Banu Umayyah

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.

After the Prophet ﷺ left Makkah for Ta'if, he could no longer safely return. By walking out of Makkah, he had seemed to accept the expulsion that Abu Lahab had imposed on him. His companion Zayd ibn Harithah RA asked him how they would enter Makkah now. The Prophet ﷺ replied that Allah would make a way out for them. The Prophet ﷺ then sent messages to a few leaders of the Quraysh, asking for their protection (jiwar). The first was al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq, who replied that his people were in a weak position and could not protect him. Next he asked Suhayl ibn Amr. Suhayl replied that his clan, Banu Amir ibn Lu'ayy, had never protected anyone from Banu Ka'b ibn Lu'ayy, and he did not want to set a precedent. Finally he asked Mut'im ibn Adi, the chief of Banu Nawfal ibn Abd Manaf. Mut'im agreed at once. He told his four sons to arm themselves and bring the Prophet ﷺ straight back to him. They rode out fully armed and escorted the Prophet ﷺ into Makkah. Mut'im waited for him at the Ka'bah and told him to perform tawaf, and the Prophet ﷺ circled the Ka'bah with the armed guards beside him. When he finished, Mut'im stood up and announced to the people of Makkah that he had given Muhammad ﷺ his protection. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb stood and asked whether Mut'im had become his follower or was only giving protection. Mut'im said he was not a follower and was only giving protection. Abu Sufyan replied that in that case the Quraysh would accept it.

