Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE PRINCE OF MEDINA t 79
extent that he allowed one of the Aws to determine their sentence.
His judgment was that the males of the Qurayza deserved death
and that the women and children should be sold into slavery. It
was done: between six hundred and eight hundred males of the
Qurayza were publicly beheaded in the main market of Medina,
and, if we are to credit the Life, Muhammad himself was the chief
executioner. The tribe’s real property was again divided among the
Muslims.
That was the end of the Jews of Medina, a not inconsiderable
part of the population, we can guess, though they had recently
been reduced to clientage to the paramount Arab tribes of Aws and
Khazraj. There is some evidence that they were the most literate
Medinese and in many cases the craftsmen of the settlement. The
Muslim newcomers appropriated the Jews’ property—their lands
and inventories—but not their skills. Yet they had little need for
the latter; an even more profitable windfall had come upon them.
The Lord of Arabia (628–632)
Later in 628, with Medina apparently in his control, Muhammad
conceived the notion of participating in the umra, the Meccans’
annual springtime religious festival. (The hajj was more “international”
in character and took place in the autumn outside Mecca).
He took with him the Migrants and Helpers, and in an effort to
swell their ranks, whatever nearby Bedouin might be persuaded to
go to Mecca. Though his intentions were said to be peaceful and
he brought livestock to sacrifice at the Kaaba (a practice discontinued
in Islamic times), we cannot know Muhammad’s actual intent
in this rather curious move. The Quraysh were not, in any
event, inclined to allow their implacable enemy and his followers
into the town. He got as far as a place called Hudaybiyya, where
he was forced to halt. Envoys were exchanged with the Quraysh,
and after a homely exchange of insults on both sides and a false
rumor that his close follower Uthman had been killed by the Quraysh,
an odd sort of agreement was worked out. Muhammad had
to agree to withdraw so that “none of the Arabs [that is, the Bed-