The Pledge of al-Ridwan Under the Tree

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

As ʿUthmān's absence stretched on with no news, dread spread through the camp and a rumour took hold and hardened, as rumours do, into assumed fact: that Quraysh had killed the Prophet's ﷺ envoy. When it reached the Prophet ﷺ that the Muslims had all but accepted this, he declared they would not leave without exacting justice, and a crier announced that Jibrīl (al-Rūḥ al-Qudus) had come down and the Prophet ﷺ was calling the people to pledge allegiance. Allah knew ʿUthmān was alive; this was a test of the believers.

The pledge was to fight Quraysh and not to turn back, meaning to fight to the death and never flee the field. The circumstances made it near-certain death: some 1,400 Muslims, tired from the road, short on water and provisions, without proper war gear (they had come for ʿUmrah), against a Quraysh three times their number, rested, armed, and supplied at home. The Companions came forward and gripped the Prophet's ﷺ hand with both of theirs, swearing they would fight behind him and never abandon him. Only one hypocrite hid, crouching behind his camel so none would see him, and Allah exposed him in the Qurʾān. When all had pledged, the Prophet ﷺ took his own left hand, said "This is for ʿUthmān," placed it in his right, and gave the pledge on ʿUthmān's behalf.

This became the Bayʿat al-Riḍwān, the Pledge of Divine Pleasure, named from Allah's words in Sūrat al-Fatḥ: "Laqad raḍiya-llāhu ʿani-l-muʾminīna idh yubāyiʿūnaka taḥta l-shajarah" (لَقَدْ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ يُبَايِعُونَكَ تَحْتَ الشَّجَرَةِ, "Allah was well pleased with the believers when they pledged to you under the tree," 48:18), which continues that He knew what was in their hearts, sent down tranquillity (sakīnah) upon them, and rewarded them with an imminent conquest and much spoils to come, the coming Conquest of Khaybar. Of the pledge itself Allah says, "yadu-llāhi fawqa aydīhim" (يَدُ اللَّهِ فَوْقَ أَيْدِيهِمْ, "the hand of Allah is above their hands," 48:10), affirmed, Dr. Qadhi notes, in a manner befitting Allah, and an extraordinary honour: their pledge was, in effect, given directly to Him. The Prophet ﷺ told them, "Antum khayru ahli-l-arḍ" (أَنْتُمْ خَيْرُ أَهْلِ الْأَرْضِ, "you are the best people on earth"), and later, in a report in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, that no one who pledged under the tree would ever enter the Fire. Dr. Qadhi notes their rank as a body stands second only to the people of Badr, and that ʿUthmān's honour was greater still, the Prophet ﷺ standing in his very place, so that to malign ʿUthmān is to insult the hand of the Prophet ﷺ that pledged for him.