Banu al-Aws

Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf was the son of an Arab of the Banu Nabhan who had fled a killing among his own people and been taken in by the Banu Nadir of Yathrib, and of a Nadiri mother, which in Jewish reckoning made him a Jew. He had an Arab's lineage and a Nadiri's learning, and grew into one of the tribe's leaders, rich enough to own a fortress of his own, famous for his looks and for his poetry. His hostility began early. When the qibla was changed it was he who asked what had turned them from the direction they had prayed to, and the Qur'an answers him. When zakat was commanded he went to his friends among the Ansar and told them not to give their money away, since no one knew what would become of this man; the verse on those who are stingy and urge stinginess on others came down about it. When the criers came into Madinah with the news of Badr he said that if Muhammad ﷺ had really killed those men, the noblest of the Arabs, it were better to be under the earth than on it: a verdict, as it turned out, on himself. Then he went to Makkah with some of the Banu Nadir and made a pact with Abu Sufyan against the Prophet ﷺ, of which no book records the terms; the sources keep only Abu Sufyan's question, whether the Quraysh or Muhammad ﷺ were the better guided, and Ka'b's answer that the Quraysh were, which Surah al-Nisa quotes back at him. He came home believing the alliance secret; Allah had told the Prophet ﷺ of it. He had long written verse against the Muslims, and the last straw was satirical love-poetry about Muslim women, naming them. Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham and al-Waqidi place what follows between Badr and Uhud; Muqatil, al-Baghawi and al-Salihi place it after Uhud and add that Ka'b was the mind behind the Banu Nadir's plot to poison the Prophet ﷺ and died the night before it was to be carried out. The Prophet ﷺ stood and asked who would deal with Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, who had injured Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. Muhammad ibn Maslamah rose. He was of the Aws, who had been the Nadir's allies before Islam and had no old feud with them, so that the killing would not reopen the Jahili quarrel between the Nadir and the Khazraj. For three days he neither ate nor drank, until the Prophet ﷺ was told and came to ask what was wrong: he had promised something he was not sure he could do. Only try, the Prophet ﷺ said; and when Ibn Maslamah asked leave to say things he did not mean, he was told to say what he liked. He went to Ka'b at his hours of business, drew him aside, and complained that this man had brought nothing but trouble on them, set the Arabs against them, and was now asking for their money. Ka'b was delighted and promised worse to come. Ibn Maslamah said that having followed him they could not desert him until things changed, and asked for a loan to pay what was demanded of him. Ka'b lent money for a living and wanted security: the women of his house, he suggested, or his sons. Ibn Maslamah answered that no one would trust a woman near the handsomest man in Yathrib, and that his sons would carry the taunt of having been their father's pledge all their lives. He offered his weapons instead, which Ka'b accepted gladly; and Silkan ibn Salama, called Abu Na'ila, Ka'b's foster-brother, and one or two others took loans on the same terms. Now they could come to his fortress armed and be expected. Abu Na'ila fixed a night, the 14th of Rabi' al-Awwal of the third year by al-Waqidi's reckoning, cloudless and under a full moon. The Prophet ﷺ walked with them as far as Baqi' al-Gharqad and sent them on with a prayer for their success. At the fortress on the edge of the city they called Ka'b down. He had lately taken a new wife, and she held him back: why were they coming at such an hour, when he was a man at war? He answered that Abu Na'ila was his foster-brother and Ibn Maslamah an old friend, and went down. They walked and talked in the moonlight until Abu Na'ila remarked on the perfume he wore, was told it came from the most scented woman in Arabia, and asked to smell his hair. Ka'b bent his head; Ibn Maslamah seized it, and the others struck. The armour he wore made it slow work, and in the dark al-Harith ibn Aws was badly cut by his own companions' swords and limped back bleeding. When they reached the Prophet ﷺ he put his saliva on the wound and it closed. The other tribes complained, and the Prophet ﷺ did nothing about it, for he had ordered it; Ibn Ishaq says that after that night no enemy of the Muslims felt safe. This was a political act by the ruler and judge of Madinah, taken against a man who had broken the Constitution by treating with the Quraysh and had crossed every line in his verse; Ka'b's own wife understood the terms he was living under, and it is not to be measured against the customs of a later age.