Badr is a well on a plain about 130 km south-west of Madinah, where the road to Syria runs. It was named after the man of the Banu Damra who dug it. The battle fought there on Friday, 17 Ramadan 2 AH, was never meant to be a battle. In the year since the Hijrah, permission to fight had come down. The Muslims had begun to strike at the one thing that made the Quraysh what they were. That was their caravan road, which ran past Madinah. First came the expedition to al-Abwa, then the raid that saw the first arrow shot in the way of Allah, then al-Ushayra. At al-Ushayra, the Prophet ﷺ missed Abu Sufyan's great caravan, on its way north, by a single day. Then came Nakhla, where eight men killed a man of the Quraysh in the sacred month. That handed the Quraysh a grievance. Abu Jahl had once threatened Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA at the Ka'bah for sheltering the Muslims. Sa'd had then sworn in front of the Ka'bah to cut the Quraysh off from their trade, which was dearer to them than tawaf. Shortly before the battle, the qibla turned from Jerusalem to Makkah. Ibn Ishaq places this in Sha'ban. In Ramadan the same caravan was due back from Syria, led by Abu Sufyan. By some reports it had a thousand camels. It carried the money and goods of the Quraysh, and Ibn Ishaq says that thirty or forty men guarded it. The Prophet ﷺ sent out scouts. According to Muslim, one scout, Busaysah, brought his report to a house where only the boy Anas RA was present. Other reports name Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA and Sa'id ibn Zayd RA as the scouts, and Ibn Ishaq names Basbas ibn Amr and Adiy ibn Abi al-Zaghba' as the two sent ahead to Badr. The Prophet ﷺ then told the people that anyone whose mount was ready should ride with him at once. He would not wait for those whose animals were grazing outside the town. In Ibn Ishaq's telling, he named the Quraysh caravan as the target when he called them out. It was meant to be a quick seizure, so the men came as they were. There were around 313 or 315 of them. Of these, 83 were Muhajirun, 62 were from the Aws and 170 were from the Khazraj. By one report they had two horses, which belonged to Zubayr RA and al-Miqdad RA. Ali RA said that al-Miqdad was their only horseman. They had seventy camels, with three men sharing each one. In Ibn Mas'ud RA's report, the Prophet ﷺ shared his camel with Ali RA and Abu Lubaba RA. Ibn Ishaq names Ali RA and Marthad ibn Abi Marthad RA instead. His two companions begged him to ride. He answered that they were no stronger than he was, and that he needed the reward no less than they did. He judged al-Bara' ibn Azib RA and Abdullah ibn Umar RA too young to fight. Hudhayfah RA and his father were held back for another reason. The Quraysh had once made them swear never to fight against Muhammad ﷺ, and an oath is an oath, even to an enemy. A pagan of Madinah, famous for his courage, asked three times to join. He was refused twice, because the Muslims do not seek help from an idolater, until he took the shahada. The blind Ibn Umm Maktum stayed behind in Madinah. By one report, Abu Lubaba RA was sent back from the road to take charge of the city. Abu Sufyan had been on his guard since al-Ushayra. He found the scouts' campsite and broke open the camel droppings. Inside he recognised the date stones of Yathrib. He turned the caravan down to the coast road, and sent Damdam ibn Amr al-Ghifari racing to Makkah. Three days before Damdam arrived, Atikah bint Abdul Muttalib had a dream. In it, a crier on a camel called the Quraysh traitors and promised them death in three days. Then a rock rolled down from Abu Qubays and shattered against every house in the city. Her brother al-Abbas told her to keep the dream to herself. But he told one friend about it, and before long Abu Jahl was sneering at the Banu Abdul Muttalib for producing a prophetess. On the third day Damdam rode in. His camel's nose was slit and his shirt was torn, and he was crying out that Muhammad ﷺ was upon the caravan. Makkah raised an army at speed. Every household sent a man or hired one to go. By some reports the army set out 1,300 strong, with a hundred horses and six hundred coats of mail. Umar RA's report in Muslim and Ahmad says that it stood at Badr about a thousand strong. Abu Lahab stayed behind and paid a man who owed him money to go in his place. By some reports Utbah ibn Rabi'ah did not want to fight his own kin, until his brother Shaybah shamed him into it. The same reports say that Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt had once spat in the Prophet ﷺ's face and had been promised death outside Makkah. He did not dare to go until a kinsman lent him the fastest camel in the city. Umayyah ibn Khalaf, fat and fearful, meant to stay at home. According to al-Bukhari, Abu Jahl told him that if the chief of the valley stayed, the people would stay too. According to Ibn Ishaq, Uqba brought him an incense burner and told him to perfume himself, because he belonged with the women. Umayyah then bought the best camel in Makkah. He told his wife that he meant to go only a short way. Every one of these men was on the list the Prophet ﷺ had named in his prayer on the day the entrails were thrown on his back. By one report, before they marched, the Quraysh held the curtains of the Ka'bah. They asked Allah to give victory to the better of the two parties. The Qur'an says that this prayer was answered, against them. Outside Makkah the army nearly turned back. They were afraid that the Banu Bakr would raid the empty city. Then Iblis himself came to them in the shape of Suraqa ibn Malik, a chief of Kinanah. He promised them his protection and rode with them. At Juhfa, Juhaym ibn al-Salt of the Banu al-Muttalib had a dream. In it a crier named Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah among the dead. He also saw a camel stabbed in the chest, whose blood spattered every tent. Abu Jahl scoffed that here was another prophet from the Banu al-Muttalib. Then a messenger arrived from Abu Sufyan. He said that the caravan was safe and that the army should go home. Abu Jahl said they would go on to Badr anyway. They would camp there for three days, drink and be sung to, and let all Arabia hear that the Quraysh feared no one. Al-Akhnas ibn Shariq told the Banu Zuhrah to lay the charge of cowardice on him and go home. They did, and so did Talib ibn Abi Talib with some others. Meanwhile the Muslims had begun to hear of an army. The Prophet ﷺ had been shown in a dream that he would fight. By some reports he asked them twice what they thought of meeting the Quraysh instead of the caravan. Twice they answered that they had come for a caravan, with no armour and no supplies. The Qur'an records this reluctance, yet still calls them nothing but believers. The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA went scouting themselves. They met an old Bedouin and got from him the exact positions of both the Muslims and the Quraysh. All they told him about themselves was that they were "from water". Then two water carriers of the Quraysh were caught. When the boys said they were from the army, the Companions beat them. The beating went on until the boys said they were from the caravan. The Prophet ﷺ finished his prayer and told the Companions that they had beaten the boys for telling the truth, and let the lie stand. He asked the boys how many camels the Quraysh slaughtered each day. They said nine or ten, and he said the army was nine hundred to a thousand strong. The boys then named its leading men, Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah. The Prophet ﷺ told the Companions that Makkah had thrown them the pieces of its liver. He also pointed to the places on the ground where each of those men would fall. Earlier, at Dhafiran, news had come that the Quraysh had marched, and he had asked the army for its advice. Abu Bakr spoke and sat down. Umar RA spoke and sat down. Then al-Miqdad said that they would not speak as the Children of Israel had spoken to Musa. Instead they would fight at his right and his left, in front of him and behind him. Still the Prophet ﷺ asked again. At last Sa'd ibn Mu'adh understood that he was waiting to hear from the Ansar. In Muslim's report it was Sa'd ibn Ubadah. The Ansar's pledge at Aqaba had been to defend him in Madinah, not to march out to war. Sa'd told him to go wherever he wished. If he rode them into the sea, they would follow him, and perhaps Allah would show him through them something to comfort his eyes. The Prophet ﷺ was delighted. He told them to go forward, because Allah had promised him one of the two parties. It was as though he could already see the enemy lying slain. The Muslims reached the water of Badr before the Quraysh. Al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA asked whether this campsite had been chosen by revelation, or was simply a soldier's choice. He was told it was a soldier's choice. So he proposed camping beyond the wells, so that the water lay behind the Muslims and the enemy had only what they carried. The Prophet ﷺ took his advice. The other wells were stopped up, and a cistern was built and filled for the Muslims. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh had a shelter built, from which the Prophet ﷺ could watch the field. That night a light rain fell. It firmed the sand on the Muslim side and, by some reports, drenched the Quraysh. Ali said that all the Companions slept except the Prophet ﷺ. He prayed under a tree until dawn: "O Allah, if this band perishes, You will not be worshipped on earth." While he dozed, he was shown the enemy as few in number. The Qur'an says that this spared the Muslims from quarrelling and despair. At dawn on the 17th he drew the army up in ranks. He straightened the lines with an arrow in his hand. When he prodded Suwad RA in the belly, Suwad demanded his right to retaliate. The Prophet ﷺ bared his own stomach, and Suwad kissed it. Suwad said that if he was to die, he wanted his skin to have touched the Prophet ﷺ's. He had given the flag to Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Two black banners were carried, one by Ali and one by a man of the Ansar. He put Qays ibn Abi Sa'sa'a RA in charge of the rearguard. He also ordered that certain men were not to be killed. These were al-Abbas and the Banu Hashim who had been dragged out to fight, and Abu al-Bukhturi, who had helped to break the boycott. Across the plain the Prophet ﷺ saw a man on a red camel riding up and down the lines of the Quraysh. He said that if there was any good in them, it was in that man. The man was Utbah. He was offering to pay the blood money for Amr al-Hadrami, the man killed at Nakhla. He pleaded with the Quraysh not to kill their own sons and brothers, but to leave Muhammad ﷺ to the other Arabs. Hakim ibn Hizam carried the offer to Abu Jahl. Abu Jahl mocked Hakim as Utbah's errand boy. He stirred up al-Hadrami's brother, and called Utbah a coward who had lost his nerve at the sight of the Muslims. Utbah had told them they could blame him for cowardice, but he could not bear to hear it from Abu Jahl. He called for his brother and his son. The Quraysh scout Umayr ibn Wahab reported three hundred men with nothing but their swords. He warned that not one of them would die without taking a man of the Quraysh with him. By one report, Abu Jahl told him that no one had asked his opinion. As the armies closed in, Abu Jahl prayed aloud. He asked Allah to destroy whichever army had cut the ties of kinship and brought a strange religion. It was another prayer against himself. Al-Aswad ibn Abd al-Asad swore to drink from the Muslims' cistern or die trying. Hamzah RA cut him down at the water. He was the first man killed at Badr. Then Utbah, Shaybah and al-Walid ibn Utbah stepped out and called for champions to face them. Three young men of the Ansar answered. They were Awf and Muawwidh, the sons of Afra', and Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA. The Quraysh waved them away. They said they had no quarrel with them, and asked for their equals instead. So the Prophet ﷺ sent Ubaydah ibn al-Harith RA, Hamzah and Ali. In Ibn Ishaq's account, Hamzah and Ali killed Shaybah and al-Walid at once. Ubaydah and Utbah struck each other down, and Utbah cut off Ubaydah's leg. Then the other two turned and killed Utbah. Ali RA's own report in Abu Dawud pairs them differently. In it Hamzah faced Utbah, Ali faced Shaybah, and Ubaydah and al-Walid wounded each other. Ubaydah died of his wound at al-Safra on the way home. This duel is the Qur'an's "two adversaries who dispute about their Lord". The Prophet ﷺ faced the qibla and raised his hands to the sky. He pleaded for the help he had been promised, until his cloak fell from his shoulders. Abu Bakr put it back on him. He told him that it was enough, and that his Lord would give what He had promised. According to Muslim, Allah then revealed that He would help them with a thousand angels. Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ dozed in the shelter and then woke. He told Abu Bakr to be of good cheer. He said that Jibril was there, holding a horse by the rein and leading it, with dust on his front teeth. A thousand angels were coming in file. The Prophet ﷺ recited the verse "the host will be routed and turn their backs". Umar is reported to have said that he had not understood this verse until that morning. Then the Prophet ﷺ took up a handful of pebbles. He threw them at the Quraysh, saying "may these faces be disfigured". By reports in the tafsir, every one of them got grit in his eyes. The Qur'an says that it was not he who threw, but Allah. What happened next can only be told through the dozen stories the Companions left behind. The Prophet ﷺ called on them to rise up to a Paradise as wide as the heavens and the earth. Umayr ibn al-Humam RA was chewing dates at the time. He said that if he lived long enough to finish them, that would be too long a life. He threw them down and fought until he was killed. The Muslims held back their arrows until the enemy was in range. They kept their swords sheathed until the enemy was upon them. Ali said that the Prophet ﷺ was the closest of them all to the enemy. By another report, Ali said he found the Prophet ﷺ three times in his shelter, in prostration, crying "O Living, O Sustaining", with Abu Bakr at his side. The Prophet ﷺ moved between the two. Iblis saw the angels and ran. Al-Harith ibn Hisham grabbed at the man he took for Suraqa, and was thrown onto his back. A mursal report in the Muwatta' tells what the Prophet ﷺ said about this. Satan is never more humiliated than on the day of Arafah, he said, except for what Satan was shown on the day of Badr. On that day he saw Jibril arranging the angels in ranks. Some Companions heard a rider above them urging on his horse, Haizum. They saw the pagan in front of them lose his head before their own blow landed. The man who captured al-Abbas was a slightly built man of the Ansar. Al-Abbas insisted that he had been taken by a handsome horseman on a piebald horse. The Prophet ﷺ told the Ansari to be quiet, because an angel had helped him. By one report the angels wore yellow turbans like Zubayr's, while Ibn Ishaq's report from Ibn Abbas RA says their turbans were white. Ukasha ibn Mihsan RA broke his sword. He was handed a stick of wood, and found a blade in his hand. By a report with a broken chain, Abu Ubaydah RA kept away from his father, Abdullah ibn al-Jarrah. In the end the old man came at him, and Abu Ubaydah killed him. The closing verse of Surah al-Mujadilah came down about him. It says that no believer loves those who fight Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, even if they are his father. Abu al-Bukhturi refused to be taken prisoner without his friend. He was killed by a man of the Ansar who had tried to spare him. The three men of the duel were the father, uncle and brother of Abu Hudhayfah RA. He said aloud that the Muslims were killing their own kin while the Prophet ﷺ's uncle went untouched. He regretted those words until he died at Yamamah. Two boys of the Ansar had each asked Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA to point out Abu Jahl. One was Mu'adh ibn Amr ibn al-Jumuh RA. The other was a son of Afra', called Mu'adh in al-Bukhari and Muawwidh in Ibn Ishaq. When Abd al-Rahman pointed him out, the boys went through the crowd like hawks. Mu'adh leapt and cut off Abu Jahl's leg. It cost him his own arm to Ikrimah's sword, so he tore the arm off and fought on without it. Muawwidh struck the second blow. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud RA was the shepherd whom Abu Jahl had despised. He found Abu Jahl dying and put a foot on his neck. To the end, Abu Jahl said that a man killed by his own people was not disgraced, and that Ibn Mas'ud was standing on a high place. Ibn Mas'ud's own sword had been blunted by the day's fighting, so he took Abu Jahl's sword and finished him with it. By a report with a weak chain in Ahmad, the Prophet ﷺ made Ibn Mas'ud swear three times before going to look for himself. He called Abu Jahl the Pharaoh of this community. Umayyah ibn Khalaf begged his old friend Abd al-Rahman to take him and his son prisoner. He said he was worth more than the coats of mail Abd al-Rahman was carrying. Then Bilal RA saw the man who had tortured him on the sand of Makkah. He called out to the Ansar, and Umayyah and his son died under their spears. Abd al-Rahman was wounded in the foot trying to shield them. Umayyah's body was the only one that could not be moved to the well. It came apart when they lifted it, so they covered it with stones where it lay. Seventy of the Quraysh were dead and about seventy were taken prisoner. That was one man in seven of their army. Fourteen or fifteen Muslims had been killed, and none were taken. The Quraysh fled by the one road the Muslims had left open. The Prophet ﷺ stayed on the field for three days, to bury the martyrs and to make it plain who had won. The Quraysh dead, all except Umayyah, were thrown into a dry well and covered over. On the third day, before leaving, the Prophet ﷺ stood at the mouth of the well. He called the dead by name, Utbah, Shaybah, al-Walid, Abu Jahl and Umayyah. He asked whether they had found their Lord's promise true, for he had found his Lord's promise true. Umar asked how he could speak to bodies without souls. He answered that they heard him no worse than the living did, though they could not reply. While still on the field, the Companions had already started arguing over the spoils. The men who gathered the spoils, the men who chased the enemy and the Prophet ﷺ's bodyguard each claimed the better right. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA asked for the sword he had won. Then the opening verses of Surah al-Anfal came down there, saying that the spoils belong to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. Every man received an equal share. Shares also went to some who had been kept away on duty. Among them was Uthman RA, who was nursing his dying wife Ruqayyah. Looking over the prisoners, the Prophet ﷺ spoke of Mut'im ibn Adi, who had recently died. He said that if Mut'im had asked him for these prisoners, he would have freed every one of them. This was because of the shelter Mut'im had given him after Ta'if. Abu Bakr advised taking ransom, since the prisoners were their kin. Umar advised giving each Companion his own kinsman to kill. The Prophet ﷺ compared the first to Ibrahim and Isa, and the second to Nuh and Musa. He chose ransom. The next day Umar found him and Abu Bakr weeping under a tree, because of verses that had come down. The verses said that no prophet should take captives before he has subdued the land. They also said that but for a prior decree, a punishment would have touched them. Two prisoners were executed on the road home. One was al-Nadr ibn al-Harith, who had mocked the Qur'an as old fables that he could improve on. The other was Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt. Uqba asked who would look after his children, and the answer he was given was the Fire. Their execution was the only time captives of Badr were put to death. Zayd ibn Harithah RA carried the news to Lower Madinah, naming the dead one by one. Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA took it to Upper Madinah. By some reports Zayd was riding the Prophet ﷺ's own camel, and people thought he was mad. Abdullah ibn Ubayy heard him and said that the matter was now settled. The hypocrisy of Madinah dates from that day. Uthman heard the shouting just as he finished burying Ruqayyah. The prisoners were lodged with the men who had captured them. The captors were ordered to treat them well. They gave the prisoners their bread, and ate dates themselves. Suhayl ibn Amr was kept in the Prophet ﷺ's own house. There Sawda RA saw the chief of the Quraysh tied up in a corner, and cried out that he should have died a noble death. When the Prophet ﷺ rebuked her, she said she could not contain herself. Each man's ransom was set according to his means. The poor were freed for nothing. According to Ahmad, some who had nothing to pay with were freed for teaching the children of the Ansar to write. Al-Abbas protested that he was a Muslim. He was told that Allah knew his heart, but he had fought. Then he was told where he and Umm al-Fadl had set money aside when no one else was present. So he paid for himself, and for Aqil and Nawfal too. By one report, he used to say that Allah had given him twenty merchants in return for those twenty ounces. Abu Sufyan refused to pay for his son Amr, having already lost another son on the field. Later he kidnapped an old Ansari pilgrim in Makkah to force an exchange. Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi' was ransomed with a necklace. Khadija RA had given it to her daughter Zaynab RA as a wedding gift. When the Prophet ﷺ saw it, his face changed. At his word the captors returned it, and Abu al-As went home on his promise to send Zaynab to Madinah. In Makkah, the first survivor to arrive was al-Haysaman al-Khuza'i. He listed so many dead nobles that Safwan ibn Umayyah tested him by asking about himself. Al-Haysaman told him that he had watched Safwan's father and brother die. The Quraysh banned wailing for the dead, so that the Muslims would take no pleasure in it. Al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib, who had lost three sons, was overjoyed to hear a woman wailing. Then he learned that she was weeping for a camel. Abu Lahab heard from his nephew, Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, about men in white on piebald horses whom no one could withstand. Al-Abbas's slave Abu Rafi' said they were angels, and Abu Lahab beat him for it. Then Umm al-Fadl split Abu Lahab's head open with a tent pole. Within days he died of a foul sickness. According to a report in al-Tirmidhi, on the same day, far away, Rome defeated Persia, as Surah al-Rum had foretold. Years earlier, Abu Bakr had made a bet with a Makkan, Ubay ibn Khalaf, that this would happen within six years. The six years had passed, so Abu Bakr had already lost the bet. Within weeks, Umayr ibn Wahab came to Madinah with a poisoned sword to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and went home a Muslim. The Banu Qaynuqa told the Prophet ﷺ that he had beaten only men who knew nothing of war. They were besieged and sent out of Madinah. Jibril asked how the Muslims regarded those who had fought at Badr. He was told that they were the best of the Muslims. Jibril said that the angels regard the angels who were there in the same way.

