Daggers, Grain, and Grace
The gate groans shut on its iron hinges, and a man crouching in the dusk pretends to relieve himself against a stone wall. Inside the fortress of Khaybar, the man who bankrolled the siege of Madinah sleeps in his upper chamber—and five Khazraji operatives have come to ensure he never finances another army.
5-6 AH · 627 CE
The gate groans shut on its iron hinges, and a man crouching in the dusk pretends to relieve himself against a stone wall. In the fading amber light of Khaybar’s fortress town, the guard squints at the distant figure, barks a warning—hurry, the gate is closing—and the figure stumbles forward, slipping through the narrowing gap just before the heavy door seals the night inside. His name is Abdullah ibn Atik, and he has come to kill the man who bankrolled the siege that nearly destroyed Madinah.
This is the world after the trenches. The coalition has scattered, the Banu Qurayza have faced their reckoning, and the dust of Khandaq has barely settled—but the war is far from over. In the months between the great siege and the treaty that will redefine everything at Hudaybiyyah, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his community wage a quieter, more surgical kind of struggle: covert operations deep in enemy territory, caravan interceptions across the desert, and the unexpected capture of a pagan chieftain whose conversion will reshape the balance of power across Arabia. These are the minor expeditions—minor only in the sense that no great army clashes on an open field. In their consequences, they are anything but small.
The Financier of War
To understand why five men from the Khazraj tribe volunteered for a mission three days’ ride into hostile territory, one must follow the money.
Salam ibn Abi al-Huqayq was no ordinary tribal leader. A senior figure among the Banu Nadir—the Jewish tribe expelled from Madinah after their own betrayal—he had resettled in Khaybar, the fortified oasis settlement to the north. From behind Khaybar’s thick stone walls, Salam had done something the Muslims could not afford to ignore: he had financed the army that came to annihilate them. The tribe of Ghatafan, the bulk of the ten-thousand-strong coalition that besieged Madinah during the Battle of Khandaq, were essentially hired mercenaries. They fought not out of ideological conviction but for payment. And the man writing the checks was Salam ibn Abi al-Huqayq.
He had done it before. He would do it again. The message had to be sent: financing war against the Muslim community carried a price.
Scholarly Note
The assassination of Salam ibn Abi al-Huqayq is recorded in detail by Ibn Ishaq and is referenced in Sahih al-Bukhari (4039). The chronology places it after the conclusion of the Banu Qurayza affair and before the Battle of Khaybar—most likely around the sixth year of Hijra. Some scholars note parallels with the earlier killing of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf, another figure who used wealth and influence to organize military campaigns against the Muslims. Ibn Hajar discusses both incidents in Fath al-Bari.
The initiative came not from the Prophet but from the Khazraj themselves. There was an element of tribal pride at work: the Aws had carried out the operation against Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf, and the Khazraj felt the score was uneven. They wanted to demonstrate that they, too, could undertake dangerous missions for the sake of the community. But where Ka’b had lived barely an hour’s ride from Madinah, Salam was ensconced in Khaybar—a settlement of massive stone fortresses that the Arabs had never learned to breach. This would be no midnight raid on a nearby estate. This was infiltration behind enemy lines.
The Prophet granted permission with a single condition: do not kill any women or children. Whatever else happened, that line was absolute.
The Night Raid on Khaybar
Five men set out under Abdullah ibn Atik’s command. Ibn Atik was chosen for a specific and irreplaceable reason: he spoke the language of Khaybar’s inhabitants fluently. The Jewish communities of the Hijaz had developed their own dialect—most likely a Hebrew-Arabic hybrid—and Ibn Atik, raised among the mixed communities of Yathrib, could pass as a native speaker. In an operation that depended entirely on blending in, this was everything.
They reached Khaybar and camped outside the walls, studying the fortress, waiting for their moment. Ibn Atik’s plan was deceptively simple. At Maghrib, when the gates were about to close for the night—as was the custom in every fortified settlement of the era—he positioned himself within sight of the guard, feigning the posture of a man answering the call of nature. The guard, impatient, called out for him to hurry. Ibn Atik rushed forward and slipped through just as the gate swung shut behind him.
He was alone inside the fortress.
He must have hidden somewhere as darkness fell—the sources are tantalizingly sparse on this point. When night deepened and the settlement slept, he crept back to the gate, opened it, and admitted his four companions. Together, the five men navigated the interior of the fortress to Salam’s residence. The wealthiest man in a fortified settlement typically occupied the most prominent and elevated dwelling, and Salam’s quarters were accessed by climbing to an upper floor. They found their way in. They carried out their mission.
