The Fall of Khaybar and the Fifty-Percent Treaty

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧FORTRESS AFTER FORTRESS

Khaybar was not one battle but a series, at least eight or nine engagements, some lasting a day, some three, some ten. After al-Nāʿim fell, the fortress of al-Ṣaʿb resisted for three days; its conquest was a mercy from Allah, for the Muslims' provisions had run out, and al-Ṣaʿb turned out to be stockpiled with grain and water that fed the army for the rest of the campaign. Another stronghold, the fortress of al-Zubayr, had no internal well; the Muslims cut its external water supply, forcing the defenders out to fight, and they were defeated. With that, the first half of Khaybar was conquered, and the army crossed to the second half, where the pattern repeated. Each time a fortress fell its survivors fled on horseback to the next, so the remnants of every mini-tribe finally gathered in one great fortress. The Muslims simply camped outside it. After a solid two weeks the besieged accepted that there was nowhere left to run, and negotiated.

❧CONQUEST OR SURRENDER?

Scholars debated whether Khaybar was taken by force or by surrender, a question with some fiqh consequences and much to do with honor, since a negotiated surrender preserves a people's dignity where military conquest humiliates. The majority, including Ibn al-Qayyim in his Zād, held that it was conquest: had they wished to surrender they would have done so at the start, not after every fortress but one had fallen and the last was merely a matter of time.

❧THE THREE TERMS

The Prophet ﷺ initially intended to expel them, but they petitioned: O Abū al-Qāsim, pointedly not calling him the Messenger of Allah, your people do not know how to work these lands as we do; let us stay and take a percentage. The final terms: first, half of all Khaybar's produce would go to the Muslims, from hundreds of acres of the most fertile land in Arabia, a fortune beyond anything the community had seen; second, all labor and maintenance costs fell on the people of Khaybar alone; third, the arrangement would last only as long as the Muslims wished, cancellable at any time. They accepted.

❧THE FORESIGHT, AND THE ENDING

The shaykh notes the Prophet's ﷺ foresight: the Muslims had neither the manpower to garrison and farm Khaybar, it would have taken a thousand men they could not spare, nor the local expertise; the arrangement yielded a massive income at no cost. It held for decades, until late in the khilāfah of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, when the Muslims no longer needed it. Invoking the cancellation clause, ʿUmar had the people of Khaybar relocate to other lands, the end of the Jewish presence in central Arabia.