After the Muslim victory at Badr, Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf travelled secretly to Makkah with some men of his tribe, the Banu Nadir. There they made an alliance with Abu Sufyan, the leader of Makkah, against the Prophet ﷺ. The books of seerah do not record the terms of this alliance. It is also reported that near the end of the meeting, Abu Sufyan asked Ka'b, by Allah, whether the religion of the Quraysh or the religion of Muhammad ﷺ was closer and more beloved to Allah. Ka'b answered that the Quraysh were more rightly guided.

When survivors of the Quraysh army began returning to Makkah with news of the crushing defeat at Badr, Abu Lahab refused to believe them. He had not fought at Badr himself. He insisted on hearing the account from Abu Sufyan ibn Harb. The two met at the house of Abu Lahab's brother al-Abbas, who was being held as a prisoner of war in Madinah. Al-Abbas's wife, Umm al-Fadl, and his household were at home. Abu Sufyan described how the Muslims had overpowered the Quraysh, killing and taking prisoners as they pleased. He said he had seen men with white faces on black-and-white horses, hovering between heaven and earth, whom no one could overpower. A slave of al-Abbas overheard this. He cried out with joy that these had been angels helping the Muslims. Abu Lahab was enraged to see the slave rejoicing at the defeat of the Quraysh. He threw him to the ground and beat him almost to death. When Umm al-Fadl tried to stop him, he began beating her too. She rebuked him for treating her husband's household this way while al-Abbas was away. Ashamed, Abu Lahab fled. Soon afterwards he was struck by a disease, and he died shortly after.

About two or three months after Badr, probably early in Dhu al-Hijjah, Abu Sufyan set out to take revenge. He had vowed not to bathe, not even the ritual bath after marital relations, until he had avenged Badr. He gathered around 150 to 200 men of the Quraysh. Before the attack, the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir gave his party protection, food, supplies and water. This broke their pact with the Muslims under the Constitution of Madinah, which forbade helping the Quraysh against them. Abu Sufyan's men then raided one of the date gardens of Madinah. They killed two men of the Ansar and burned the garden. When the Muslims rode out after them, Abu Sufyan's men fled on their camels. To lighten their load, they cut loose their bags of sawiq, a dried travel porridge made of barley, milk, butter and honey. The Muslims picked up a large amount of it, but Abu Sufyan himself escaped unharmed.

Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi' was the husband of Zaynab, the daughter of the Prophet ﷺ. Zaynab was a Muslim, but Abu al-As was not, and he had been taken prisoner at Badr. He was freed on condition that he send Zaynab back to her father. About a month after Badr, the Prophet ﷺ sent two companions to wait outside Makkah to receive her. Rumors spread in Makkah that Zaynab was about to leave. Hind bint Utbah, the wife of Abu Sufyan, visited her and offered to help her pack. Hind hoped to keep the Prophet ﷺ's daughter in Makkah as a hostage. Zaynab sensed that something was wrong and did not tell her of her plans. Zaynab's brother-in-law, Kinana, then led her out of Makkah on a camel in broad daylight. The news spread, and a party of the Quraysh caught up with them. One of them, Habbar ibn al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib, thrust a spear at the camel. The camel reared, and Zaynab, who was pregnant, fell about 15 feet to the ground and miscarried. Kinana stood over her and threatened anyone who came near with his sword and his bow. The standoff lasted until Abu Sufyan ibn Harb arrived and calmed the situation. He told Kinana he had acted foolishly by taking her out so openly, and told him to wait a while and then take her quietly. A few days later, Kinana took her out in the middle of the night and handed her over to the two companions sent by the Prophet ﷺ. They brought her safely to Madinah.

The Prophet ﷺ led around 150 to 200 sahaba out to intercept the most important caravan of the Quraysh, their large annual caravan to Syria. It had at least 70 to 80 camels and carried around 70 to 80 percent of the wealth of Makkah, because almost everyone in the city who had money invested in it. It was led by Abu Sufyan ibn Harb. By the decree of Allah, the two sides never met. A man from the caravan happened to stray and saw the Muslims coming in the distance. He rushed back to warn the others, and Abu Sufyan quickly took the caravan along a different route. The caravan reached Syria safely, and the Muslims returned to Madinah.

Several months after Badr, an elderly man of the Ansar named Sa'd ibn al-Nu'man travelled to Makkah to trade and to perform Umrah. He had nothing to do with the battle. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, the leader of the Quraysh, had refused to pay a ransom for his son Amr ibn Abi Sufyan, who had been captured at Badr. Now Abu Sufyan kidnapped Sa'd in broad daylight inside the Haram, the sacred precinct of Makkah, where even the Quraysh had always forbidden such acts. He said he would not release Sa'd until the Muslims released his son. Sa'd's tribe brought the matter to the Prophet ﷺ, who released Amr without ransom so that Sa'd could go free.

