Ten Thousand Toward Makkah

The truce of Hudaybiyyah had allowed tribes to ally with either side. When an ally of Quraysh attacked an ally of the Muslims by night, slaughtering them even in the sacred precinct, Quraysh backed the aggressors, and the ten-year peace lay broken in its second year. Abu Sufyan himself hurried to Madinah to try to patch it, and found the doors of the city's leaders closed to him; even his daughter, a wife of the Prophet ﷺ, would not let him sit on the Prophet's ﷺ bedding. He returned to Makkah having achieved nothing, sensing what was coming.

The Prophet ﷺ resolved to march, and asked Allah to keep the news from Quraysh so that he might take the city by surprise and spare it a battle. He gathered ten thousand believers, the largest force ever assembled in Arabia for one purpose, and moved on Makkah with such secrecy that the city had no warning.

When the army camped in the hills outside Makkah by night, the Prophet ﷺ ordered every man to light a separate fire, ten thousand fires blazing in the dark, a sight meant to break Quraysh's will to resist before a sword was drawn. Abu Sufyan crept out to learn what was happening and was brought, in the dark, before the Prophet ﷺ. There, on the eve of the conquest, the leader of the Makkan opposition for twenty years embraced Islam.

To preserve his dignity and ease the city's surrender, the Prophet ﷺ proclaimed an extraordinary safety: whoever enters the house of Abu Sufyan is safe; whoever shuts his door is safe; whoever enters the Sacred Mosque is safe. The message to the terrified city was unmistakable before the army even entered: this was not a coming massacre. The man returning in triumph to the city that had tortured, boycotted, and exiled him, and sent assassins to his bed, was offering it, in advance, peace.