Leaders of the Confederates

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Ibn Saʿd records that the Confederate (Aḥzāb) army numbered around 4,000 from Quraysh and its outlying allied clans, by far the largest force Quraysh had ever assembled, exceeding both Badr and Uḥud, backed by 300 horses and 150 camels. Beyond Quraysh, numerous other tribes contributed forces: Banū Sulaym sent 700, Banū Fazārah 1,000, Banū Ashjaʿ 400, Banū Murrah 400, and others besides. It is this patchwork of allied tribes, rather than a single unified command, that gave the campaign its name: al-Aḥzāb, "the Confederates" or "the Groups", from ḥizb, a faction or party. Dr. Qadhi notes that this lack of one unified leader, with Quraysh merely holding the largest single share, proved to be the coalition's fatal structural weakness once the alliance began to fracture.

❧ABŪ SUFYĀN

Abū Sufyān Ṣakhr ibn Ḥarb, having become the senior-most figure of Quraysh in the aftermath of Badr, served as the de facto overall commander of the Confederate army, as he had at Uḥud.

❧ʿUYAYNAH IBN ḤIṢN

ʿUyaynah ibn Ḥiṣn, chieftain of Banū Fazārah, a branch of Ghaṭafān, led his tribe's 1,000 fighters. Classical sources describe him as embodying the crude manners (jafā') of the desert Bedouin: on one occasion, prior to the revelation of Ḥijāb, he barged unannounced into the Prophet's ﷺ home, dismissed the Prophet's ﷺ mild correction about seeking permission by declaring he had never once asked permission of a Muḍarī Arab to enter his own house, referred to ʿĀ'ishah dismissively as "this little red one," and crudely offered to trade one of his own wives for her, a pre-Islamic custom the Prophet ﷺ told him Allah had forbidden. After he left, the Prophet ﷺ privately told ʿĀ'ishah he was "the fool who is obeyed by his people," explaining that his outward courtesy toward such a man was only to be spared his harm, not out of respect. Classical historians further record that ʿUyaynah secured the chieftainship of his tribe by killing his own dying father at the father's own request, when all nine of his brothers had refused, in exchange for succeeding him as chief.

❧ṬULAYḤAH AL-ASADĪ

Ṭulayḥah, chieftain of Banū Asad, led his tribe's 700 fighters, not yet a Muslim at this point in the Sīrah. He would later embrace Islam outwardly during the ʿĀm al-Wufūd, then declare himself a prophet during the Riddah after the Prophet's ﷺ death, one of roughly ten false prophets across Arabia, ranked third in prominence after Musaylimah and Sajāḥ, before Khālid ibn al-Walīd crushed his forces. Ṭulayḥah fled to Syria, where his repentance became genuine; he returned to seek Abū Bakr's forgiveness, was granted it, and spent the rest of his life visibly burdened by guilt, repeatedly asking Allah for martyrdom in compensation, a prayer Dr. Qadhi notes was, by the traditional accounts, answered when Ṭulayḥah was killed fighting under Khālid ibn al-Walīd at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah against the Persians.