave. The lower-status believers, many of them slaves, could not go, even though they needed it most. These included Bilal, Khabbab, Ibn Mas'ud and Ammar.
About fifteen Muslims had emigrated to Abyssinia in the month of Rajab to escape persecution. A few months later, word reached them that the Quraysh had accepted Islam. The news was an exaggeration. What had really happened was that the Quraysh had joined the Muslims in prostrating when Surah al-Najm was recited in Makkah. The emigrants had not been persecuted in Abyssinia, but living in an unfamiliar land, with a strange language and culture, had been hard. They longed for home. So they quickly packed their belongings and set out for Makkah, with no way to confirm whether the rumor was true.
Abu Jahal would stand on the outskirts of Makkah and warn arriving pilgrims that there was a madman in town. Abu Lahab sometimes did the same about his own nephew, Muhammad ﷺ. He told visitors that Muhammad ﷺ had gone mad and was a magician who would captivate anyone who listened to him. He urged them to turn away and put their hands over their ears if they saw him.
Once, leaders of the Quraysh, including Abu Jahal and Umayyah ibn Khalaf, were talking with the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ became hopeful that some of them were coming closer to Islam. Then three believers of humble standing, Ammar, Suhayb, and Bilal, passed by. Abu Jahal was worried that the other leaders were growing sympathetic, so he used the moment. He asked how the truth could have reached these people before the nobles of Quraysh. He told the Prophet ﷺ that if he wanted them to accept his religion, he would have to send these people away. In response, Allah revealed verses in Surah al-An'am. One of them warned that to drive these believers away would be to join the wrongdoers (Qur'an 6:52).
Yasir, his wife Sumayyah, and their sons Abdullah and Ammar were a family of slaves in Makkah who had accepted Islam. The Quraysh tortured them together, each in front of the others. Yasir was the first to die. Early authorities differ on exactly how he was killed. Some say he was dragged through the streets by a rope, and others say horses pulled him apart. His death only made Sumayyah's faith stronger, and she rebuked Abu Jahal, one of the fiercest enemies of Islam. Abu Jahal killed her with a thrust of his spear. Yasir and Sumayyah were the first martyrs of Islam. Their son Abdullah was then thrown into a ditch. Ammar was probably no older than fifteen. Overwhelmed by the torment, he said words of disbelief to make it stop. Because he was the youngest, the Quraysh finally let him go.
In Ramadan of the fifth year of his mission, the Prophet ﷺ recited the whole of Surah al-Najm before a gathering of Muslims and members of the Quraysh in Makkah. The surah builds toward a powerful ending, and its force moved everyone present. When he reached the last verse, "So prostrate to Allah and worship Him" (53:62), the Muslims fell into sajdah, or prostration. The Quraysh were so moved that they prostrated with them. For the first time, Muslims and non-Muslims all united behind the Prophet ﷺ. The only one who refused was al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, or in another narration Umayyah ibn Khalaf. He took a handful of sand, put it to his head, and said that this was enough for him. Ibn Abbas RA narrates this account in Sahih al-Bukhari, and scholars accept it as authentic. The detail that it happened in Ramadan comes from Ibn Ishaq. Later reports add a much weaker story. These reports are not found in the six main books of hadith, nor in the biographies of Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham. They appear only in later works that collected everything, such as al-Tabari's Tafsir and al-Wahidi's Asbab al-Nuzul. They claim that after verse 20 of the surah, shaytan added two lines praising the idols al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat. The lines called them "the exalted cranes, whose intercession is to be hoped for." One version says that only the Quraysh heard these words, and the Muslims did not. A further, more extreme version says that the Prophet ﷺ himself mistook shaytan's words for those of Jibril AS and recited them, until Jibril AS came back and told him the words were not his. The Western orientalist Sir William Muir later gave this story the name "the satanic verses". Islamic sources call it Qissat al-Gharaniq, the Story of the Cranes.
In the second emigration, more than eighty Muslims left Makkah for Abyssinia. Makkah was a town of only a few hundred people, so this was about a tenth of the city. For the Quraysh, the guardians of the Haram, it was a humiliation to see their own people fleeing from them. They sent two envoys to the king of Abyssinia, the Najashi, whose name was As'hama ibn Abjar. One was Amr ibn al-As RA. The sources disagree on the other: some name Abdullah ibn Abi Rabi'ah, others Umara ibn al-Walid. The two men took with them a large gift of fine leather. The story is told by Umm Salama RA, who was one of the emigrants. Until then, she says, the Muslims had been treated with every kindness by the Najashi and had never heard a harsh word from his people. The envoys did not go to the king first. They visited each of his ministers in turn, gave each one a gift, and asked a favour. They explained that some foolish young men from Makkah had run away to Abyssinia, and that their families wanted them home. When the matter came before the king, would the ministers please support the request? The next day the envoys appeared before the Najashi himself and presented his gifts. They told him that these young men had abandoned the religion of their fathers without accepting the king's religion either, and that the leaders of their people were asking for them to be returned. All the ministers spoke up together in support of the Quraysh. But the Najashi refused. He swore that he would not hand over people who had chosen his land and his protection above all others, at least not before he had heard what they had to say for themselves. He sent for the Muslims. They were frightened. Ja'far ibn Abi Talib RA told them that they would speak only the truth, and only what the Prophet ﷺ had taught them. When they entered the hall, the king was seated with his bishops around him. The Quraysh envoys bowed down in prostration before him, but Ja'far walked in standing upright. One of the ministers demanded to know why he had not prostrated. Ja'far answered that the Muslims prostrate to no one except their Lord. The Najashi asked them what this new religion was, which was neither his own Christianity nor the faith of their fathers. Ja'far's reply is one of the most famous speeches in the Seerah. He said that they had been a people of ignorance. They worshipped idols, ate dead animals, committed indecency, cut off their relatives, and the strong among them preyed on the weak. Then Allah sent them a Messenger ﷺ from among themselves, a man whose family and honesty they knew well. He called them to worship one God, to be truthful, to keep ties with their relatives and be good to their neighbours, to pray, fast and give charity, and to stop shedding blood, consuming the wealth of orphans and slandering others. They believed him and followed him. For that, their own people tortured them and tried to force them back to idol worship. So they had come to the king's land, choosing him over every other ruler, in the hope that they would not be wronged there. The Najashi asked whether they had with them anything of what their Prophet ﷺ said had been revealed to him from God. Ja'far recited the opening of Surah Maryam, which tells the story of Mary and the birth of her son Jesus. The bishops wept even though they could not understand the Arabic. When the verses were translated, the Najashi wept too. He swore that this recitation and the messages of Moses and Jesus had sprung from the same fountain. Then he told the envoys to leave, saying he would never hand these people over to them. On the way out, Amr told his companion that he had one more trick to try. His companion urged him to let it go, since the emigrants were their own relatives. Amr ignored him. The next morning he returned to the king and claimed that the Muslims said something outrageous about Jesus. The Muslims were summoned a second time and were even more afraid. Again Ja'far told them they would say exactly what the Prophet ﷺ had taught and nothing else. Before the king he said that Jesus was the servant of Allah, His Messenger, and His Word, which He cast into the virgin Mary. Ja'far did not attack the Christian belief in the Trinity. He simply stated what the Muslims believed and let it stand. The Najashi picked up a small twig from the floor. He said that what Ja'far had described did not differ from what Jesus himself had taught by even the length of that twig. Years later it became known that the king did not share the official doctrine of his priests, and that Ja'far's words matched what he privately believed. He dismissed the envoys a second time, and now he also returned their gifts. Umm Salama RA said the two men left humiliated and disgraced. The Muslims went on living in Abyssinia in peace and safety until they rejoined the Prophet ﷺ at Khaybar. Some of the king's own people grumbled that he had abandoned their religion, and he answered them using a parchment hidden inside his robe.
