The Expedition of Tabuk

No one knows the year. Ibn Sayyid al-Nas says the ninth year of the Hijrah; others say the fourth, fifth or sixth. That the Prophet ﷺ was by then married to all nine of his wives, Sawda, Aisha, Hafsa, Umm Salama, Juwayriyya, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Umm Habiba, Safiyyah and Maymunah, and that Umar was at the time worrying about an attack by the Ghassanids, which was no longer a fear after Tabuk, point to a late date; that Umar went in to Aisha points to a time before the verses of hijab; that the verses revealed about it sit in Surah al-Ahzab proves nothing, since a surah's verses need not come down together. The cause is easier to state than the date. The Prophet ﷺ had never lived well: a shepherd for pennies as a boy, a lodger in Abu Talib's crowded house, without a riding animal of his own until the Hijrah. Wealth came to the community rather than to him, in the ransoms of Badr, the fields of Khaybar and the gift of Fadak that fed his household, and then, greatest of all, the spoils of Hunayn, of which he kept nothing, though the law allowed a ruler his share. This was a choice. An angel who had never before descended had once offered him, from his Lord, to be a king and messenger or a slave and messenger, and at Jibril's sign to humble himself he had chosen to be a slave; after that day, the narrator says, he was never seen eating with his back against a wall. His wives watched the standard of living rise around them in Madinah as it did not rise in their own rooms, and at some point, most likely in the eighth or ninth year, they asked him together for more. What exactly they asked no book records, and rightly; it was a matter of the household. What is clear is that it was a joint effort, led by Aisha and Hafsa, and that what they wanted was lawful. He answered with an ila', an oath before Allah to stay away from his wives, which the law permits for up to four months when a marriage needs time to cool. He swore for one month, and withdrew to a small loft reached by a ladder, close by the mosque. Umar told the story to Ibn Abbas, who had waited more than a year for the chance to ask him about the two wives Surah al-Tahrim addresses, and began it with the affair of Maria. The men of the Quraysh, he said, had ruled their women; in Madinah they found a people whose women ruled them, and their own wives learned it. One day at his house in al-Awali his wife answered him back, and when he rebuked her she told him that the Prophet ﷺ's wives answered him back, and left him for a whole day when angry. He went straight to Hafsa and asked whether it was true, and it was. He told her that whoever did that had lost everything, warned her never to answer the Prophet ﷺ again or trouble him for anything but to bring her needs to her father, and told her not to be deceived by what her companion could do: Aisha was more graceful than she, and dearer to the Prophet ﷺ, and would be forgiven what Hafsa would not. Umar and an Ansari neighbour used to take turns, one working the land while the other spent the day with the Prophet ﷺ and brought back what he had heard, and in those days their talk was of a Ghassanid army said to be shoeing its horses to march on them. One night after Isha the neighbour hammered on his door. Have the Ghassanids come? No, something worse: the Prophet ﷺ has divorced his wives. Umar went at first light and found the mosque full of men sitting silent, turning pebbles in their hands. In one telling he went first to Aisha and asked whether the daughter of Abu Bakr had gone so far in troubling the Prophet ﷺ that he had left them all, and was told to see to his own vessel; then to Hafsa, whom he found weeping, and said he had warned her, and that she knew the Prophet ﷺ did not love her, and that were she not his daughter he would have divorced her long ago. She did not know whether they were divorced; he had gone up to the loft. At the foot of the ladder stood a servant, Bilal in one version, and Umar asked him to seek leave for him to enter. The servant came back: he had mentioned him and the Prophet ﷺ had said nothing. Umar went and sat by the minbar, came back, and was refused again. The third time he called up loudly that he thought the Prophet ﷺ supposed he had come on Hafsa's account, and that by Allah, had he been told to strike off her head he would have done it; and he was let in. He found a room with some barley, a half-tanned water-skin, a chamber pot and a few hides, and the Prophet ﷺ lying on a mat of palm fibre that had printed its weave on his side. Had he divorced his wives? He had not. Umar said the takbir, and then, seeing the tension, told him the whole story of the women of Madinah and the warning he had given Hafsa not to measure herself against Aisha, and the Prophet ﷺ smiled, and smiled again, and gave him leave to sit. He looked round the room and could see nothing else in it. He asked why the Prophet ﷺ did not pray for his people to be given wealth as Persia and Rome had been given it, when they did not even worship Allah, and began to cry; and when asked why, said it was because the mat had marked the side of Allah's chosen one while Kisra and Caesar lay in silk. The Prophet ﷺ sat up. Are you in doubt, son of al-Khattab? Are you not content that they should have this world and we the next? Umar asked him to seek forgiveness for him. In another version Umar added that if the Prophet ﷺ wished to divorce any of them, Allah, Jibril and Mika'il, Abu Bakr, he himself and all the believers were with him; and he used to say he hoped Allah would confirm what he had said, and He did, in the fourth verse of Surah al-Tahrim, one of the three times the Qur'an came down in agreement with Umar. After twenty-nine days the Prophet ﷺ came back down. Aisha reminded him that he had sworn a month and it was only twenty-nine days; a month, he told her, may be twenty-nine. He went first to her room and told her he was going to put something to her, that she was not to answer in haste, and that she should consult her parents before she replied. Then he recited the verses Allah had sent down: O Prophet ﷺ, say to your wives, if you desire the life of this world and its adornment, come and I will provide for you and release you graciously; but if you desire Allah and His Messenger ﷺ and the Home of the Hereafter, then Allah has prepared for those of you who do good a great reward. She understood that he had told her to consult her parents because he knew they would never tell her to leave; and she asked what there was to consult about, for she chose Allah and His Messenger ﷺ and the Hereafter. Then she asked him not to tell the others what she had chosen, and he refused: Allah had sent him to convey, not to make things hard. He put the same choice to each of his wives in turn, and every one of them chose as she had. The whole city had known of the quarrel, and Allah put it in the Qur'an; the fault line it exposed was not in the wives but in a standard of living that a messenger-slave could not share. It is the source of the law of ila' and of the husband's right to hand his wife the choice of divorce, and of the plainest picture the Companions left of how the Prophet ﷺ chose to live.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 98: Umar RA "said, 'During this time, we were discussing the Ghassanids and how they might attack us.' (Side note: This is why some scholars say this incident occurred before Tabuk, because after Tabuk, the Ghassanids were not a threat.)" The year itself is disputed.

