Banu Sahm

The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah had permitted either side to form alliances with outside tribes, with Hudaybiyyah's own terms extending automatically to any tribe that joined. The Khuza'a (kin to the Prophet ﷺ through his great-great-great-grandmother and bound to Banu Hashim by an old alliance of Abdul Muttalib's) took the side of the Muslims; the Banu Bakr took the side of the Quraysh. In the 8th year of the Hijrah, the Banu Bakr (with old blood-scores to settle, helped with weapons by the Quraysh, some of whom fought beside them secretly by night; Hassan ibn Thabit's verses lay the blame on Suhayl ibn Amr and Safwan ibn Umayyah) raided the Khuza'a by night at the pond of al-Watir, just outside the Haram boundary. Men of Khuza'a were killed and the rest driven into the sacred area, and when his own men reminded the Bakri leader Nawfal ibn Mu'awiyah that they were inside the Haram, he answered that he had no god that day. The Khuza'a chieftain Amr ibn Salim al-Khuza'i went to Madinah and recited a poem invoking the old treaty and the massacre in the same breath; moved, the Prophet ﷺ promised, "You shall be helped, O Amr ibn Salim." Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, sent to renegotiate on the Quraysh's behalf, found every door in Madinah closed to him (Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab RA both refused to intercede, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and his infant son Hasan could offer him nothing, and even his own daughter Umm Habiba RA would not let him sit on the Prophet ﷺ's bedding) and he returned to Makkah having secured nothing. The Prophet ﷺ called for a full mobilization without naming its destination, telling no one (not even Abu Bakr RA or Aisha RA) where the army was headed, and, by some reports, sending a small decoy party of eight men north toward Batn Idam to suggest Syria was the target. Then he told the people he was going to Makkah, and prayed, "O Allah, take eyes and ears from the Quraysh so that we may take them by surprise in their land." It was then that Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah RA (a Badr veteran, by the strongest opinion a mawla from Yemen whose family had no protecting tribe in Makkah) paid a mawla-lady of Banu Hashim to smuggle a warning letter to the Quraysh, hidden in her hair braids. News of it came to the Prophet ﷺ from heaven, and he told them where to find her; Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA overtook her caravan at Rawdatu Khakh outside Madinah. She denied carrying anything until Ali swore neither the Prophet ﷺ nor Jibril AS could have been mistaken and threatened to search her by force: at which point, asking them first to turn around out of modesty, she untied her hair and handed over the letter. Confronted, Hatib confessed and 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 love of the Quraysh. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA twice asked to execute him as a traitor; the Prophet ﷺ pardoned him both times, telling Umar that Allah may have already forgiven every participant of Badr, reducing Umar to tears, and declared, "Hatib has spoken the truth. Nobody should say anything about Hatib anymore except good." Allah then revealed the opening of Surah al-Mumtahanah (Qur'an 60:1), instructing the believers not to take His enemies as allies. The army moved with remarkable speed: it left Madinah on the 10th of Ramadan and reached the outskirts of Makkah on the 19th, nine days for a force that had swollen past 10,000 as the Muhajirun and Ansar marched to a man and allied tribes such as the Muzayna and Banu Sulaym joined along the way; barely six years after only 300 Muslims had fought at Badr. On reaching al-Kadid, between Usfan and Qudaid, the Prophet ﷺ broke his Ramadan fast and the army with him. At the valley of Juhfa the army encountered al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, the Prophet ﷺ's uncle, riding out from Makkah to make his own Hijrah with his family, unaware the Conquest was already underway; 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 who had long mocked and opposed him (the poet Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith ibn Abdul Muttalib RA and Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah RA, brother of Umm Salama RA) came out to seek an audience; the Prophet ﷺ at first refused to see them, saying that one had wounded his pride and the other had insulted him in Makkah, and only relented, moved, when Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith threatened with his young son at his side to go and die in the desert rather than be turned away. Both accepted Islam. At the final camping station of Marr al-Zahran, later known as Wadi Fatima, the army's camp fires lit up the plain. Al-Abbas RA, newly reunited with the army and anxious to spare his people needless bloodshed, went out that night to persuade the Quraysh to submit peacefully, and encountered three Quraysh and Khuza'a leaders out looking for news: 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, past Umar ibn al-Khattab RA, who wanted him executed on the spot; the Prophet ﷺ had Abu Sufyan spend the