Hamzah became a Muslim most likely in Dhu al-Hijjah of the sixth year of the dawah. Three days later, the Muslims of Makkah gained a second man whom the Quraysh had thought could never be won over. This was Umar ibn al-Khattab. He and Abu Jahl were the strongest men of their generation, both in body and in family standing. They were also the two fiercest enemies the new faith had. Before this, Umar had shown a moment of softness. A woman named Layla was loading her camel for the second emigration to Abyssinia. She told him that his cruelty was driving them from their homes just so they could worship Allah. Umar softened for a moment, and wished her blessing wherever she went. Her husband, Amir ibn Rabi'ah, heard about it. He said that his father's donkey would accept Islam before Umar did. Neither of them knew that the Prophet ﷺ had made a du'a about Umar. He had asked Allah to strengthen Islam through whichever of the two men, Abu Jahl or Umar, was dearer to Him. Umar's son, Abdullah, later said that Umar was the dearer of the two. More than one story is told of how Umar came to Islam. They are best read as strands of a single rope. One night Umar went looking for a drink. None of his friends were at home, and even the wine-seller was out. So he went to the Ka'bah to walk off the craving. There he found the Prophet ﷺ alone in the dark, praying. Umar crept up behind him, meaning to beat him. Instead, for the first time, he listened. The Prophet ﷺ was reciting Surah al-Haqqah. Umar told himself that this was a poet's verse. At that moment the recitation said that it was not the word of a poet. He thought it might be the word of a soothsayer, and the recitation answered that too. He wondered whether the man had made it up. The verses said that if he had invented any of it, Allah would have seized him by the right hand and cut his aorta. Umar stood there until the surah was finished, and then went home. He said afterwards that Islam entered his heart that night, even though he did not yet accept it. Then one day Abu Jahl was speaking at length among the Quraysh about the man who had insulted their gods and their forefathers. He offered a reward to whoever would get rid of him. The reward was a hundred red and black camels and a hundred measures of silver. Umar went home, took his sword and set out. On the way he met Nu'aym ibn Abdillah al-Nahham, who was secretly a Muslim. Nu'aym asked him where he was going. Umar said he was going to kill Muhammad ﷺ. Nu'aym was frightened. He asked whether Umar really thought the Banu Abd Manaf would let him go on living after he killed one of their own. Then, to turn him aside, Nu'aym told him he had better put his own house in order first. His sister Fatima and her husband Sa'id ibn Zayd had accepted Islam. This did not calm Umar. He went to their house. Through the door he heard the Qur'an being recited. Khabbab ibn al-Aratt was inside with them, because the Prophet ﷺ had appointed him as their teacher. Khabbab hid, and Fatima sat on the written page to hide it. Umar pounded on the door and demanded to know what the murmuring had been. They denied that there had been anything. Umar struck at Sa'id, but the blow landed on his sister. Fatima and her husband were bleeding, but they were now beyond fear. They told him that yes, they were Muslims, and he could do whatever he liked. Seeing them stand so firm changed him, just as Layla's words had. He asked to see what they had been reading. First Fatima made him swear not to harm it. Then she told him that a mushrik could not touch it until he had washed. Umar did ghusl and read from Surah Taha. Then he asked to be taken to the Prophet ﷺ. Sa'id led him to the house of al-Arqam, where the Muslims met in secret. Umar still had his sword in his hand. Someone inside cried out that Umar was at the door with a sword. Hamzah told them to let him in. He said that if Allah wanted good for Umar, he would accept Islam. If not, Umar's own sword would be the end of him. The Prophet ﷺ took hold of Umar's collar. He asked him what he was doing there. He warned him that if he carried on down this path, Allah would destroy him with a punishment. Umar said he had come to believe in Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ cried "Allahu akbar," and everyone in the house heard it. That same day the Muslims, about forty of them, walked to the Ka'bah in two lines. Umar led one line and Hamzah led the other. They prayed there in public for the first time, and no one dared to touch them. The Prophet ﷺ gave Umar the name al-Faruq, meaning the one who separates truth from falsehood. Years later, as Umar lay dying, Ibn Mas'ud said that from the day Umar became Muslim, the Muslims never stopped being held in honour. Umar was not a man to hide what he had done. He went to Abu Jahl's door to tell him in person that he now believed in Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. Abu Jahl cursed him and slammed the door in his face. Then Umar asked who the biggest gossip in Makkah was. People pointed him to Jamil ibn Ma'mar al-Jumahi. Umar confided in Jamil that he had become a Muslim. Jamil ran out into the streets, barely dressed. He shouted that Ibn al-Khattab had become a Sabian. Umar followed behind him, correcting the word. He called out, "Aslamtu," which means "I have accepted Islam." A crowd at the Ka'bah fought him until al-As ibn Wa'il gave him protection. The Prophet ﷺ later said something about Umar. He said that there had been people before who were spoken to by the angels without being prophets, and that if anyone in his community was like this, it was Umar. And when Umar became caliph, the faith that had once been forty people walking to the Ka'bah spread over most of the known world.
One day Abu Jahal, a leader of the Quraysh, publicly cursed and insulted the Prophet ﷺ for as long as he wished, and no one stood up to defend him. Hamzah, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle, was away at the time. He was a well-known archer and one of the strongest men in Makkah. When Hamzah returned from his expedition, some women taunted him. They asked what kind of uncle he was if his own nephew could be insulted with no one to defend him, and where the honour of Banu Hashim had gone. Hamzah asked whether it had happened in public. They told him the whole of Makkah had seen it. Furious, Hamzah marched to the Ka'bah with his bow still in his hand. He struck Abu Jahal across the face with it, drawing blood. He demanded to know how Abu Jahal dared to curse his nephew. Then, without having planned it, he declared that he too followed the Prophet ﷺ's religion. Hamzah went home confused, unsure whether the new religion was true. He prayed to Allah to guide his heart to it if it was true, and spent a sleepless, miserable night. The next morning he went to the Prophet ﷺ and told him everything. The Prophet ﷺ spoke with him until he was convinced, and Hamzah testified that he was speaking the truth.
In the 7th year of the dawah (the call to Islam), the clans of the Quraysh agreed among themselves that the Prophet ﷺ must be killed. They knew, however, that his own clan, Banu Hashim, would never hand him over. So they went one last time to his uncle Abu Talib. They offered him whatever blood money he wanted if he gave the Prophet ﷺ up. If he refused, they threatened to cut off all trade, marriage and social ties with Banu Hashim and their cousin clan, Banu al-Muttalib. Abu Talib refused. The two clans left Makkah and moved to the Valley of Abu Talib, just outside the city. The Quraysh wrote the terms of the boycott in a treaty and hung it inside the Ka'bah. For about two to three years, the clans endured severe hardship and survived on leaves and shrubs. A few sympathisers secretly sent them food, most famously Mut'im ibn Adi and Hakim ibn Hizam. Throughout this time, the Prophet ﷺ still went out in the hajj seasons to call the visiting tribes to Islam. Three things brought the boycott to an end. First, the Prophet ﷺ prayed for a famine to strike the Quraysh, and it did. Second, a group of Quraysh with softer hearts, led by Hisham ibn Amr and Zuhayr ibn Abi Umayya, spoke out against the boycott at a public gathering and turned opinion against Abu Jahal. Finally, the Prophet ﷺ told Abu Talib that Allah had informed him that termites had eaten the treaty, leaving only the words "In the name of Allah". When the Quraysh opened it, they found this was true, and the pact was void.
Later in the Muslims' stay in Abyssinia, a rival from another Abyssinian royal family tried to take the throne from the Najashi, the Christian king who was protecting them. The struggle grew until it became a full civil war, and the decisive battle was fought on the banks of the Nile. The Muslims feared that if the Najashi lost, they would lose his protection. They met to decide who would go to the battlefield to watch the outcome, so that they would know whether they needed to leave. Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA volunteered and camped on the river bank to wait. Meanwhile the others prayed earnestly for the Najashi's victory. After a few days Zubayr RA returned with joyful news. The Najashi had won.
As Abu Talib lay dying, his nephew the Prophet ﷺ came to see him. Abu Jahal was there as well. The Prophet ﷺ pleaded with him, "O my uncle, say 'la ilaha illaLlah', one kalimah that I will be able to present as an argument on your behalf before Allah." Abu Talib knew in his heart that the Message was true, and he was about to say it. But Abu Jahal and Abdullah ibn Abi Umayya challenged him, "O Abu Talib, are you going to leave the religion of Abdul Muttalib?" Abdul Muttalib was Abu Talib's father. They kept interrupting whenever he seemed ready to say the words. Abu Talib died without ever saying the kalimah, the declaration of faith.
After the death of Abu Talib, the Quraysh persecuted the Prophet ﷺ far more openly than before. Hostility that had been held back out of respect for Abu Talib was now on full display. Abu Lahab, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle, took over leadership of the Banu Hashim, since he was the most senior pagan of the clan still alive. Surprisingly, he offered the Prophet ﷺ his protection. When a man from outside the clan cursed the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Lahab went to the Prophet ﷺ and promised that he could live as he had in Abu Talib's time, for as long as Abu Lahab was alive. He did this not out of love, but from a chief's sense of duty to guard his own clan. People began to say that Abu Lahab had left his religion, which he denied. Abu Jahal and Utbah then saw a way to break the protection. They told Abu Lahab to ask his nephew about the fate of his father, Abdul Muttalib. The Prophet ﷺ answered that Abdul Muttalib was with his people. Abu Lahab came back pleased, until Abu Jahal pointed out that, according to the Prophet ﷺ, those people were in the Fire. Doubt took hold of Abu Lahab, and he withdrew his protection.