After their defeat at Badr, the Quraysh spent a full year preparing for revenge. Four motives drove them together. The first was religious hatred of the new faith. The second was personal grief for the leaders they had lost, since the fathers of both Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal and Safwan ibn Umayyah had died at Badr. The third was economic, because the Muslims now controlled their trade route to Syria and that trade had collapsed. The fourth was political, the threat of a growing Muslim state. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, together with Safwan and Ikrimah, went from door to door. They collected the profits of the Badr caravan from every Qurashi household that had invested in it. They used this money to recruit allied tribes such as Kinana and Tihama. On the 7th of Shawwal, 3 AH, an army of 3,000 set out from Makkah. It had 200 horses and 700 suits of armour. Around two dozen women of the Quraysh came with it, among them Hind bint Utbah, to urge the men on with their songs. The journey to Madinah normally took two weeks, but the army covered it in seven days. Abu Sufyan held overall command. Khalid ibn al-Walid led the right flank, and Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal led the left. There is a report, not found in Ibn Ishaq, about al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, who had stayed behind in Makkah. He sent a trusted servant racing to Madinah with the exact numbers of the army. The servant covered the distance in three days. He found the Prophet ﷺ at Quba, and Ubay ibn Ka'b RA read the letter to him privately. The news was urgent, but the Prophet ﷺ did not act on a single report. He first sent scouts to confirm where the Quraysh were. Only then did he call a general meeting of the Muslims. The meeting took place at the Friday gathering, which was even larger than usual because a funeral had already brought many people out. The Prophet ﷺ explained the threat and asked for advice. He gave his own view first. He wanted to stay inside Madinah and use its natural defences. There were fields of volcanic rock to the east and west, Mount Uhud to the north, and date palm groves to the south. The Quraysh would then be forced into costly fighting in the streets. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the most experienced warrior in the city, agreed with this plan. He did so not out of any respect for the Prophet ﷺ, but because it was clearly the stronger position. A group of younger Companions argued the other way. Many of them had missed Badr and were eager to prove themselves, so they pressed to meet the Quraysh in open battle. The Prophet ﷺ judged that most people wanted this, so he agreed and went inside to put on his armour. The younger men then had second thoughts. They told him they would not oppose him if he wished to stay in the city. This is in Ibn Ishaq, and some retellings name Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA as the one who said it. The Prophet ﷺ replied that once a prophet has put on his armour, it is not fitting for him to take it off before he has fought. He marched out on Friday, the 14th of Shawwal, with roughly 700 Muslims. He divided them into three groups. Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA led the Muhajirun, Usayd ibn Hudayr RA led the Aws, and al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA led the Khazraj. Between them they had only a handful of horses and 100 suits of armour. The Prophet ﷺ led them along a secret route through the date palm groves instead of the main road, so that their position would not be revealed too early. The route passed through the garden of Mirba' ibn Qayzi, a blind hypocrite. He threw dust at the Muslims, and the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions to leave him alone. During the march, Abdullah ibn Ubayy turned back with about 300 men. He said publicly that his advice had been ignored. Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram RA confronted him for abandoning the Prophet ﷺ. Abdullah ibn Ubayy insisted that he did not believe there would be any fighting. The Qur'an later exposed this as a lie (Qur'an 3:167). Some of the Aws, from Banu Harithah, and some of the Khazraj, from Banu Salama, also wavered. In the end they stayed, and Qur'an 3:122 credits their steadfastness to Allah's protection. The roughly 700 who remained reached Uhud in the early afternoon of the 14th. The Prophet ﷺ chose the site with care. The mountain protected the army on two sides. The third side was covered by fifty archers under Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, posted on a hill called Jabal Aynayn. That hill was later renamed Jabal al-Ruma in their honour. The archers had strict orders never to leave their position, no matter how the battle seemed to be going. This left the much larger Quraysh army only one narrow approach to attack through. The Prophet ﷺ arranged the army for battle and sent home the boys he judged too young. Two boys, Rafi ibn Khadij RA and Samura ibn Jundub RA, were allowed to stay. Ibn Hisham says they were fifteen. Rafi' was allowed because he was a good archer, and Samurah because he could beat Rafi' at wrestling. On the morning of the 15th, the Prophet ﷺ offered his own sword to whoever would take it and give it its due. Abu Dujana RA accepted it. He put on his turban of death and walked along the ranks, giving the Muslims courage. Abu Sufyan first sent a message trying to split the Ansar away from the Muhajirun. Then he sent Abu Amir al-Rahib, a former leader of the Aws who had rejected Islam, to appeal directly to his own people. The Ansar refused both approaches. They gave Abu Amir a new name, Abu Amir al-Fasiq. The battle opened with single combat. Talha ibn Abi Talha came out first. He was of Banu Abd al-Dar, the clan that carried the standard of the Quraysh. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA struck him down. Ibn Ishaq counts him among the men Ali RA killed. Another report says that Talha begged Ali RA by the ties of kinship, so Ali RA left him, and he later died of his wounds. The Muslims then charged and broke the ranks of the Quraysh. They killed the standard bearers of Banu Abd al-Dar one after another, until the standard fell. The story of Usayrim belongs to this same morning. He was from Banu Abd al-Ashhal, and for three years he had been the only pagan left in his clan. He accepted Islam after the Fajr prayer and was martyred before Zuhr, without ever having prayed a single rak'ah. In this first phase the Quraysh broke and fled. The Companions became overconfident. They put down their weapons and began collecting the spoils of war. The rules for dividing spoils had not yet been fully settled, and many assumed the battle was over. The fifty archers on Jabal al-Ruma watched the spoils being gathered below. As the minutes passed, no word came from the Prophet ﷺ. The archers began to argue about whether to go down and join in. Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, their leader, refused to move without a direct command from the Prophet ﷺ. Even so, over perhaps the better part of an hour, forty of the fifty left the position and went down, leaving only ten. Khalid ibn al-Walid had not simply fled. He had been watching carefully, and now he saw his chance. He moved in along a low ditch on the army's right that could not be seen from ground level. He overran the ten archers who were left. Then he led his cavalry, estimated at 100 to 150 riders, around Jabal al-Ruma and attacked the Muslims from behind. This cut the Muslim army in two. On one side was the Prophet ﷺ's own camp. On the other were the scattered Muslims still collecting spoils, most of them unarmed. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ was the first to see Khalid's attack coming. The enemy was hunting for him personally, and shouting would reveal where he was. Even so, he stood up and shouted a warning to the Muslims. The surprise attack threw the Muslims into chaos. Many fled, unable to tell friend from foe. The sources say that shaytan stirred up the confusion, and some Muslims struck down other Muslims in the fighting. One of them was al-Yaman RA, the father of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA. His own side killed him before Hudhayfah's shouts to stop could be heard. Hudhayfah said, "May Allah forgive you." The Prophet ﷺ paid him the blood money for his father, and Hudhayfah gave it away as charity to the Muslims. As the Muslim army split apart, the Prophet ﷺ was left with a guard of only nine men. Two of them were Muhajirun, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA. The other seven were Ansar. Ibn Ishaq names Ziyad, or Umarah, ibn al-Sakan among them. A report from al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari gives the number as twelve. Meanwhile the rest of the army, believing the battle already won, was scattered across the field. One by one, the Ansar in that small group went out to stop the approaching enemy, and each was killed. In the end only Sa'd, Talha and the Prophet ﷺ himself remained. They pulled back into a narrow gap in the mountainside, barely wide enough for one or two people. From the opening, Sa'd and Talha fired arrow after arrow. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ picked spent arrows up off the ground and handed them back to Sa'd to shoot again. Abu Talha al-Ansari RA begged the Prophet ﷺ not to raise his head, for fear of a stray arrow. He offered his own neck and chest in place of the Prophet ﷺ's (al-Bukhari). It was here that the Prophet ﷺ said to Sa'd, "Fidaka abi wa ummi (may my mother and father be given in ransom for you)! Shoot, O Sa'd, shoot!" Ali RA said he never heard the Prophet ﷺ say these words to anyone else. However, al-Zubayr RA reports that the Prophet ﷺ said the same to him at Qurayzah. An attacker reached Talha and cut off several of his fingers, and Talha cried out in pain. The Prophet ﷺ told him that if he had said "Bismillah" instead, the angels would have lifted him up in front of everyone. Qatada ibn al-Nu'man al-Awsi RA took up the Prophet ﷺ's bow and shot with it until it broke. His eye was struck so badly that it hung down on his cheek. The Prophet ﷺ put it back in place with his hand, and it became the better and sharper of his two eyes (Ibn Ishaq). During this same period the Prophet ﷺ was wounded several times. Utbah ibn Abi Waqqas threw a stone that broke his lower right incisor and injured his lip. Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri wounded his forehead. Ibn Qami'ah struck his cheekbone and drove two rings of his helmet into his cheek. This account is from Ibn Hisham, on the authority of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA. Other reports describe the wounds differently. In them, an arrow shot by Utbah passed through his cheek and knocked out a tooth, and a sword blow from Ibn Qami'ah or Abdullah ibn Shihab drove his helmet into his cheekbone. With blood streaming down his face, the Prophet ﷺ was heard to say, "How can a people succeed who have wounded their own Prophet ﷺ while he called them to their Lord?" Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA later said that he saw two men dressed in brilliant white fighting fiercely at the Prophet ﷺ's side that day. He had never seen them before and never saw them again. Around the same time, Ubay ibn Khalaf charged straight at the Prophet ﷺ. Ubay was a Makkan who had long vowed to kill the Prophet ﷺ, and he had been fattening a horse for that purpose. Back then, the Prophet ﷺ had replied that he would be the one to kill Ubay instead. Now he reminded Ubay of that reply. He took a spear from a companion and struck Ubay in the neck. The wound looked minor, but Ubay himself insisted it would kill him. He died on the road home, before he reached Makkah. Ibn Qami'ah cut down Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA and thought he had killed the Prophet ﷺ. He shouted that Muhammad ﷺ was dead. The false news spread quickly and broke the spirit of part of the Muslim line. Some of them simply sat down in the middle of the battle. Anas ibn al-Nadr RA rallied a group of them back into the fight. He asked them what they would do with life after the Prophet ﷺ, and told them to die as he had died. Anas fought on until he was killed. His body was so disfigured that no one could recognise him, until his sister identified him by the tips of his fingers. Ka'b ibn Malik RA was the first to recognise the Prophet ﷺ, by his eyes. He was about to announce that the Prophet ﷺ was alive. The Prophet ﷺ signalled to him to stay silent, so as not to give away his position. A later report adds that the two of them exchanged armour. Abu Bakr RA, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA and Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA fought their way back to him. They found the two rings of his helmet still stuck in his cheek. Abu Ubaydah did not want to risk hurting him further with his hands. It is reported that he pulled each ring out with his own teeth instead, and lost a tooth each time. As the fighting died down, Abu Sufyan called out from a distance. He asked whether Muhammad ﷺ was still alive. Then he asked about Abu Bakr RA and Umar RA. The Prophet ﷺ told the Muslims not to answer him. Then Abu Sufyan declared victory and gave the credit to the idol Hubal. This time the Prophet ﷺ had the Muslims reply, "Allah is mightier and more worthy of honour." He stayed silent about his own survival, but he would not let shirk against Allah go unanswered. Abu Sufyan swore that the two sides would meet again the next year at Badr, and the Quraysh withdrew. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ walked over the battlefield. He found the body of his uncle, Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, mutilated by Hind bint Utbah RA. Her father and brother had been killed at Badr, and in revenge she had cut open Hamzah's stomach and taken his liver. The Prophet ﷺ wept. He vowed to mutilate thirty bodies of the Quraysh in return. Then Allah revealed Qur'an 16:126, which limits retaliation to no more than what was suffered. After that, the Prophet ﷺ forbade mutilation completely. On the way back, Hamnah bint Jahsh RA met the army. She was told, one after another, of the deaths of her brother Abdullah, her uncle Hamzah RA and her husband Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Wailing for the dead broke out across Madinah. When the Prophet ﷺ heard it, he allowed it once for Hamzah RA's sake. After that he forbade it as a general rule. The martyrs were reported to number around seventy, most of them Ansar. They were buried two, three or four to a grave, in the clothes they had died in, without being washed. The Prophet ﷺ instructed that whoever had memorised the most Qur'an should be placed in the grave first. According to Jabir RA's report in al-Bukhari, no funeral prayer was said over them. A report from Ibn Abbas RA in Ibn Ishaq says that the Prophet ﷺ did pray over Hamzah RA and the others. Only one prisoner was taken in the whole battle, Abu Azzah al-Jumahi. He had earlier been pardoned on condition that he never fight the Muslims again. Because he broke that condition, he was executed. Before all this, the Prophet ﷺ had sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to follow the Quraysh. Ali RA found them riding their camels and leading their horses, a sign that they were heading back to Makkah. The next morning, Sunday the 16th, the Prophet ﷺ called out the men who had fought the day before, wounded as they were. He led them to Hamra al-Asad, about eight miles from Madinah. They stayed there on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At some point before or during this period, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions about a dream. Accounts differ on exactly when he told it. He said, "I saw in a dream that I had struck with my sword, but my sword broke, and this is what afflicted the Muslims at Uhud. Then I hit it again, and it came back as good as it ever was, and this was the victory that Allah gave to the Muslims and the coming together of the believers." He went on, "I saw cows, and Allah is good, and this was the believers on the Day of Uhud." In a version in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, he also saw himself wearing protective armour, which he took to mean Madinah itself.

In Muharram of 4 AH, a Muslim sent by the Prophet ﷺ killed Khalid ibn Sufyan, a chieftain of the tribe of Hudhayl who had been gathering men to attack Madinah. Hudhayl wanted revenge. They paid two other tribes, Udal and al-Qara, to set a trap. Men of these tribes would pretend to accept Islam, go to Madinah, and ask the Prophet ﷺ to send them teachers of the Qur'an and the religion. The plan worked. Around ten Companions volunteered, led by Asim ibn Thabit. When they reached the Well of al-Raji, 100 warriors ambushed them. The Companions climbed to the top of a hill and fought back with their bows and arrows. They held out until Asim and most of the others were killed. The attackers then promised the last three men safety if they came down. These were Khubayb ibn Adi, Zayd ibn al-Dathinah and Abdullah ibn Tariq. As soon as they surrendered, they were tied up. Abdullah ibn Tariq said that this was the first sign of treachery, and he refused to go along as a prisoner. They killed him on the spot. Khubayb and Zayd were taken to Makkah and sold to men who wanted revenge for the battle of Badr. Khubayb was bought by Banu al-Harith, because he had killed one of their men at Badr. Zayd was bought by Safwan ibn Umayyah, because Zayd had been among those who killed Safwan's father, Umayyah ibn Khalaf, at Badr. Both men were executed soon afterwards.

The day after the Battle of Uhud, the Prophet ﷺ worried that the retreating Quraysh army might turn back to finish off the Muslims. He called for volunteers to follow them. He allowed only those who had fought at Uhud to go, which left out the 300 who had turned back with Abdullah ibn Ubayy before the battle. About 70 Companions volunteered, led by Ali ibn Abi Talib. They marched out and camped at Hamra al-Asad. The Prophet ﷺ joined them the next day. They stayed there for three days to make sure the Quraysh did not return, and then went back to Madinah.

At the end of the Battle of Uhud, Abu Sufyan had called out that the two sides would meet again one year later at Badr. In Sha'ban of the 4th year of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ marched out with around 1,500 sahaba, with Ali ibn Abi Talib RA as flag bearer. They camped at Badr for over a week, waiting for the Quraysh. The Quraysh had in fact gathered an army of about 2,000 and marched out, but their hearts were not in it. After much argument they turned back without a fight, saying it had been a year of drought and hardship.

"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 Shawwal of 6 AH, a small expedition (sariyya) of 30 Companions under Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA was sent to al-Qurta' against the tribe of Banu Bakr ibn Kilab. On the way back, they came across a small convoy that seemed suspicious and brought its men back as prisoners. They did not realise who they had captured. One of them was Thumamah ibn Uthal, the chieftain of the Banu Hanifa, one of the largest tribes in Arabia. Thumamah had openly sided with the pagans and had publicly threatened to kill the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ had earlier prayed to Allah to give him control over Thumamah, and he recognised him at once. He ordered that Thumamah be treated with honour. Thumamah was kept tied up in the Prophet ﷺ's masjid for three days and was sent the Prophet ﷺ's own food. Each morning the Prophet ﷺ asked him what he had to say, and each time Thumamah gave the same dignified answer. On the third day the Prophet ﷺ had him released. Thumamah went out, bathed, and soon came back to declare his shahada, the testimony of faith. Thumamah then went on to Makkah to perform the umrah he had been travelling to make, and he openly announced his new faith there. When the Quraysh confronted him, he swore that no grain would reach them from his lands until they followed Islam. He then cut off the grain supply from the Najd, in central Arabia, to the Quraysh. In the end Abu Sufyan wrote to the Prophet ﷺ, appealing to him as a relative. The Prophet ﷺ then wrote to Thumamah asking him to let the supply resume.

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.

Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, by then the senior leader of the Quraysh, offered a reward to anyone who killed the Prophet ﷺ. A Bedouin took up the offer. Abu Sufyan gave him a camel, food, and weapons and sent him to Madinah, where the man pretended that he wanted to accept Islam. When he entered the mosque, the Prophet ﷺ said, "This is a man who has treachery written on him." The companions seized him, and a dagger fell from his belt. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "If you are truthful to me, I shall let you go." The man confessed everything. The Prophet ﷺ kept his promise and let him go, and the Bedouin then accepted Islam.