The Battle of Tabuk carries two names, both used by the sahaba. It is called Ghazwa Tabuk because the Muslim army was saved there: after the sahaba had run out of water on the march, the Prophet ﷺ told Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA they would reach the spring of Tabuk the next day at the hottest part of the day, and warned them not to touch its water until he arrived. Two men touched it before he came and were rebuked; the Prophet ﷺ then washed his hands and face in what remained, and the water gushed out until the whole army (traditionally reported as 20,000 men, though such figures in the sources were often inflated) drank from it. It is also called Jaysh al-Usrah, the Army of Difficulty (a name Imam al-Bukhari records alongside Ghazwa Tabuk in his own chapter heading), because it was harsher than any other campaign: managing so large an army strained food, water, and logistics; it took place in the hottest part of the year, with temperatures around 110°F; it covered the furthest distance any army led by the Prophet ﷺ ever marched, roughly 650 km northwest of Madinah; and it fell during Madinah's August harvest season, when leaving meant forgoing the year's main income for an agrarian society with no concept of a steady salary. It took place in the month of Rajab, 9 AH, exactly six months after the Siege of Ta'if, and it was the Prophet ﷺ's final ghazwa; after it he undertook his Farewell Hajj, fell ill, and the seerah moves toward his death and the khilafa. No actual clash of swords took place; the difficulty was the march itself. Attendance was called for every able-bodied man, even from as far as Makkah. The most famous story of the expedition, however, is not the march itself but what happened to those who missed it. Ka'b ibn Malik RA (one of the earliest Ansari converts, of Banu Salama, who had taken part in the Bay'at al-Aqaba) owned two camels and was healthier and wealthier than ever before, yet kept postponing his preparations day after day until the army had gone too far to catch. He was not alone: of the whole city, only the hypocrites and those genuinely excused failed to march, and even among these, more than eighty men came forward on the Prophet ﷺ's return to swear oaths and offer excuses, which he accepted at face value (later mildly rebuked for this in Qur'an 9:43), leaving their true intentions to Allah. Only three men (Ka'b, Murara ibn al-Rabi' al-Amri RA and Hilal ibn Umayyah al-Waqifi RA, the latter two both veterans of Badr) refused to lie, and told the Prophet ﷺ the plain truth. He forbade the whole community from speaking to the three of them. For fifty nights they were shunned by everyone, including, in Ka'b's case, his own cousin Abu Qatada RA; the King of Ghassan even tried to lure Ka'b away with a letter, which he burned as a test. Forty days in, the three were also ordered to separate from their wives. On the fiftieth morning, as Ka'b prayed Fajr on his rooftop, a man of Aslam climbed Jabal Sal' (the mountain visible on exiting the Masjid al-Nabawi) and cried out that Allah had accepted their repentance; his voice reaching Ka'b before a horseman sent to convey the news in person, whom Ka'b gifted the only clothes he owned; he then had to borrow a garment from a neighbor to go to the Prophet ﷺ. Ka'b's repentance, and that of his two companions, was announced across Madinah, prompting Qur'an 9:117-119 on Allah turning in mercy to "the three who were left behind." Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA alone among the Muhajirun stood to congratulate Ka'b, who resolved from that day to never knowingly lie again. Before the army departed, the Prophet ﷺ called for donations from the minbar, and the sahaba raced to give. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, thinking he could finally outdo Abu Bakr RA, brought half his wealth, telling the Prophet ﷺ he had left an equal amount for his family (narrated in Sunan al-Tirmidhi); Abu Bakr RA then brought everything he owned, saying he had left his family only "Allah and His Messenger ﷺ", prompting Umar to concede he could never compete with him again. Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA, who had arrived in Madinah with nothing but the clothes on his back, gave 200 uqiyas of grain. Uthman ibn Affan RA gave in two remembered moments: during the Prophet ﷺ's khutbah he pledged, in escalating stages, a hundred camels, then two hundred, then finally three hundred with all they carried, at which the Prophet ﷺ came down from the minbar to declare "Uthman has no sin after what he has done today"; separately, when one of his trading caravans returned from Syria around the same time, he sold it entire for roughly a thousand gold coins and poured them before the Prophet ﷺ, who said, "Whatever Uthman does after today, it will not harm him", a promise Uthman himself would invoke decades later against the neo-Kharijites besieging his house. The hypocrites, by contrast, gave nothing and mocked those who did: when a poor Ansari man brought one of only two handfuls of dates he had earned by drawing water all night, two hypocrites jeered that Allah had no need