and retreat, despite the small number of Muslims facing them, while their aim (1) was to seize the land and annihilate its people.

In the same way those earlier hosts had camped on the outskirts of Medina, directly across from the believers (2). The siege during the Year of the Trench lasted—according to one report—a little over twenty nights, and according to another, twenty nights exactly.

This enemy crossed the Euphrates on the seventeenth of Rabiʿ al-Thani. His first withdrawal came when he turned back from Aleppo, after their chief commander Ghazan pulled back with his troops on Monday, the eleventh or twelfth of Jumada al-Ula (3), the very day the army—the army (4) of the Muslims—entered protected Egypt. The daʿi met them there and addressed them concerning this matter.

When Allah cast into the believers’ hearts the concern and resolve He willed, He simultaneously cast into the hearts of their enemies dread and the impulse to withdraw.

In the Year of the Trench there had been biting cold and a fierce, ominous wind through which Allah drove the Confederates from Medina, as He, exalted is He, says: “So We sent against them a wind and forces you did not see” (Qur’an 33:9).

In this year (5) Allah has sent even more snow, rain, and cold than is usual, unlike most years.