Salam’s wife saw them. She screamed—a piercing alarm that shattered the night silence. One of the companions raised his sword to silence her, then stopped. The Prophet’s command echoed in his mind: no women, no children. He sheathed his blade.
The five men fled.
In the scramble down from the upper room, Abdullah ibn Atik—whose eyesight was poor—missed a step on the ladder and fell. His foot broke or badly sprained; he could not walk. His companions hoisted him between them and ran, carrying their crippled leader through the narrow streets of a fortress now waking to screams and alarm cries. How they made it out of Khaybar alive, with one man unable to stand, while the settlement roused behind them—this the sources do not tell us. But they escaped without a single casualty beyond Ibn Atik’s shattered foot.
When they returned to Madinah and presented themselves before the Prophet, he asked Ibn Atik to extend his injured foot. The Prophet placed his hand upon it, and—by the permission of Allah—the foot was healed completely.
Targeted Killings in Historical and Modern Context
The operations against Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf and Salam ibn Abi al-Huqayq are among the most frequently cited incidents by critics of early Islamic history. It is worth placing them in their proper context.
In seventh-century Arabia, there was no distinction between civilian and combatant in the modern sense. Every adult male of fighting age was, by default, a warrior. There were no standing armies, no uniformed soldiers, no Geneva Conventions. Targeted killings of enemy leaders—particularly those who financed or organized military campaigns—were an accepted norm of warfare on all sides. Abu Sufyan himself had placed a bounty on the Prophet’s head and dispatched at least one assassin to Madinah, a Bedouin who arrived with a concealed dagger and was exposed only by divine revelation.
The operations were not unilateral acts of aggression but responses to specific, documented threats: Ka’b had actively incited the Quraysh to war and composed inflammatory poetry designed to mobilize armies; Salam had bankrolled the largest military coalition ever assembled against Madinah. Both men were, in modern terminology, strategic targets whose elimination served a clear military objective.
Contemporary Islamic scholars, including Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others, have noted that the Sharia provides a flexible framework that can adapt to international norms and treaties. If a Muslim state were to sign conventions prohibiting such operations, Islamic jurisprudence would accommodate that commitment. The principle remains: these were wartime measures undertaken by a legitimate authority against identified military threats, not precedents for individual vigilantism.
The Chieftain in the Mosque
While covert operations struck at Madinah’s distant enemies, an entirely different kind of encounter was unfolding closer to home—one that would demonstrate the power of gentleness over force.
Muhammad ibn Maslama (may Allah be pleased with him) had been dispatched with thirty companions on an expedition against the Banu Bakr ibn Kilab in the region of al-Qurta, during the month of Shawwal in the sixth year of Hijra. The military objective was straightforward, but the expedition’s lasting significance lay in what happened on the return journey: a chance encounter in the desert with a man named Thumama ibn Uthal.
Thumama was no ordinary traveler. He was the chieftain of the Banu Hanifa, one of the most powerful tribes in central Arabia—the Najd region. He was, in every sense, a king without a crown: wealthy, proud, commanding the loyalty of thousands. He was also, at that moment, traveling to Makkah to perform Umrah, accompanied by a minimal retinue. He had not expected to cross paths with a Muslim patrol in the middle of the desert.
The Muslim expedition captured him. The companions did not recognize who he was. But the Prophet did—informed, as the sources indicate, through divine revelation. His instruction was immediate and specific: treat him well.
There was no prison in Madinah. There were no holding cells, no detention facilities. So they brought Thumama to the only communal space available: the Prophet’s mosque. They tied him to one of the pillars—not as punishment, but to prevent escape—and there he sat.
For three days.
Scholarly Note
The story of Thumama ibn Uthal is recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari (4372) and Sahih Muslim (1764). Ibn Hajar discusses it extensively in Fath al-Bari, noting that this incident serves as one of the primary evidences for the permissibility of non-Muslims entering mosques—a position held by the majority of scholars. The Prophet also permitted the Christian delegation of Najran to perform their own worship inside his mosque, further supporting this ruling.
Each evening, the Prophet sent his own food to Thumama—not because his personal plate was finer than what the companions ate, but as a deliberate gesture of honor. When the Prophet’s servant arrived bearing the meal, the message was unmistakable: you are not a forgotten prisoner; you are a guest of the head of state.