After the truce of Hudaybiyyah, the Prophet ﷺ was free to look beyond Arabia. He wrote letters to the rulers of the world, and the most famous of them went to Caesar, the Roman emperor. The emperor at that time was Heraclius, who reigned from 610 to 641. Muslim and non-Muslim historians alike remember him kindly. Heraclius was a scholar of Christianity. He tried, and failed, to reconcile its two great factions with a theology of his own. He was also a soldier. He had just won back everything the Persians had taken from Rome, as Surah al-Rum had foretold at a time when Rome seemed finished. Dihyah al-Kalbi carried the letter. He was to hand it to the governor of Busra, a town where the Quraysh went to trade, who would send it on. As it happened, Heraclius was in Jerusalem at the time, so the letter reached him at once. Abu Sufyan, who was still a pagan, was trading in Busra at the time. A crier summoned him and his companions to Jerusalem, and he found himself standing in the emperor's palace. Through an interpreter, Heraclius asked which of them was the closest relative of the man who claimed to be a prophet. Abu Sufyan was, so he was seated in front. His companions stood behind him, with orders to signal if he lied. He said afterwards that only the fear of being called a liar by his own people made him tell the truth. The emperor asked his questions one after another. He asked about the man's family, and Abu Sufyan said it was noble. He asked whether anyone among them had made this claim before him, and Abu Sufyan said no. He asked whether any of his ancestors had been a king, and again the answer was no. He asked whether the nobles followed him or the poor. Abu Sufyan said the poor. Heraclius asked whether his followers were growing or shrinking in number. Abu Sufyan said they were growing. He asked whether anyone who had entered his religion later left it in disgust. Abu Sufyan said no. He asked whether the man had ever been accused of lying before he began his mission. Again the answer was no. Heraclius asked whether he broke his word. Abu Sufyan said no. But he added that there was a truce between them now, and no one knew what he would do. Abu Sufyan admitted later that this was the one thing he could find to say against him. Heraclius asked whether they had fought him. Abu Sufyan said yes, and that sometimes he won and sometimes they did. Finally Heraclius asked what the man commanded. Abu Sufyan told him that he commanded them to worship God alone and abandon the gods of their fathers. He also told them to pray, to speak the truth, to be chaste, and to keep the ties of kinship. Then Heraclius explained why he had asked each question. Prophets, he said, come from noble families. If someone else had made the claim before, this man might be imitating him. If his fathers had been kings, he might be trying to win back his inheritance. A man who does not lie about money does not lie about God. The poor are always the first to follow the prophets. The truth always gains followers. Faith that has entered a heart and mixed with it is not thrown off. Prophets do not betray. And what this man commanded was what the prophets had always commanded. Heraclius said that if all this was true, the man would soon rule the very ground he was standing on. He said he had known from his scriptures that someone was coming, but he had not expected him to come from the Arabs. If he could reach him, he said, he would wash his feet. Then Heraclius called for the letter and had it read aloud. It began in the name of Allah. It was from Muhammad ﷺ, the servant of Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, to Heraclius, the great one of the Romans. It sent peace to whoever follows guidance. It told him to submit and be safe, and Allah would give him a double reward. If he turned away, he would carry the sins of the Arisiyin, a word whose meaning scholars have long debated. The letter closed with the verse of Ali Imran that calls the People of the Book to a word held in common, that none be worshipped but Allah. There was uproar in the court, and the Arabs were sent out. On the way out, Abu Sufyan spoke to his companions. The Quraysh mockingly called the Prophet ﷺ "Ibn Abi Kabsha", and Abu Sufyan said that the affair of Ibn Abi Kabsha had grown so great that even the king of the Romans feared him. He said later that it was there, in Caesar's palace, that Islam first entered his heart. That was three years before he actually embraced it. Sahih al-Bukhari keeps a second story about Heraclius, told separately from the first. One morning he woke up troubled by a dream in which he had seen the king of the circumcised appear. His courtiers told him that only the Jews were circumcised, and that he need only crack down on them. Then Dihyah arrived with the Prophet ﷺ's letter. When he was examined, he was found to be circumcised, and the emperor understood whom the dream was about. Heraclius wrote to a friend of his, most likely John IV. The friend wrote back that this was indeed the one. One theory, not stated in the sources, is that this same friend supplied the three tests that Heraclius later sent the Tanukhi to carry out. At last Heraclius gathered his senators and asked them what they thought of his following Muhammad ﷺ. They rushed for the doors, so he told them he had only been testing their faith. He died a Christian, in the confusion of a coup. He lived long enough to see Jerusalem taken by the people of his dream.

Khalid ibn al-Walid was the son of al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, chieftain of the Banu Makhzum clan. He was the most effective battlefield commander of the Quraysh. Over the years he grew more and more convinced that the Prophet ﷺ was telling the truth. In every battle he fought against him, at Uhud and at Khandaq, Khalid sensed that he was being turned away. The final straw came during the journey to Hudaybiyyah. Khalid had planned to ambush the Muslims at Asfan, but the Prophet ﷺ outmaneuvered him. Then the Prophet ﷺ came to Makkah for Umrah al-Qada and asked where Khalid was. Khalid's brother, al-Walid ibn al-Walid RA, had become a Muslim as a prisoner after Badr. He wrote Khalid a letter urging him to embrace Islam. In it he passed on the praise the Prophet ﷺ had given Khalid while Khalid was not there. After reading the letter, Khalid decided to become a Muslim. Khalid looked for someone to go with him. He first asked Safwan ibn Umayyah, who flatly refused. He then asked his childhood friend Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal. Ikrimah panicked and called Abu Sufyan ibn Harb and other elders of the Quraysh to his house. According to one report, swords were drawn in front of Khalid. Ikrimah himself was shocked by this, and he calmed the situation down. Khalid realised he could no longer stay in Makkah. That same night he left for Madinah with Uthman ibn Talha. On the road they met Amr ibn al-As, who was also on his way to accept Islam, and the three travelled on together. They were the last group of Quraysh leaders to accept Islam before the Conquest of Makkah. In Madinah, Khalid was the first of the three to accept Islam in front of the Prophet ﷺ. When it was Amr's turn, he held back from the Prophet ﷺ's outstretched hand. He said he would only accept Islam on condition that his past sins be forgiven. The Prophet ﷺ reminded him that embracing Islam, migration (hijrah) and Hajj each wipe away all the sins that came before them.

The Banu Bakr, allies of the Quraysh, had attacked the Khuza'a, who were allied to the Muslims, and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was close to collapse. With the approval of the Quraysh, Abu Sufyan travelled alone to Madinah to try to renegotiate it. The reports differ on the order of his visits. Ibn Ishaq says he went first to the Prophet ﷺ, who gave him no response at all. Only then did he go to Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab, and Ali ibn Abi Talib in turn. Ibn Sa'd says he visited Abu Bakr, Umar, and Ali first, and the Prophet ﷺ last. Sh. Yasir Qadhi leans toward Ibn Ishaq's version. Abu Bakr, his friend from before Islam, told him plainly that he could not help. Umar, his former business partner, refused even more bluntly. Ali was his third cousin and his closest relative in Madinah. Ali heard him out, but told him that once the Prophet ﷺ had decided a matter, they would not try to change it. Abu Sufyan then turned to Fatima, who was there with her little son Hasan. He asked her to have the boy seek protection for him. Fatima replied that her son was too young to grant protection, and that no one could give protection against the Prophet ﷺ. As a last resort, Ali advised Abu Sufyan to stand in the mosque and publicly ask for protection. Under Arab custom, any member of a tribe could grant protection, and Islam kept this rule for any Muslim, male or female, old or young. Abu Sufyan made the plea, but no one came forward, since the Prophet ﷺ himself had said nothing. Before leaving Madinah, Abu Sufyan visited his daughter Umm Habiba, a wife of the Prophet ﷺ. He had not seen her in over 13 years, since she emigrated to Abyssinia. When he went to sit down, she quickly folded away the bedding. She told him it was the bed of the Prophet ﷺ, and that he, as an idolater, would not sit on it. Abu Sufyan returned to Makkah empty-handed. When he told the Quraysh that he had begged for protection in the mosque, they told him he had been made a fool of.

