The Siege of Ta'if

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Thaqīf fled the rout back to their city, and the Prophet ﷺ marched on Ṭāʾif and laid siege, a distinct episode joined to Ḥunayn only because it followed at once. Ṭāʾif, green and watered on its mountain plateau, could not match Mecca's Kaʿbah but rivalled it in wealth, and had walled and fortified itself with turrets and cauldrons of burning oil, stocked for a year's siege. Foreseeing this even from Mecca, the Prophet ﷺ had sent Companions to the tribe of Jurash to learn siege-craft the Arabs had never used, the catapult (the first ever built by Muslims went up before Ṭāʾif), the battering-ram, and the testudo shield-roof under which men could approach the walls. This is foresight, and a proof that beneficial knowledge is taken from anyone, Muslim or not, so long as it touches nothing of the religion's fundamentals.

❧A Siege That Would Not Break

The Companions first camped where the arrows reached them, then moved to the spot that became Masjid Ibn ʿAbbās, the great mosque of Ṭāʾif to this day. The testudo was tried against the wall, but burning oil got through and drove the men out into the arrows, with losses. In frustration they burned the vineyards, lawful only in extremity, until Ṭāʾif begged by kinship and neighbourliness to be spared, and the Prophet ﷺ relented. He proclaimed that any who came over would be protected, and any slave who left would be freed; a couple of dozen slipped out and believed. But the walls held. Twice the Prophet ﷺ counselled withdrawal; the first time the eager young Companions begged to stay and he let them, the wisdom of shūrā, that even he did not impose his view, and after more losses they quietly agreed to go. The siege cost more casualties than Ḥunayn itself, and Ṭāʾif was not taken: even in his hour of glory the Prophet ﷺ was shown that this world is never total victory.