The Execution of Banu Qurayzah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Following Saʿd ibn Muʿādh's verdict, the men of Banū Qurayẓah were bound and led in batches to a site on land belonging to a woman of Banū Najjār, where trenches had been dug, and the executions were carried out. ʿAṭiyyah al-Quraẓī, a young boy at the time, later recounted that he was spared, along with the other boys, because he had not yet reached puberty, the physical standard used to separate those old enough to be counted among the men from those still classified as children.

Huyayy ibn Akhṭab, the exiled former chieftain of Banū Naḍīr whose scheming had drawn Banū Qurayẓah into the betrayal, was led out wearing his finest red silk-embroidered garment, tied tightly to his body so it could not be taken from him after death. Passing the Prophet ﷺ, he declared he had never once regretted his hostility toward him, adding, in words Dr. Qadhi notes as a chilling but honest admission, that whoever Allah truly humiliates is the one who is genuinely humiliated. He then told his remaining people not to grieve, since this was simply the fate decreed for the Children of Israel throughout their history, before submitting to execution.

Kaʿb ibn Asad, by contrast, had always shown more hesitation than defiance. As he was brought out, the Prophet ﷺ asked why he had not heeded the counsel of Ibn Kharrāsh, understood to have been one of the tribe's own rabbis who, before the Prophet's ﷺ emergence, had foretold his coming and instructed his people to follow him if they ever encountered him. Kaʿb admitted, swearing by the Torah, that this was entirely true, but explained that his fear of being accused by his own people of converting merely out of fear of death kept him from embracing Islam even at the very end, choosing instead to die upon the faith of his ancestors.

No children were executed, and among the women only one was put to death. ʿĀ'ishah, who was present among the captive women, narrated that one woman among them was laughing and joking even as her people were being executed nearby, a striking, almost disorienting composure ʿĀ'ishah says she never forgot, until this woman's own name was called. Asked why she was being summoned, the woman answered plainly that it was for something she had done: during the siege, she had thrown a millstone from the fortress wall and killed a Muslim by name, and for this act alone, the only killing attributed to a woman of the tribe, she was the sole woman executed among the captives.