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 before 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 four sides 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 at Kadaʾ in the north. Khalid ﵁ came up from the low ground at Kudan in the south. Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁ took the foot up the middle of the valley. Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁ brought the Ansar.

The order was identical for all four: no fighting unless they were fought. Three columns entered without a blow. Khalid’s ﵁ met a body of Quraysh at al-Khandamah that had decided to resist, and broke it — 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 struck them down one by one, 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 God is One.

The people of Mecca gathered at the sanctuary expecting the treatment they had handed out for twenty years. He asked them what they thought he would do. They said: a noble brother, and the son of a noble brother.

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.