The Siege of The Qurayza Quarter
The next day Muhammad brought his army to besiege the Qurayza stronghold, shouting: “You brothers of monkeys, hasn’t Allah has disgraced you and brought His punishment on you?” In fact it is not entirely clear how the Qurayza had offended. If the Constitution of Medina was still in force, which is doubtful, their failure to join the defence of the city was a transgression. According to the second treaty, Ka'b was only bound to neutrality; and although he had considered aiding the besiegers, he had not actually done so. From a purely pragmatic point of view, however, it is clear that Kaab and Muhammad each had excellent reasons to distrust the other, that each wanted the other out of Medina, and that Muhammad would have been a fool not to attack them while he could do so easily.
The siege lasted 25 days. When it became clear that the Qurayza could not hold out much longer, Ka'b offered his people three alternative ways out of their predicament: surrender to Muhammad and embrace Islam; kill their own women and children, then rush out for a charge to win or die; or make a surprise attack on Sabbath. The first two alternatives were probably offered sarcastically. When the Qurayza also rejected the serious option of attacking on Sabbath, Ka'b complained: “Not a man among you has ever passed a night determined to do what he knows needs doing!”
The next morning the Qurayza surrendered to Muhammad, and all the adult males were sentenced to death. They were kept in the Najjar quarter, where Muhammad’s own kinsmen lived, while the Muslims went to the market-place to dig trenches. Then Muhammad sent for them in batches of five or six. The Qurayza men asked Ka'b what he thought was happening. He replied: “Don’t you understand? Don’t you see that the summoner never stops, and those who are taken away do not return? By God, it is death!” Ka'b was brought out with the rest to the market-place, where he was made to kneel down in a trench, and his head was struck off.
Read more about this topic: Ka'b Ibn Asad
Famous quotes containing the words siege and/or quarter:
“One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)