Khaybar and the Banner of Ali (ra)

After Hudaybiyyah secured his southern flank, the Prophet ﷺ moved against Khaybar, the great fortified oasis to the north whose Jewish strongholds had bankrolled and organised the confederate army at the Trench and remained a standing threat. The Muslims besieged its forts one by one.

On the eve of the decisive assault, the Prophet ﷺ said: tomorrow I will give the banner to a man who loves Allah and His Messenger, and whom Allah and His Messenger love; Allah will grant victory through him. The Companions spent a restless night each hoping to be the one. In the morning he asked for Ali ibn Abi Talib (ra), who was suffering from sore eyes. He spat lightly in his eyes and they healed instantly, gave him the banner, and Ali (ra) led the believers to victory, his courage at Khaybar becoming legendary.

When the oasis fell, a captured woman prepared a roasted sheep for the Prophet ﷺ and laced it with poison, in a final act of vengeance. He took a bite, then stopped, saying the meat itself had told him it was poisoned. A Companion who had swallowed his portion died; the Prophet ﷺ survived, though he would say in his final illness that he still felt at times the effect of that morsel from Khaybar.

And then a decision of striking pragmatism and mercy: rather than expel the people of Khaybar, the Prophet ﷺ allowed those who wished to remain on their lands as farmers, working the date palms and giving half the produce to the Muslims, an arrangement that lasted for years. Khaybar removed the last organised military threat to Madinah and brought the believers, after years of hardship and hunger, their first real prosperity. The tide had fully turned; only Makkah itself remained.