On the night of al-Isra wal-Mi'raj, the Prophet ﷺ was taken from Makkah to Jerusalem on al-Buraq, and brought back the same night. Some narrations, not fully authentic but acceptable to mention, say that on the way back he passed three caravans of the Quraysh. In the first he recognised a man he knew. From the second he drank water from their shared water container. In the third he saw a man searching for a lost camel. Back in Makkah he slept, and he woke in the Haram, where the journey had begun. The Prophet ﷺ later described that morning himself. He said he woke up anxious about how he would tell his people what had happened. As he sat there worried, Abu Jahl passed by and saw him. Abu Jahl asked him sarcastically whether something had happened. The Prophet ﷺ said yes, and told him that the night before he had been taken from Makkah to Jerusalem. Abu Jahl was astonished and asked whether he was really back among them that morning. He did not know whether to mock him at once, or to wait in case the Prophet ﷺ took his words back in front of others. So he asked whether the Prophet ﷺ would repeat the story if he called the people together, and the Prophet ﷺ said he would. Abu Jahl shouted for the people to gather. Makkah was a small city and Abu Jahl was a leading man, so everyone came. He told the Prophet ﷺ to repeat what he had said. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Last night, I went to Bayt al-Maqdis and I prayed in Masjid al-Aqsa." Bayt al-Maqdis is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. He did not mention his ascent to the heavens, which he told only to the Muslims later. The crowd did not know how to react. Some clapped, some put their hands on their heads, and some laughed. He had never been known to lie. Then a man who had been to Jerusalem asked him to describe the city, since everyone knew the Prophet ﷺ had never been there. He began to describe it. But they pressed him on details he could not remember, and he later said he had never been so distressed. Then he saw Bayt al-Maqdis raised up before his eyes, above the house of Aqil ibn Abi Talib, the house where he had grown up. After that, he could see the answer to every question they asked. In the end the man who knew Jerusalem said that his description was accurate in every detail. Ibn Hisham narrates that the Prophet ﷺ then gave them further signs. He told them about the three caravans. One would be back soon, because it was the closest to Makkah. The second had lost a camel, which they could ask about. From the third he had drunk from a large water container. Abu Jahl said that if this was true, the first caravan should be arriving at that very moment. While they were still arguing, news came that it was entering Makkah. Abu Jahl went to look, found it just as described, and came back saying it was plain sorcery. Ibn Hisham also has a line, with no chain of narration, saying that some Muslims left the religion when they heard the story. Scholars do not rely on it. No Muslim is known to have left Islam in the Makkan years, and Abu Sufyan later told the Roman emperor Heraclius that none had. Before the Prophet ﷺ could tell Abu Bakr himself, a man of the Quraysh ran to him with the news. He said that Abu Bakr's companion claimed to have gone to Jerusalem and back in one night, a journey of two months. Abu Bakr answered that if he had said it, then it was true. The man asked whether he really believed such a thing. Abu Bakr said that he believed him in something even more amazing. He believed him when he said that revelation came to him from above the seven heavens in an instant. From that day, Abu Bakr was called al-Siddiq, the one who always affirms the truth of the Prophet ﷺ.
Ayyash ibn Abi Rabi'ah and Hisham ibn al-As had planned to emigrate to Madinah together with Umar ibn al-Khattab. Hisham never arrived at the meeting point, so Umar and Ayyash set off without him and reached Madinah. Some days later, Abu Jahal and his brother, who were both half-brothers of Ayyash, came to Madinah after him. They told him that his mother had vowed not to eat, drink or shelter from the sun until she saw him again, and that her hair was full of lice. Umar warned Ayyash that it was a trick, and he offered to give him all the money he needed if he would stay. When Ayyash insisted on going back to look after his mother, Umar lent him his own camel, which was faster and stronger than theirs. He told Ayyash to ride straight back to Madinah at the first sign of treachery. On the road, Ayyash gradually let his guard down. Abu Jahal then said his own camel was tired and asked to ride on Ayyash's instead. As soon as Ayyash made his camel kneel, the brothers seized him and tied him up. They brought him into Makkah as a prisoner and paraded him around the town. The Quraysh threw him into a prison they had set up especially for him and for Hisham, who had also been captured.
The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA were guided to Madinah by Abdullah ibn Urayqit, a hired guide from a distant Bedouin tribe. He took them along a back road that the Quraysh did not know, circling down toward what is now Jeddah before turning toward Madinah. This way they avoided the main road, where the Quraysh were searching for them. The Quraysh had offered a reward of 100 camels for the Prophet ﷺ, dead or alive. Suraqa ibn Malik, the leader of the Banu Mudlij, heard that three riders had been seen, and he rode after them to win the reward. As he drew near, his horse sank into the ground and threw him. This happened three times. After the third time he gave up the chase, knowing that this was a force beyond him. He called out that he meant them no harm, and asked the Prophet ﷺ for a written promise of protection, which he was given. Abu Bakr RA asked him not to tell anyone about them, and Suraqa kept their secret.
Abu Salama is said to have been the first Muslim to emigrate to Madinah. He gathered his belongings, placed his wife Umm Salama and their young son on his camel, and set out. He did not know how the Quraysh would react, so he left openly rather than in secret. The Quraysh confronted him on the way with their weapons. They agreed that he was a free man who could go where he wished. But they said his wife belonged to them, and they refused to let her or her son leave with him. So Abu Salama was forced to go on without his family. When Abu Salama's own tribe heard what had happened, they marched on the Quraysh. They said the woman could stay with the Quraysh, but the boy belonged to them. Both sides pulled at the two-year-old boy until his arm was dislocated. Umm Salama could not bear it and cried out for them to let the other side take him. In the end, Abu Salama's tribe took the child and the Quraysh kept Umm Salama. Abu Salama went on to Madinah alone.
The Quraysh held a secret meeting in the middle of the night at Dar al-Nadwa, their council house. Every clan sent a representative except the Banu Hashim, the clan of the Prophet ﷺ. Even Abu Lahab was not invited, because the plot was against his own nephew. They also left out Mut'im ibn Adi, who was protecting the Prophet ﷺ at that time. According to a weak report, an old man knocked on the door during the meeting. He said he was a leader from Najd and offered to help them with his advice. Ibn Abbas said this old man was Iblis. The council feared that if the Prophet ﷺ joined the Muslims who had already emigrated, he would become a threat to Makkah. One suggestion was to lock him up in a house, and another was to send him into exile, but both ideas were rejected. Then Abu Jahal proposed that every clan send one man, so that they would all strike him together. His blood would then be on all their swords, and no single clan could be blamed. The Banu Hashim could not fight all the clans at once, so they would have to accept blood money. The clans chose their men and sent them to the Prophet ﷺ's house. At the same time, Jibril AS came to the Prophet ﷺ and told him he must make the Hijrah, the emigration to Madinah, at once. That same evening the Prophet ﷺ spoke to Abu Bakr RA, and he left that same night.
The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA hid for three nights in the Cave of Thawr, south of Makkah. This was the opposite direction from Madinah, which lies to the north. Abu Bakr RA had arranged for three people to help them. Every morning his son Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr brought them food, and he listened in the marketplace to what the Quraysh were saying about their search. The freed slave Amir ibn Fuhayra drove his flock of sheep behind Abdullah to cover his footprints. A Bedouin guide, Abdullah ibn Urayqit, was ready to lead them to Madinah by a back route the Quraysh did not use. Al-Baladhuri reports that the Quraysh hired an expert tracker. He followed the camel tracks from Abu Bakr RA's house to the foot of the mountain where the cave was, but could follow them no further. Search parties came there, including Abu Jahal and al-Walid ibn al-Mughira. According to a report in Musnad Imam Ahmad, the strongest of these accounts, a spider spun a web over the cave's entrance. Weaker reports from later generations add that a tree grew over the mouth of the cave and that pigeons nested there. The Quraysh passed by without realising anyone was inside. On the third night, the Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA met their guide as planned and set out for Madinah.
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.
When Abu Salama emigrated to Madinah, his wife Umm Salama was forced to stay behind in Makkah, and their young son was taken from her by Abu Salama's tribe. For more than sixteen months she went every day to al-Bat'ha, a spot outside Makkah, to weep. At last some of her cousins took pity on her and begged the elders of Banu Makhzum to let her go. Abu Salama's tribe then gave her son back to her. She set out alone into the desert for Madinah, trusting in Allah. At Tan'im she met Uthman ibn Talha, who was not yet a Muslim. He would not let her travel alone, and he led her camel on foot the whole way. He never spoke to her. At each stop he made the camel kneel and turned his back while she got down, to protect her modesty. She slept under a tree while he slept by the camel. The journey took about two weeks. When the houses of Madinah came into view, he told her that her husband was there, and he let her go on alone.
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.
Abu Salama Abdullah ibn Abd al-Asad RA was a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ through his mother. He was married to Umm Salama RA, and the two had a strong and loving marriage. Abu Salama RA was badly wounded at the Battle of Uhud, and he died of his wounds a few months later. As he lay dying, Umm Salama RA suggested that they promise each other not to remarry, so that they would be reunited in Jannah. He asked whether she would obey him, and she said she would. He then told her to marry again after his death. He also made du'a that Allah would give her a husband better than himself, who would care for her and never harm her. Some time before this, Abu Salama RA had come home delighted with a hadith he had heard from the Prophet ﷺ. It said that anyone struck by a calamity who is patient and recites the du'a "Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un..." will be rewarded and given something better in its place. When Abu Salama RA died, Umm Salama RA recited this du'a herself.
Umm Salama, whose name was Hind bint Abi Umayya al-Makhzumiyah RA, was widowed when her husband Abu Salama RA died of the wounds he received at Uhud. The first man to propose to her afterwards was Abu Bakr RA, and she turned him down. Later the Prophet ﷺ proposed to her. She told him there were three things he should know. She had ghayra, a jealous nature, and he already had wives. She was no longer young. And she had a family of four children. The Prophet ﷺ replied, "As for your ghayra, I will make du'a to Allah, and insha'Allah, it will be removed from your heart. As for your age, I am afflicted with the same calamity as you. And as for your family, they are my family."