Each morning, the Prophet visited Thumama and asked the same question: What do you have to say?
And each morning, Thumama gave the same extraordinary answer—the answer of a man who would not beg, who carried his dignity like armor:
“If you kill me, you kill a man whose blood carries great weight. If you show generosity, you show it to one who recognizes the favor. And if you want ransom, name your price.”
No pleading. No groveling. Just the calm assessment of a man who understood his own value and was prepared for any outcome.
The Prophet advised him to accept Islam. Thumama said nothing. The Prophet let him be.
The second morning: the same question, the same answer. The third morning: identical. Three days of the same exchange, and three days of Thumama sitting in the mosque, watching.
What did he see in those seventy-six hours? He heard the Quran recited in prayer—not as an argument directed at him, but as the living breath of a community at worship. He watched the Prophet lead the five daily prayers, saw the companions prostrate in unison, observed the quiet rhythms of a community built on devotion. He witnessed the Prophet’s conversations with his companions, the gentleness of his manner, the absence of tyranny or cruelty. No one lectured him. No one pressured him. He was simply there, absorbing the reality of Islam through his own eyes and ears.
On the evening of the third day, when Thumama gave the same answer for the third time, the Prophet turned to the companions and said: Release him. Let him go.
They cut his ropes. Thumama stood, walked out of the mosque, and disappeared behind a grove of date palms. He bathed—a detail the scholars note as evidence that the practice of bathing before embracing Islam was already well known even among pagans. Then he walked back into the mosque, and he spoke the words that changed everything:
“I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
Then he poured out his heart: “Ya Muhammad, I swear by Allah, there was no face on this earth more hateful to me than yours—but now it is the most beloved. There was no religion more despised to me than yours—but now it is the most beloved. There was no city I hated more than yours—but now it is the most beloved.”
Three days. That was all it took. Not the sword, not the dungeon, not the threat—but kindness, dignity, and the lived example of faith.
The Talbiya That Shook Makkah
Thumama explained that he had been on his way to perform Umrah when he was captured. Now a Muslim, he asked whether he should continue. The Prophet told him to proceed.
What happened next was historic. Thumama entered Makkah chanting the Islamic talbiya—the pilgrim’s declaration of monotheism:
“Labbayk Allahumma labbayk, labbayka la sharika laka labbayk. Innal hamda wan-ni’mata laka wal-mulk, la sharika lak.”
According to Ibn Ishaq, Thumama was the first Muslim to enter Makkah with this pure, unaltered talbiya. The Quraysh knew the talbiya well—it was an ancient formula—but they had corrupted it with a devastating addition: “illa sharikan huwa lak”—“except a partner who belongs to You.” They had woven shirk into the very fabric of pilgrimage. Thumama cut the corruption away and declared the oneness of God in the heart of the city that had exiled the Prophet.
The Quraysh were stunned. “Have you become a Sabian?” they demanded, using the contemptuous label they applied to anyone who abandoned their ancestral religion.
“No,” Thumama replied. “I have become a Muslim.”
Swords were half-drawn. Voices rose. But cooler heads prevailed: killing the chieftain of the Banu Hanifa would mean war with one of the largest tribes in Arabia. They let him go—but not before the confrontation turned ugly enough to ignite Thumama’s fury.
He swore an oath: Not a single grain of wheat will reach you from the north until the Prophet himself commands me to release it.
And he meant it. Thumama controlled the trade routes through central Arabia. The grain supply from the northern regions passed through Banu Hanifa territory. He shut it down completely. Weeks turned to months. The Quraysh’s stores dwindled. Other sources could not supply the volume needed. Eventually, the people of Makkah were reduced to eating ilhiz—a famine food made from camel’s blood and camel’s hair, consumed only in the most desperate circumstances.
Abu Sufyan, swallowing his pride but unable to fully suppress his arrogance, wrote to the Prophet: “You claim to preach the ties of kinship, yet you allow your own relatives to starve.”
The Prophet’s response was immediate and merciful. He wrote to Thumama, instructing him to allow the grain to flow again. The supplies resumed. Even as the Quraysh plotted his assassination, even as they had besieged his city mere months before, the Prophet would not let them starve.
