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bJuhammad and his community must be attacked and eliminated. To this
end, they contacted other tribes to integrate them into the pact; the Banu
Asad, Banu Ghatafan, and Banu Sulaym joined in. Only the Banu Amir,
one of whose women the Prophet had married, and who had already
shown unfailing fidelity (apart from a few individuals who had betrayed
their word), refused to be part of the new coalition because they had pre-
viously entered into a pact with Muhammad.
The forces assembled were considerable, and when the armies
marched off toward Medina, it seemed that the J\'Iuslims were no match
for them. The Quraysh army and their ames from the south were more
than four thousand strong, and another army, coming from Naid in the
cast, and made up of various tribes, brought together more than six thou-
sand men. The city of Medina was going to be attacked from t\vo sides,
then encircled, by ten thousand warriors: one could hardly imagine its
inhabitants coming out unharmed. \Vhen the armies set out, the P rophet'S
uncle, Abbas, secretly sent a delegation to Medina to warn rhe Prophet of
the attack. \'(Then the delegation reached Medina, the people of Medina
had only a week or less left to draw up a resistance strategy. They could
not hope to muster morc than three thousand soldiers, less than a third of
the enemy force.
True to his custom, the Prophet gathered his Companions and consult-
ed them about the situation and the plan of action they should adopt.
Some felt that they must go out and meet the enemy, as they had done at
Badr. Others thought that only by waiting inside the city would they have
a chance to succeed, and that lessons must be drawn from the Ubud
defeat. Among the Companions present was a Persian named Salman
(Salman al-Farisi), whose story was singular in many ways. He had long
been in quest of the truth and of God, and be had traveled toward Mecca
in the hope of living in proximity to the P rophet. Circumstances had not
been favorable, and he had eventually been sold as a slave in the Banu
Qurayzah tribe. The Prophet and his Companions had gathered the
amount needed to set him free, and he had for some time been a free
Companion. H e took part in d1eir meetings and stood out by his fervor
and devotion. When he rose to speak, he suggested a strategy hitherto
unknown to the Arabs: "0 Messenger of G od, in Persia, when we feared
an attack from a cavalry, we used to dig a moat around the city. Let us dig
a moat around us!,,1 8 The idea was unexpected, but all the Companions