Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
12. Emigration—From Makkah to Madinah
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much so that when the Prophet asked for someone
to volunteer for a spying foray into the enemy
camp, no one stood up. Eventually the Prophet
personally delegated this task to Huzayfah.
There were also recurrent problems with the Jews of
Madinah who, in alliance with the Quraysh, were
always conspiring against the Muslims. Madinah
was besieged for twenty days during the Battle of
the Trench. Finally the Quraysh were forced by a
violent sandstorm to make their way back to
Makkah. Now that collaboration with the Quraysh
had been exposed, the Prophet chose this time to
solve this problem. There were three Jewish tribes
in and around Madinah—the Banu Nadir, Banu
Qaynuqah and Banu Qurayzah. Immediately after
the Battle of the Trench, they were besieged and
exiled applying on them their own Judaic law. The
threat that they had posed to the Muslims in
Madinah was thus permanently eliminated.
Then there was the problem of Khaybar. Six years
after the Prophet’s emigration, Madinah was an
island of Islam between the Quraysh in Makkah,
400 kilometres to the south, and the Jews in
