The Conquest of Mecca

Quraysh had broken the treaty of al-Hudaybiyah by arming an ally against Khuzaʿah, who were in the Prophet’s ﷺ protection. He moved on Mecca with ten thousand men and kept the destination secret to the last.

The army camped a night’s march out at Marr al-Zahran and every man was ordered to light his own fire. Ten thousand fires came up out of the valley at once: a message, not an accident.

Abu Sufyan ﵁ came out to see what it was, was brought in under al-ʿAbbas’s ﵁ protection, and accepted Islam the next morning. He was sent back with the terms: whoever entered his house, or the Sacred Mosque, or shut his own door, was safe.

The army was divided into four and entered from different directions at once, so that no quarter could organise a defence and no column had to fight its way through the whole city.

Al-Zubayr ﵁ came in over the high ground in the north and planted the standard at al-Hajun. Khalid ﵁ came up from the low ground at al-Lit in the south. Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁ took the foot up the middle of the valley. Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁ brought the Ansar, with whom the Prophet ﷺ himself rode into upper Mecca.

The order was identical for all four: no fighting unless they were fought. Three columns entered unopposed. Khalid’s ﵁ met a body of Quraysh at al-Khandamah that had decided to resist, and broke it in the only real fighting of the day.

The Prophet ﷺ went to the Kaʿbah and made the circuit. Three hundred and sixty idols stood around it. He jabbed at them with a stick in his hand, reciting that the truth has come and falsehood has vanished away; falsehood is bound to vanish.

The key of the House was returned to ʿUthman ibn Talhah ﵁, from whose family it had been taken, and his house has kept it ever since.

Bilal ﵁ climbed onto the roof and gave the call to prayer over the city. He had been tortured on the sand of that same city for saying that Allah is One.

The people of Mecca gathered at the sanctuary expecting the treatment they had handed out since the first public call to Islam. He asked them what they thought he would do. They said: a noble brother, and the son of a noble brother.

It is reported that he said: go, you are free.

Almost no one was executed. Hind bint ʿUtbah, who had mutilated Hamzah ﵁ at Uhud, came and was pardoned. ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁, son of the man who had led the war from the start, was pardoned, became a Muslim and died fighting for it in Syria. The war with Quraysh ended not with a reckoning but with its cancellation.