The Massacre of the Banu Qurayzah

According to the traditional Islamic sources, in 627 AD as a result of the Battle of the Trench and the betrayal of the Muslims by the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza, the Muslims under the direct military command of the prophet Muhammad laid siege to the Banu Qurayza compound. After a siege of around 2 weeks, depending on the source, the Jews of Banu Qurayza surrendered and entrusted their fate to a trusted intermediary from the Muslims of the tribe of 'Aws, Sa'd bin Mu'adh. Sa'd bin Mu'adh, however, claiming to be following the law of the Torah itself, advised Muhammad to slaughter the men folk of the tribe and sell the women and children into slavery. Muhammad took this advice and as a consequence between 400 and 900 prisoners of the tribe were slaughtered, many in front of their families, and the rest of the tribe were sold into slavery. The event is well attested to in the Islamic historical tradition, and has served as the basis for multiple rulings throughout history dealing with the treatment of captured non-Muslims by Muslim military forces.

Background

According to ibn Ishaq, Muhammad's constant aggressive raids and warmongering against the Meccans had driven them, in alliance with the Jewish tribes he had expelled from Yathrib and the north Arabian tribe of Ghatfan, to put an end to him and his movement once and for all. The three original Jewish tribes of Medina, the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qaynuqaa', and the Banu Qurayza, had seen their number dwindle to one as Muhammad had expelled the Banu Nadir and the Banu Qaynuaqaa' from Medina on different pretexts. Meanwhile their property, including their precious palm trees, had been seized by Muhammad and the Muslims. Together with the Meccans and the Ghatfan, the exiled Jewish tribes of Medina had formed an alliance and gathered an army whose numbers are given in the sira as being around 10,000 strong, including over 600 mounted horsemen against very few cavalry for the Muslims, and 7,000 stronger than the army which had defeated Muhammad at the Muslims at Uhud. Muhammad at this time could call on a force of only around 3,000 men. Muhammad received word of their advance and began to make preparations. A Persian companion of the prophet named Salman, an apparent veteran of the Sassanid's many wars against the Romans, advised that when facing a great number of enemy horseman such as the confederate Jews and Meccans possessed, a good stratagem was to dig a defensive trench. It was decided to pursue this strategy ^[1]. The Banu Qurayza did not provide men to help but did provide entrenching tools and the Muslims strategy relied on the Banu Qurayza, whose fort lay in the rear of the Muslim defenses, not breaking their alliance with Muhammad and joining with the confederates. The strategy of the trench worked to win the battle against the Meccans and their allies, and the confederates were beaten back without many casualties for the Muslims, but this proved to be no end to the fighting.

Narrative from the Sira

The series of events leading to the destruction of the Banu Qurayza started during the battle of the trench. Unable to break the defenses of the Medinian Muslims, the Meccans sent an emissary from their Jewish allies, “the enemy of Allah, Huyayy bin Akhtab An-Nadri” ^[2], to the Banu Qurayza in an attempt to bring their aide and end the stalemate by attacking Muhammad and the Muslims in the rear of their defenses. According to ibn Ishaq, initially the leader of the Banu Qurayza Ka'b bin Asad al-Qurayzi did not even allow Huyayy bin Akhtab to enter the compound, but was goaded into doing so be Huyayy's accusation that bin Ka'b did not want to share his food. Ibn Ishaq does not make it clear how he knows this however he claims that the negotiation came to naught due to the Qurayza’s insistence that the Meccans offer hostages in order to assure they would not leave the field of battle till Muhammad was defeated (though they did in fact end up leaving without defeating Muhammad). According to ibn Ishaq, the Banu Qurayza after much "wheedling" agreed only to not aide the Muslims or to obstruct or fight the confederates. Ibn Ishaq offers as evidence of the Banu Qurayza’s perfidy an Isnad chain from Yahya bin ‘Abbaad bin ‘Abdullah bin Az-Zubayr with a story that a Muslim woman, Safiyah bint ‘AbdulMuttalib, who saw a Jewish scout of the Banu Qurayza reconnoitering a Muslim fort in preparation for an attack. She told the fort's commander Hassan of this and asked him to kill the scout, and when he refused she took a club and went out and beat the man to death^[3]. Other than this ibn Ishaq presents no evidence that the Jews of the Banu Qurayza were in league with the confederates. He does, however, relate that Allah “sowed discord” between the confederates and the Banu Qurayza, which resulted in the Meccans retreating without having defeated Muhammad or engaged in a coordinated attack upon the Muslims with the Banu Qurayza ^[4]

