The Madinah period — building and defending the ummah

The Madinan decade was a period of building a society and defending it against repeated attempts to destroy it. Quraysh did not accept the loss of the emigrants or the threat the new community posed to their trade and standing. At Badr, in 2 AH, a Muslim force of about 313 met a Makkan army roughly three times its size and won a decisive victory that steadied the young community and shook Makkah. At Uhud, in 3 AH, the Muslims held the advantage until a group of archers left the position they had been ordered to hold; the Makkan cavalry turned the flank, and the Muslims suffered heavy losses, among them the Prophet’s uncle Hamzah رضي الله عنه. The Qur’an devotes a long passage of Surah Al ’Imran to the causes and lessons of that day, chiefly obedience and reliance on God. At al-Khandaq, in 5 AH, a large coalition besieged Madinah, which held behind a defensive trench dug on the advice of Salman al-Farisi رضي الله عنه until weather and division broke the siege.

Alongside the fighting there was diplomacy. In 6 AH the Prophet ﷺ set out with about 1,400 Companions to perform ’umrah, unarmed for war, and was stopped at Hudaybiyyah on the edge of the sacred area. The treaty signed there required the Muslims to turn back that year and return the next, and to hand back anyone who came to them from Quraysh without permission — terms so lopsided that some Companions were openly distressed. Its wisdom appeared within two years: the truce created a space in which people met the Muslims freely and Islam spread faster than at any point before, and the Qur’an named it “a clear victory” (48:1). In the same period the Prophet ﷺ sent letters carried by envoys to rulers beyond Arabia — the Byzantine and Persian emperors, the ruler of Egypt, the Negus of Abyssinia and others — inviting them to Islam.

When Quraysh broke the treaty by backing an ally against a tribe allied to the Muslims, the Prophet ﷺ marched on Makkah in 8 AH with around ten thousand men. The city that had tortured the weak among his followers, boycotted his clan and fought him for years surrendered with almost no bloodshed. Standing at the Ka’bah before the people responsible for all of it, he asked what they thought he would do with them; they said, “good — a noble brother, the son of a noble brother.” He answered, “Go, for you are free,” a near-quotation of the words of Yusuf to his brothers. He cleared the Ka’bah of its idols, confirmed the custodianship of the sanctuary in the hands that had held it, and left the running of the city largely unchanged.

The consistent pattern the Companions recorded from these years was firm defence when attacked, willingness to accept an unequal peace for a greater good, and, at the moment of complete victory, amnesty rather than revenge.