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.
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.
In the 6th year of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ had a dream. He saw himself doing tawaf around the Ka'bah in ihram, with his head shaved, completing the full rites of an Umrah. He understood the dream as Allah's command to go to Makkah. He announced his plan to the Muhajirun, the Ansar and the tribes around Madinah. Around 1,400 people set out with him. Most of them were Muhajirun who had not seen Makkah for six years. The Bedouin tribes around Madinah mostly refused to come, preferring to stay with their wealth and families. The Qur'an later exposed this hesitation as an excuse rather than a genuine reason (Qur'an 48:11-12). He set out in Dhu al-Qa'dah. This was one of the sacred months, in which fighting was traditionally forbidden even before Islam, in the Jahiliyyah. Travelling in this month was a deliberate signal that he came in peace. At the miqat of Dhu al-Hulayfah, he prayed two rak'ahs and entered ihram. He also dedicated seventy sacrificial camels, garlanded to mark them as offerings. Even pagan Arabs respected such animals as a sign of piety, as events would later prove. From there, he sent a single scout ahead to see how the Quraysh would react. The scout was Busr ibn Sufyan al-Khuza'i. He came from Khuza'a, a neutral tribe, and the Quraysh did not know him. At Asfan, roughly halfway to Makkah, Busr came back with his report. He said that the Quraysh had armed for war and brought their women with them, as they had at Uhud. They had also sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to block the road at Ghumaym. The Prophet ﷺ was grieved that his own people would rather fight than simply let him pass. He said, "Woe to the Quraysh, war has consumed them." He vowed that he would keep fighting with whatever Allah had sent him "until Allah grants victory or this neck of mine is cut off". At the same time, he made it clear that he did not want war or bloodshed. He asked the sahaba for their advice. Abu Bakr RA advised them to stick to their original purpose. They had come to visit the House of Allah, he said, and should not fight anyone unless they were attacked. The Prophet ﷺ agreed. He set aside his own first inclination, which had been to strike first at the tribes that were backing the Quraysh. Because Khalid was blocking the main road, one of the sahaba guided the army along another route. It ran through a valley of thorns and volcanic rock, and their feet were left bleeding. The Prophet ﷺ compared this passage to the gate that the Israelites had been commanded to enter humbly, in return for forgiveness (Qur'an 2:58). He promised that Allah would forgive everyone who passed through it, except for one man. That man had spent the whole way distracted by a camel he had lost. He replied that finding his camel mattered more to him than forgiveness. His answer showed that he was a hypocrite, marching in a caravan that was otherwise entirely sincere. As night fell, the army came out of the valley and reached the plain of Hudaybiyyah. There, the Prophet ﷺ's camel, Qaswa', suddenly knelt down and would not get up. The sahaba complained that she had turned stubborn. The Prophet ﷺ told them that this was not in her nature. "The One who stopped the Elephant has also stopped her," he said. He made camp where she had stopped. The well at the camp had almost run dry. The Prophet ﷺ rinsed his mouth with its water and returned the water to the well. After a while, the well gave enough water for the whole camp and their animals to drink their fill. This is reported by al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari. Another report in al-Bukhari says that he sent an arrow down into the well. The Prophet ﷺ expected the terms to be hard. He told the sahaba in advance that he would accept any condition the Quraysh proposed, as long as it did not compromise the sanctity of Allah's symbols. Quraysh scouts soon found the camp, and Khalid's force pulled back toward Makkah. At one point, eighty armed men from Makkah tried to make a surprise raid on the camp from the hills of Tan'im. Ibn Ishaq's report gives their number as forty or fifty. Muslim scouts spotted them first, and they were surrounded and captured. Not a drop of blood was spilled on either side. According to Qur'an 48:24, it was Allah who held back the hands of both sides. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ forgave all of them and sent them home. The negotiations began with Budayl ibn Warqa' of Khuza'a, a neutral tribe that was sympathetic to the Muslims. Budayl carried the Prophet ﷺ's message back to the Quraysh. The message was that he had come only to honour the House of Allah. He was willing to agree a truce with the Quraysh, and otherwise he was ready to fight. The more hot-headed Quraysh refused even to hear the message. The Quraysh as a whole still would not move. They did not want the Arabs to say that Muhammad ﷺ had got the better of them. Next, Urwah ibn Mas'ud al-Thaqafi volunteered to go. He was a leader of Thaqif with close ties to the Quraysh. He met the Prophet ﷺ in person and accused him of breaking family ties and threatening the sanctity of the Haram. As he spoke, Urwah kept taking hold of the Prophet ﷺ's beard, a customary gesture between equals. Each time, al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, who was guarding the Prophet ﷺ, struck his hand away with the hilt of his sword. Al-Mughira was Urwah's own grand-nephew. Urwah then mocked the loyalty of the Prophet ﷺ's followers, calling them a rootless "hodgepodge". Abu Bakr RA answered him with a curse so sharp that Urwah said he would have replied in kind, if he had not owed Abu Bakr a personal favour. Urwah went back to the Quraysh visibly shaken. He had watched the sahaba compete to catch the Prophet ﷺ's spit and the water he washed with, and lower their voices in his presence. He told the Quraysh that he had visited the courts of Caesar, Kisra and the Najashi. He had never seen a king honoured the way this man was honoured by his own people. He urged the Quraysh to accept the Prophet ﷺ's offer. The Prophet ﷺ then sent Khirash ibn Umayyah of Khuza'a to the Quraysh. As a gesture of goodwill, he sent him riding one of his own well-known camels. The Quraysh responded by hamstringing the camel. They were about to kill Khirash when the Ahabish protected him and let him go (Ibn Ishaq). The Quraysh's own next envoy was al-Hulays ibn Alqama al-Kinani. He came from a tribe that held sacrificial animals sacred. The Prophet ﷺ knew this, so he had the sahaba parade their garlanded camels and sheep in front of him. Al-Hulays never even entered the Muslim camp, because the sight alone was enough for him. He went back to the Quraysh and declared that it was forbidden to keep pilgrims and their offerings away from the House of Allah. The Quraysh mocked him as an ignorant Bedouin. In response, he swore that his own tribal confederation, the Ahabish, would no longer support them. The neutral envoys had now all been tried, so the Prophet ﷺ decided to send a Muslim of standing. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA was famous for his fearlessness, but he asked to be excused. He was not afraid for himself. His hostility toward the Quraysh was well known, and he had no kin in Makkah to protect him. He was therefore likely to be killed before any negotiation could take place. Umar RA suggested Uthman ibn Affan RA instead. Uthman was an Umayyad, related to Abu Sufyan, and this gave him a standing the Quraysh would respect. Uthman entered Makkah under the protection of his cousin Aban ibn Sa'id. He met Abu Sufyan and the leaders of the Quraysh and delivered his message. They told Uthman that he himself could go round the Ka'bah. He refused to do so before the Prophet ﷺ had done it, and so they held him (Ibn Ishaq). Uthman was away longer than expected, and a rumour spread through the camp that he had been killed. The Prophet ﷺ was not willing to leave this unanswered. Beneath a tree at Hudaybiyyah, he called the sahaba to make a fresh pledge of allegiance. In it they committed themselves to fight the Quraysh rather than retreat. The Qur'an later honoured this oath as the moment when "Allah's Hand was over their hands" (Qur'an 48:10). It also recorded Allah's pleasure with those who made it (Qur'an 48:18). Every man present made the pledge except one hypocrite, who hid behind his camel. Uthman was away in Makkah, so the Prophet ﷺ pledged on his behalf. He raised his right hand and said, "This is the hand of Uthman." Then he struck it on his other hand and said, "This is for Uthman" (al-Bukhari). News of the pledge reached Makkah. It seems to have pushed the Quraysh to negotiate seriously at last. Uthman came back to the camp. It is related that the sahaba asked him whether he had managed to do tawaf while he was in the city. He told them that he would never do it before the Prophet ﷺ, even if he had stayed in Makkah for a year. The Quraysh first sent Mikraz ibn Hafs, but he offered nothing workable. Then they sent their most capable negotiator, Suhayl ibn Amr. Suhayl was a senior speaker of the Quraysh. After