The battle of the trench being won, Muhammad and his men put their entrenching tools and weapons down to head home. According to the sira, though, Allah had other plans. The angel Jibreel appeared to Muhammad just as he had put down his weapon, and informed him that the battle was not yet over for the Jews of the Banu Qurayza still needed to be dealt with due to their treachery, mentioned above. Muhammad informed his men that they were not to pray the 'asr prayer until they reached the Banu Qurayza compound, meaning he wanted them to go there quickly. The Muslims lay siege to the compound for differing amounts of time depending on the source (ibn Ishaq claims 25 days before "Allah cast terror in their hearts"). The Banu Qurayza were told to surrender and accept Islam, something they swore they would never do. Despairing of their position, according to ibn Ishaq, they discussed three options: accepting Islam, killing their wives and children and engaging in a banzai-style attack against the numerically superior Muslim forces (perhaps, modern commentators have added, in emulation of their religious forbearers at Masada in Palestine), or engaging in a sneak attack on the Jewish Sabbath. The Jews of the Banu Qurayza found none of these options acceptable.

Unable to come to a decision and under siege for weeks, the Banu Qurayza asked to speak with Abu Lubaba, a man of the tribe of 'Aws, their allies. Abu Lubaba, when asked what the Banu Qurayza should do, advised them to surrender to the prophet, but at the same time raised his hand to his neck, indicating they would be slaughtered ^[5]. After he left, he felt that his action in telling the Banu Qurayza of their fate was a betrayal of the prophet, and he tied himself to a pillar to ask for Allah's forgiveness, an act that Muhammad approved of. Despite this warning, the Banu Qurayza surrendered to the Muslims the following day ^[6].

The tribe of 'Aws, allies of the Banu Qurayza from the time of jahilliyah, asked for mercy for them from the prophet. The prophet, not wanting to cause dissension in his ranks (oaths and alliances of loyalty were very important in tribal Arab society, as in the absence of courts and established governments the only guaranty of security and justice which could be obtained was the promise of protection from allies in the case of murder, family feuds or war), entrusted the fate of the Banu Qurayza to a trusted elder shaykh of the 'Aws, Sa‘d bin Mu‘adh, who had been mortally wounded during the battle and would in fact die a shortly after the slaughter of the Banu Qurayza. Once Sa'd bin Mu'adh had ascertained that both the Banu Qurayza and the prophet would abide by his judgement, whatever it be, he gave it without hesitation: the men of the Banu Qurayza were to be executed to the last, while the women and children should be sold into slavery. Sa'dibn Mu‘adh justified this decision as being from the Torah of the Jews itself. Ibn Ishaq does not cite the verse and chapter from the Bible but this is usually taken as a reference to the book of Deuteronomy 20:12-14:

Although modern Muslims cite this verse in justification of Mu'adh's verdict, it should be noted that neither Jewish nor Christian tradition understands this verse as a blanket rule for warfare, but rather as a specific command to the Jews under the command of Joshua who were fighting the pagan peoples of the Holy Land. It has not, generally, been used by either religion to justify the sort of massacre that took place in Medina in other historical contexts.

The prisoners, thus condemned, were kept in the house or compound of a Muslim woman d. Al-Harith of the banu al-Najjaar tribe. In the morning they were marched out to a trench which had been dug in the city's market, and executed by decapitation ^[7] . According to the sira of ibn Ishaq, one woman was amongst them. The other women and the children were given as sexual and labor slaves to the Muslims, with only boys who had not yet reached puberty being allowed to live. According to the sira, the haul of weapons and plunder was substantial, but Muhammad still sent some of the women and children to be sold in the Najd for more horses and weapons ^[8]. Muhammad as was custom received his pick of the loot including his pick of the females, a beautiful Jewish woman whose husband was decapitated named Rayhana, and the rest went to all the rest of the Muslims, with a Muslim on horse receiving 2 times the spoils of a foot soldier ^[9].