night in al-Abbas's tent, and the next morning, pressed by both men, Abu Sufyan reluctantly testified to the shahada. The Prophet ﷺ then declared that whoever entered the Haram, stayed in their own home, or entered the house of Abu Sufyan would be safe, and had al-Abbas show him the army marching past tribe by tribe. Abu Sufyan marveled at its scale and remarked 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, with the people of Makkah still unaware of what was upon them, a secrecy so complete over a force of more than 10,000 that it was remembered as nothing short of miraculous. The Prophet ﷺ divided the army at Dhu Tuwa: Zubayr ibn al-Awwam RA on the left, Sa'd ibn Ubadah RA with the Ansar, Khalid ibn al-Walid RA on the right with Aslam, Sulaym, Ghifar, Muzayna, Juhayna and other Arab tribes, and Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah RA leading the troops ahead of the Prophet ﷺ (Ibn Ishaq). 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 it to the Prophet ﷺ, who said that Sa'd was wrong: today Allah would honour the Ka'bah, and today it would be covered (al-Bukhari). By Ibn Ishaq's account the Prophet ﷺ had the banner taken from Sa'd and given to Ali RA; in al-Bukhari, 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!": to the fury of his still-pagan wife Hind bint Utbah, who 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 and, pressed on what one house could do for the whole city, spelled out the fuller terms of safety: the Haram, one's own home, or his own house. Entering Makkah from east and west, the Prophet ﷺ ordered that no one be killed unless attacked, naming only a small number of individuals excepted from this general amnesty. A handful of Quraysh under Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal, Safwan ibn Umayyah, and Suhayl ibn Amr made a brief, doomed stand in the alleys of the city; about twelve or thirteen of the Quraysh were killed, and two or three men of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA's cavalry, and resistance collapsed. The Prophet ﷺ then entered the city on his camel in armor, his head bowed so low it nearly touched the camel's back, reciting Surah al-Fath (Qur'an 48:1); he rode to the Ka'bah and performed tawaf on his camel, striking with his stick at the 360 idols around it, which fell, while reciting, "Truth has come, and falsehood has departed" (Qur'an 17:81). He then had Uthman ibn Talha bring the key, and cleared the Ka'bah of the idols and images inside, including one of Ibrahim AS with divination arrows, saying, "May Allah curse them! By Allah, neither Ibrahim nor Isma'il practised divination by arrows." (Al-Azraqi, quoting Ibn Ishaq, also reports pictures of Jesus and Mary.) He is also reported to have prayed inside the Ka'bah, with Bilal RA beside him; Bilal RA said he prayed two rak'ahs between the pillars, while Ibn Abbas RA reported that he did not pray inside. He once told Aisha RA that were it not for the Quraysh being new to Islam, he would have rebuilt the Ka'bah on Ibrahim AS's original foundation and lowered its door to the ground, a renovation he chose, even now, not to force 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," abolished every claim of Jahiliyyah except the custodianship of the Ka'bah and the feeding of pilgrims, and recited Qur'an 49:13 on the equality of mankind before Allah. Asked what he intended to do with them, the assembled Quraysh answered, "Good. You are a noble brother, son of a noble brother," and the Prophet ﷺ said, "Go your way, for you are the freed ones" (Ibn Ishaq); some tellings add Yusuf AS's words, "No blame on you today" (Qur'an 12:92). Ali ibn Abi Talib RA asked whether the Ka'bah's custodianship (sadana) and the pilgrims' feeding (siqaya) might both be given to Banu Hashim; the Prophet ﷺ instead called for Uthman ibn Talha and said, "Here is your key; today is a day of good faith" (Ibn Ishaq; other reports link it to Qur'an 4:58), a custodianship that has remained with his clan, the Banu Abd al-Dar, ever since. In the conquest's immediate aftermath, the Prophet ﷺ by one report permitted the Khuza'a until Asr to retaliate against the Banu Bakr, then forbade any further bloodshed in the Haram; when men of Khuza'a killed Ibn al-Athwa' of Hudhayl the next day, the Prophet ﷺ told them to stop, paid the blood money himself, ruled that after that a victim's family could choose retaliation or blood money, and stressed that Allah alone had permitted him, and only briefly, to fight within the sanctuary. Unusually among conquests in human history, no war booty, prisoners, or land were taken, and almost no fighting occurred at all. Of the whole city, only a small number of individuals were denied amnesty by name, and the lists differ: Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal, who fled to Yemen meaning to sail for Abyssinia, turned to Islam at the sea (in Ibn Ishaq because the ship's master demanded belief in one God, in other tellings during a storm), came back under the protection his wife Umm Hakim obtained for him, and later died a martyr fighting the Romans; Abdullah ibn Khatal, executed after clinging to the Ka'bah's curtain for protection, having killed the Muslim