After their defeat at Badr, the Quraysh spent a full year preparing for revenge, driven by four converging motives: religious animosity toward the new faith, personal grief for slain leaders (Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal's father and Safwan ibn Umayyah's father had both died at Badr), the economic collapse of their Syria trade route now that the Muslims controlled it, and the political threat of a growing Muslim state. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, together with Safwan and Ikrimah, went door to door reclaiming the profits of the Badr caravan from every Qurashi household that had invested in it, and used the funds to enlist allied tribes such as Kinana and Tihama. On the 7th of Shawwal, 3 AH, an army of 3,000 (with 200 horses and 700 suits of armor, and accompanied by around two dozen Qurashi women, among them Hind bint Utbah, to spur the men on with song) covered the two-week journey from Makkah to Madinah in seven days. Abu Sufyan held overall command, with Khalid ibn al-Walid on the right flank and Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal on the left. By a report not found in Ibn Ishaq, al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, who had remained behind in Makkah, sent a trusted servant racing to Madinah with the army's exact numbers; the servant covered the distance in three days and reached the Prophet ﷺ at Quba, where Ubay ibn Ka'b RA read him the letter in confidence. Rather than act on a single report, however urgent, the Prophet ﷺ sent scouts to confirm the Quraysh's position before calling a general meeting of the Muslims. When the Friday gathering convened, swelled further by a funeral that had drawn much of the city out already, the Prophet ﷺ laid out the threat and asked for counsel, giving his own view first: to stay inside Madinah and use its natural defenses, volcanic rock fields to the east and west, Mount Uhud to the north, and date palm groves to the south, which would force the Quraysh into costly street fighting. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the city's most seasoned warrior, agreed, not out of any regard for the Prophet ﷺ, but because it was plainly the sounder position. A group of younger Companions, many of whom had missed Badr and were eager to prove themselves, pressed instead to meet the Quraysh in open battle; when the Prophet ﷺ judged that the majority wanted this, he agreed and went in to put on his armor. They then had second thoughts and told him they would not oppose him if he wished to stay (Ibn Ishaq; some retellings name Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA as the one who said so), but the Prophet ﷺ replied that once a prophet has put on his armor, it is not fitting for him to remove it before he has fought. He marched out on Friday, the 14th of Shawwal, dividing the roughly 700 Muslims into three contingents (the Muhajirun under Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA, the Aws under Usayd ibn Hudayr RA, and the Khazraj under al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA) with only a handful of horses and 100 suits of armor between them, and led them by a secret route through the date-palm groves rather than the main road so as not to reveal their position early, passing through the garden of Mirba' ibn Qayzi, a blind hypocrite who threw dust at them and whom the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions to leave alone. On the march, Abdullah ibn Ubayy withdrew with about 300 men, publicly claiming his advice had been ignored; Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram RA confronted him over abandoning the Prophet ﷺ, but he insisted he did not believe there would be a fight, a claim the Qur'an later exposed as a lie (Qur'an 3:167). Some of the Aws (Banu Harithah) and Khazraj (Banu Salama) also wavered before staying, their perseverance credited to Allah's protection in Qur'an 3:122. The roughly 700 who remained reached Uhud in the early afternoon of the 14th; the Prophet ﷺ chose the site deliberately, its mountain shielding two sides and a third covered by fifty archers posted on Jabal Aynayn (later renamed Jabal al-Ruma in their honor) under Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, with strict orders never to abandon the position regardless of how the battle appeared to be going, leaving only one narrow approach for the far larger Quraysh army to attack through. The Prophet ﷺ arranged the army for battle, turning back boys he judged too young, though Rafi ibn Khadij RA and Samura ibn Jundub RA, fifteen by Ibn Hisham's account, were allowed to remain, Rafi' as a good archer and Samurah because he could outwrestle him. On the morning of the 15th, the Prophet ﷺ offered his own sword to whoever