The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah allowed either side to make alliances with outside tribes. Any tribe that joined a side was automatically covered by the terms agreed at Hudaybiyyah. The Khuza'a took the side of the Muslims. They were kin to the Prophet ﷺ through his great-great-great-grandmother, and they were bound to Banu Hashim by an old alliance made by Abdul Muttalib. The Banu Bakr took the side of the Quraysh. In the 8th year of the Hijrah, the Banu Bakr raided the Khuza'a by night at the pond of al-Watir, just outside the boundary of the Haram. The Banu Bakr had old blood feuds to settle. The Quraysh knew the raid would break the treaty, yet they approved it. Some of their leaders, such as Suhayl ibn Amr and Safwan ibn Umayyah, gave the Banu Bakr weapons, and some men of Quraysh are reported to have fought beside them in the dark. In his verses, Hassan ibn Thabit later laid the blame on these two men. The raid turned into a massacre. More than twenty people of Khuza'a were killed, including women and children. One man of Khuza'a fled into the Haram and called on his pursuer from Banu Bakr to fear his God. The pursuer answered, "There is no God today," and killed him inside the sanctuary. The chieftain of Khuza'a, Amr ibn Salim al-Khuza'i, went to Madinah. There he recited a poem that called on the old treaty and described the massacre in the same breath. The Prophet ﷺ was moved, and he promised, "You shall be helped, O Amr ibn Salim." The Quraysh sent Abu Sufyan ibn Harb to Madinah to negotiate the treaty again, but he found every door closed to him. Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab RA both refused to speak for him. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and his infant son Hasan could offer him nothing. Even his own daughter, Umm Habiba RA, would not let him sit on the Prophet ﷺ's bedding. He went back to Makkah having achieved nothing. The Prophet ﷺ called for a full mobilization, but he did not say where the army was going. He told no one, not even Abu Bakr RA or Aisha RA. By some reports, he also sent a small decoy party of eight men north toward Batn Idam, to make it look as if Syria was the target. Then he told the people that he was going to Makkah. He prayed, "O Allah, take eyes and ears from the Quraysh so that we may take them by surprise in their land." It was at this point that Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah RA tried to warn the Quraysh. Hatib had fought at Badr. By the strongest opinion he was a mawla, a client member of a tribe, from Yemen, and his family in Makkah had no tribe to protect them. He paid a mawla woman of Banu Hashim to smuggle a warning letter to the Quraysh, hidden in the braids of her hair. News of this came to the Prophet ﷺ from heaven, and he told his men where to find her. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA caught up with her caravan at Rawdatu Khakh, outside Madinah. At first she denied carrying anything. Ali swore that neither the Prophet ﷺ nor Jibril AS could have been mistaken, and he threatened to search her by force. At that, she asked them to turn around out of modesty. Then she untied her hair and handed over the letter. When Hatib was confronted, he confessed. He explained that his loyalty to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ had never wavered. He had acted only out of fear for his unprotected family, not out of love for the Quraysh. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA had asked at once to execute him. But the Prophet ﷺ declared, "Hatib has spoken the truth. Nobody should say anything about Hatib anymore except good." Umar asked a second time, saying that Hatib had betrayed Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ refused again. He reminded Umar that Hatib had fought at Badr, and told him that Allah may already have forgiven everyone who took part in Badr. Umar was moved to tears. After this, Allah revealed the opening of Surah al-Mumtahanah (Qur'an 60:1), which tells the believers not to take His enemies as allies. The army moved remarkably fast. It left Madinah on the 10th of Ramadan and reached the outskirts of Makkah on the 19th, a march of nine days. By then the force had grown to more than 10,000. Every man of the Muhajirun and the Ansar marched, and allied tribes such as the Muzayna and Banu Sulaym joined along the way. Barely six years earlier, only 300 Muslims had fought at Badr. When the army reached Qudaid, the Prophet ﷺ broke his Ramadan fast, and the army broke theirs with him. At the valley of Juhfa, the army met al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle. He was riding out of Makkah with his family to make his own Hijrah, and he did not know that the Conquest was already under way. By a weak report, the Prophet ﷺ called him the last of the Muhajirun. At Niq al-Uqab, between Makkah and Madinah, two of the Prophet ﷺ's first cousins came out to ask to see him. Both had long mocked and opposed him. One was the poet Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith ibn Abdul Muttalib RA. The other was Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah RA, the brother of Umm Salama RA. At first the Prophet ﷺ refused to see them. He said that one had wounded his pride and the other had insulted him in Makkah. Then Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, with his young son at his side, threatened to go and die in the desert rather than be turned away. Only then was the Prophet ﷺ moved to give way. Both men accepted Islam. The army's last camp was at Marr al-Zahran, later known as Wadi Fatima. There its campfires lit up the plain. Al-Abbas RA had just joined the army, and he was anxious to spare his people needless bloodshed. That night he went out, hoping to persuade the Quraysh to surrender peacefully. On the way he came across three leaders of Quraysh and Khuza'a who were out looking for news. They were Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, Hakim ibn Hizam and Budayl ibn Warqa'. Al-Abbas brought Abu Sufyan into the camp on the Prophet ﷺ's own white mule. On the way they passed Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, who wanted Abu Sufyan executed on the spot. The Prophet ﷺ had Abu Sufyan spend the night in al-Abbas's tent. The next morning, pressed by both men, Abu Sufyan reluctantly testified to the shahada. The Prophet ﷺ then declared that anyone who entered the Haram, stayed in their own home, or entered the house of Abu Sufyan would be safe. He also had al-Abbas show Abu Sufyan the army as it marched past, tribe by tribe. Abu Sufyan marveled at its size and said to al-Abbas, "The kingdom of your nephew has become great." Al-Abbas corrected him, "It is not a kingdom. It is prophethood." The final entry came on the morning of the 20th of Ramadan. The people of Makkah still did not know what was coming. The secret had been kept so completely, over a force of more than 10,000, that it was remembered as nothing short of a miracle. At Dhu Tuwa, the Prophet ﷺ divided the army. According to Ibn Ishaq, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA took the left and Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA led the Ansar. Khalid ibn al-Walid RA took the right, with Aslam, Sulaym, Ghifar, Muzayna, Juhayna and other Arab tribes. Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA led the troops ahead of the Prophet ﷺ. As Sa'd ibn Ubadah passed Abu Sufyan, he called out, "Today is the day of a great battle, and today the Ka'bah will be made lawful!" Abu Sufyan reported this to the Prophet ﷺ. According to al-Bukhari, the Prophet ﷺ said that Sa'd was wrong. Today, he said, Allah would honour the Ka'bah, and today it would be covered. In Ibn Ishaq's account, the Prophet ﷺ had the banner taken from Sa'd and given to Ali RA. In al-Bukhari's account, Zubayr RA carried the Prophet ﷺ's own flag. Al-Abbas RA then sent Abu Sufyan back into the city to warn the Quraysh not to fight. Abu Sufyan ran through the streets calling, "Come to my house and you will be safe!" His wife, Hind bint Utbah, was still a pagan, and she was furious. She seized him by the moustache and called for him to be killed as a wretched protector of his people. But Abu Sufyan held his ground. When people pressed him on what one house could do for the whole city, he spelled out the full terms of safety. They would be safe in the Haram, in their own homes, or in his house. The army entered Makkah from the east and the west. The Prophet ﷺ ordered that no one be killed unless they attacked first. He named only a small number of people who were left out of this general amnesty. A handful of Quraysh made a brief, hopeless stand in the alleys of the city. They were led by Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal, Safwan ibn Umayyah and Suhayl ibn Amr. The books report that around 13 to 20 men of Quraysh were killed. Only two Muslims were killed, both in the flank of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA. The resistance soon collapsed. The Prophet ﷺ then entered the city on his camel, wearing armour. His head was bowed so low that it nearly touched the camel's back, and he was reciting Surah al-Fath (Qur'an 48:1). He rode to the Ka'bah and performed tawaf on his camel. There were more than 350 idols around it, and some say 360. As he passed each one, he pointed his staff at it, and it fell. All the while he was reciting, "Truth has come, and falsehood has departed" (Qur'an 17:81). He then had Uthman ibn Talha bring the key, and he cleared the idols and images out of the Ka'bah. One image showed Ibrahim AS with divination arrows. The Prophet ﷺ said, "May Allah curse them! By Allah, neither Ibrahim nor Isma'il practised divination by arrows." A report in Ibn Sa'd also mentions a picture of Mary and Jesus, but that report is very weak. The Prophet ﷺ is also reported to have prayed inside the Ka'bah, with Bilal RA beside him. Bilal RA said that he prayed two rak'ahs between the pillars, but Ibn Abbas RA reported that he did not pray inside. He once told Aisha RA that he would have rebuilt the Ka'bah on Ibrahim AS's original foundations, and lowered its door to the ground, if the Quraysh had not been so new to Islam. Even now, he chose not to force that renovation through. Speaking from the door of the Ka'bah, the Prophet ﷺ declared, "There is no God but Allah alone. He has fulfilled His promise, and He has aided His servant, and He has destroyed all the enemies by Himself." He abolished every claim of the Jahiliyyah, the age of ignorance before Islam, except two. These were the custodianship of the Ka'bah and the feeding of pilgrims. He also recited Qur'an 49:13, on the equality of all mankind before Allah. He asked the assembled Quraysh what they thought he would do with them. They answered, "Good. You are a noble brother, son of a noble brother." The Prophet ﷺ said, "Go your way, for you are the freed ones" (Ibn Ishaq). Some tellings add the words of Yusuf AS, "No blame on you today" (Qur'an 12:92). Ali ibn Abi Talib RA asked whether both the custodianship of the Ka'bah (sadana) and the feeding of pilgrims (siqaya) could be given to Banu Hashim. Instead, the Prophet ﷺ called for Uthman ibn Talha and said, "Here is your key; today is a day of good faith" (Ibn Ishaq). Other reports link this to Qur'an 4:58. The custodianship has stayed with Uthman's clan, the Banu Abd al-Dar, ever since. In the immediate aftermath of the conquest, by one report, the Prophet ﷺ allowed the Khuza'a to take revenge on the Banu Bakr until the time of Asr. After that he forbade any more bloodshed in the Haram. The next day, men of Khuza'a killed Ibn al-Athwa' of Hudhayl. The Prophet ﷺ told them to stop, and he paid the blood money himself. He ruled that from then on a victim's family could choose either retaliation or blood money. He stressed that Allah alone had allowed him to fight inside the sanctuary, and only for a short time. Unusually among the conquests of human history, no war booty, prisoners or land were taken. Almost no fighting took place at all. Out of the whole city, only a small number of people were denied the amnesty by name, and the lists differ. Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal fled to Yemen, meaning to sail for Abyssinia. He turned to Islam at the sea. In Ibn Ishaq's account this was because the ship's master demanded belief in one God, while other tellings say it happened during a storm. He came back under the protection that his wife, Umm Hakim, obtained for him. He later died a martyr fighting the Romans. Abdullah ibn Khatal had killed the Muslim freedman who served him, and he had turned murtad, leaving Islam. He clung to the curtain of the Ka'bah for protection, but he was executed. Miqyas ibn Subaba was executed for assassinating a sahabi in revenge for his brother's accidental death at al-Muraysi'. Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi al-Sarh had once been the Prophet ﷺ's scribe. He had turned murtad and slandered the revelation of the Qur'an. His foster brother, Uthman ibn Affan RA, pleaded for him, and he was pardoned. Ibn Khatal had two singing girls, Fartanah and her companion. One of them was killed, and the other fled and was later pardoned. Sarah had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, and she too was later pardoned. Habbar ibn al-Aswad had caused the miscarriage of Zaynab bint Muhammad ﷺ. He later repented and was forgiven. Al-Huwayrith ibn Nuqaydh was one of those who had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, and he was executed by Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. By another report, he had attacked Fatima and Umm Kulthum RA on their journey to Madinah. Wahshi, who had killed Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, fled to Ta'if and converted about a year later. In the end, four of those named were killed. They were Ibn Khatal, Miqyas, al-Huwayrith and one of the singing girls. After the khutbah, the Prophet ﷺ had Bilal ibn Rabah RA climb onto the Ka'bah and give the first adhan ever called in Makkah. Bilal was an Abyssinian former slave. Now he was raised, literally and symbolically, above the Quraysh who had once tortured him. As Bilal gave the adhan, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb was standing with two leading men of Quraysh, al-Harith ibn Hisham and Itab ibn Asid. Itab said that his late father had been spared the humiliation of seeing Bilal raised above them. Al-Harith said that if he thought this man was on the truth, he would follow him. Abu Sufyan, a new Muslim, would not say anything. He said that if he spoke, even the stones would tell the Prophet ﷺ. Later, as the Prophet ﷺ left the Haram, he repeated to each of the three, word for word, what they had said. Al-Harith accepted Islam on the spot, and Itab accepted it later. Al-Harith is the Companion who asked the Prophet ﷺ how revelation came to him. Al-Bukhari reports this without saying when it happened. By one report, al-Harith died a martyr at the Battle of Yarmouk in 15 AH. Water meant for him was passed on twice. He gave it to Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal RA, who passed it to Ayyash ibn Abi Rabi'ah RA. All three died before it could be drunk. The Prophet ﷺ then sat at Mount Safa, where the public call to Islam had begun two decades earlier. There he took the bay'ah, the pledge of allegiance, from the men of Quraysh, fulfilling Qur'an 110:2. Mujashi' ibn Mas'ud RA brought his brother to pledge to make the Hijrah. The Prophet ﷺ said that there was no migration after the Conquest, but that he would take his pledge for Islam. In Ibn Abbas RA's report, he said, "There is no emigration after the Conquest, but jihad and intention." He then took the pledge of the women of Quraysh, following Qur'an 60:12. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA administered it in person, since the Prophet ﷺ never touched the hand of a woman who was not related to him. Hind bint Utbah came veiled, and at first she was not recognized. She argued with each condition in turn. She objected that women were being asked for more than men. She admitted that she had secretly taken some of Abu Sufyan's wealth, and he forgave her on the spot. She protested that a free woman would never commit zina. When the pledge forbade killing children, Hind retorted that the Muslims had killed the sons of Quraysh as grown men at Badr. Umar laughed uncontrollably at that reply. The Prophet ﷺ had recognized her when Abu Sufyan spoke, and he asked, "Then you are Hind bint Utbah?" She asked him to forgive what was past, and he went on with the pledge. Meanwhile, some of the Ansar worried among themselves. They feared that now the Prophet ﷺ had returned to his own people, he had grown soft toward them. Revelation came to him, and he told the Ansar, "I migrated towards Allah and towards you. I will live with you and will die with you." They wept (Muslim). The Prophet ﷺ stayed in Makkah for 19 days. During that time, several notable figures held out for a while before finally accepting Islam. By a weak report, a young man named Fudala ibn Umayr was enraged at the defeat. He hid a dagger, meaning to kill the Prophet ﷺ during tawaf. The Prophet ﷺ confronted him by name, and Fudala lied about what he intended. The Prophet ﷺ laughed, asked Allah's forgiveness, and placed a hand on his chest. Fudala later said that from then on no one was more beloved to him. He accepted Islam on the spot. Safwan ibn Umayyah had joined the hopeless resistance. He fled to Jeddah, intending to drown himself. Umayr ibn Wahb RA begged the Prophet ﷺ to grant Safwan protection. Then he caught up with Safwan, carrying the Prophet ﷺ's own turban as proof. He talked him out of boarding the ship and brought him back toward Makkah. Safwan asked for two months to decide, and he was given four. He accepted Islam later, after Hunayn. By some reports, this was after he had lent the Muslims armour and had been given a large share of the spoils of Hunayn. Suhayl ibn Amr had been the Quraysh's negotiator at Hudaybiyyah. By a report not found in Ibn Ishaq, he locked himself in his house in terror. He sent his Muslim son, Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA, to beg for protection on his behalf. The Prophet ﷺ granted it at once. He told the sahaba to receive Suhayl with respect, since "he is too intelligent to be ignorant of Islam". Suhayl accepted Islam about a month later, after Hunayn and the Siege of Ta'if. Abu Quhafa was the blind, elderly father of Abu Bakr RA, and he had long opposed Islam. His granddaughter, Asma bint Abi Bakr RA, led him by the hand to the Prophet ﷺ, who was sitting with Abu Bakr. The Prophet ﷺ asked Abu Bakr why he had not left the old man at home, so that he could go to him there. Abu Bakr answered that it was more fitting for his father to come. The Prophet ﷺ stroked Abu Quhafa's chest and invited him to Islam. He told them to change the whiteness of his hair, but to avoid black. Umm Hani' bint Abi Talib RA also embraced Islam during this time. She was a daughter of Abu Talib, a full sister of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, and a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ. She had kept her old faith right up until the Conquest. Two of her in-laws from Banu Makhzum fled to her, and Ali RA swore that he would kill them. She bolted her door on them and went to the Prophet ﷺ. She found him bathing, screened by his daughter Fatima RA. He welcomed her and said, "O Umm Hani', we grant protection to whomever you have granted protection." The right to grant protection belongs to any Muslim, man or woman. Umm Hani' RA also narrated that she saw the Prophet ﷺ pray eight rak'ahs of Salat al-Duha that morning. It is the only surviving report of how many rak'ahs he himself prayed of that prayer. One of the last holdouts was Abdullah ibn al-Zab'ari of Banu Sahm, the official poet of the Quraysh. For years he had traded stinging verses with Hassan ibn Thabit RA. At the Conquest he fled to Najran rather than face the Muslims. Then a single verse that Hassan RA aimed at him stung him, and he resolved to return and embrace Islam. In some tellings his cousin objected, and he answered him, "Why should I not convert? ... Should I not go back to my own kith and kin, my own cousin? He is the best of all mankind." By reports not found in Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet ﷺ saw him approaching the Ka'bah from a distance. He remarked to the sahaba, "That is Ibn al-Zab'ari; and I see from him the nur of Iman." Ibn al-Zab'ari then gave the shahada and made a moving declaration of repentance for his years of hostile poetry. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "Islam wipes away all that you have done in the past." He spent the rest of his life writing poetry in praise of Islam. By one report, the Prophet ﷺ gave him his cloak for it. The Prophet ﷺ no longer had a house of his own in Makkah. Abu Talib had died a mushrik. Under the ruling that a Muslim does not inherit from a disbeliever, his house passed instead to his non-Muslim sons, Talib and Aqil, and Aqil later sold it. So the Prophet ﷺ set up a tent at al-Hujun for his 19 days in the city. Ali RA asked whether they would go back to their old family house, and the Prophet ﷺ replied, "And did Aqil leave any property for us to live in?" In al-Bukhari's report it was Usama ibn Zayd RA who asked where they would stay, and the reply is given as "Has Aqil left for us any house to lodge in?" He shortened his prayers throughout the stay. Ibn Abbas RA put the stay at nineteen days, and Ibn Ishaq at fifteen nights. During these 19 days, the Prophet ﷺ gave short sermons teaching the new Muslims the basics of the religion. He reaffirmed that Makkah would always be sacred. He declared, "Allah has made Makkah sacred the day that He created the heavens and the earth, and it shall remain sacred until the Day of Judgment ... Makkah was never halal before me, nor shall it be halal after me. And even for me, it was made halal just for an hour of the day." He forbade the sale of alcohol, carcasses, pigs and idols. This ended the Makkans' profitable trade in carving idols. It also established the fiqh principle that whatever is unlawful to use is also unlawful to sell. Scholars differ on when zawaj al-mut'ah was prohibited, but most place its final prohibition at the Conquest. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA fell ill in Makkah. In al-Bukhari's main report, this happened in the year of the Farewell Hajj. His only heir was one daughter, and he asked the Prophet ﷺ whether he could leave two-thirds of his wealth by will. The Prophet ﷺ said, "No, too much." Sa'd asked about half, and got the same answer. Then Sa'd proposed a third. This led to a ruling still followed in Islamic inheritance law. A bequest to anyone outside the Qur'anic heirs may not be more than one-third. A noblewoman of Banu Makhzum was caught stealing, and Usama ibn Zayd RA, who was beloved of the Prophet ﷺ, pleaded for her. The Prophet ﷺ became angry and answered, "Do you intercede in a case connected with Allah's prescribed punishments?" Then in a sermon he said that if Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad ﷺ, were to steal, he would cut off her hand. The woman later visited Aisha RA regularly, and Aisha passed on her requests to the Prophet ﷺ. This shows that a punishment does not brand a person a criminal for life. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Abd ibn Zam'ah RA also had a dispute over a boy born to the slave-girl of Zam'ah. Sa'd claimed the boy for his brother Utbah. Abd ibn Zam'ah claimed him as his own brother, born on his father's bed. The Prophet ﷺ settled the case with his verdict, "The boy is for the bed, and the stone is for the adulterer" (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ also sent small expeditions to destroy the remaining centres of idol worship. He commanded every household to destroy its own idols. He sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to destroy the great idol al-Uzza, which is mentioned in Qur'an 53:19. By other reports, he sent another party to destroy Manat (Qur'an 53:20). At Nakhla, al-Uzza's guardian, a man of Sulaym, hung his sword on the idol and climbed the mountain. He called on al-Uzza to strike Khalid down. Khalid destroyed the idol and returned (Ibn Ishaq). This success was spoiled by a mistake of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA, who was a very recent convert and did not yet know fiqh well. He was sent to invite the Banu Jadhimah to Islam, a tribe that had killed his uncle in the Jahiliyyah. They took up their weapons, and he told them to lay them down, since everyone had accepted Islam. They did so, saying "Saba'na, saba'na", because they could not say "Aslamna". Khalid then had them tied up, and he killed a number of them (Ibn Ishaq; al-Bukhari). Abdullah ibn Umar RA and his companions refused Khalid's order to kill their captives. Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA told Khalid that he had committed a pagan act in Islam. The two men quarrelled, and Khalid insulted him. When the Prophet ﷺ heard the news, he stood facing the Ka'bah, raised his hands, and declared, "O Allah, I am free from what Khalid has done." He then sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA with money to pay blood money and to apologize to the grieving families on his behalf. When he heard about the quarrel, the Prophet ﷺ said, "None should revile my Companions, for if one among you were to spend as much gold as Uhud, it would not amount to one mudd of one of them, or half of it" (Muslim). The 19 days secured only the area immediately around Makkah. Ta'if, the fortified city on a plateau that had once driven out and stoned the Prophet ﷺ, was still beyond the army's reach. It would be dealt with in the campaigns that followed.

