to storm the fortress, but he replied, “I do not think we shall take it, nor have we been given leave to do so.”

ʿUrwah adds: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then ordered the Muslims that each man cut down five date palms or five vine-stems from their vineyards. ʿUmar came and said, “Messenger of Allah, the trees are still sound; their fruit has not yet been eaten.” He therefore instructed them to cut only those whose fruit had already been consumed, one after another, and he dispatched a herald to announce: “Whoever comes out to us is free.”

Ibn Isḥāq relates: ʿUrwah ibn Masʿūd and Ghaylān ibn Salamah were present at neither Ḥunayn nor the siege of al-Ṭāʾif; they had gone to Jurash to learn the construction of battering-rams and catapults.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then travelled by way of Nakhlah to al-Ṭāʾif, built a mosque there, and prayed in it. Some of his Companions were killed by arrow-fire, and the Muslims could not breach their wall, for it had been shut against them. The Prophet ﷺ besieged them for a little over twenty nights, accompanied by two of his wives, one of whom was Umm Salamah bint Abī Umayyah. After Thaqīf embraced Islam, Abū Umayyah ibn ʿAmr ibn Wahb built a mosque upon the spot where the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had prayed. In that mosque there was a pillar which, so they say, the sun never touched on any day without a creaking (naqīḍ) being heard—the word naqīḍ denotes the creak of wooden litters.

Yūnus ibn Bukayr—through Hishām ibn Sinbar, Qatādah, Sālim ibn Abī al-Jaʿd, and Maʿdān ibn Abī Ṭalḥah—from Abū Najīḥ al-Sulamī—said: We besieged the fortress of al-Ṭāʾif with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and I heard him say, “Whoever scores a hit with an arrow will gain one rank in Paradise.” That day I hit with sixteen arrows. I also heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, “Whoever shoots an arrow in the path of Allah, it is equivalent…"