Khuza'a's Appeal to the Prophet ﷺ

News of the massacre at al-Watir reached the Khuza'a's chieftain, Amr ibn Salim al-Khuza'i, who led a delegation of 40 men to Madinah to seek the Prophet ﷺ's help. He recited a one-page poem before the Prophet ﷺ, recorded in Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham, invoking the ancient covenant (Hilf) his own father had made with the Prophet ﷺ's grandfather Abdul Muttalib, that the two tribes would stand as one against anyone who caused the other distress, "as long as the generations proceed"; he also invoked the shared ancestress the two tribes had through Qusayy ibn Kilab, and the Khuza'a's standing as allies of the Muslims under the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, before describing how the Banu Bakr had fallen on his people while they were bowing and prostrating in prayer. Moved by the poem, the Prophet ﷺ promised to help, and later, seeing a cloud on the horizon, took it as a good omen of victory for the Khuza'a (also called Banu Ka'b). Most scholars hold that the Prophet ﷺ then took the Banu Bakr's attack as an automatic breach of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and began marching on Makkah without any further negotiation with the Quraysh; well within his rights, since the Quraysh had knowingly broken the treaty. A report graded mursal sahih by Ibn Hajar and others instead holds that the Prophet ﷺ first sent the Quraysh an ultimatum: sever ties with the Banu Bakr and pay the blood money for the twenty dead (2,000 camels), or face war. On this account, the Quraysh refused both conditions outright: the blood money alone would have ruined them, and they argued the Banu Bakr were the only tribe left in the region still on their own religion.