Siege of Medina, 627

In March 627, the Quraysh left Mecca with an army of 10,000. Muhammad could muster only about 3,000 men from Medina and his Bedouin allies. The Muslims barricaded themselves into their city. Medina was not difficult to defend. It was surrounded on three sides by cliffs and plains of volcanic rock and it was relatively easy to man the roads that ran through this difficult terrain into the oasis. It was from the north that Medina was most vulnerable, and Muhammad hit on an expedient, which his contemporaries found extraordinary.

They were to gather the crops from the outlying areas, so that the besieging army would find no fodder as they had last time, and then work to build a huge trench around the northern part of the oasis. The trench effectively stymied the whole massive offensive. The cavalry was completely useless because the horses cold not get over the trench.

The Quraysh leaders decided to try a more wily method and get the Jewish tribe in the south of the oasis, to let them into the city. When the Jewish tribe saw the huge army that the Quraysh had brought to Medina, they agreed to help the Quraysh.

It was always difficult to maintain a siege in Arabia; the Quraysh exhausted their provisions, and men and horses became hungry. Their resolve snapped when the weather suddenly changed. The Koran speaks of the drop in the temperature, the wind and rain as an act of God. When the Muslims peered over the top of the escarpment the next morning, the vast plain was entirely empty.

Judgement of the Jews

But what was Muhammad to do about the Jews who had brought the umma to the brink of destruction? This is a grim and horrible story and has hideous overtones for most of us today. Muhammad summoned the Muslim army to the village. When they heard Muhammad was advancing on their territory, the Jews duly barricaded themselves into their fortress and managed to hold out against the Muslims for twenty-five days. They knew that as unfaithful allies they could expect no mercy.

The Jews finally agreed to accept Muhammad’s judgment and opened their gates to the Muslim army. The Jews begged Muhammad to be merciful. Muhammad asked them if they would accept the decision of one of their own leading men, Sa’d, and they agreed.

Sa’d judged that all the 700 men should be killed, their wives and children into slavery and their property divided among the Muslims. Muhammad cried aloud: ‘You have judged according to the very sentence of Allah above the seven skies!’ Muhammad ordered a trench to be dug. They were tied together in groups and beheaded; their bodies were thrown into the trench. One woman was executed.

In Perspective

It is probably impossible for us to dissociate this story from nazi atrocities and it will inevitably alienate many people irrevocably from Muhammad. This was a very primitive society – far more primitive than the Jewish society in which Jesus had lived and promulgated his gospel of mercy and love some 600 years earlier. At the time of Muhammad, Medina was a mighty slayer of the enemies of God and who on one occasion massacred two hundred Philistines, castrated them and sent the grisly pile of foreskins to their king.

The Jews had nearly destroyed Medina. If Muhammad had let them go they would have swelled the Jewish opposition at Khaybar and would have organized another offensive against Medina. The summary executions impressed Muhammad’s enemies. Nobody seems to have been shocked by the massacre, and the Jews themselves seem to have accepted its inevitability. The executions sent a grim message to the Jews at Khaybar, and the Arab tribes noted that Muhammad was not afraid of any friends or allies of Mecca.