Sa'yah and the Gold of Huyayy

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Among the conditions of the Khaybar surrender was that the tribes hand over all gold, silver, weapons, and armor, concealing anything would void the treaty. Ḥuyayy ibn Akhṭab, the Banū al-Naḍīr leader killed early in the battle, had left Medina at the exile of his tribe with chests of gold (the Naḍīr, recall, had been allowed to carry away whatever their camels could bear, down to the doors of their houses). So the Prophet ﷺ asked Ḥuyayy's kinsman Saʿyah: where is the gold?

Saʿyah answered that the wars and the spending had consumed it (أَذْهَبَتْهُ الْحُرُوبُ وَالنَّفَقَات). The Prophet ﷺ replied: the time is recent, and the wealth was more than that (الْعَهْدُ قَرِيبٌ وَالْمَالُ أَكْثَرُ مِنْ ذَلِك), the arithmetic simply did not work, and the denial was a lie. When Saʿyah kept insisting, the Prophet ﷺ handed him to al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām to extract the information, and after being roughed up Saʿyah suddenly recalled having seen Ḥuyayy heading toward a certain valley. There the freshly dug earth gave up the hidden treasure.

The shaykh addresses the modern objection head-on, refusing to sugarcoat: critics cite this as the Prophet ﷺ condoning the mistreatment of a prisoner. But this was the universal norm of that age, every civilization, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, did the same, and it is idiosyncratic to judge the seventh century by conventions agreed upon in the twentieth. Where modern states, Muslim or otherwise, sign such accords, the Sharīʿah requires them to honor their treaties. Saʿyah was lying about a breach that voided a treaty he had just entered, he knew the consequences, and he went on living his life afterwards.