The Broken Truce
In the eighth year, tribesmen of Banū Bakr — allies of Quraysh under the treaty — fell upon Khuzāʿah, allies of the Prophet ﷺ, at their well of al-Watīr, and Quraysh secretly armed the raiders. A rider of Khuzāʿah stood in the mosque of Madīnah and recited his people's slaughter; the Prophet ﷺ answered, “You are helped.” Abū Sufyān himself hurried to Madīnah to re-tie the truce, and returned empty-handed. Then Madīnah armed in secrecy so complete that even the destination was withheld — pierced only once, by a letter from the anguished Ḥāṭib ibn Abī Baltaʿah to his kin in Makkah, intercepted at the Prophet's ﷺ direction; and Ḥāṭib, a veteran of Badr, was questioned, heard, and forgiven.12
In Ramadan of the year 8, ten thousand men camped at Marr al-Ẓahrān, a night's ride from Makkah, and lit ten thousand fires. Into that field of light al-ʿAbbās brought a stunned Abū Sufyān, who spoke the two testimonies before the Prophet ﷺ in the morning. And the man whose city was about to fall received terms of surpassing shrewdness and mercy at once: “Whoever enters the house of Abū Sufyān is safe; whoever locks his door is safe; whoever enters the Sacred Mosque is safe.”13
The Entry
The army entered by four columns, with orders to fight only if fought; only Khālid's column, meeting armed resistance at the Khandamah ridge, exchanged blows. The Prophet ﷺ rode in on al-Qaṣwāʾ with his head bowed so low in gratitude that his beard nearly touched the saddle, reciting Sūrat al-Fatḥ. Twenty-one years after a man had stood alone on Ṣafā to be cursed, Makkah was his without a battle.14
He went straight to the Kaʿbah, circled it, and with the staff in his hand toppled the idols one by one — three hundred and sixty of them — reciting: “Truth has come, and falsehood has vanished away.” The images inside the House were scrubbed from its walls; Bilāl, the slave once dragged through these streets with a rope, climbed onto the roof of the Kaʿbah and gave the call to prayer over the city. Then the Prophet ﷺ stood at the door of the House, the men of Quraysh massed before him, and asked: “O Quraysh, what do you think I will do with you?” They said: “Good — a noble brother, son of a noble brother.” He said, in the very words of Yūsuf to his brothers: “No reproach shall be upon you this day. Go — for you are free.”15
Ḥunayn, Ṭāʾif, and the Meltwater
The amnesty held — a bare handful of named criminals excepted, and most of those, in the end, pardoned too. The freed people of Makkah, al-ṭulaqāʾ, entered Islam in crowds; and history records no massacre, no confiscation, no monument of vengeance. Even Waḥshī, the killer of Ḥamzah, and Hind, who had mutilated him, were received into the amnesty — the Prophet ﷺ asking only that Waḥshī keep out of his sight, for grief.13
The last field armies of paganism — Hawāzin and Thaqīf — gathered within the month at Ḥunayn, and their ambush in the defile broke the Muslim van at dawn; the Qur'an remembers the moment “when the earth, for all its breadth, was strait for you, and you turned your backs” — and how it turned, the Prophet ﷺ standing his ground on a white mule, al-ʿAbbās thundering the summons, the ranks re-forming, the victory descending.6 Ṭāʾif — the city of stones — stood siege, and submitted within the year of its own accord. In dividing Ḥunayn's spoils the Prophet ﷺ loaded the new Makkan converts with gifts and gave the Anṣār nothing; to their hurt he answered with the speech preserved in al-Bukhārī: “Are you not content, O Anṣār, that the people go home with sheep and camels, and you go home with the Messenger of God? … The Anṣār are my inner garment, and the people my outer. If all mankind took one valley and the Anṣār another, I would take the valley of the Anṣār.” They wept until their beards were wet.7