freedman who served him and turned murtad; Miqyas ibn Subaba, executed for assassinating a sahabi in revenge for his brother's accidental death at al-Muraysi'; Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi al-Sarh, the Prophet ﷺ's former scribe who had turned murtad and slandered the Qur'an's revelation, pardoned after his foster brother Uthman ibn Affan RA interceded; Ibn Khatal's two singing girls, Fartanah and her companion, of whom one was killed and the other fled and was later pardoned; Sarah, who had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah and was later pardoned; Habbar ibn al-Aswad, who had caused Zaynab bint Muhammad ﷺ's miscarriage, later repented and was forgiven; al-Huwayrith ibn Nuqaydh, executed by Ali ibn Abi Talib RA one of those who had insulted the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah (by another report, he had attacked Fatima and Umm Kulthum RA on their journey to Madinah); and Wahshi, the killer of Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA, who fled to Ta'if and converted about a year later. In the end, four of them were killed: Ibn Khatal, Miqyas, al-Huwayrith and one of the singing girls. After the khutbah, the Prophet ﷺ had Bilal ibn Rabah RA climb the Ka'bah and give Makkah's first-ever adhan, an Abyssinian former slave raised, literally and symbolically, above the Quraysh who had once tortured him. By a note of Ibn Hisham, sitting in the courtyard with al-Harith ibn Hisham and Itab ibn Asid, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb privately weighed in with remarks of Jahiliyyah about Bilal's honor; when the Prophet ﷺ later recounted each man's private words to him word for word as he left the Haram, al-Harith and Itab both accepted Islam on the spot. Al-Harith is the Companion who asked the Prophet ﷺ how revelation came to him (al-Bukhari, with no occasion given), and by one report he died a martyr at the Battle of Yarmouk (15 AH) after giving up water meant for himself twice over (to Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahal RA, who passed it to Ayyash ibn Abi Rabi'ah RA) all three dying before it could be drunk. The Prophet ﷺ then sat at Mount Safa, where the public dawah had begun two decades earlier, and took the bay'ah from the men of Quraysh in fulfillment of Qur'an 110:2. When Mujashi' ibn Mas'ud RA brought his brother to pledge for Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ said there was no migration after the Conquest, but 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 oath of the women of Quraysh per Qur'an 60:12, with Umar ibn al-Khattab RA physically administering it since the Prophet ﷺ never touched the hand of a woman not related to him. Hind bint Utbah, veiled and unrecognized, sparred with each condition in turn (objecting that women were asked more than men, admitting she had skimmed from Abu Sufyan's wealth (which he forgave on the spot), protesting that a free woman would never commit zina, and retorting over the ban on killing children that the Muslims had killed the Quraysh's sons as adults at Badr, a reply at which Umar laughed immoderately); the Prophet ﷺ had recognized her when Abu Sufyan spoke, asked, "Then you are Hind bint Utbah?", and went on with the pledge when she asked him to forgive what was past. Some of the Ansar, meanwhile, worried among themselves that the Prophet ﷺ's return to his own people meant he had grown soft toward them; revelation came to him, and he told them, "I migrated towards Allah and towards you. I will live with you and will die with you," and they wept (Muslim). Over the 19 days the Prophet ﷺ remained in Makkah, several notable figures held out before eventually accepting Islam. By a weak report, a young Fudala ibn Umayr, enraged at the defeat, hid a dagger meaning to assassinate the Prophet ﷺ during tawaf; confronted by name, he lied about his intent, and the Prophet ﷺ laughed, sought Allah's forgiveness, and placed a hand on his chest, after which, by his own account, no one was more beloved to him, and he accepted Islam on the spot. Safwan ibn Umayyah, who had joined the doomed resistance, fled to Jeddah intending to drown himself; Umayr ibn Wahb RA begged the Prophet ﷺ for his protection and caught up with him bearing the Prophet ﷺ's own turban as proof, talking him down from the ship and back toward Makkah. Safwan asked for two months to decide and was given four; his Islam came later, after Hunayn, by some reports after he lent the Muslims armour and was given a great share of its spoils. By a report not found in Ibn Ishaq, Suhayl ibn Amr, the Hudaybiyyah negotiator, locked himself in his house in terror and sent his Muslim son Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA to beg protection on his behalf, which the Prophet ﷺ granted at once, instructing the sahaba to receive him 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. And Abu Quhafa, Abu Bakr RA's blind and elderly father who had long opposed Islam, was brought to the mosque by Abu Bakr, as his granddaughter Asma bint Abi Bakr RA narrated; the Prophet ﷺ asked why he had not left the old man at home so that he could come to him there, Abu Bakr answered that it was more fitting for him