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alliances with as many clans as possible. lie scnt him another two hundred
men because opposition seemed to be Stronger than he had anticipated:
however, it was not, a nd the Mus lim force was able to proceed into Syrian
territory, consolidate existing alliances, and csmblish new ones, which
made it possible to secure that hitherto unsafe fronL
The Covenant Is Broken
As previously noted, the covenant of al-l-Iudaybiyyah applied no t jlJSt to
the j\·lcdina community an d the Quraysh but to all their allies as well. T he
Khuzaah were Muhammad's allies, and onc o f their dans, me Banu Kab,
was treacherously attacked onc night by the Banu Bah, the Quraysh's
allies, who killed one of their m en. The Banu Kab promptly sent the
Prophet an envoy to inform him o f that treason. It co nstituted a b reach
of the covenant, and J\'luhammad decided the crime must not go unp un-
ished: he had to help his Khuzaah allies.
As fo r the Quraysh, they understood how serious the situation wa~,
and they d ecided to send their mOSt influential man to persuade Muham-
mad not to respond to that isolated action. Yet, eve r since the covenant
h:ld been sib'11ed, the Qurnysh had kepI ('nrtmlching on the terms and lim-
its of the treaty, and they never hesitated to prompt other clans to set
upon the :Muslim community to weaken or even attack them. This time,
however, things had gone too far, and this was why Abu Sufyan himself
went ro Med ina to confer with th e Prophet. The latter was cun and aloof:
Abu Sufyan tried to enlist the suppo rt first of his daughter Urn Habibah,
the Prophet'S wife, then of Ali, but he found no mea ns to negotiate. The
Prophet remained silent, a.s did his Companions, and Abu Sufyan did not
know what t o think of the situation,
During the weeks that followed, the Prophet asked his Companions to
get ready for an expedition, though he kept its objective secret. Only a few
close Companions knew what was coming, and he asked them to initiate
several contradictoty rumors. They were to suggest that the army \'ould
march tOward Syria, or toward T ha(lif, or against the Hawa:-:in, so as [0
spread uncertainty over the whole Peninsula.
Ye,~ after an invocatio n in the mosque, the Prophet had a vision inform-
ing him lhat the secret was going to be berrayed and that a woman "",-as tak-
martin jones
(Martin Jones)
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