of so little and that he needed it more than anyone, prompting Qur'an 9:79. Others made excuses to avoid marching at all: al-Jad ibn Qays begged off, claiming he feared losing self-control around Roman women, and the Prophet ﷺ simply turned away from him (Qur'an 9:49 is tied to this); Qur'an 9:81-82 and 9:42 rebuke the wider hypocrite camp for rejoicing at staying behind and for finding the journey too far. Set against them were the Bakka'un ("the Criers"), roughly seven men including relatives of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari and Irbad ibn Sariya RA, who wanted to march but had no mount and wept when the Prophet ﷺ told them so (Qur'an 9:92); the Prophet ﷺ later told the sahaba at Tabuk that such sincere companions back in Madinah shared fully in the army's reward. Ulba ibn Zayd RA, having no wealth to give, pledged instead to defend the Prophet ﷺ with his honor against the hypocrites' taunts, and the Prophet ﷺ accepted it as charity. Wathila ibn al-Asqa' RA, also without money or a mount, went daily to the marketplace offering his future share of the ghanima to whoever would take him, until an elder of the Ansar agreed to share a camel and meals with him, and later refused to accept the very booty-camels Wathila tried to hand over in payment. Two companions nearly missed the expedition through sheer procrastination before recovering themselves at the last moment, alongside Ka'b ibn Malik RA. Abu Khaythama al-Ansari RA delayed like Ka'b, but on returning home and finding his wife had prepared a shaded, watered rug and food for him, he rebuked himself for enjoying comfort while the Prophet ﷺ endured the heat, and rushed out alone to catch up; the Prophet ﷺ, spotting a lone rider in the distance, said "Let it be Abu Khaythama," and on arrival asked why he had been delayed, gently rebuking him afterward with "Woe to you, Abu Khaythama!" once he heard the story. Abu Dharr al-Ghifari RA fell behind when his camel proved unfit to travel, so he loaded its burden onto his own back and walked the whole distance alone; the Prophet ﷺ, seeing a solitary walking figure approach, said "Let it be Abu Dharr!" and then remarked, "May Allah have mercy upon Abu Dharr. He is walking by himself, he will die by himself, and he will be resurrected by himself", a statement later fulfilled almost exactly at his death in exile, years afterward, in the khilafa of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA (see the separate event on his exile and death). The hypocrites' organized opposition, including their construction of Masjid al-Dirar during this same period as a rival headquarters, is treated as its own event (see Masjid al-Dirar) since it unfolded on a separate, simultaneous track from the march itself. Before departing Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ left Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA in charge of the city's affairs, as he did whenever he left on campaign, and told Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to stay behind and take charge of his household, the Mother of the Believers and the Ahl al-Bayt, since the journey would take more than a month. The munafiqun mocked Ali RA for staying behind, calling him unfit to fight; stung despite his well-known bravery, Ali RA armed himself and caught up with the army to protest. The Prophet ﷺ reassured him with the hadith of manzila: "Are you not content to be with me like Harun was with Musa, except that there is no prophet after me?" Ali RA was left in charge only of the Prophet ﷺ's family, not of Madinah itself (that was Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA's post), a detail Sunni scholars point to against the Shia reading of this hadith as evidence of a designated political succession. The army departed by way of Thaniyat al-Wada', the hill north of the Haram where Madinan families traditionally gathered to bid travelers farewell. There the Prophet ﷺ paused to organize the army (the largest ever assembled under him) into battalions by tribe, each with its own leader and flag, a mark of his organizational skill though he had no military training. On the march, when the sahaba began falling asleep on their mounts after Fajr and their camels scattered, Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA found himself riding close enough to the Prophet ﷺ, alone, to ask him privately what deed would gain him Jannah, a conversation preserved at length in Musnad Imam Ahmad (see the Sayings & Actions below). The Prophet ﷺ prayed qasr throughout the twenty days the army camped at Tabuk, a practice later cited in fiqh discussions on how long a qasr-praying traveler (musafir) may remain at one place. The morning after arrival, he ﷺ also delivered a khutbah preserved by Uqba ibn Amir al-Juhani RA (see the separate Khutbah at Tabuk event). Separately, during the twenty days at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to Dawmat al-Jandal, where he captured the Kindah chieftain Ukaydir ibn Abd al-Malik and sealed the whole northern frontier against Rome through treaties (see the separate Dawmat al-Jandal expedition). Over the twenty days the army