would take it by its right; Abu Dujana RA accepted it and, in his turban of death, walked the ranks to embolden the Muslims. Abu Sufyan first tried to detach the Ansar from the Muhajirun by message, then sent Abu Amir al-Rahib (a former Aws leader who had rejected Islam) to appeal to his own people directly; the Ansar refused both approaches and renamed him Abu Amir al-Fasiq. The mubaraza opened with Talha ibn Abi Talha of Banu Abd al-Dar, the Quraysh standard-bearers, being struck down by Ali ibn Abi Talib RA: Ibn Ishaq counts him among those Ali RA killed, while another report says Ali RA left him when he begged by the ties of kinship, and he died of his wounds. The Muslim charge that followed broke the Quraysh ranks and killed the flag-bearers of Banu Abd al-Dar one by one until their standard fell. The story of Usayrim of Banu Abd al-Ashhal, who had remained the sole pagan of his subtribe for three years, belongs to this same morning: he embraced Islam after Fajr and was martyred before Zuhr, without having prayed a single rak'ah. After the Quraysh broke and fled in this initial phase, the sahaba grew complacent enough to lay down their arms and begin collecting the ghanima; the rules for dividing spoils had not yet been fully finalized, and many assumed the battle was over. The fifty archers atop Jabal al-Ruma, watching the ghanima being gathered below with no word from the Prophet ﷺ for the better part of an hour, fell into their own dispute over whether to join in; over time all but ten, led by Abdullah ibn Jubayr RA, descended from the position despite his refusal to move without the Prophet ﷺ's own command. Khalid ibn al-Walid, who had been carefully watching rather than fleeing outright, saw his opening: he worked his way in from a low-lying ditch on the army's right hidden from ground level, overran the ten remaining archers, and brought his cavalry, an estimated 100 to 150 strong, around Jabal al-Ruma to fall on the Muslims from behind, cutting the army in two: the Prophet ﷺ's own camp on one side, and the scattered, largely unarmed Muslims still collecting spoils on the other. It is said that the Prophet ﷺ was the first to see Khalid's counterattack coming and, at the risk of giving away his own location to an enemy targeting him personally, stood and shouted a warning to the Muslims. The surprise attack threw the Muslim ranks into chaos; many fled without recognizing friend from foe, and in the confusion, which the sources attribute to shaytan's instigation, some Muslims struck down other Muslims in the melee, among them al-Yaman RA, the father of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA, killed by his own side before Hudhayfah's shouts to stop could be heard; Hudhayfah said, "May Allah forgive you", and when the Prophet ﷺ wanted to pay the blood money, Hudhayfah gave it as alms to the Muslims. As the Muslim ranks split, the Prophet ﷺ found himself down to a guard of nine (Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA and Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA among the Muhajirun, and seven of the Ansar, among them, by Ibn Ishaq's account, Ziyad or Umarah ibn al-Sakan; al-Bara' RA's report in al-Bukhari says twelve) while the rest of the army, believing the battle already won, was scattered across the field. One by one the Ansar of that small group went out to intercept the approaching enemy and were killed, until only Sa'd, Talha, and the Prophet ﷺ himself remained, retreating to a narrow crevice in the mountainside barely wide enough for one or two people. Sa'd and Talha fired volley after volley from the opening (the Prophet ﷺ, it is said, gathering spent arrows off the ground and handing them to Sa'd to reuse) while Abu Talha al-Ansari RA begged him not to raise his head for fear of a stray arrow, offering his own neck and chest in place of the Prophet ﷺ's (al-Bukhari). It was here that the Prophet ﷺ addressed Sa'd with words Ali RA said he never heard him use for anyone else, though al-Zubayr RA reports him saying the same to him at Qurayzah, "Fidaka abi wa ummi (may my mother and father be given in ransom for you)! Shoot, O Sa'd, shoot!" When an attacker reached Talha and severed several of his fingers, Talha cried out in pain; the Prophet ﷺ told him that had he said "Bismillah" instead, the angels would have carried him up before everyone's eyes. Qatada ibn al-Nu'man al-Awsi RA, took up the Prophet ﷺ's bow after he had shot with it until it broke, and his eye was struck so that it hung upon his cheek; the Prophet ﷺ put it back in its place with his hand, and it became his better and keener eye (Ibn Ishaq). In this same period the Prophet ﷺ was wounded several times: a stone thrown by Utbah ibn Abi Waqqas broke his lower right incisor and injured his