Tafsir Accounts

The famed mufassir ibn Kathir, drawing upon his own sources as well as many other classical commentators, in his commentary on sura 33 Al-Ahzab الأحزاب  "The Confederates" reaffirms many of the pertinent details from the sira narrative. In particular, ibn Kathir reads into the Quran's denouncement of the people of the book the perfidious Jews of the tribe of Banu Qurayza and their betrayal of the prophet:

He refers here to Surah 33:

ibn Kathir confirms that it was the angels themselves who implored Muhammad not to stop fighting:

Thus in the view of ibn Kathir the fate of the Banu Qurayza was the work of their own hand, a fate approved of and commanded by heaven itself. According to ibn Kathir, there fate was exactly what ibn Ishaq had described:

Accounts in Hadiths

The hadith of Bukhari provide witness for the incidents described by Ishaq. Bukhari confirms that it was the angels who decree that the war be carried to the Banu Qurayza:

Similiarly, he confirms that it is was Sa'ad who condemned them to their fate:

Incidentally, Bukhari mentions that even though ibn Sa'd was called upon to provide a fair judgement to the Banu Qurayza as a former ally, in fact he went to his death, caused by wounds suffered during the battle of the trench, wishing for death to the infidels:

Bukhari also mentions the fate of the Banu Qurayza, carried out in accordance with Sa'd's judgement:

Sunan Abi Dawud tells us exactly how it was determined, whether a male youth would be spared, based on whether he had had reached puberty or not:

Modern Views and Perspectives

In the clip above Muslim scholar Yassir Qadhi, well respected for his degrees from the Islamic University of Medina as well as from Yale, makes the argument that Muhammad was dealing with treachery and he had taken the maximum punitive actions against it. Qadhi argues that the prophet was justified in every step and showed as much restraint as necessary, being motivated purely by concerns on statecraft and practicality, not by malice. As he says, it is possible to accuse the prophet of being "harsh" but not of acting with malice towards the Banu Qurayza or the Jews in general, as this would not be "academically valid." Ibn Ishaq makes the same point:

Yasir Qadhi states that the punishment was "harsh" and yet it is sometimes necessary to be harsh. Yaqeen institute scholar Abu Amina Elias (Justin Parrott) makes the cases that killing the "fighting men" prisoners of the Banu Qurayza was an "act of self-defense" on the part of the Muslim community and cites Deuteronomy 20:12-14 to justify the actions of the Muslims, agreeing with ibn Ishaq that Sa'd was judging the Jews by their own law. He also claims that the prophet only sent his men their with arms to "defend themselves" and that the women and children of the Banu Qurayza were taken "into captivity" for their protection since all of their men folk had bee slaughtered ^[10]. Karen Armstrong, in her book A Short History of Islam, likewise claims  "The struggle did not indicate any hostility towards Jews in general, but only towards the three rebel tribes. The Quran continued to revere Jewish prophets and to urge Muslims to respect the People of the Book."^[11] These arguments are all echoes of the original arguments found in the material above. Ibn Ishaq claims that the Jews of Banu Qurayza posed a threat to the Muslims via their betrayal and does portray Muhammad as hesitating to decide their fate. ibn Ishaq even recounts of how "harsh" the punishment was:

Yet critics of these pro-Islam viewpoints have pointed out that the verse cited by modern Muslims from Deuteronomy to justify the extermination of the Banu Qurayza yet in fact this is not how the verse has been viewed in traditional Christian or especially Jewish scholarship. According to Jewish doctrine, these verses were revealed to him before the Israelites entered the Holy Land, specifically instructing them on how to deal with the people living there ^[12]. Morever, the claim that there was no apparent animus towards the Jews of Banu Qurayza on the part of Muhammad is contradicted by ibn Ishaq's account:

In mocking them as apes, Muhammad is here echoing the Qur'an, which claims that (some) Jews were turned into apes for violating the sabbath (Qur'an 50:60). Jewish anti-jihad scholar Andrew Bostrom points out that Muhammad took one of the most beautiful Jewish women of the Banu Qurayza, Rayhanah, as his wife and that the Muslims benefited handsomely from the destruction of this tribe, so self-defense was clearly not the only concern. ^[13]. Abu Amina Elias's view that the Muslims took such women and children as Rayhana captive simply for their protection also cannot be true, as ibn Ishaq recounts that some of them were taken to the far-off region of the Najd to be sold for weapons and horses. Yasir Qadhi himself points out that the Banu Qurayza were offered freedom to live on were they to accept Islam, and according to the sira only their hard, petulant hearts which rejected Muhammad despite knowing he was a prophet of the Lord prevented them from allowing themselves to be saved by conversion to Islam. So clearly, at least in the eyes of the sirah, their Jewish religion did, in fact, have something to do with the pitilessness with which Muhammad dealt with them, going against Qadhi's point that the prophet acted without malice or religious animus according to the sources we have. Bukhari also mentions that the prophet commanded his men to abuse the Banu Qurayza with poetry, which was in ancient Arab times one of the premier ways of promoting enmity with an enemy (Muhammad ordered prophets who did this to him to be killed):