Badr he had been held as a prisoner in the home of one of the sahaba. Years earlier, Umar RA had wanted to silence him, but the Prophet ﷺ refused to allow it. He told Umar that a day might come when Suhayl would say something that pleased him. When the Prophet ﷺ saw Suhayl approaching, he said to the sahaba, "Suhayl has come; things have been made easy for you." He was reading a good omen in the meaning of Suhayl's name. Suhayl came with a grievance of his own. One of his sons, Abdullah, had already gone over to Madinah years earlier. He had slipped away from the Quraysh's own ranks at Badr. His younger son, Abu Jandal RA, had become a Muslim. Suhayl had kept him in chains and tortured him, and he was still a prisoner back in Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ called for Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to write the treaty. Ali began with "In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful." Suhayl objected that he did not recognise "al-Rahman". He insisted on the old pagan formula, "Bismika Allahumma", instead. The Prophet ﷺ agreed, rather than let the wording block the treaty. Ali then wrote, "This is what Muhammad ﷺ, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, has agreed with Suhayl ibn Amr." Suhayl objected again. He said that if the Quraysh had believed in that title, they would never have opposed him in the first place. He demanded "Muhammad ibn Abdillah" instead. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ even if you deny it." Even so, he agreed to the change. Ali RA refused to strike out the words "Messenger of Allah ﷺ" with his own hand. The Prophet ﷺ could not write, so he asked Ali RA to point to the words, and he erased them himself. Suhayl then set out his central condition. Any man of the Quraysh who came over to the Muslims would be sent back, even if he came as a Muslim. But no Muslim would ever be handed over in the other direction. The sahaba objected loudly. Most of them had fled Makkah themselves to find exactly this protection. Reversing it now would shut the door on every future refugee. Before the clause had even been fully written, Abu Jandal RA broke free of his chains. He stumbled into the camp crying out for help, with the marks of torture visible on his body. Suhayl pointed to him as the first person the clause would apply to. The Prophet ﷺ pointed out that the treaty had not yet been written, and asked Suhayl to let him keep Abu Jandal. Suhayl refused outright. Mikraz ibn Hafs said, "We allow you to keep him," but Suhayl would not give way (al-Bukhari). Other reports say that Mikraz took Abu Jandal under his protection so that he would not be tortured again. The Prophet ﷺ told Abu Jandal to be patient, because Allah would make a way out for him. Umar RA was standing near Abu Jandal. Rather than see him sent back, Umar gestured toward his own sword. But Suhayl was still Abu Jandal's father, and Abu Jandal did not take the sword. He was led back to Makkah in chains. After that, the remaining terms were agreed. There would be no Umrah that year, only the next year. There would be a ten-year truce, with no fighting on either side. Both sides were free to make alliances with other tribes, and those tribes would be bound by the same terms. And any Muslim who went back over to the Quraysh would not be returned, unlike in the other direction. Ibn Ishaq names the witnesses as Abu Bakr RA, Umar RA, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA, Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA, Mahmud ibn Maslamah RA and Mikraz, who was then still a polytheist. Ali RA was the one who wrote the document. As Suhayl left, satisfied, Umar RA confronted the Prophet ﷺ directly. He was voicing what many of the sahaba felt. He asked whether the Prophet ﷺ was not the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He asked whether the Muslims were not on the truth and their enemies on falsehood. If so, he asked, how could they accept such humiliating terms? The Prophet ﷺ replied, "I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and I will not disobey Allah, and He will help me." Umar RA then asked whether the Prophet ﷺ had not told them that they would go round the House of Allah. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Indeed, I told you. But did I say we will do it this year?" Umar RA admitted that he had not. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "You will do it next year." Umar RA was still not satisfied, so he put the same questions to Abu Bakr RA. Abu Bakr rebuked him sharply. He told Umar to hold fast to the Prophet ﷺ's stirrup rather than question him. Umar RA later said that, because of what he had said that day, he kept on giving charity, fasting, praying and freeing slaves (Ibn Ishaq). It is also reported that, when he was khalifa, he admitted that no other leader could have made him accept such a condition. Once the treaty was written, the Prophet ﷺ told the sahaba to get up, slaughter their sacrificial animals and shave their heads. He said it three times, but not a single person moved. They were too crushed by what had just happened (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ went back to his tent. He told Umm Salama RA that he had given them a command and no one had obeyed. She advised him to go out and shave his own head first, without saying another word. Once they saw him do it, she said, they would follow. He did exactly that. The sahaba were freed from their paralysis and rushed to shave each other's heads. He made du'a for those who had shaved their heads rather than only trimming their hair. He repeated this du'a three times. On the fourth time, he finally included those who had only trimmed. The sacrificial animals were slaughtered there. Among them was a camel that had belonged to Abu Jahal and had been captured at Badr. It had a silver ring in its nose, and the sight of it enraged the polytheists (Ibn Ishaq). On the march home, Umar RA was still troubled by what had passed between him and the Prophet ﷺ. He rode up hoping to make peace. His greetings went unanswered, and he feared the worst. Then a rider came to call him back. He found the Prophet ﷺ's face lit up with joy as he recited Surah al-Fath, which had been revealed on the way back. It begins, "Indeed, We have granted you a clear triumph" (Qur'an 48:1). Umar RA asked in disbelief whether this really counted as a triumph. The Prophet ﷺ confirmed that it did. Umar RA is said to have ridden the whole length of the column, announcing the victory. The Prophet ﷺ said that this surah was dearer to him than everything the sun shines upon (al-Bukhari). Not long after the return to Madinah, the treaty faced its first real test. Abu Basir was a convert from Thaqif, allied to Banu Zuhrah, and he fled to Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ did not turn him away when he arrived. But then two men of the Quraysh came to invoke the treaty's return clause. The Prophet ﷺ honoured the treaty and sent Abu Basir back with them. On the road, Abu Basir killed one of his two escorts with the man's own sword. The other escort fled back to Madinah in terror. Then Abu Basir himself came back. He insisted that the Prophet ﷺ had fulfilled his obligation, and that it was Allah who had set him free. The Prophet ﷺ did not directly help him any further. Instead, he remarked to the people near him, "What a great warrior he is. If only he had someone else to help him." Abu Basir understood the hint. He left and set up camp at al-'Is, by the sea, on the road the Quraysh used to travel to Syria (Ibn Ishaq). Abu Jandal RA heard where Abu Basir had gone. He escaped from Makkah a second time and joined him. Word spread among the Muslims of Makkah who were still being persecuted. Eventually some seventy to eighty of them gathered there. They supported themselves by raiding Quraysh caravans. Under the treaty, the Muslims had no authority to stop them, and no obligation to. In time, the raids became so costly that the Quraysh themselves appealed to the Prophet ﷺ. Invoking their ties of kinship, they asked him to take the whole band into Madinah and put an end to the raids. He did so. A later report, though, says that Abu Basir died before he reached the city. Another test came with Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah. She was the daughter of Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt, the man who had once thrown animal entrails on the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah. She became a Muslim and fled to Madinah. The treaty's return clause spoke only of men. Allah revealed Qur'an 60:10, which exempted believing women from the clause entirely. So she stayed in Madinah. She is reported to have later married Zayd ibn Harithah RA. One night during the march home, everyone was exhausted. The Prophet ﷺ asked Bilal RA to stay awake and wake the camp for Fajr. Bilal fell asleep too, and the whole camp, including the Prophet ﷺ, slept past sunrise. Sahih Muslim places a night like this on the return from Khaybar instead. The Prophet ﷺ did not pray on the spot. He moved the camp on and led the late prayer at a new place, saying that Shaytan had a hand in that particular ground.