lip; Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri wounded his forehead; and Ibn Qami'ah struck his cheekbone, driving two rings of his helmet into his cheek (Ibn Hisham, from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA). Streaming blood, 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 reported seeing two men dressed in dazzling white fighting fiercely at the Prophet ﷺ's side that day whom he never saw before or since. Around this same time, Ubay ibn Khalaf, a Makkan who had long vowed to kill the Prophet ﷺ on a horse he was fattening for that purpose, charged him directly; the Prophet ﷺ, reminding him of his own earlier reply that he would be the one to kill Ubay instead, took a spear from a companion and struck him in the neck. The wound looked minor, but Ubay himself insisted it was fatal, and he died on the road home before reaching Makkah. After cutting down Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA, his killer Ibn Qami'ah thought he had killed the Prophet ﷺ and shouted that Muhammad ﷺ was dead, and the false report spread fast enough to demoralize part of the Muslim line, some of whom sat down mid-battle, before Anas ibn al-Nadr RA rallied a group of them back into the fight asking what they would do with life after him and telling them to die as he had died, and fought on until he was killed, disfigured beyond recognition except by his sister identifying the tips of his fingers. It was Ka'b ibn Malik RA who first recognized the Prophet ﷺ by his eyes and moved to announce he was alive; the Prophet ﷺ signed to him to be silent rather than give away his position; a later report adds that the two 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; finding the two rings of his helmet still lodged in his cheek, Abu Ubaydah is reported to have pulled each free with his own teeth rather than risk further injury with his hands, losing a tooth each time. As the fighting wound down, Abu Sufyan called out from a distance asking whether Muhammad ﷺ was still alive, and then whether Abu Bakr RA or Umar RA were; the Prophet ﷺ told the Muslims not to answer him. When Abu Sufyan declared victory and credited the idol Hubal, the Prophet ﷺ had the Muslims answer this time, "Allah is mightier and more worthy of honor", unwilling to let shirk against Allah go unchallenged even while staying silent about his own survival. Abu Sufyan swore the two sides would meet again the following year at Badr, and the Quraysh withdrew. Surveying the field afterward, the Prophet ﷺ found Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, his uncle, mutilated by Hind bint Utbah RA (who had cut open his stomach and taken his liver in revenge for her own father and brother killed at Badr) and wept, vowing to mutilate thirty Quraysh bodies in return before Allah revealed Qur'an 16:126 limiting retaliation to no more than what was suffered, after which he forbade mutilation outright. On the way back, Hamnah bint Jahsh RA met the army and was told in turn of the deaths of her brother Abdullah, her uncle Hamzah RA and her husband Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA. Wailing broke out across Madinah for the dead before the Prophet ﷺ, hearing it for Hamzah RA's sake, allowed it once and then forbade it thereafter as a general rule. The martyrs (reported as around seventy, most of them Ansar) were buried two, three, or four to a grave in the clothes they had died in, without ghusl, and by Jabir RA's report in al-Bukhari without funeral prayer (a report from Ibn Abbas RA in Ibn Ishaq says he prayed over Hamzah RA and the others), on the Prophet ﷺ's instruction to bury whoever had memorized the most Qur'an first; only one prisoner was taken the entire battle, Abu Azzah al-Jumahi, executed for breaking a previous pardon on condition he never fight the Muslims again. Before that, the Prophet ﷺ had sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to follow the Quraysh, and he found them riding their camels and leading their horses, a sign they were making for Makkah. The next morning, Sunday the 16th, the Prophet ﷺ called out those who had fought the day before, wounded as they were, and led them to Hamra al-Asad, about eight miles from Madinah, where they stayed the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Sometime before or during this period, accounts differ on when he told it, the Prophet ﷺ recounted a dream to the sahaba: he had seen his own sword break in his hand, then return whole; and he had seen cattle, which he took as a good sign. He later explained the broken sword as the setback the Muslims suffered, its mending as the victory and unity Allah would restore to them afterward, and a third image, of himself wearing armor, as pointing to Madinah itself as their protection.