Abu Sufyan’s Assassin
The period between Khandaq and Hudaybiyyah was not only a time of Muslim operations against their enemies. The traffic of violence moved in both directions. Abu Sufyan, now the undisputed senior leader of Makkah—Abu Talib was dead, Abu Lahab was dead, al-Walid ibn al-Mughira was dead—had placed a standing bounty on the Prophet’s life. An unnamed Bedouin, lured by the reward, accepted the mission. Abu Sufyan supplied him with a camel, provisions, and weapons.
The Bedouin rode hard for Madinah, covering the distance in six days—nearly as fast as physically possible. He entered the mosque with a fabricated story, most likely claiming to be a representative of his tribe seeking an audience. But the moment he stepped inside, the Prophet spoke:
“This is a man who has treachery written on his face.”
The companions tackled him instantly. A concealed dagger tumbled from his belt—no legitimate visitor carried a hidden weapon into the presence of a head of state. The Prophet offered him the same terms he offered so many others: tell the truth, and you go free. The Bedouin confessed everything. The Prophet honored his word and released him. And, like so many who encountered the Prophet’s character firsthand, the Bedouin embraced Islam before he left.
Scholarly Note
This assassination attempt is recorded by Ibn Sa’d in al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. The identity of the Bedouin is not preserved in any extant source. What is remarkable is that despite this attempt—and despite Abu Sufyan’s role in organizing the battles of Uhud and Khandaq—the Prophet would later honor Abu Sufyan at the conquest of Makkah, declaring his house a place of sanctuary. This pattern of responding to enmity with eventual magnanimity is one of the defining features of the Prophetic biography.
The Expedition Against Banu Lihyan and the Prayer of Fear
Not all the expeditions of this period were covert. The Prophet himself led three hundred companions against the Banu Lihyan—the tribe responsible for the massacre of Muslim emissaries, including the beloved companion Khubayb ibn Adiyy (may Allah be pleased with him), who had been captured and executed in cold blood after praying his final two units of prayer with a composure that astonished even his killers.
The challenge was geographical: the Banu Lihyan lived in the Hijaz, dangerously close to Makkah. The Prophet employed the same tactical misdirection he had used before—marching north out of Madinah as if heading toward a distant target, then doubling back. By the time the army’s true direction became clear, it was too late for the Quraysh to intervene.
But the Banu Lihyan had their own warning systems. They saw the army coming and fled. The Prophet camped on their abandoned grounds for two or three days—a demonstration of dominance, a message that betrayal would not be forgotten—but no battle took place.
The expedition’s lasting significance was theological rather than military. The Banu Lihyan, panicking, had sent word to the Quraysh for help, and Khalid ibn al-Walid—still a pagan, though his conversion was less than a year away—arrived with a small force. The two armies faced each other without engaging. When the time for Dhuhr prayer came, the Muslims stood, removed their armor, and prostrated.
A Qurayshi voice observed: “If only they do this again—that would be the perfect moment to charge.”
Khalid agreed: “Wait. They have another prayer coming at Asr.”
In the hours between Dhuhr and Asr, Jibreel descended with the verses of Surah an-Nisa (4:102), legislating Salat al-Khawf—the Prayer of Fear. The army was to split into two groups: one praying while the other stood guard in full armor, then rotating. When Asr arrived, the Muslims prayed in this new formation, weapons at the ready, and the planned ambush never materialized.
“And when you are among them and lead them in prayer, let a group of them stand with you and let them carry their arms. And when they have prostrated, let them be behind you, and let another group come forward who have not yet prayed, and let them pray with you, taking their precautions and their arms.” — An-Nisa (4:102)
The Whale on the Shore
Among the smaller expeditions of this period, one stands out for its sheer improbability. Abu Ubaidah Amir ibn al-Jarrah (may Allah be pleased with him) led three hundred men to intercept a Qurayshi caravan, but the caravan eluded them. Supplies ran desperately low. Abu Ubaidah ordered all remaining food pooled and rationed equally. The daily allocation shrank to a single date per person. Then even that was gone. The men sucked on date seeds for sustenance and ate khabat—the withered, bitter leaves of desert thorn bushes.
Then, on the shore near the coastal settlement of Yanbu, they found it: a whale of staggering proportions, beached and dead. Jabir ibn Abdullah (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates in Sahih al-Bukhari (5493) that thirteen or fourteen men could sit inside the creature’s eye socket. They planted one of its rib bones upright in the sand, and Abu Ubaidah rode the tallest camel in the expedition beneath the arch of that single bone without lowering his head.
