The Trench

In the fifth year, the enemies of Islam gathered for a final blow. The exiled leaders of Banu an-Nadir rallied Quraysh, the great tribe of Ghatafan, and others, until a confederate army of around ten thousand, al-Ahzab, the largest force Arabia had ever assembled, marched on Madinah to destroy the believers once and for all. The Muslims could field perhaps three thousand. It was, the Qur'an says, when eyes turned aside and hearts reached the throats.

Then a companion who had come from far away changed the battle. Salman al-Farisi (ra), the Persian who had searched across the world for the true religion, knew the warfare of his homeland. In Persia, he said, when we feared cavalry, we dug a trench. The idea was foreign to the Arabs, but the Prophet ﷺ adopted it at once, and the whole community, the Prophet ﷺ among them, dug a great trench across the exposed northern approach to the city, working in cold and hunger, tying stones to their bellies against the gnawing while he ﷺ tied two.

As they dug, a great rock defeated their tools, and they called the Prophet ﷺ. He struck it three times, and with each blow a flash of light, and with each he gave glad tidings: the keys of Syria, of Persia, of Yemen, empires that would open to this hungry, besieged band. They were starving behind a ditch, and being promised the world.

The confederates arrived and stopped short, baffled: this was not how Arabs fought. Their cavalry, the heart of their power, was useless against the trench. The siege settled into weeks of cold, fear and probing attacks, while inside, the danger grew sharper than the army outside: Banu Qurayzah, the Jewish tribe still bound by the Constitution to defend the city, were induced to break their covenant and threaten the Muslims from within, exposing the families behind the lines. The Qur'an's description of that night is unflinching: the believers were tested and shaken with a mighty shaking.

And then, with the believers at the end of their strength, Allah broke the siege without a great battle. A bitter winter wind tore through the confederates' camp night after night, ripping out their tents, overturning their pots, scattering their horses, and discord, sown partly by a new Muslim moving secretly between the allies, spread distrust among them. One morning the great army was simply gone. We sent upon them a wind and forces you did not see. The largest coalition ever raised against Madinah had melted into the desert, and the Prophet ﷺ said: now we will march on them, and they will not march on us. The tide of the whole conflict had turned.