After the Banu Nadir's attempt to assassinate him, the Prophet ﷺ sent Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA to deliver an ultimatum: leave Madinah within ten days, or be killed. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, their long-standing ally from the Aws and Khazraj, secretly promised the Banu Nadir his full support and 2,000 reinforcements from the Ghatafan, and vowed he would fight alongside them or go into exile with them if needed. Trusting these promises, Huyayy ibn Akhtab persuaded the tribe, over the objection of some of their own people, to defy the ultimatum and stay. The same day, the Prophet ﷺ marched roughly 700 Muslims to their fortresses and laid siege. During the siege he also went to the Banu Qurayza to renew their oaths under the Constitution of Madinah and confirm they would not join the Banu Nadir; they agreed to remain neutral. Abdullah ibn Ubayy never sent the promised help. As the siege dragged on for seven to ten days, the Prophet ﷺ ordered some of the Banu Nadir's date palms cut down and burned to break their resolve, which distressed them greatly and also unsettled some of the sahaba until the Qur'an affirmed it was permitted. With no help coming, the Banu Nadir agreed to an unconditional surrender. The Prophet ﷺ allowed them to leave in exile with as much of their property as their camels could carry, forbidding only weapons; out of spite, many of them tore down their own houses rather than leave them intact for the Muslims. Two or three individuals accepted Islam and were allowed to keep their possessions and remain. The land, orchards, and property left behind were fay' (property gained without battle), which the Prophet ﷺ distributed mainly among the landless Muhajirun so that the Ansar and Muhajirun would be more economically equal, along with three landless Ansar who had fought in a number of battles.

The moment the Muslims returned home from Khandaq and the Prophet ﷺ had barely set down his sword, Jibril AS arrived (the angels, he said, had not yet put theirs down) and relayed Allah's command to march on the Banu Qurayza at once. The Prophet ﷺ sent a crier through Madinah: "Whoever hears must obey! And nobody is allowed to pray Asr except at Banu Qurayza!" As the sahaba set out in batches, some were caught by sunset before arriving; unable to agree whether the order meant to hurry or to be taken literally, some prayed Asr where they were and others delayed it until they reached the Banu Qurayza, missing its time. When told of this on arrival, the Prophet ﷺ criticized neither group, a report that "both of you have done correctly" is not authentic, but his silence itself became a foundational example for later scholars of how equally qualified mujtahids may reach different, even mutually exclusive, conclusions without either being blameworthy, even though only one can match the truth in Allah's sight. Ali ibn Abi Talib RA reached the massive fortress of the Banu Qurayza first and planted the Prophet ﷺ's flag outside it. When the Prophet ﷺ arrived, Ali RA tried to steer him away so he would not hear the insults the Banu Qurayza were hurling at him; the Prophet ﷺ set his camp directly in front of the fortress anyway, and called out, "O group of the Jews! Didn't Allah humiliate you? Hasn't Allah's anger come upon you?" He then called them to surrender, and they refused. The siege lasted 25 days. Inside were Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the exiled leader of the Banu Nadir who had chosen to stay and face their fate rather than risk Abu Sufyan's wrath, and Ka'b ibn Asad, chieftain of the Banu Qurayza. As supplies dwindled, Ka'b ibn Asad offered his people three choices in turn: accept the Prophet ﷺ's message (for they all knew, and none denied, that he was the very messenger foretold in