camped at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ gave many short khutbahs and khatirahs, several of which are preserved in the books of hadith and seerah. In one, he ﷺ said Allah had given him five things granted to no prophet before him: he ﷺ was sent to all of mankind rather than to one people alone; Allah made him victorious through awe felt by his enemies a month's journey away; ghanima was made lawful for him ﷺ where it had not been for earlier nations; the whole earth was made a place of purification and prayer, so his ﷺ ummah could pray anywhere rather than only in a house of worship; and he ﷺ had saved his own personal request to Allah for the Day of Judgment, promising it to whoever testifies la ilaha illallah; understood as the Great Intercession. In another, narrated by Awf ibn Malik RA, he ﷺ foretold six signs before the Day of Judgment, ending in a truce and then a betrayal by the Bani al-Asfar (the Romans). The stay also saw repeated miracles of increasing food and water when supplies ran low, reported four or five times just in this expedition, and a karamah in which a companion lost in the dark found his way back to camp by the light of his own glowing fingers. One Fajr, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA led the salah after the Prophet ﷺ was delayed performing wudu (assisted and narrated by al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, including the Prophet ﷺ's instruction to leave his khuff on rather than remove them for washing); the Prophet ﷺ then prayed the missed rak'ah behind him, the only time in his life ﷺ he prayed a full rak'ah led by a companion. During these days the companion Abdullah Dhu al-Bijadayn RA also died and was buried by the Prophet ﷺ's own hands (see the separate event on his death and burial). Several fiqh rulings are also dated to Tabuk in the hadith literature: that washing each limb once in wudu suffices when water is scarce; that the Prophet ﷺ prayed with a sutrah roughly the size of a camel's saddle; that he ﷺ combined salahs only while actually traveling and not once settled even briefly (as at Tabuk and later at the Conquest of Makkah), while still praying qasr for the whole twenty days; and that the skin of a dead animal becomes pure, and so usable, once tanned. On the return march, the army passed through al-Hijr, the rock-carved dwellings of the ancient people of Thamud and Prophet Saleh AS (see the separate event on passing by al-Hijr). Their animals were also strengthened by a du'a the Prophet ﷺ made over them when they grew too weak to carry the army, a du'a the companion Fudala RA recognized fulfilled decades later at the Muslim conquest of Cyprus (28 AH). When water ran short, the Prophet ﷺ prayed for rain, and after a night of rain gave a khutbah on believers who credited the rain to Allah against hypocrites who credited it to a star. When the Prophet ﷺ's own camel went missing, a hypocrite mocked him ﷺ for claiming revelation from heaven yet not knowing where his camel was; the Prophet ﷺ then announced, by revelation, exactly where the camel was found, and a companion who learned who had mocked him expelled the man from his unit. Elsewhere on the march, hypocrites mocking the Prophet ﷺ's prophecies of conquering Rome and Persia were exposed as the Qur'an (9:64-66) was revealed quoting the mocker's excuse before he could finish giving it (see the separate event on the munafiqun's mockery). Separately, a group of some fourteen or fifteen hypocrites made a spur-of-the-moment attempt to throw the Prophet ﷺ off a cliff at night, foiled by his own evasive action while Ammar ibn Yasir RA and Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA looked on without realizing what was happening (see the separate event on the assassination attempt). The army finally returned to Madinah after some fifty to sixty days away, greeted at Thaniyat al-Wada' by the city's women and children (among them the companion al-Sa'ib RA, then a child) traditionally, though incorrectly, associated instead with the Hijrah (see the separate event on the return to Madinah). On the return march, one of the munafiqs was reported to have said that if Islam were true, it would mean believers were more misguided than donkeys, then swore under oath he had never said it, until Allah exposed the lie in Surat al-Tawba [Quran, 9:74]. Other hypocrites who stayed behind told one another, "Do not march forth in the heat," prompting the reply in the same surah that the Fire of Hell is far hotter [Quran, 9:81-82]. A separate, popular story (that a named sahabi begged the Prophet ﷺ for wealth, promised to become generous, then turned stingy once Allah granted him riches, with his later repentance and charity refused) is widely repeated as the occasion for [Quran, 9:75-77], but Sh. Yasir Qadhi rejects it as unreliable: besides a weak chain, it has the Prophet ﷺ refusing a repentant man's charity, which contradicts the Quran's own teaching that Allah accepts repentance. The verses instead describe the hypocrites in general, some of whom vowed to give charity if made wealthy and then grew stingy once Allah provided for them.

