The Treachery of Banu Qurayzah Is Confirmed
historicalShaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:
As fears mounted over the loyalty of Banū Qurayẓah, the last of Madinah's three Jewish tribes still under treaty with the Muslims, the danger became concrete when Huyayy ibn Akhṭab, the exiled former chieftain of Banū Naḍīr and father of Ṣafiyyah, secretly made his way back into the city he knew intimately from his years living there. Dr. Qadhi notes this as a reminder that the trench, however effective against a massed army, could never fully seal Madinah against a single determined individual slipping through.
Huyayy went directly to Kaʿb ibn Asad al-Quraẓī, chieftain of Banū Qurayẓah, and pressed him repeatedly to abandon the tribe's treaty and join the siege. Kaʿb refused three times, citing the honor of the agreement, until Huyayy's persistent promises of protection and a share in the coming victory wore him down and he agreed.
❧THE PROPHET'S ﷺ ḤAWĀRĪ
When the Prophet ﷺ voiced his fear of exactly this treachery and asked for a volunteer to investigate, al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām stepped forward. It was on this occasion that the Prophet ﷺ gave him the famous title: "Every prophet has had a disciple (ḥawārī), and my disciple is al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām", comparing him to the disciples of ʿĪsā. Al-Zubayr returned reporting that Banū Qurayẓah had broken the treaty (naqaḍū al-ʿahd), most likely based on visible preparations for war he observed in their camp, though the sources do not record the exact details of what he saw.
Unwilling to act on a single report alone, the Prophet ﷺ next sent four leaders of the Anṣār who had maintained ties with Banū Qurayẓah since the pre-Islamic era to confirm the matter directly. They returned describing evasive, non-committal answers with no acknowledgment of the existing treaty, confirmation enough that something had shifted, even without an outright admission.
❧THE TWO SAʿDS CONFRONT KAʿB
The Prophet ﷺ then sent Saʿd ibn Muʿādh and Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah to confirm the betrayal outright, instructing them to signal the news subtly to the wider community if it was bad, rather than causing public panic. Confronted directly, Kaʿb denied that any treaty had ever existed at all, by one report, he had physically torn up the written document so there would be nothing to show them. When one of the two Saʿds began cursing him in anger, Kaʿb retorted that the matter between them was now "beyond just cursing," a veiled threat of violence. The two Saʿds returned and, using the coded phrase "ʿAḍal wa al-Qārah", a reference to the tribes responsible for the massacres at al-Rajīʿ and Bi'r Ma'ūnah, signaled to the Prophet ﷺ that the news was as bad as could be. The Prophet ﷺ covered his head in visible distress at the confirmation.
With the treachery now certain, Madinah faced a threat unlike anything before: roughly 10,000 Confederate fighters outside the trench, and now some 1,500 to 2,000 armed men of Banū Qurayẓah inside the city's own defenses, with the unprotected women and children at al-Fāriʿ directly exposed. Several Companions described this as the single worst night of the entire Sīrah. Allah describes this exact moment in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33:10–11): "When they came at you from above you and from below you, and when eyes grew wild and hearts reached the throats, and you assumed about Allah [various] assumptions. There the believers were tried and shaken with a severe shaking" (إِذْ جَاءُوكُمْ مِنْ فَوْقِكُمْ وَمِنْ أَسْفَلَ مِنْكُمْ وَإِذْ زَاغَتِ الْأَبْصَارُ وَبَلَغَتِ الْقُلُوبُ الْحَنَاجِرَ وَتَظُنُّونَ بِاللَّهِ الظُّنُونَا هُنَالِكَ ابْتُلِيَ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ وَزُلْزِلُوا زِلْزَالًا شَدِيدًا). Dr. Qadhi explains that this shaking of the believers' certainty under the weight of a life-threatening situation is not itself a sign of hypocrisy or disbelief, but a mark of the incompleteness of their trust in Allah (tawakkul) under conditions of extreme trial, falling short of the standard set by Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, without amounting to sin.
❧FULLER DETAIL ON THE PERSUASION AND CONFIRMATION
Ibn Isḥāq preserves a fuller, though unattributed, account of how Huyayy first won Kaʿb over. Arriving at Banū Qurayẓah's gate, Huyayy found it barred against him, the tribe, sensing danger the moment word of his approach reached them, refused to let him in, with Kaʿb calling through the door that Huyayy's very presence was an ill omen he wanted no part of and that he would not break his word to a Prophet ﷺ who had shown him nothing but truthfulness. Huyayy pressed on, shifting to an appeal to hospitality, accusing Kaʿb of such stinginess that he would not even share food with an old friend and fellow chieftain left waiting outside, until Kaʿb relented and opened the door. Once inside, Huyayy painted a picture of overwhelming Confederate strength, naming the chieftains of Quraysh and Ghaṭafān gathered with their full armies and swearing they would not leave until Muḥammad ﷺ and his companions were annihilated. Kaʿb remained uneasy, likening Huyayy's promises to "a cloud that looks full of rain but delivers only thunder and lightning", his instincts warning him even as the pressure mounted. What finally moved him, by Ibn Isḥāq's account, was Huyayy's own pledge to share Banū Qurayẓah's fate personally if the Confederates were to withdraw and abandon them, a pledge that, as later events would show, sealed Huyayy's own end along with theirs.
The four Anṣārī delegates the Prophet ﷺ sent to confirm the betrayal directly were Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah, ʿAbdullāh ibn Rawāḥah, and Khawwāt ibn Jubayr, chosen specifically for the personal relationships each had maintained with Banū Qurayẓah since the days of Jāhiliyyah. Ibn Isḥāq describes Banū Qurayẓah's response to them as the most openly vulgar and hostile the Anṣār had ever experienced from them, mocking the very question of who "Muḥammad" was and denying any treaty had ever existed, despite having physically torn up the written document. Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, known for his temper, responded to their mockery with open cursing; Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah, calmer by nature, restrained him, observing that the matter between them and Banū Qurayẓah had moved far beyond anything mere cursing could settle.
When the Prophet ﷺ received the delegation's coded confirmation, his response was not despair but "Allāhu Akbar, good news!" Dr. Qadhi highlights this as one of the clearest examples in the Sīrah of the Prophet's ﷺ certainty (yaqīn) in Allah: rather than dwelling on the danger of facing enemies from both outside and within the city, he recognized that the last remaining non-Muslim community inside Madinah revealing itself meant that, once the crisis passed, the city would finally belong entirely to the believers.