After Uhud the situation of the Muslims was precarious. Seventy of their best had fallen. The Prophet ﷺ himself had been wounded. The hypocrites under Abdullah ibn Ubayy dared to say openly that if the people had followed his counsel the dead would still be alive. The Quraysh had left the battlefield without attacking Madinah, but no one doubted that they would return. And the Jewish tribes in and around Madinah, who had signed the Charter of Madinah, began to show their hostility more openly now that the Muslims appeared weakened.
The period that followed Uhud and preceded Al-Khandaq is sometimes passed over quickly in the Seerah. That is unjust. These were years in which the Islamic community was tested from all sides: from without, by military attacks and treachery; from within, by hypocrisy and doubt. They were years that shaped the Companions ﵃ in a way that neither Badr nor Uhud alone could have done.
The Aftermath of Uhud
The day after Uhud the Prophet ﷺ sent his men back into the field. Many were wounded. Some had hardly slept. But the report that the Quraysh might be planning to return to Madinah forced him to act. He called his men to march out and made it a condition that only those who had fought the previous day might take part.
This was a deliberate choice. The message to the Quraysh and to the wider region had to be that the Muslims, despite their losses, were not broken. That they were ready to fight again at once. Abu Sufyan, on receiving word that the Prophet ﷺ was following him, decided to return to Makkah. The confrontation he might have sought, he postponed.
The expedition came to be known as Hamra al-Asad. It lasted only a few days but had an unmistakable psychological effect. A community willing to march out again the day after a heavy battle is not a community on its knees.
Raji’: The First Betrayal
In the fourth year after the Hijra, representatives of the tribes Adhal and Qarah came to the Prophet ﷺ with a request. They claimed there were people among them who were interested in Islam, and asked whether the Prophet ﷺ would send a number of his Companions ﵃ with them to teach them. It was a request the Prophet ﷺ had often granted, for the spreading of knowledge was one of the pillars of his da’wah.
He sent six men with them, under the leadership of Marthad ibn Abi Marthad ﵁. When they reached the well of Raji’, the trap was sprung. The men of Adhal and Qarah called upon the neighbouring tribe of Khuzayl, and a group of armed men surrounded the six Companions ﵃.
Three of them refused to surrender and fought to the death. Three others were taken prisoner and handed over to the Quraysh in Makkah in exchange for money. One of the captives, Khubaib ibn Adiy ﵁, was held by the Quraysh until they found a suitable occasion for his execution. They brought him outside Makkah and offered him a choice.
The executioner asked him whether he would wish that Muhammad ﷺ stood in his place and he himself were free. Khubaib ﵁ replied that he would not wish for the Prophet ﷺ to be pricked even by a thorn while he himself sat safely at home. Just before his execution he asked permission to pray two rak’ahs. This was granted to him. He prayed calmly and completely, and afterwards said that he had only feared people might think he was prolonging the prayer out of fear of death. He was then crucified and killed.
Khubaib ﵁ was the first in Islam to establish the practice of praying two rak’ahs just before execution: a practice taken up after him by martyrs.
Bi’r Ma’unah: The Greatest Disaster
What had happened at Raji’ was a painful blow. But what took place shortly afterwards at the well of Ma’unah surpassed everything the Muslims had until then experienced in terms of loss in a single incident.
Abu Bara Amir ibn Malik, a leader of the tribe Amir ibn Sa’sa’a, had visited the Prophet ﷺ in Madinah. He had not accepted Islam but stood favourably disposed toward it. He asked the Prophet ﷺ to send a group of Companions ﵃ to Najd to teach the people there, and pledged them his protection. The Prophet ﷺ hesitated, for he did not trust the people of Najd. But Abu Bara insisted, and the Prophet ﷺ sent seventy men.
These were not ordinary men. They were the best Quran reciters of Madinah, men who by day gathered firewood to provide for their livelihood and by night devoted themselves to prayer and the study of the Quran. The Prophet ﷺ called them the Qurra, the reciters.
When they reached the well of Ma’unah, they sent a messenger with a letter from the Prophet ﷺ to Amir ibn al-Tufayl, the nephew of Abu Bara. Amir ibn al-Tufayl did not read the letter but killed the messenger on the spot. He then called upon his own tribe to attack the seventy Companions ﵃. His tribe refused, on account of the protection that Abu Bara had pledged. Amir ibn al-Tufayl thereupon called upon other tribes of the region, and they surrounded the seventy Muslims at the well.
The Companions ﵃ refused to surrender. They fought until only two of the seventy remained. One of them, Ka’b ibn Zayd ﵁, survived gravely wounded and later died at Al-Khandaq. The other, Amr ibn Umayyah al-Damri ﵁, was taken prisoner and later released.
Amr ibn Umayyah returned to Madinah and brought the news. The Prophet ﷺ was so deeply struck by the loss that his Companions ﵃ said they had never seen him grieve like that before. For forty days, in every Fajr prayer, the Prophet ﷺ prayed the qunut and beseeched Allah ﷻ to bring justice upon the tribes responsible for this massacre.
The wound of Bi’r Ma’unah healed slowly. But it healed.