Placed here because: Ep. 87: "When did this take place? The month of Rajab in the 9th year of the Hijrah. Exactly 6 months after the Siege of Ta'if."

On the morning after the army arrived at Tabuk, following Salat al-Fajr, the Prophet ﷺ stood and delivered a khutbah preserved by Uqba ibn Amir al-Juhani RA. He praised Allah, said "O people, amma ba'd," and then spoke in short, dense, aphoristic phrases: on the Book of Allah, the path of Ibrahim AS, the Sunnah, sincerity in deeds, the guidance of the prophets, martyrdom, charity, taqwa, and the dangers of a lying tongue, riba, and a hard heart. He closed by asking Allah's forgiveness for himself and his ummah three times, then the customary "Astaghfirullaha li wa lakum."

Placed here because: Ep. 92: "For 20 days when he was there, he gave lots of small khutbahs."

During the twenty days the army camped at Tabuk, the companion Abdullah Dhu al-Bijadayn RA died. Ibn Mas'ud RA reports that he woke one night to see a fire in the distance with the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr RA, and Umar RA around it, and found that Abdullah Dhu al-Bijadayn RA had died and the three of them were preparing to bury him. The Prophet ﷺ himself descended into the grave and had the body handed to him, then filled the grave while saying, O Allah, I am pleased with this servant of Yours, so You as well be pleased with him. Ibn Mas'ud RA remarked afterward how much he wished he had been the one in that grave.

Placed here because: ~ During the encampment; the day is not given.

While the Prophet ﷺ was encamped at Tabuk, he sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA with a few hundred sahaba on a mini-expedition to Dawmat al-Jandal, home of the Christian Arab tribe of Kindah, whose chieftain Ukaydir ibn Abd al-Malik was called a king (malik). The Prophet ﷺ told Khalid he would find Ukaydir away from his entourage, in the midst of some cows, and that is exactly how it happened: Ukaydir's herd kept barging against his palace door one night, and his wife, fed up, told him to go deal with it himself. Khalid found him in the middle of nowhere with a few servants and captured him. Brought before the Prophet ﷺ, Ukaydir did not embrace Islam at the time, but agreed to break off his relationship with the Romans, pay the jizya, and not attack the Muslims. To show his loyalty, Ukaydir later sent the Muslim camp gifts, including a hulla (a gold-threaded, coordinated two-piece garment) finer than any the sahaba had seen: they gathered around the Prophet ﷺ in awe of it.

Placed here because: Sent from Tabuk during the encampment; Rajab 9 AH.

On the return march from Tabuk, the army passed by al-Hijr, the ruins of the ancient people of Thamud and Prophet Saleh AS, whose homes were carved directly into the mountain and still stand along with the well once used by their she-camel. Some of the sahaba began rushing in to see inside the dwellings, so the Prophet ﷺ called out al-salatu jami'ah to gather the army back. He then asked them why they would want to enter upon a people whom Allah's wrath had come down upon, told them their own Prophet ﷺ informing them of the future was more amazing than the ruins of Thamud, and instructed them to hurry through crying rather than curiously, lest the same punishment overtake them. He covered his face with his turban and rushed through the valley without pausing. Some of the army nonetheless drew water from Thamud's wells and mixed it with dough; on hearing of it, the Prophet ﷺ ordered that all such water and bread be given to the animals rather than consumed. He also told them not to ask Allah for miracles, recalling how the people of Saleh AS had asked for a miracle, a she-camel brought forth from solid rock, and then hamstrung her in defiance of the warning never to harm her, bringing swift punishment. That night, after leaving the valley, he ﷺ warned the army not to leave their tents unless accompanied, and two who disobeyed were afflicted: one is said to have lost his mind before the Prophet ﷺ prayed for his cure, and the other was carried off by winds to a distant mountain and had to make his own way back to Madinah.

Placed here because: ~ The sources place it on the return march; al-Hijr lies on the road both ways, so the leg is not certain.