Problem with the Traditional Narrative

The narrative of the Banu Qurayza is an accepted part of Islamic law, and multiple Islamic jurists have cited it, including when ruling that certain populations of Jews and other non-believers be massacred. As such there is no question amongst orthodox Muslims that it happened ^[14]. Yet the historiography of the subject is not without its own problems.

Within the Islamic tradition, ibn Ishaq was frequently criticized for giving too much weight to Jewish stories and being biased in general in his retellings of certain events. Malik ibn Anas accusses ibn Ishaq of being a "liar" for listening to "Jewish stories" ^[15].

Modern scholarship has cast much more serious doubts on the scholarship of Islamic scholars working in the 8th century (2nd Islamic century) such as ibn Ishaq. As Fred Donner points out, one of the earliest documents we have from the nascent proto-Islamic movement in the Constitution of Medina  صحيفة مدينة also known as the Ummah Document or صحيفة الأمة. This remarkable document, preserved by the Islamic historian Al-Tabari, lays out a compact for the "believers" of Medina, an "ummah" or national community that includes the Jews as "believers" on the same level as the Arab believers. Fred Donner believes this document actually points to an early, occulted history of Islam in which Arab monotheists joined with Jews into one "ummah" under the command of Muhammad. Troublingly for the historical narrative, this document makes mention of many different Jewish tribes, but the main 3 tribes of the sira, the Banu Qurayza, the Banu Qaynuqaa', and the Banu Nadir are conspicuously absent. It is in fact the absence of these tribes which convinces scholars that the document must be very old despite being preserved only in the 9th-century works of Tabari, since a younger document would presumably would have been changed to agree with the established historical narrative. Donner mentions that many early 7th century mosques do not include the qibla facing towards Mecca, and concludes that this story of the massacre of the Banu Qurayza may have been invented or embellished in order to explain a much later break between the Jewish and Muslim communities ^[16].

Patricia Cronner and Michael Cook in their groundbreaking work Hagarism likewise report on an Armenian historian writing in the 7th century known as pseudo-Sabeous. This historian imputes the Arab invasions to a confederation of Jews and Arabs led by Muhammad himself, contradicting the Islamic narrative that Muhammad died before the invasion of Palestine and the Middle East. Pseudo-Sebeos likewise imputes to the Arabs and Jews a shared monotheism and brotherhood through their ancestry to Abraham and his wife Hagar ^[17]. If this account is to be believed, there could not have been any great massacre of the Jews by Muhammad as we has working with them when he invaded Palestine. Stephen Shoemaker in his work The Death of a Prophet adds further evidence to thesis of Crone and Cook, marshaling evidence from a wide variety of sources, almost all of which predate the first Islamic sources, that Muhammad himself was actually the leader of the believers when they entered Palestine and he died only after its conquest. In particular he calls attention to a Jewish apocalypse from the 7th century, the Secrets of Rabbi ben Shim'on, which seems to paint Muhammad as the redeemer of the Jews from the oppression of the Romans in the Holy Land. If this is to be believed, and this source predates every Islamic source we have, the massacre of the Banu Qurayza could not have taken place, since Muhammad, the leader of the invasion of Palestine, was seen as a savior of the Jewish people ^[18]. This would seem to indicate that the break between the Muslims and the Jews took place after his death, and would indicate that stories such as the massacre of the Banu Qurayza were fabricated in order to "back date" the break with the Jews to the prophet's own lifetime.

See Also

• List of Killings Ordered or Supported by Muhammad

Translations

• A version of this page is also available in the following languages: Azerbaijani, Bulgarian. For additional languages, see the sidebar on the left.

External Links

• What really happened to the Banu Qurayza - Collection of articles from Answering Islam

• Muhammad, the Qurayza Massacre, and PBS - Andrew G. Bostom, FrontPageMagazine

• Muhammad and Massacre of the Qurayza Jews - James Arlandson, American Thinker

• Massacre of the Banū Qurayẓa: A Re-Examination of a Tradition - M. J. Kister, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986): 61-96

References