The first order of business when it was clear that the besieging army had left was to confront the large Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayzah, whose leader had torn up their treaty with Muhammad. I came to this story with the idea that the (spoiler alert) execution of its men was about refusing to give up their faith. It was, and it wasn’t. There are several details of the story that show a mindset that Americans can’t empathize with; it’s a story from another place and time.
As soon as the Muslims withdrew from the trench, Muhammad called them to start a siege of the Jewish fortress. I wish we knew how large these fortresses were, but I think there are no archeological remains. It was large enough that over a thousand people could live inside, withdrawing from the village houses many of them normally lived in. The siege lasted for about three weeks, and then the fortress ran out of food.
The Jewish leaders inside asked one of their former Arab allies to come in for a consultation. His name was Abu Lubabah. They asked him if Muhammad would probably lay on them the same doom as on the other Jewish tribes: banishment with what they could carry. Abu Lubabah knew that this time it was different, since their betrayal had made defending the trench much harder and might have resulted in deaths. Muhammad was probably going to declare the death penalty for treachery. But Abu Lubabah also knew that Muhammad would prefer that he tell them to surrender immediately. So he split the difference: he advised them to surrender, while making a gesture of throats being cut, to show the danger.
This is one of the puzzling, foreign-at-least-to-my-mind details. Abu Lubabah felt that he, too, had now betrayed the Prophet. He was overwhelmed with guilt and went to the mosque, where he tied himself to a pillar. He stayed there all day for two weeks, until Muhammad came to speak revelatory verses over him, assuring him of pardon and suggesting a large charitable donation to complete his repentance.
I don’t get it. All he had done was to tell the doomed men the truth. But this brings up another story: back when the Bani Nadir Jews had not yet been evicted, there was a man living in their fortress who had been writing poetry of sarcasm and satire against the Muslims and also passing military information to the Quraysh. Muhammad appointed an assassin to take him out. The assassin said, “I cannot get into the fortress to kill him. The only way is to lure him out, and I’ll need to deceive him. I know that Allah hates lies.” But Muhammad assured him that “war is deceit.” Once you are in a state of war, lying doesn’t count. And so the poet was assassinated.
Abu Lubabah was sent to do essentially the same thing, but he could not lie to his former friends. He chose his old friends over the Prophet. The Quran had often addressed loyalty problems very clearly: the only right way was to love both Allah and his Messenger more than any friend or family. It’s a very feudal way of defining loyalty, and now very foreign to our minds in a time when we have nation-states and loyalty to ideals, not to leaders.
In any case, the Banu Qurayzah Jews surrendered. As in past cases, there was a negotiation about their fate. The Arab tribe that had previously been their allies begged for mercy. Muhammad suggested that their own chief should make the decision, and they agreed. But their chief decreed execution for the Banu Qurayzah traitors, so that’s what happened. The men were divided from the women and children, who were sold or just appropriated into slavery. (One widow became Muhammad’s servant.) Their property was divided up among the Muslims from Mecca (including their excavating equipment). The execution was carried out by digging mass-grave trenches, then having groups of men sit on the edge, waiting for Ali and others to behead them.
But there was one more twist. About three Jews who chose to convert to Islam were spared. The rest had been aware of this option before their surrender and all during the process, and some of them believed Muhammad was truly a prophet. But all of them said they would not forsake the Torah. One old man who was not executed with them that day asked to be taken to the trenches, the next day, and was beheaded, because he did not want to be separated from his people.
Our modern minds want to separate religion, enemy status, and actual wrongdoing, but they did not separate them. Everyone knew that many of those executed or sold had not taken any hostile action, but they were part of a group who had. The reason conversion would alter things was that Islam’s doctrine stated submission to Allah was more important than any group membership, just as loyalty to the Prophet mattered more than caring about friends. Also, by choosing to identify with the group and die, they accepted collective guilt for the decision made by their chief. It’s all very strange to us.
But were ALL the men executed? The story says they were, but some scholars question that point. The Quran notes the incident in Surah 33, and its wording is equivocal:
And Allah drove back the disbelievers in their rage, totally empty-handed. And Allah spared the believers from fighting. For Allah is All-Powerful, Almighty.
And He brought down those from the People of the Book who supported the enemy alliance from their own strongholds, and cast horror into their hearts. You believers killed some and took others captive.
He has also caused you to take over their lands, homes, and wealth, as well as lands you have not yet set foot on. And Allah is Most Capable of everything. (33: 25-7)
Adil Salahi (Muhammad: Man and Prophet) reasons that some of the details given in the early biography by Ibn Ishaq actually contradict the idea of a mass execution. For example, he says the men were kept in a single house overnight before execution, which is not credible if hundreds of men were involved. Another early historian, Al-Waqidi, says that two of the Jews were sent to each of the tribes of Medina for them to execute, and that doesn’t add up to hundreds either.
Salahi’s conclusion for these and other clues is that the Jews believed to be at fault were executed, and the rest were sent away. Further, the Jews outside Medina were permitted to ransom some of their relatives. The smaller Jewish villages in the Yathrib oasis may have absorbed other Banu Qurayzah Jews. Medina and its farms were not “Jew-free” zones after this event, but the political and military power of the large clans had ended.
- Revelation: The Story of Muhammad, by Meraj Mohiuddin and Sherman Jackson.
- Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, by Martin Lings.