While traveling at night on the return from Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ separated from the rest of the army and rode up onto the top of a cliff, with only his camel and two or three companions (among them Ammar ibn Yasir RA and Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA) nearby. In the middle of the night, around fourteen or fifteen men with their faces covered charged toward the Prophet ﷺ's camel. He took evasive action and went quickly down into the valley, and the men fled. He then told Ammar RA that they were hypocrites who had wanted to throw him off the edge of the cliff, but that Allah had protected him. Most of the sahaba never heard of the incident at the time, and the Prophet ﷺ simply moved on.

Placed here because: On the return march (Ep. 92, "what happened on the way back").

On the return march from Tabuk, a group of hypocrites began joking inappropriately, with one mocking the Prophet ﷺ's prophecy that the Muslims would inherit the treasures of Rome and Persia (prophecies that, unknown to them at the time, would come to pass within years of his death ﷺ) and disparaging the Qur'an-reciting Muslims around them as cowardly and gluttonous. A companion overheard this, confronted the speaker, and galloped ahead to inform the Prophet ﷺ, but by the time he arrived the Prophet ﷺ was already receiving revelation. As the hypocrite ran up behind, jumping off his camel in a show of remorse to offer an excuse before he thought he could be reported, the Prophet ﷺ began reciting the Qur'an, which quoted the hypocrite's excuse simultaneously as he was about to give it. The Prophet ﷺ recited on without even looking at him, repeating that he had committed kufr after his Iman, while the man ran alongside holding the camel's stirrup, being dragged.

Placed here because: ~ On the return march; its order against the attempt at the pass is not given.

While the Prophet ﷺ was raising funds for the Jaysh al-Usrah and had just been mildly rebuked by Allah for accepting the hypocrites' excuses at face value [Qur'an 9:43], the hypocrites of Madinah built their own masjid within walking distance of Masjid Quba. Classical tafsir (Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari) traces its true origin to Abu Amir al-Rahib ("the Monk"), an elder of the Aws who had rejected Islam, fled to Makkah after Badr, tried and failed to rally the Aws against the Prophet ﷺ before Uhud, and finally made his way into the circle of the Roman Caesar. From there he wrote to his old ally Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul asking him to build a base in Madinah so that, with Roman backing, they might retake the city; Ibn Ubayy responded by constructing this masjid as its headquarters. Publicly, the hypocrites gave a different reason, that it served their weak and elderly on rainy nights, even though Masjid Quba stood nearby. Ibn Ubayy invited the Prophet ﷺ to pray two rak'at there as a token gesture; the Prophet ﷺ, uncomfortable at a masjid being raised while the community needed funds for Tabuk, questioned them about its purpose and declined to commit, saying only that he would consider it after returning from the expedition. The masjid operated for about a month, and the Prophet ﷺ never once prayed in it. On the march back from Tabuk, Allah revealed Qur'an 9:107-109 exposing it as a masjid built for harm, disbelief, division among the believers, and as a base for whoever had warred against Allah and His Messenger ﷺ (a reference to Abu Amir), and forbidding the Prophet ﷺ from ever standing in it. The Prophet ﷺ then commanded that it be destroyed and burned to the ground. Abu Amir himself never returned; the Prophet ﷺ had prayed against him, "May you die a stranger," and he died in Rome without family or friends. Verse 9:108's praise of "a masjid founded on taqwa from the first day" prompted a companion debate over whether it meant Masjid Quba or the Prophet ﷺ's own masjid in Madinah; the correct view, encompassing both, is that it is a general description of any masjid built with sincere taqwa.

Placed here because: Built before the army left; pulled down as it returned.

After roughly fifty to sixty days away, some accounts say closer to three months, the Prophet ﷺ returned to Madinah from Tabuk. The companion al-Sa'ib RA, then a child, later narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari that he was among the children who ran out to Thaniyat al-Wada', the hill north of Madinah where families traditionally gathered to see travelers off and welcome them home, to greet the Prophet ﷺ on his return. A report from Ibn Aisha, which has a broken chain, adds that the women and children went out singing the poem Tala'al-badru alayna (The full moon rose over us, from Thaniyat al-Wada'). Al-Bayhaqi records it in his Dala'il al-Nubuwwah under this return as well as under the Hijrah, noting that the scholars usually mention it at the Hijrah; Ibn al-Qayyim holds that it belongs here, since Thaniyat al-Wada' lies on the Syrian side of Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ went to his masjid, prayed two rak'at, and almost immediately began receiving the delegations of those who had stayed behind, including Ka'b ibn Malik RA.

Placed here because: The last stage of the return.