Banu Nadir: The Treacherous Plot
The second Jewish tribe of Madinah, the Banu Nadir, had signed the Charter of Madinah. They lived in strong fortresses on the south-eastern side of Madinah and were wealthy and influential. After Uhud they barely concealed their hostility toward the Prophet ﷺ.
The immediate cause of the conflict with the Banu Nadir was a visit by the Prophet ﷺ to their quarter. He had come to ask for their help in paying blood money, an obligation arising from the Charter they had signed together. They received him kindly and said they would help. While the Prophet ﷺ sat by a wall waiting, they devised a plan. A man would climb onto the roof and drop a great stone on his head.
Allah ﷻ revealed the plan to the Prophet ﷺ before it could be carried out. He stood up, said that he had to attend to something, and did not return. His Companions ﵃ who were with him followed him. Shortly afterwards the Banu Nadir realised that their plan had been uncovered.
The Prophet ﷺ sent a messenger to the Banu Nadir with the message that they were to leave Madinah within ten days because of their breach of the treaty. Abdullah ibn Ubayy secretly sent them a message that they should remain and that he would support them with two thousand men. They trusted his promise and refused to leave.
The support of Ibn Ubayy never came. The Prophet ﷺ besieged their fortresses. After several weeks, with no promised help in sight, the Banu Nadir surrendered. They were allowed to depart with whatever they could carry on their camels, except weapons. Some went to Khaybar in the north, others to Syria.
But their departure was not the end of their role in history. After the expulsion, their leader Huyayy ibn Akhtab travelled across the Arabian Peninsula with one purpose: to assemble a great coalition of tribes that would jointly attack Madinah and destroy the Muslims once and for all. The seed of Al-Khandaq was planted in the soil of the Banu Nadir’s expulsion.
Allah ﷻ says of them:
هُوَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أَخۡرَجَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ مِنۡ أَهۡلِ ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ مِن دِيَٰرِهِمۡ لِأَوَّلِ ٱلۡحَشۡرِۚ مَا ظَنَنتُمۡ أَن يَخۡرُجُواْ وَظَنُّواْ أَنَّهُم مَّانِعَتُهُمۡ حُصُونُهُم مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ فَأَتَىٰهُمُ ٱللَّهُ مِنۡ حَيۡثُ لَمۡ يَحۡتَسِبُواْ
He is the One Who drove out those who disbelieved among the People of the Book from their homes for the first gathering. You did not think they would leave, and they thought their fortresses would protect them from Allah. But Allah came upon them from where they did not expect.
Surah Al-Hashr: 2
The Trial from Within
While all of this pressed in on the community from outside, the threat from within remained. The hypocrites under Abdullah ibn Ubayy made use of every difficulty to sow doubt. After Uhud they had grown bolder. After Bi’r Ma’unah they whispered that the Prophet ﷺ was sending his own men to their deaths. After the siege of Banu Nadir they claimed that the harshness toward the Jews would destabilise the region.
But the real trial from within was subtler than the hypocrisy of Ibn Ubayy. It was the trial of the ordinary believer who had to keep his faith standing while the suffering piled up. Seventy scholars killed at Ma’unah. Companions betrayed and handed over at Raji’. Uhud still fresh in memory. The economic strain of a community continually on a war footing.
In this period, Allah ﷻ revealed both consolation and warning:
أَمۡ حَسِبۡتُمۡ أَن تَدۡخُلُواْ ٱلۡجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَأۡتِكُم مَّثَلُ ٱلَّذِينَ خَلَوۡاْ مِن قَبۡلِكُمۚ مَّسَّتۡهُمُ ٱلۡبَأۡسَآءُ وَٱلضَّرَّآءُ وَزُلۡزِلُواْ حَتَّىٰ يَقُولَ ٱلرَّسُولُ وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ مَعَهُۥ مَتَىٰ نَصۡرُ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ نَصۡرَ ٱللَّهِ قَرِيبٌ
Or did you think that you would enter Paradise while you have not yet experienced the like of those who passed before you? They were touched by hardship and adversity and were so shaken that the Messenger and those who believed with him said: “When will the help of Allah come?” Behold, the help of Allah is near.
Surah Al-Baqarah: 214
The Coalition Takes Shape
In the fifth year after the Hijra, Huyayy ibn Akhtab completed his diplomatic mission. He had managed to convince the Quraysh in Makkah, and Abu Sufyan agreed to a new campaign. He had won over the tribe of Ghatafan by promising them half of the date harvest of Khaybar. Smaller tribes joined out of self-interest, out of tribal pride, or because of debts they owed to the Quraysh.
The resulting army was of a scale the Arabian Peninsula had not previously seen in the struggle against the Muslims: ten thousand men. Some accounts speak of more. Against the seven hundred men with whom the Prophet ﷺ had fought at Uhud, this was a tenfold increase in enemy strength.
Madinah could not meet such an army in open ground. That was impossible. The question was not whether the coalition would come, but how the Muslims would survive when it did.
The answer to that question would come from a man who had not been born in Arabia, but whose knowledge of Persian warfare would change the course of history: Salman al-Farisi ﵁.