The Assassination of Sallam ibn Abi al-Huqayq

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Sallām ibn Abī al-Ḥuqayq was one of the wealthiest leaders of Khaybar and, crucially, the principal financier of the Ghaṭafānī mercenaries who made up the bulk of the Confederate army at the Battle of the Trench five months earlier, men fighting for pay rather than conviction, and among the first to flee once the storm turned against them. Because he had funded that campaign and could readily fund another, and to send a clear deterrent message, the Khazraj proposed his elimination, motivated in part, Dr. Qadhi notes, by a desire to match the Aws's earlier killing of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf. The Prophet ﷺ approved the mission on one explicit condition: no women or children were to be harmed.

Five Companions volunteered under the leadership of ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAtīk, chosen for his fluency in the mixed Hebrew-Arabic dialect of Khaybar's Jewish community, learned growing up in close contact with them in Madinah. Khaybar, unlike Madinah, was heavily fortified in a style the Arabs had not mastered, making any large-scale assault impractical, hence the decision for a small, covert operation instead. Reaching the fortress at dusk, ibn ʿAtīk devised a simple ruse: he lingered near the gate pretending to relieve himself until the guard, eager to close up for the night, waved him through impatiently. He slipped inside, hid until nightfall, then opened the gate to let the rest of the team in.

The five made their way to Sallām's residence and killed him. His wife, seeing what had happened, cried out in alarm; one of the Companions moved to silence her, then remembered the Prophet's ﷺ explicit order and sheathed his sword instead, leaving her unharmed. Fleeing the residence, which was reached by a raised stairway, ibn ʿAtīk, reportedly weak of eyesight, missed a step and injured his foot badly enough that his companions had to carry him the rest of the way back to Madinah, evading pursuit the entire distance without further casualty. On their return, the Prophet ﷺ passed his hand over the injured foot, and it healed completely.

Dr. Qadhi addresses this episode, as he did the earlier killing of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf, as a targeted wartime killing rather than an act of terrorism or assassination in the modern pejorative sense, a distinction he argues holds up under the standards later Muslim jurists and modern nation-states alike have applied to combatants directly financing hostile military action, while stressing that no scholar has ever extended this precedent to permit unilateral killings by individuals outside a recognized state of war.