days, yet the trench stood between them and any full-scale clash of the armies. Only a few light skirmishes took place between individual cavalrymen. Allah then arranged a number of factors that broke the idolaters’ spirit, and at last they pulled back to their own territory.

When they withdrew in disappointment, having gained none of what they had confidently expected, the Prophet ﷺ turned his attention to Banū Qurayẓa. They had sided with the idolaters—urging them to march on Medina, giving them direct support, and breaking the pact they had concluded with the Prophet ﷺ. He therefore laid siege to them, and they agreed to submit to the judgment of Saʿd ibn Muʿādh. Saʿd ruled that their fighting men be put to death and their women and children be taken captive.

During this campaign Allah revealed the opening passage of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb, from His words, “O you who believe, remember Allah’s favor upon you when hosts came against you, and We sent against them a wind and forces you did not see” (Al-Aḥzāb 9) down to “He made you heirs to their land, their homes, their wealth, and a land you had never set foot on. Allah has power over all things” (Al-Aḥzāb 27).

• Then, in the sixth year AH, the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions set out to perform the ʿumra of al-Hudaybiyya (the lesser pilgrimage). Although the Sacred House was normally open to everyone, the idolaters resolved to bar the Prophet from it. When he reached al-Hudaybiyya and saw that pagan zeal had seized them and that they were bent on fighting, he entered into a truce with them—both to prevent bloodshed in Allah’s Sacred House and because of the many benefits the accord entailed.

The treaty stipulated that the Prophet ﷺ would return that year without entering the Sanctuary, would make up the pilgrimage the following year, and that warfare between the two sides would cease for ten years. Most of the Muslims disliked this agreement, imagining that it diminished them, unaware of the many advantages it actually held.