Lessons of al-Hudaybiyyah: The Turning of the Tide

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Dr. Qadhi gathers the benefits of al-Ḥudaybiyyah in four categories, Sīrah, theology, fiqh, and modern political thought. These are the Sīrah lessons.

First, the treaty forced Quraysh to treat the Muslims as an equal party, for treaties are struck only between equals, proof the tide was turning. Quraysh's very insistence that "the Arabs must not say you had the upper hand" betrayed their insecurity: they knew the Muslims already did. For those closest to Islam, this was the last sign they needed; the final wave of converts before the Conquest, Khālid ibn al-Walīd, ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, ʿUthmān ibn Ṭalḥah, came after al-Ḥudaybiyyah, having seen that the religion would not be extinguished.

Second, the peace gave the Muslims a security they had never felt since Badr, Uḥud, and the Trench, freeing them to turn to matters they had never had the luxury to address: within a month came Khaybar, the remaining Jewish stronghold, and in the following year the Prophet ﷺ began writing letters to the emperors and kings, Caesar, Kisrā, the Muqawqis, acting for the first time as a global political leader, the truce affirming the Muslims as an independent state that could negotiate with any power.

Third, and perhaps greatest: the peace let Muslims and pagans mix, buying, selling, travelling, without fear of bloodshed, so the message spread by persuasion rather than the sword. This was a jihād of daʿwah, and it converted far more than any battle. Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī, the great scholar of the Tābiʿūn and a pillar of Sunni scholarship, said no victory before al-Ḥudaybiyyah was greater than it: once people were at peace they talked, and no intelligent person heard about Islam without entering it, so that in the two years after the treaty the number of Muslims more than doubled what nineteen years of preaching had produced. Ibn Hishām's proof is the arithmetic: 1,400 pledged under the tree, yet two years later 10,000 marched on the Conquest of Makkah, the extra thousands all recent converts. A peace treaty, Dr. Qadhi notes, can be a far greater victory than any military campaign.

Finally, al-Ḥudaybiyyah honored those who witnessed it, "you are the best people on earth," the Prophet ﷺ told them, and none who pledged would enter the Fire, and it was the direct line to the Conquest of Makkah, since it was Quraysh's later breach of this very treaty that let the Prophet ﷺ march on the city. Without al-Ḥudaybiyyah, there is no Conquest, truly a "clear victory."