The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah allowed either side to make alliances with outside tribes. Any tribe that joined a side was automatically covered by the terms agreed at Hudaybiyyah. The Khuza'a took the side of the Muslims. They were kin to the Prophet ﷺ through his great-great-great-grandmother, and they were bound to Banu Hashim by an old alliance made by Abdul Muttalib. The Banu Bakr took the side of the Quraysh. In the 8th year of the Hijrah, the Banu Bakr raided the Khuza'a by night at the pond of al-Watir, just outside the boundary of the Haram. The Banu Bakr had old blood feuds to settle. The Quraysh knew the raid would break the treaty, yet they approved it. Some of their leaders, such as Suhayl ibn Amr and Safwan ibn Umayyah, gave the Banu Bakr weapons, and some men of Quraysh are reported to have fought beside them in the dark. In his verses, Hassan ibn Thabit later laid the blame on these two men. The raid turned into a massacre. More than twenty people of Khuza'a were killed, including women and children. One man of Khuza'a fled into the Haram and called on his pursuer from Banu Bakr to fear his God. The pursuer answered, "There is no God today," and killed him inside the sanctuary. The chieftain of Khuza'a, Amr ibn Salim al-Khuza'i, went to Madinah. There he recited a poem that called on the old treaty and described the massacre in the same breath. The Prophet ﷺ was moved, and he promised, "You shall be helped, O Amr ibn Salim." The Quraysh sent Abu Sufyan ibn Harb to Madinah to negotiate the treaty again, but he found every door closed to him. Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab RA both refused to speak for him. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and his infant son Hasan could offer him nothing. Even his own daughter, Umm Habiba RA, would not let him sit on the Prophet ﷺ's bedding. He went back to Makkah having achieved nothing. The Prophet ﷺ called for a full mobilization, but he did not say where the army was going. He told no one, not even Abu Bakr RA or Aisha RA. By some reports, he also sent a small decoy party of eight men north toward Batn Idam, to make it look as if Syria was the target. Then he told the people that he was going to Makkah. He prayed, "O Allah, take eyes and ears from the Quraysh so that we may take them by surprise in their land." It was at this point that Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah RA tried to warn the Quraysh. Hatib had fought at Badr. By the strongest opinion he was a mawla, a client member of a tribe, from Yemen, and his family in Makkah had no tribe to protect them. He paid a mawla woman of Banu Hashim to smuggle a warning letter to the Quraysh, hidden in the braids of her hair. News of this came to the Prophet ﷺ from heaven, and he told his men where to find her. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA caught up with her caravan at Rawdatu Khakh, outside Madinah. At first she denied carrying anything. Ali swore that neither the Prophet ﷺ nor Jibril AS could have been mistaken, and he threatened to search her by force. At that, she asked them to turn around out of modesty. Then she untied her hair and handed over the letter. When Hatib was confronted, he confessed. He explained that his loyalty to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ had never wavered. He had acted only out of fear for his unprotected family, not out of love for the Quraysh. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA had asked at once to execute him. But the Prophet ﷺ declared, "Hatib has spoken the truth. Nobody should say anything about Hatib anymore except good." Umar asked a second time, saying that Hatib had betrayed Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ refused again. He reminded Umar that Hatib had fought at Badr, and told him that Allah may already have forgiven everyone who took part in Badr. Umar was moved to tears. After this, Allah revealed the opening of Surah al-Mumtahanah (Qur'an 60:1), which tells the believers not to take His enemies as allies. The army moved remarkably fast. It left Madinah on the 10th of Ramadan and reached the outskirts of Makkah on the 19th, a march of nine days. By then the force had grown to more than 10,000. Every man of the Muhajirun and the Ansar marched, and allied tribes such as the Muzayna and Banu Sulaym joined along the way. Barely six years earlier, only 300 Muslims had fought at Badr. When the army reached Qudaid, the Prophet ﷺ broke his Ramadan fast, and the army broke theirs with him. At the valley of Juhfa, the army met al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle. He was riding out of Makkah with his family to make his own Hijrah, and he did not know that the Conquest was already under way. By a weak report, the Prophet ﷺ called him the last of the Muhajirun. At Niq al-Uqab, between Makkah and Madinah, two of the Prophet ﷺ's first cousins came out to ask to see him. Both had long mocked and opposed him. One was the poet Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith ibn Abdul Muttalib RA. The other was Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah RA, the brother of Umm Salama RA. At first the Prophet ﷺ refused to see them. He said that one had wounded his pride and the other had insulted him in Makkah. Then Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, with his young son at his side, threatened to go and die in the desert rather than be turned away. Only then was the Prophet ﷺ moved to give way. Both men accepted Islam. The army's last camp was at Marr al-Zahran, later known as Wadi Fatima. There its campfires lit up the plain. Al-Abbas RA had just joined the army, and he was anxious to spare his people needless bloodshed. That night he went out, hoping to persuade the Quraysh to surrender peacefully. On the way he came across three leaders of Quraysh and Khuza'a who were out looking for news. They were Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, Hakim ibn Hizam and Budayl ibn Warqa'. Al-Abbas brought Abu Sufyan into the camp on the Prophet ﷺ's own white mule. On the way they passed Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, who wanted Abu Sufyan executed on the spot. The Prophet ﷺ had Abu Sufyan spend the night in al-Abbas's tent. The next morning, pressed by both men, Abu Sufyan reluctantly testified to the shahada. The Prophet ﷺ then declared that anyone who entered the Haram, stayed in their own home, or entered the house of Abu Sufyan would be safe. He also had al-Abbas show Abu Sufyan the army as it marched past, tribe by tribe. Abu Sufyan marveled at its size and said to al-Abbas, "The kingdom of your nephew has become great." Al-Abbas corrected him, "It is not a kingdom. It is prophethood." The final entry came on the morning of the 20th of Ramadan. The people of Makkah still did not know what was coming. The secret had been kept so completely, over a force of more than 10,000, that it was remembered as nothing short of a miracle. At Dhu Tuwa, the Prophet ﷺ divided the army. According to Ibn Ishaq, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA took the left and Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA led the Ansar. Khalid ibn al-Walid RA took the right, with Aslam, Sulaym, Ghifar, Muzayna, Juhayna and other Arab tribes. Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA led the troops ahead of the Prophet ﷺ. As Sa'd ibn Ubadah passed Abu Sufyan, he called out, "Today is the day of a great battle, and today the Ka'bah will be made lawful!" Abu Sufyan reported this to the Prophet ﷺ. According to al-Bukhari, the Prophet ﷺ said that Sa'd was wrong. Today, he said, Allah would honour the Ka'bah, and today it would be covered. In Ibn Ishaq's account, the Prophet ﷺ had the banner taken from Sa'd and given to Ali RA. In al-Bukhari's account, Zubayr RA carried the Prophet ﷺ's own flag. Al-Abbas RA then sent Abu Sufyan back into the city to warn the Quraysh not to fight. Abu Sufyan ran through the streets calling, "Come to my house and you will be safe!" His wife, Hind bint Utbah, was still a pagan, and she was furious. She seized him by the moustache and called for him to be killed as a wretched protector of his people. But Abu Sufyan held his ground. When people pressed him on what one house could do for the whole city, he spelled out the full terms of safety. They would be safe in the Haram, in their own homes, or in his house. The army entered Makkah from the east and the west. The Prophet ﷺ ordered that no one be killed unless they attacked first. He named only a small number of people who were left out of this general amnesty. A handful of Quraysh made a brief, hopeless stand in the alleys of the city. They were led by Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal, Safwan ibn Umayyah and Suhayl ibn Amr. The books report that around 13 to 20 men of Quraysh were killed. Only two Muslims were killed, both in the flank of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA. The resistance soon collapsed. The Prophet ﷺ then entered the city on his camel, wearing armour. His head was bowed so low that it nearly touched the camel's back, and he was reciting Surah al-Fath (Qur'an 48:1). He rode to the Ka'bah and performed tawaf on his camel. There were more than 350 idols around it, and some say 360. As he passed each one, he pointed his staff at it, and it fell. All the while he was reciting, "Truth has come, and falsehood has departed" (Qur'an 17:81). He then had Uthman ibn Talha bring the key, and he cleared the idols and images out of the Ka'bah. One image showed Ibrahim AS with divination arrows. The Prophet ﷺ said, "May Allah curse them! By Allah, neither Ibrahim nor Isma'il practised divination by arrows." A report in Ibn Sa'd also mentions a picture of Mary and Jesus, but that report is very weak. The Prophet ﷺ is also reported to have prayed inside the Ka'bah, with Bilal RA beside him. Bilal RA said that he prayed two rak'ahs between the pillars, but Ibn Abbas RA reported that he did not pray inside. He once told Aisha RA that he would have rebuilt the Ka'bah on Ibrahim AS's original foundations, and lowered its door to the ground, if the Quraysh had not been so new to Islam. Even now, he chose not to force that renovation through. Speaking from the door of the Ka'bah, the Prophet ﷺ declared, "There is no God but Allah alone. He has fulfilled His promise, and He has aided His servant, and He has destroyed all the enemies by Himself." He abolished every claim of the Jahiliyyah, the age of ignorance before Islam, except two. These were the custodianship of the Ka'bah and the feeding of pilgrims. He also recited Qur'an 49:13, on the equality of all mankind before Allah. He asked the assembled Quraysh what they thought he would do with them. They answered, "Good. You are a noble brother, son of a noble brother." The Prophet ﷺ said, "Go your way, for you are the freed ones" (Ibn Ishaq). Some tellings add the words of Yusuf AS, "No blame on you today" (Qur'an 12:92). Ali ibn Abi Talib RA asked whether both the custodianship of the Ka'bah (sadana) and the feeding of pilgrims (siqaya) could be given to Banu Hashim. Instead, the Prophet ﷺ called for Uthman ibn Talha and said, "Here is your key; today is a day of good faith" (Ibn Ishaq). Other reports link this to Qur'an 4:58. The custodianship has stayed with Uthman's clan, the Banu Abd al-Dar, ever since. In the immediate aftermath of the conquest, by one report, the Prophet ﷺ allowed the Khuza'a to take revenge on the Banu Bakr until the time of Asr. After that he forbade any more bloodshed in the Haram. The next day, men of Khuza'a killed Ibn al-Athwa' of Hudhayl. The Prophet ﷺ told them to stop, and he paid the blood money himself. He ruled that from then on a victim's family could choose either retaliation or blood money. He stressed that Allah alone had allowed him to fight inside the sanctuary, and only for a short time. Unusually among the conquests of human history, no war booty, prisoners or land were taken. Almost no fighting took place at all. Out of the whole city, only a small number of people were denied the amnesty by name, and the lists differ. Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal fled to Yemen, meaning to sail for Abyssinia. He turned to Islam at the sea. In Ibn Ishaq's account this was because the ship's master demanded belief in one God, while other tellings say it happened during a storm. He came back under the protection that his wife, Umm Hakim, obtained for him. He later died a martyr fighting the Romans. Abdullah ibn Khatal had killed the Muslim freedman who served him, and he had turned murtad, leaving Islam. He clung to the curtain of the Ka'bah for protection, but he was executed. Miqyas ibn Subaba was executed for assassinating a sahabi in revenge for his brother's accidental death at al-Muraysi'. Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi al-Sarh had once been the Prophet ﷺ's scribe. He had turned murtad and slandered the revelation of the Qur'an. His foster brother, Uthman ibn Affan RA, pleaded for him, and he was pardoned. Ibn Khatal had two singing girls, Fartanah and her companion. One of them was killed, and the other fled and was later pardoned. Sarah had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, and she too was later pardoned. Habbar ibn al-Aswad had caused the miscarriage of Zaynab bint Muhammad ﷺ. He later repented and was forgiven. Al-Huwayrith ibn Nuqaydh was one of those who had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, and he was executed by Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. By another report, he had attacked Fatima and Umm Kulthum RA on their journey to Madinah. Wahshi, who had killed Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, fled to Ta'if and converted about a year later. In the end, four of those named were killed. They were Ibn Khatal, Miqyas, al-Huwayrith and one of the singing girls. After the khutbah, the Prophet ﷺ had Bilal ibn Rabah RA climb onto the Ka'bah and give the first adhan ever called in Makkah. Bilal was an Abyssinian former slave. Now he was raised, literally and symbolically, above the Quraysh who had once tortured him. As Bilal gave the adhan, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb was standing with two leading men of Quraysh, al-Harith ibn Hisham and Itab ibn Asid. Itab said that his late father had been spared the humiliation of seeing Bilal raised above them. Al-Harith said that if he thought this man was on the truth, he would follow him. Abu Sufyan, a new Muslim, would not say anything. He said that if he spoke, even the stones would tell the Prophet ﷺ. Later, as the Prophet ﷺ left the Haram, he repeated to each of the three, word for word, what they had said. Al-Harith accepted Islam on the spot, and Itab accepted it later. Al-Harith is the Companion who asked the Prophet ﷺ how revelation came to him. Al-Bukhari reports this without saying when it happened. By one report, al-Harith died a martyr at the Battle of Yarmouk in 15 AH. Water meant for him was passed on twice. He gave it to Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal RA, who passed it to Ayyash ibn Abi Rabi'ah RA. All three died before it could be drunk. The Prophet ﷺ then sat at Mount Safa, where the public call to Islam had begun two decades earlier. There he took the bay'ah, the pledge of allegiance, from the men of Quraysh, fulfilling Qur'an 110:2. Mujashi' ibn Mas'ud RA brought his brother to pledge to make the Hijrah. The Prophet ﷺ said that there was no migration after the Conquest, but that he would take his pledge for Islam. In Ibn Abbas RA's report, he said, "There is no emigration after the Conquest, but jihad and intention." He then took the pledge of the women of Quraysh, following Qur'an 60:12. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA administered it in person, since the Prophet ﷺ never touched the hand of a woman who was not related to him. Hind bint Utbah came veiled, and at first she was not recognized. She argued with each condition in turn. She objected that women were being asked for more than men. She admitted that she had secretly taken some of Abu Sufyan's wealth, and he forgave her on the spot. She protested that a free woman would never commit zina. When the pledge forbade killing children, Hind retorted that the Muslims had killed the sons of Quraysh as grown men at Badr. Umar laughed uncontrollably at that reply. The Prophet ﷺ had recognized her when Abu Sufyan spoke, and he asked, "Then you are Hind bint Utbah?" She asked him to forgive what was past, and he went on with the pledge. Meanwhile, some of the Ansar worried among themselves. They feared that now the Prophet ﷺ had returned to his own people, he had grown soft toward them. Revelation came to him, and he told the Ansar, "I migrated towards Allah and towards you. I will live with you and will die with you." They wept (Muslim). The Prophet ﷺ stayed in Makkah for 19 days. During that time, several notable figures held out for a while before finally accepting Islam. By a weak report, a young man named Fudala ibn Umayr was enraged at the defeat. He hid a dagger, meaning to kill the Prophet ﷺ during tawaf. The Prophet ﷺ confronted him by name, and Fudala lied about what he intended. The Prophet ﷺ laughed, asked Allah's forgiveness, and placed a hand on his chest. Fudala later said that from then on no one was more beloved to him. He accepted Islam on the spot. Safwan ibn Umayyah had joined the hopeless resistance. He fled to Jeddah, intending to drown himself. Umayr ibn Wahb RA begged the Prophet ﷺ to grant Safwan protection. Then he caught up with Safwan, carrying the Prophet ﷺ's own turban as proof. He talked him out of boarding the ship and brought him back toward Makkah. Safwan asked for two months to decide, and he was given four. He accepted Islam later, after Hunayn. By some reports, this was after he had lent the Muslims armour and had been given a large share of the spoils of Hunayn. Suhayl ibn Amr had been the Quraysh's negotiator at Hudaybiyyah. By a report not found in Ibn Ishaq, he locked himself in his house in terror. He sent his Muslim son, Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA, to beg for protection on his behalf. The Prophet ﷺ granted it at once. He told the sahaba to receive Suhayl with respect, since "he is too intelligent to be ignorant of Islam". Suhayl accepted Islam about a month later, after Hunayn and the Siege of Ta'if. Abu Quhafa was the blind, elderly father of Abu Bakr RA, and he had long opposed Islam. His granddaughter, Asma bint Abi Bakr RA, led him by the hand to the Prophet ﷺ, who was sitting with Abu Bakr. The Prophet ﷺ asked Abu Bakr why he had not left the old man at home, so that he could go to him there. Abu Bakr answered that it was more fitting for his father to come. The Prophet ﷺ stroked Abu Quhafa's chest and invited him to Islam. He told them to change the whiteness of his hair, but to avoid black. Umm Hani' bint Abi Talib RA also embraced Islam during this time. She was a daughter of Abu Talib, a full sister of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, and a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ. She had kept her old faith right up until the Conquest. Two of her in-laws from Banu Makhzum fled to her, and Ali RA swore that he would kill them. She bolted her door on them and went to the Prophet ﷺ. She found him bathing, screened by his daughter Fatima RA. He welcomed her and said, "O Umm Hani', we grant protection to whomever you have granted protection." The right to grant protection belongs to any Muslim, man or woman. Umm Hani' RA also narrated that she saw the Prophet ﷺ pray eight rak'ahs of Salat al-Duha that morning. It is the only surviving report of how many rak'ahs he himself prayed of that prayer. One of the last holdouts was Abdullah ibn al-Zab'ari of Banu Sahm, the official poet of the Quraysh. For years he had traded stinging verses with Hassan ibn Thabit RA. At the Conquest he fled to Najran rather than face the Muslims. Then a single verse that Hassan RA aimed at him stung him, and he resolved to return and embrace Islam. In some tellings his cousin objected, and he answered him, "Why should I not convert? ... Should I not go back to my own kith and kin, my own cousin? He is the best of all mankind." By reports not found in Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet ﷺ saw him approaching the Ka'bah from a distance. He remarked to the sahaba, "That is Ibn al-Zab'ari; and I see from him the nur of Iman." Ibn al-Zab'ari then gave the shahada and made a moving declaration of repentance for his years of hostile poetry. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "Islam wipes away all that you have done in the past." He spent the rest of his life writing poetry in praise of Islam. By one report, the Prophet ﷺ gave him his cloak for it. The Prophet ﷺ no longer had a house of his own in Makkah. Abu Talib had died a mushrik. Under the ruling that a Muslim does not inherit from a disbeliever, his house passed instead to his non-Muslim sons, Talib and Aqil, and Aqil later sold it. So the Prophet ﷺ set up a tent at al-Hujun for his 19 days in the city. Ali RA asked whether they would go back to their old family house, and the Prophet ﷺ replied, "And did Aqil leave any property for us to live in?" In al-Bukhari's report it was Usama ibn Zayd RA who asked where they would stay, and the reply is given as "Has Aqil left for us any house to lodge in?" He shortened his prayers throughout the stay. Ibn Abbas RA put the stay at nineteen days, and Ibn Ishaq at fifteen nights. During these 19 days, the Prophet ﷺ gave short sermons teaching the new Muslims the basics of the religion. He reaffirmed that Makkah would always be sacred. He declared, "Allah has made Makkah sacred the day that He created the heavens and the earth, and it shall remain sacred until the Day of Judgment ... Makkah was never halal before me, nor shall it be halal after me. And even for me, it was made halal just for an hour of the day." He forbade the sale of alcohol, carcasses, pigs and idols. This ended the Makkans' profitable trade in carving idols. It also established the fiqh principle that whatever is unlawful to use is also unlawful to sell. Scholars differ on when zawaj al-mut'ah was prohibited, but most place its final prohibition at the Conquest. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA fell ill in Makkah. In al-Bukhari's main report, this happened in the year of the Farewell Hajj. His only heir was one daughter, and he asked the Prophet ﷺ whether he could leave two-thirds of his wealth by will. The Prophet ﷺ said, "No, too much." Sa'd asked about half, and got the same answer. Then Sa'd proposed a third. This led to a ruling still followed in Islamic inheritance law. A bequest to anyone outside the Qur'anic heirs may not be more than one-third. A noblewoman of Banu Makhzum was caught stealing, and Usama ibn Zayd RA, who was beloved of the Prophet ﷺ, pleaded for her. The Prophet ﷺ became angry and answered, "Do you intercede in a case connected with Allah's prescribed punishments?" Then in a sermon he said that if Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad ﷺ, were to steal, he would cut off her hand. The woman later visited Aisha RA regularly, and Aisha passed on her requests to the Prophet ﷺ. This shows that a punishment does not brand a person a criminal for life. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Abd ibn Zam'ah RA also had a dispute over a boy born to the slave-girl of Zam'ah. Sa'd claimed the boy for his brother Utbah. Abd ibn Zam'ah claimed him as his own brother, born on his father's bed. The Prophet ﷺ settled the case with his verdict, "The boy is for the bed, and the stone is for the adulterer" (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ also sent small expeditions to destroy the remaining centres of idol worship. He commanded every household to destroy its own idols. He sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to destroy the great idol al-Uzza, which is mentioned in Qur'an 53:19. By other reports, he sent another party to destroy Manat (Qur'an 53:20). At Nakhla, al-Uzza's guardian, a man of Sulaym, hung his sword on the idol and climbed the mountain. He called on al-Uzza to strike Khalid down. Khalid destroyed the idol and returned (Ibn Ishaq). This success was spoiled by a mistake of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA, who was a very recent convert and did not yet know fiqh well. He was sent to invite the Banu Jadhimah to Islam, a tribe that had killed his uncle in the Jahiliyyah. They took up their weapons, and he told them to lay them down, since everyone had accepted Islam. They did so, saying "Saba'na, saba'na", because they could not say "Aslamna". Khalid then had them tied up, and he killed a number of them (Ibn Ishaq; al-Bukhari). Abdullah ibn Umar RA and his companions refused Khalid's order to kill their captives. Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA told Khalid that he had committed a pagan act in Islam. The two men quarrelled, and Khalid insulted him. When the Prophet ﷺ heard the news, he stood facing the Ka'bah, raised his hands, and declared, "O Allah, I am free from what Khalid has done." He then sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA with money to pay blood money and to apologize to the grieving families on his behalf. When he heard about the quarrel, the Prophet ﷺ said, "None should revile my Companions, for if one among you were to spend as much gold as Uhud, it would not amount to one mudd of one of them, or half of it" (Muslim). The 19 days secured only the area immediately around Makkah. Ta'if, the fortified city on a plateau that had once driven out and stoned the Prophet ﷺ, was still beyond the army's reach. It would be dealt with in the campaigns that followed.