Three hundred starving men camped on that beach for a month, eating their fill until they actually gained weight. They packed the remaining meat and brought it back to Madinah, where the Prophet confirmed that the sea’s bounty was lawful—a ruling that remains a cornerstone of Islamic dietary jurisprudence to this day.
The Son-in-Law’s Return
The final story of this interlude between great battles is perhaps the most intimate. Zayd ibn Harithah (may Allah be pleased with him), the Prophet’s adopted son, led one hundred and seventy men to intercept a major Qurayshi caravan returning from Syria. The operation succeeded completely—the entire caravan was captured, along with its goods, camels, and prisoners.
Among the prisoners was Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi’—the Prophet’s own son-in-law, husband of his eldest daughter Zaynab (may Allah be pleased with her). Abu al-As was a man of the Banu Abd al-Shams, pure Qurayshi nobility. His mother Hala was the elder sister of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (may Allah be pleased with her)—the same Hala who had first hired the young Muhammad as a trade agent before Khadijah herself did. It was Khadijah who had asked the Prophet to marry Zaynab to her nephew, and the Prophet—who never refused Khadijah anything—had agreed.
Abu al-As had been captured once before, at Badr. Zaynab had sent her mother’s necklace as ransom—a gesture that had moved the Prophet to tears. He had been released on the condition that he send Zaynab to Madinah, and he had kept his word. But he had not accepted Islam. Now, years later, here he was again—a prisoner in the city where his wife lived, separated from her by the unbridgeable gulf of faith.
The next morning, at Fajr prayer, as the Prophet stood and said Allahu Akbar, a woman’s voice rang out from the women’s section:
“O Muslims! I am Zaynab bint Muhammad, and I have given Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi’ my protection!”
The entire congregation froze. When the prayer ended, the Prophet turned to the assembly: “Did you hear what I heard?” They confirmed. He said: “By Allah, I had no knowledge of this.” Then he affirmed the principle that would become unanimous Islamic law:
“The protection of the Muslims is one. The least of them may grant it on behalf of all.”
He honored Zaynab’s declaration. Then, privately, he went to the companions who held Abu al-As’s share of the captured caravan and made the same request he had made years before at Badr—gently, without coercion: If you see fit to return his property, that would be more beloved to us. But it is your right, and the right Allah has given you.
The Ansar tried one last gambit: “Accept Islam, Abu al-As, and we’ll return everything.” His response was magnificent in its integrity: “What an evil suggestion—that I should betray the trust of those who gave me their merchandise, just to enrich myself through a false conversion.”
They returned everything. Abu al-As rode back to Makkah, distributed every last dirham to its rightful owner, asked the assembled Quraysh if any obligation remained, heard them confirm that none did—and then, in front of the Ka’bah, declared his shahada.
He had refused to convert in Madinah because someone might say he did it for the money, or for his life, or for his wife. He would only embrace Islam as a free man, in his own city, with every worldly debt discharged. Then he returned to Madinah, and the Prophet reunited him with Zaynab without requiring a new marriage contract or a new mahr.
Scholarly Note
The reunion of Abu al-As and Zaynab without a new nikah is recorded in Abu Dawud (2240), Tirmidhi (1143), and others. This hadith is the subject of significant jurisprudential debate. The majority of scholars (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali) hold that when a wife converts and her husband does not, the marriage is annulled after the completion of her waiting period (iddah), and if the husband later converts, a new nikah and mahr are required. However, Ibn Taymiyyah and others championed a minority position: that the woman enters a state of suspension—she may marry another Muslim if she wishes, but if her former husband converts before she remarries, they may resume married life without a new contract. The hadith of Abu al-As appears to support this minority view, which Ibn al-Qayyim also endorsed in Zad al-Ma’ad.
These are the stories that fill the space between the great crises—between the trenches of Khandaq and the olive branch of Hudaybiyyah. They are stories of surgical strikes and unexpected mercies, of a chieftain converted by kindness and a son-in-law converted by his own integrity, of a whale on a beach that saved three hundred lives and a single grain embargo that brought the mightiest city in Arabia to its knees.
But the quiet is about to end. Soon, the Prophet will announce a journey that will astonish friends and enemies alike: he intends to march toward Makkah—not with an army, but with pilgrims. Not to conquer, but to worship. And at a place called Hudaybiyyah, under a lone tree in the desert, a treaty will be signed that looks like surrender and turns out to be the greatest victory of all.
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