Siege of Banu Qurayza

Banu Qurayza, the last of Medina's three major Jewish tribes still in the city, broke their covenant with the Muslim community during the Battle of the Trench (5 AH) by negotiating with the 10,000-strong confederate army besieging Medina from without. Their chief Ka'b ibn Asad had held firm against earlier Qurayshi overtures but was persuaded by Huyayy ibn Akhtab — a Banu al-Nadir leader who had helped organize the confederate coalition — to align with the attackers. The breach threatened to open Medina to attack from within while the confederate army pressed from without, placing Muslim women and children sheltered in internal positions at direct risk. When the confederate army withdrew and the immediate siege ended, the Prophet ﷺ announced immediate action: 'Let no one pray Asr until he has reached Banu Qurayza.' The army moved at once. The siege of Banu Qurayza's fortified compound lasted approximately twenty-five days, with no confederate relief arriving. Ka'b ibn Asad eventually proposed to his people three options: accept Islam, kill their own families and fight to the end, or surrender to the judgment of Sa'd ibn Mu'adh — their pre-Islamic tribal ally, chief of the Aws. They chose unconditional surrender and Sa'd's judgment. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, brought on a donkey from his sickbed — he had been struck by an arrow in the artery during the trench siege and was dying — pronounced that the adult male fighters of Banu Qurayza were to be executed, the women and children taken captive, and the property distributed. The Prophet ﷺ said: 'You have judged by the judgment of Allah from above seven heavens.' The sentence was carried out. Sa'd died of his wound shortly after. The event marked the end of the recurring internal covenant crises of the Medinan period — after Banu Qurayza, no tribal group remaining in Medina would again break its covenant with the Prophet ﷺ. Surah al-Ahzab (33:26-27) is the Quranic account, describing the terror cast into their hearts and the resulting consequences as acts of divine governance. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh's judgment has been noted by Islamic scholars as one that applied the same Deuteronomic standard (20:10-14) that Banu Qurayza would themselves have recognized from their own tradition — making it the most theologically resonant of the three tribal judgments: a community judged by a law their own scripture contained, pronounced by the dying ally who had once stood as their protection.