After the Siege of Ta'if, the Prophet ﷺ returned to Ji'ranah. The ghanima, the spoils of war, and the prisoners taken at Hunayn had been kept there under guard. He camped there for over a week. He was waiting for the tribe of Hawazin to come and accept Islam, so that their families and property could be returned to them. The same thing had happened before with the Banu al-Mustaliq. Nearly a month after Hunayn, the Hawazin still had not come, so the Prophet ﷺ began to distribute the ghanima. Spoils left behind by a fleeing enemy, rather than taken from the slain, are given out at the ruler's discretion. So the soldiers had no guaranteed share of them. One by one, the Prophet ﷺ gave the largest gifts that had ever been seen in Islam up to that point. Most went to leading men of the Quraysh who were new Muslims or not yet Muslim at all. These were the muallafati qulubuhum, "those whose hearts needed reconciling to Islam". Among those who received 100 camels each were four men. The first was Abu Sufyan ibn Harb RA. The second was Safwan ibn Umayyah RA, who was still not a Muslim and was moved to accept Islam by this generosity. The third was Uyaynah ibn Hisn of the Ghatafan tribe, and the fourth was al-Aqra' ibn Habis of the Tamim tribe. He also gave large gifts to Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan and to al-Harith ibn Hisham RA, the full brother of Abu Jahal. Perhaps 60 to 70 people received gifts in total. Smaller shares were also given to the Muhajirun. The Ansar received nothing from this particular large share. Some of the younger Ansar began to grumble. Their swords were still dripping with the enemy's blood, they said, and yet they had earned nothing, while the Quraysh went home with fortunes. Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA, the chief of the Ansar, told the Prophet ﷺ about this. The Prophet ﷺ gathered the Ansar alone in a tent. There he gave one of the most moving speeches of his life, in praise of them. He said, "I give to some people because I fear for their greed and desires; and I don't give to others because I trust what Allah has given in their hearts is more than what I can give them." Then he asked them a question. Others would go home with sheep and camels. Were they not content to go home with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ himself? The Ansar wept, and said that they were content with Islam and with him. As word of the Prophet ﷺ's generosity spread, Bedouins flocked in asking for money. One chieftain grabbed the Prophet ﷺ's collar and demanded a share. The Prophet ﷺ only smiled and told those handing out the wealth to give him some. On another occasion, Bedouins crowded around him begging, so closely that his garment caught on a thorn bush. When the money was gone, he told them that if he had as many camels as there were shrubs around them, he would give them all away. He would never be found to be miserly. It was also here that a man with a straggly beard accused the Prophet ﷺ of being unjust in the distribution. This was the beginning of what would become the mindset of the Khawarij. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA asked permission to execute him for it. The Prophet ﷺ refused, for the sake of the community's wellbeing. He foretold that from this man's kind would come people who recite the Qur'an without it going beyond their throats, and who leave Islam as an arrow passes through its target. Eventually the Hawazin came and accepted Islam. They hoped their property could still be returned. The Prophet ﷺ told them it was too late for their property. He let them choose between their property and their families, and they chose their families. The next day, after the Zuhr prayer, the Prophet ﷺ gave up his own tribe's share of the prisoners first. This led the other Quraysh leaders to follow his example and release their captives freely. A few Bedouin tribes who had newly become Muslim asked to be paid for their captives instead. The Prophet ﷺ promised to compensate them from future revenue. In this way, all of the Hawazin's families were restored to them, though not their property. Before leaving Ji'ranah for Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ entered ihram there and performed an Umrah. It was the third of the four Umrahs he performed in his lifetime. Among the Hawazin who came to Ji'ranah, the Prophet ﷺ asked in particular about their chieftain, Malik ibn Awf al-Nasri. Malik had fled into Ta'if with the Thaqif tribe rather than surrender. The Prophet ﷺ sent word to him with an offer. If Malik came to him as a Muslim, his family and property would be restored to him, along with a hundred camels besides. Malik was unwilling to live on without his tribe, his family and his wealth. So he accepted, came to the Prophet ﷺ and embraced Islam. He was made chieftain over his own people again. Malik then composed verses declaring that the Prophet ﷺ was a true prophet. The Tamimi chieftain al-Aqra' ibn Habis also reflected on how vast the Prophet ﷺ's generosity had been. He said, "I have just come from a man who doesn't care about poverty! Wallahi, this man is a prophet, for no king would do what he has done!"