their own scripture); kill their own families and make a desperate final sortie; or break their own Sabbath to launch a surprise attack on a Saturday. His people refused all three, the last refusal on the grounds that Allah would punish them for breaking the Sabbath, provoking Ka'b to despair of them ever making a decision. The Banu Qurayza twice sent messengers offering to leave with their wealth, as the Banu Nadir had been allowed to; the Prophet ﷺ refused both offers, insisting on nothing less than unconditional surrender. On the 25th day the Banu Qurayza surrendered. The Aws, who had been allied with the Banu Qurayza since Jahiliyyah, pleaded with the Prophet ﷺ to be as merciful to their ally as he had been to the Khazraj's ally, the Banu Qaynuqa. The Prophet ﷺ let the Aws choose their own judge, and named Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, their own leader, who was still dying of the wound he had taken at Khandaq. Carried to the fortress on a mule while the Aws pressed him for mercy the whole way, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA pronounced: their fighting men were to be executed, their property distributed, and their women and children taken captive. The Prophet ﷺ declared that Sa'd had decreed the very judgment of Allah from above the seven heavens. Trenches were dug on land belonging to a woman of the Banu Najjar, and the men of the Banu Qurayza were executed in batches. Seerah sources vary widely on the toll: Ibn Ishaq, the most authoritative, gives 600-700, noting some exaggerate to 800-900, while a hadith in Musnad Imam Ahmad gives around 400. No children were executed, and only one woman was put to death, for having killed a Muslim during the siege by dropping a grinding stone on him from the fortress wall. Some of the Banu Qurayza had already embraced Islam and were spared, as was anyone a Muslim vouched for out of a personal debt of honor. Considerable booty was taken (some 1,500 swords, 1,500 shields, 2,000 spears, 300 suits of armor, and large numbers of livestock) and it was around this time that the shares of ghanima were fixed, with a cavalry rider receiving three shares (one for his mount, two for himself) against one for a man on foot, with a fifth reserved for the Islamic state per Surah al-Anfal.

A sariyya of 30 sahaba under Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA was sent to al-Qurta' against the tribe of Banu Bakr ibn Kilab in Shawwal of 6 AH. On the return journey the sahaba captured, without realizing it, Thumamah ibn Uthal, the chieftain of the Banu Hanifa and a public enemy of the Prophet ﷺ who had vowed to kill him. The Prophet ﷺ, who had earlier prayed for control over Thumamah, recognized him and ordered he be treated with honor. Thumamah was held for three days in the Prophet ﷺ's masjid, given the Prophet ﷺ's own food, and questioned each morning. On the third day he was released, and he returned shortly after to declare his shahada. He then performed umrah in Makkah, openly proclaiming his new faith, and afterward cut off the grain supply from the Najd to the Quraysh until the Prophet ﷺ, moved by Abu Sufyan's appeal, wrote to Thumamah asking that the supply resume.

A sariyya (raiding expedition) of 30 Sahaba led by Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA against the tribe of Banu Bakr ibn Kilab at al-Qurta', most likely in the month of Shawwal, 6 AH. The expedition succeeded. On the return journey, the Sahaba encountered a small, unguarded convoy and, sensing something amiss, brought its members to the Prophet ﷺ as prisoners without realizing whom they had captured; it turned out to be Thumamah ibn Uthal, chieftain of the Banu Hanifa, whose subsequent captivity and conversion became its own well-known story.

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.