A year after the siege of Ta'if was lifted with the Prophet ﷺ's words that the Thaqif would come to him of their own accord, they came. They were by then the last pagan tribe in the Hejaz, and what brought them was fear as much as faith. When Urwah ibn Mas'ud, the greatest of their chiefs, whom the Qur'an couples with al-Walid ibn al-Mughira as one of the two great men of the two cities, had embraced Islam on the road home from the siege and gone back to call them to it, they had shot him from the dark as he gave the adhan from his roof. The blood was on their hands and they knew what it meant. Ibn Ishaq records the long argument in which no chief would go to Madinah alone to answer for it, until they agreed that all six or seven of them would go together, with their retinue, in Ramadan of the ninth year. Their kinsman al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba met them outside the city and ran for the mosque to tell the Prophet ﷺ, and Abu Bakr stopped him on the way and begged, by Allah, to be the one to carry the good news; every Companion wanted to be the man who made the Prophet ﷺ glad. Mughira went back and taught them how to greet him and what to call him, and they ignored it all, greeting him in the manner of the days of ignorance and calling him by his name. There was no faith in them yet, and the Prophet ﷺ overlooked every discourtesy, had a tent pitched for them inside the mosque, and treated them as honoured guests. They were so afraid of what they had done that they would not touch the food until the go-between had eaten first. The go-between, as Arab custom required at that level, was Khalid ibn Sa'id ibn al-As, a distant cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, and through him the bargaining ran for ten days. Could they have a treaty at all? If they became Muslims. They had heard that riba was forbidden, and all their wealth was riba; they would keep their principal. Could they keep zina, being merchants often away from home? Allah had forbidden it. Could they at least keep wine, in Ta'if, a city of vineyards and cold nights? Allah had forbidden it. They conferred: no one could go home and tell Ta'if that riba, zina and wine were gone; but if they went home without terms and another army came, they would be finished in a month; and after all, said one of them, had not the people around this man given up all three? If they could, so could the Thaqif. Then al-Lat, the second idol of Arabia after Hubal. It would be destroyed. Three years, they asked; two; one; down through the months, and every time no. Then they could not be the ones to do it. They need not be, the Prophet ﷺ said; the Muslims would see to it. Then the prayer: could they be excused bowing, in that cold? There is no good in a religion without prayer. Wudu, then? No. Zakat and jihad? Yes, he said, they were excused; and after they had gone he told the Companions that they would pay zakat and they would fight, for Allah would put faith in their hearts, and they did. Whether that was a prophecy peculiar to him or a precedent for leniency with new Muslims the scholars still argue. Around the tenth day they became Muslims and fasted the last five days of Ramadan with him, so anxious to get it right that when Bilal brought their suhur they said the sun had risen and he told them the Prophet ﷺ was still eating, and when he brought their iftar they said the sun had not set and he told them he had come only after the Prophet ﷺ had broken his fast. The youngest of them, Uthman ibn Abi al-As, had believed before the rest and spent the fortnight out of the elders' tent, learning Qur'an from the Prophet ﷺ and religion from Abu Bakr; when they left, Abu Bakr proposed him as their leader and the Prophet ﷺ made him so. They went home and told Ta'if it must accept Islam, and Mughira and Abu Sufyan were sent to break al-Lat, Mughira first pretending to drop dead at the first blow to show them how foolish they were, and a mosque was raised where it had stood. Wahshi, Hamzah's killer, who had fled to Ta'if before the conquest, became a Muslim about the same time.

Placed here because: Ramadan 9 AH, two months after the army came home.

As part of Thaqif's agreement with the Prophet ﷺ, the tribe would not have to destroy their idol al-Lat, the second most prestigious idol of the pagan Arabs after Hubal, themselves. The Prophet ﷺ sent al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, Thaqif's own nephew, together with Abu Sufyan ibn Harb RA, to carry it out. As the whole tribe gathered anxiously, women crying and elders wailing, Mughira first played a prank on them (striking the idol, crying out, and collapsing as if struck down, so that the crowd rejoiced thinking al-Lat had defended itself) before jumping back up and mocking them for believing it. The idol's caretaker warned that the earth would swallow anyone who reached its base, but Mughira pressed on and demolished al-Lat completely, down to the ground. The Prophet ﷺ then had Uthman ibn Abi al-As RA build a mosque on the site, and the treasures kept in the idol's sanctuary were taken to the Bayt al-Mal and distributed to the poor and needy.

Placed here because: Shortly after the Thaqif delegation.

Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul was the last surviving senior leader of pre-Islamic Yathrib; the other chiefs of the Aws and Khazraj had either died in the Wars of Bu'ath or fled the city within a year or two of the Prophet ﷺ arriving. He accepted Islam only hesitantly after Badr, under social pressure, then showed his real allegiance at Uhud by withdrawing a third of the army, at the Battle of the Trench by trying to terrify the Muslims, and after the Banu al-Mustaliq expedition by slandering the Muhajirun (prompting the revelation of Surah al-Munafiqun) and instigating the Slander of Aisha RA. On more than one occasion Umar ibn al-Khattab RA sought the Prophet ﷺ permission to execute him; the Prophet ﷺ always refused, weighing the greater good of not letting it be said that Muhammad ﷺ killed his own followers. Probably around a month after the return from Tabuk, Ibn Ubayy fell fatally ill and asked the Prophet ﷺ to visit him on his deathbed, even asking him ﷺ to seek forgiveness for him. Umar RA questioned why the Prophet ﷺ would visit such an enemy of Allah; the Prophet ﷺ replied that he hoped Allah would use the visit to bring other people to Islam. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul then died during the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ. There are two reports of who asked the Prophet ﷺ for a shirt to use as a kafan: one that Ibn Ubayy himself asked before he died, the more authentic report that his son, Abdullah ibn Abdullah ibn Ubayy RA, asked the Prophet ﷺ for one of his own cloaks, hoping Allah might forgive his father, and both may be true. The Prophet ﷺ gave the cloak, and the son also asked him ﷺ to lead the funeral prayer. When the body was brought to the masjid and the Prophet ﷺ stood to pray, Umar RA held onto his lower garment, reminded him of a catalogue of Ibn Ubayy's evils, and asked whether Allah had not already prohibited praying for the hypocrites. The Prophet ﷺ replied that Allah had given him a choice rather than a prohibition (quoting what would become [Quran, 9:80], that asking forgiveness for them seventy times would never secure it) and said that if seventy-one times would have forgiven him, he ﷺ would have asked seventy-one times. The Prophet ﷺ then went to the cemetery himself; Tarikh al-Tabari records that he ﷺ personally went down into the grave to help bury him, and he ﷺ prayed the funeral prayer for him.

Placed here because: ~ Late 9 AH; no month is given.

Within hours of Abu Bakr RA leaving Madinah at the head of the Hajj delegation, Allah revealed the opening two-and-a-half pages of Surat al-Tawba, addressed to the pagans of Arabia. When someone suggested to the Prophet ﷺ that the verses simply be sent on to catch up with Abu Bakr, he ﷺ said no one could convey them on his behalf except a member of his own household, and so he chose Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, who had not been part of the original delegation, to ride out, catch up with Abu Bakr, and proclaim them to the people during the Hajj. Surat al-Tawba, one of the very last surahs revealed, opens without a Basmala; verse 1 declares a bara'ah (complete disassociation) from Allah and His Messenger toward the pagans with whom treaties had been made, nullifying those treaties. Verse 2 grants the pagans four months of safe passage to settle their affairs. Verse 3 sets the Day of the Greater Hajj (10 Dhul Hijjah) as the day this disassociation is publicly announced, offering repentance as the better path. Verse 4 excepts any pagan group whose treaty carries a fixed term and who had not broken faith with the Muslims: their treaty is to be honored to its end. Verse 5 (the so-called "Verse of the Sword") states that once the sacred/grace months have passed, the pagans are to be fought, captured, and besieged wherever found, unless they repent, establish prayer, and give zakat, in which case they are to be let go. Verse 6 immediately follows with the instruction that any pagan seeking protection is to be granted it, allowed to hear the Qur'an, and then escorted safely to his place of safety.

Placed here because: Dhul Qa'dah 9 AH, within hours of Abu Bakr RA's departure for Hajj.

With Thaqif's submission, the Battle of Tabuk, and the province of Najran all settled by the close of the 9th year of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ sent Abu Bakr al-Siddiq RA at the head of an official delegation of 300 Muslims from Madinah to Makkah, to lay the groundwork for what would become his ﷺ only Hajj, the following year's Hajjat al-Wada'. The Prophet ﷺ himself did not attend, explaining to Abu Bakr RA that the mushrikun still performed tawaf around the Ka'bah naked, and that he did not wish to perform Hajj until that practice was ended. This was therefore the only year in Islam's history in which pagans and an official Muslim delegation performed Hajj and tawaf side by side. Because the Prophet ﷺ had not yet personally demonstrated the correct rites of Hajj, Abu Bakr RA led the pilgrims according to the old, pre-Islamic manner. At Dhu al-Hulayfah, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA caught up with the delegation riding the Prophet ﷺ's own camel, prompting Abu Bakr RA to ask whether Ali had been sent to take command over him; Ali RA replied that Abu Bakr RA remained the amir, and that he had come only to recite Surat al-Tawba. At Mina, Ali RA, together with Abu Hurairah RA, proclaimed the opening of Surat al-Tawba to the assembled pagans and Muslims, and made four further announcements: that none but a believer would enter Jannah; that tawaf was never again to be performed unclothed; that after this year no mushrik would be permitted to perform Hajj at all; and that any existing treaty with the pagans would stand for four more months (unless it already carried its own fixed term), after which it was void.

Placed here because: Dhul Hijjah 9 AH.