to come, and the Prophet ﷺ stroked his chest, invited him to Islam, and told them to change the whiteness of his hair but avoid black. Umm Hani' bint Abi Talib RA (a daughter of Abu Talib, full sister of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, and cousin of the Prophet ﷺ) embraced Islam in this same stretch, having remained on her earlier faith until the Conquest itself. When two of her in-laws of Banu Makhzum fled to her and Ali RA swore to 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, the only surviving report of how many rak'ahs he himself prayed of that prayer. Among the last holdouts was Abdullah ibn al-Zab'ari of Banu Sahm, the official poet of the Quraysh, who had traded barbed verses with Hassan ibn Thabit RA for years and fled to Najran at the Conquest rather than face the Muslims. Stung by a single verse Hassan RA directed at him, he resolved to return and embrace Islam in some tellings despite his cousin's objections, telling 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, seeing him approach the Ka'bah from a distance, the Prophet ﷺ 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 a moving declaration of repentance for his years of poetic hostility, and the Prophet ﷺ told him, "Islam wipes away all that you have done in the past." He spent the rest of his life composing poetry in praise of Islam, for which, by one report, the Prophet ﷺ gave him his cloak. With no house of his own left in Makkah (Abu Talib had died a mushrik, and by 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) the Prophet ﷺ set up a tent at al-Hujun for his 19 days in the city, telling Usama ibn Zayd RA, who asked where they would stay, "Has Aqil left for us any house to lodge in?" He shortened his prayers throughout the stay, which Ibn Abbas RA put at nineteen days and Ibn Ishaq at fifteen nights. During these 19 days the Prophet ﷺ delivered short sermons teaching the new Muslims the basics of the religion. He reaffirmed the enduring sanctity of Makkah, declaring, "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, ending the Makkans' lucrative trade in idol-carving, establishing 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 the Conquest is where most place its final prohibition. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA, ill in Makkah (in al-Bukhari's main report, in the year of the Farewell Hajj), asked the Prophet ﷺ whether he could will away two-thirds, then half, of his wealth having only one daughter as heir; the Prophet ﷺ said "No, too much" to each until Sa'd proposed a third, prompting the ruling still followed in Islamic inheritance law that a bequest outside the Qur'anic heirs may not exceed one-third. When Usama ibn Zayd RA, beloved of the Prophet ﷺ, interceded for a noblewoman of Banu Makhzum caught stealing, the Prophet ﷺ became angry and answered, "Do you intercede in a case connected with Allah's prescribed punishments?", and in a sermon said that if Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad ﷺ, stole, he would cut off her hand; the woman later regularly visited Aisha RA, who relayed her requests to the Prophet ﷺ, showing that punishment does not brand a person a criminal for life. A dispute between Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA, claiming for his brother Utbah a boy born to the slave-girl of Zam'ah, and Abd ibn Zam'ah RA, who claimed the boy as his brother born on his father's bed, was settled by the Prophet ﷺ's verdict, "The boy is for the bed, and the stone is for the adulterer" (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ also sent mini-expeditions to destroy the remaining centers of idolatry: he commanded every household to destroy its own idols, and dispatched Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to destroy the great idol al-Uzza (mentioned in Qur'an 53:19) and by other reports another party to destroy Manat (Qur'an 53:20). At Nakhla, al-Uzza's Sulami guardian hung his sword on her and climbed the mountain, calling on her to strike Khalid down; Khalid destroyed her and returned (Ibn Ishaq). This achievement was marred by a mistake of Khalid ibn al-Walid RA, a very recent convert still unfamiliar with fiqh. Sent to invite the Banu Jadhimah to Islam, he met 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. When they did, saying "Saba'na, saba'na" because they could not say "Aslamna", he had them bound and killed a number of them (Ibn Ishaq; al-Bukhari). Abdullah ibn Umar RA and his companions refused his order to kill their captives, and Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA told Khalid he had done a pagan act in Islam; the two quarrelled and Khalid reviled him. On hearing the news, the Prophet ﷺ stood facing the Ka'bah, raised his hands, and declared, "O Allah, I am free from what Khalid has done," then sent Ali ibn Abi Talib RA with wealth to pay blood money and apologize to the bereaved families on his behalf. Hearing of 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 consolidated only Makkah's immediate vicinity; Ta'if, the fortified plateau city that had once expelled and stoned the Prophet ﷺ, remained beyond reach of the army and would be addressed in the campaigns that followed.