No one knows the year this happened. Ibn Sayyid al-Nas says it was the ninth year of the Hijrah. Others say the fourth, fifth or sixth. Some clues point to a late date. By then the Prophet ﷺ was married to all nine of his wives: Sawda, Aisha, Hafsa, Umm Salama, Juwayriyya, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Umm Habiba, Safiyyah and Maymunah. Also, Umar was worried at the time about an attack by the Ghassanids, and that fear ended after Tabuk. On the other hand, Umar went in to see Aisha, which points to a time before the verses of hijab. The verses revealed about the episode are in Surah al-Ahzab, but that proves nothing about the date, because the verses of a surah did not have to come down together. The cause is easier to state than the date. The Prophet ﷺ had never lived in comfort. As a boy he worked as a shepherd for pennies. He lived as a lodger in Abu Talib's crowded house. He had no riding animal of his own until the Hijrah. When wealth came, it went to the community rather than to him. It came in the ransoms of Badr, the fields of Khaybar, and the gift of Fadak, which fed his household. Greatest of all were the spoils of Hunayn. He kept none of them for himself, even though the law allowed a ruler his share. This was his own choice. An angel who had never come down before had once brought him an offer from his Lord. He could be a king and messenger, or a slave and messenger. Jibril signalled to him to humble himself, and he chose to be a slave. The narrator says that after that day he was never seen eating while leaning back against a wall. His wives saw the standard of living rising all around them in Madinah, but not in their own rooms. At some point, most likely in the eighth or ninth year, they went to him together and asked for more. No book records exactly what they asked for, and that is right, because it was a private household matter. What is clear is that they asked together, that Aisha and Hafsa led them, and that what they wanted was lawful. He answered with an ila'. This is an oath before Allah to stay away from one's wives. The law allows it for up to four months, when a marriage needs time to cool down. He swore it for one month. Then he withdrew to a small loft near the mosque, which was reached by a ladder. Umar later told the story to Ibn Abbas. Ibn Abbas had waited more than a year for a chance to ask him about the two wives addressed in Surah al-Tahrim. Umar began with the affair of Maria. He explained that the men of the Quraysh had been used to ruling over their women. In Madinah they found people whose women ruled over them, and their own wives began to learn the same ways. One day, at his house in al-Awali, Umar's wife answered him back. When he scolded her, she told him that the Prophet ﷺ's own wives answered him back. Some of them even stayed away from him for a whole day when they were angry. Umar went straight to his daughter Hafsa and asked if this was true. She said it was. He told her that any woman who did that had lost everything. He warned her never to answer the Prophet ﷺ back again, and never to trouble him for anything. If she needed something, she should bring it to her father. He also told her not to be misled by what her co-wife could get away with. Aisha was more graceful than Hafsa and dearer to the Prophet ﷺ, he said, and she would be forgiven things that Hafsa would not. Umar and a neighbour of his from the Ansar used to take turns. One would work the land while the other spent the day with the Prophet ﷺ and brought back the news. In those days everyone was talking about a Ghassanid army that was said to be shoeing its horses to march on them. One night after Isha, the neighbour hammered on Umar's door. Umar asked whether the Ghassanids had come. The neighbour said no, it was something worse. He said the Prophet ﷺ had divorced his wives. Umar went at first light. He found the mosque full of men sitting in silence, turning pebbles over in their hands. In one telling, he went first to Aisha. He asked whether the daughter of Abu Bakr had troubled the Prophet ﷺ so much that he had left all of them. She told him to mind his own business. Then he went to Hafsa and found her weeping. He reminded her that he had warned her. He told her she knew the Prophet ﷺ did not love her, and that if she were not his daughter, the Prophet ﷺ would have divorced her long ago. Hafsa did not know whether they had been divorced. She only knew that he had gone up to the loft. A servant stood at the foot of the ladder. One version says it was Bilal. Umar asked him to ask permission for him to come in. The servant came back and said he had mentioned Umar, but the Prophet ﷺ had said nothing. Umar went and sat by the minbar. Then he came back and was refused a second time. The third time, Umar called up loudly. He said he thought the Prophet ﷺ believed he had come on Hafsa's behalf. He swore by Allah that if he were told to strike off her head, he would do it. Then he was let in. Inside, he found a room with some barley, a half-tanned water-skin, a chamber pot and a few animal hides. The Prophet ﷺ was lying on a mat of palm fibre, and its weave had left marks on his side. Umar asked whether he had divorced his wives. The Prophet ﷺ said he had not. Umar said "Allahu akbar." He could see the tension, so he told the Prophet ﷺ the whole story about the women of Madinah. He also told him how he had warned Hafsa not to compare herself with Aisha. The Prophet ﷺ smiled, then smiled again, and invited Umar to sit. Umar looked around the room and could see nothing else in it. He asked why the Prophet ﷺ did not pray for his people to be given wealth, as Persia and Rome had been, when those nations did not even worship Allah. Then Umar began to cry. When the Prophet ﷺ asked him why, Umar said it was because the mat had marked the side of Allah's chosen one, while Kisra and Caesar lay in silk. The Prophet ﷺ sat up. He said, "O son of al-Khattab, are you in doubt? Are you not content that Allah has chosen us over them for the Next world and given them this world?" Umar asked him to pray for Allah's forgiveness for him. Another version adds something Umar said. He told the Prophet ﷺ that if he wished to divorce any of his wives, then Allah, Jibril and Mika'il, Abu Bakr, Umar himself and all the believers were with him. Umar used to say that he hoped Allah would confirm what he had said. Allah did, in the fourth verse of Surah al-Tahrim. It was one of three times the Qur'an came down in agreement with Umar. After twenty-nine days the Prophet ﷺ came back down. Aisha reminded him that he had sworn to stay away for a month, and it had only been twenty-nine days. He said, "The month may be 29 days as well." He went to her room first. He told her he was going to put something to her. He asked her not to answer in haste, and to consult her parents before she replied. Then he recited the verses Allah had sent down: "O Prophet ﷺ, say to your wives, if you desire the life of this world and its adornment, come and I will provide for you and release you graciously. But if you desire Allah and His Messenger ﷺ and the Home of the Hereafter, then Allah has prepared for those of you who do good a great reward." Aisha understood why he had told her to consult her parents. He knew they would never tell her to leave him. She asked what there was to consult about. She said she chose Allah and His Messenger ﷺ and the Hereafter. Then she asked him not to tell the other wives what she had chosen. He refused. He said Allah had sent him to convey the message, not to make things hard. He put the same choice to each of his wives in turn, and every one of them chose as Aisha had. The whole city had known about the quarrel, and Allah put it into the Qur'an. The problem it revealed did not lie with the wives. It lay in a standard of living that a messenger who had chosen to be a slave could not share with them. The episode is the source of the law of ila'. It is also the source of the husband's right to give his wife the choice of divorce. And it gives the plainest picture the Companions left of how the Prophet ﷺ chose to live.
Umm Salama RA had a daughter named Barrah, meaning "the righteous one" (a self-praising name the Prophet ﷺ disliked). He changed her name to Zaynab.