After the Conquest of Makkah, the tribe of Thaqif decided to fight. Thaqif was the tribe of the city of Ta'if, whose idol was al-Lat. They understood that the conquest meant the end of idol worship in Arabia unless they acted. With the Quraysh now defeated, they also wanted to take control of the Ka'bah for themselves. Thaqif sent messengers to every pagan tribe in the region. More than 20,000 pagan fighters gathered under their banner, the largest gathering of pagan Arabs in Arabian history. The two largest groups were Thaqif and the Bedouin tribe of Hawazin, who together made up about 10,000. The Prophet ﷺ sent Abdullah ibn Abi Hadrat RA, a new convert, to scout the forces of Ta'if. He came back and reported that he had never seen such a large gathering. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA doubted the report. Abdullah rebuked him, reminding him that Umar had once disbelieved the Prophet ﷺ himself. The Prophet ﷺ then gathered about 12,000 men. Of these, 10,000 had come with him from Madinah. The other 2,000 were new converts from Makkah, and some of them were not yet even Muslim. One of these was Safwan ibn Umayyah RA. The Prophet ﷺ borrowed a hundred coats of mail, with their weapons, from Safwan, as a loan to be returned. The Muslims left Makkah on the 6th of Shawwal, 8 AH. According to Sahih al-Bukhari they had stayed there about 19 days, though other reports give shorter periods. They reached the valley of Hunayn on the 10th. They camped there rather than at Ta'if itself, because Thaqif had already gathered their forces in that area. On the pagan side, the young chieftain Malik ibn Awf al-Nasri had just been chosen as leader. An old, blind nobleman named Durayd ibn al-Sima gave him advice. He urged Malik to send the tribe's women, children and livestock back to safety, and not to bring them onto the battlefield. He warned that having them there would not help the men fight. Malik refused. He even threatened to kill himself rather than be overruled. So the families and flocks stayed on the field. Thaqif and Hawazin had set a trap. They placed a small decoy force at the mouth of the valley that the Muslims had to cross. The main part of their army, with hundreds of archers, hid in the mountains on both sides. As the Muslims advanced, the decoy force ran away and drew the Muslim army deep into the pass. Then the hidden archers above let fly volleys of arrows, and the main pagan army charged. Many in the Muslim army were inexperienced new converts without proper armour. They panicked and fled in every direction. The Prophet ﷺ was left almost alone on his mule. Among the small group who stayed near him was Umm Sulaym, a woman of the Ansar. She jumped down from her mount and drew a small dagger. She told the Companions she would use it on anyone who reached her. The Prophet ﷺ called out, "Come to me! I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ! I am Muhammad ﷺ, the son of Abdullah!" He also declared, "I am the Prophet ﷺ, there is no lie about this! I am the son of Abdul Muttalib." In this way he called on both his prophethood and his family line. His uncle, al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, was known for his powerful voice. The Prophet ﷺ asked him to call the fleeing Muhajirun and Ansar back, by name and by tribe. Al-Abbas stood up on his mount and called on them to return. As they came back fighting, the Prophet ﷺ declared, "Now the real fight begins!" This is the first recorded use of that Arabic expression. Then he took a handful of dust and threw it towards Thaqif. He said, "May the faces be disfigured." After that the battle turned, and the Muslims surged forward. Allah then sent down His sakina, or tranquillity, upon the Prophet ﷺ and the believers. As Surah al-Tawbah 9:25-26 relates, He also sent unseen forces to help them. A number of people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, reported seeing these angels come down. One of them was Jubayr ibn Mut'im RA. He described a thick black cloud coming down from the sky and spreading out among the people like ants. In the middle of the chaos, there was another danger. Shayba ibn Uthman was a distant cousin of the Prophet ﷺ from the Banu Abd al-Dar, and he had only recently converted. His father, Uthman ibn Abi Talha, had been killed at Uhud fighting against the Muslims. Shayba rode at the Prophet ﷺ's unguarded back, meaning to avenge his father. A blinding light stopped him. The Prophet ﷺ turned, sensed what was happening, and made du'a for Shayba to be guided. Iman entered Shayba's heart at once. He turned and fought alongside the Muslims for the rest of the battle. Thaqif and Hawazin had relied completely on the ambush, and they had no backup plan. Once the Muslims regrouped and charged, the pagan coalition fled in every direction. The Prophet ﷺ ordered the Companions to chase them into the surrounding valleys and mountains before the scattered tribesmen could regroup. A long series of small expeditions followed. Several sahaba were wounded or killed in them. One of those killed was Abu Amir RA, the uncle of Abu Musa al-Ash'ari RA, who was fatally struck by a javelin. Afterwards, the Prophet ﷺ walked across the battlefield. He came upon the body of a woman who had been killed, and he said it was not right that she had been killed. He learned that Khalid ibn al-Walid RA had killed her. The Prophet ﷺ sent word to Khalid, forbidding him to kill any more women, children or other non-combatants. A second large part of the fleeing coalition regrouped at a place called Awtas. Another skirmish took place there. Some Muslims were killed or wounded before the Muslims won. Only four Muslims were killed in the Battle of Hunayn itself, though many were wounded. Famously, the wounded included all four of the future Khulafa al-Rashidun: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali RA. All four stood with the Prophet ﷺ, and all four were wounded that day.

The Muslim army's final camp before the Conquest of Makkah was at Marr al-Zahran, now known as Wadi Fatima. There the ten thousand men lit their campfires. Al-Abbas RA, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle and a new Muslim, feared that the Quraysh would be destroyed if Makkah were taken by force. He asked permission to go and persuade them to submit. The Prophet ﷺ gave him his own mule, Duldul, to ride. That night al-Abbas came across three leaders of the Quraysh and Khuza'a, who had been coming out each night to look for the Muslim army. Among them was Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, the last senior chief left in Makkah. Al-Abbas told him to come along and promised to ask the Prophet ﷺ to forgive and protect him. He brought Abu Sufyan into the camp on the Prophet ﷺ's mule. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA saw them and followed them to the Prophet ﷺ's tent. He asked for Abu Sufyan to be executed, while al-Abbas insisted that Abu Sufyan was under his protection. The Prophet ﷺ told al-Abbas to keep Abu Sufyan in his tent overnight and bring him back in the morning. The next morning Abu Sufyan, after much hesitation, accepted Islam. The Prophet ﷺ then announced that whoever entered the Haram, stayed in his own house, or entered the house of Abu Sufyan would be safe. He also had al-Abbas show Abu Sufyan the army marching past, tribe by tribe, and Abu Sufyan was astonished at its size.

Makkah was conquered in Ramadan of the 8th year of the Hijrah, and the Battle of Hunayn followed in Shawwal. So in principle, the Prophet ﷺ and the Muslims of Madinah could have performed Hajj that same year. They did not, because Makkah was not yet fully safe. The neighboring city of Ta'if and its tribe, Thaqif, were still hostile, and stayed so until they later sent a delegation and accepted Islam. So no official Hajj delegation came from Madinah in the 8th year. A small group of Muslims did perform Hajj that year, however. They were led by Attab ibn Asid of the Banu Abd Shams, whom the Prophet ﷺ had appointed governor of Makkah. Attab had only become a Muslim at the Conquest. He was allowed to stay in Makkah because he had never made Hijrah. The Muhajirun, who had emigrated from Makkah, were bound never to return to live there, or their Hijrah would be undone. As governor, Attab led this small group in the first Hajj that Muslims had performed openly since the beginning of Islam.

During their negotiations with the Prophet ﷺ, the Thaqif accepted that their idol al-Lat would be destroyed, but asked not to be the ones to do it. Al-Lat was the second most prestigious idol of the pagan Arabs after Hubal. The Prophet ﷺ sent al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, who was their own kinsman, together with Abu Sufyan ibn Harb RA, to destroy it. The whole tribe gathered anxiously, with the women crying and the elders wailing. Mughira first played a prank on them. He struck the idol, cried out, and fell on his face as if al-Lat had struck him down. The crowd rejoiced, thinking their idol had defended itself. Then Mughira jumped up and mocked them for believing it. The idol's caretaker warned that the earth would swallow anyone who reached its base. Mughira carried on and demolished al-Lat completely, down to the ground. The Prophet ﷺ then sent word to Uthman ibn Abi al-As RA to build a mosque where the idol had stood. The treasures kept in its sanctuary were taken to the Bayt al-Mal, the public treasury, and the Prophet ﷺ distributed them to the poor and needy.

During the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, Suhayl ibn Amr and Abu Sufyan ibn Harb came to visit him in Madinah. They found a line of people waiting at Umar's door, and they had to wait while others went in before them. Those others included Bilal, Suhayb al-Rumi, Ibn Mas'ud and other Companions whom the leaders of Quraysh had once looked down on. Abu Sufyan was angry that these men were given precedence over them. Suhayl told him that if he wanted to be angry, he should be angry at himself. They had all been called to Islam, but those men had raced ahead while the two of them had lagged behind. The blessing those men had gained by accepting Islam early was far greater than the honour of entering Umar's door first.