This is an accepted version of this pageThe Banu Qurayza (Arabic: بنو قريظة, romanized: Banū Qurayẓa; alternate spellings include Quraiza, Qurayzah, Quraytha, and the archaic Koreiza) were a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathrib (now known as Medina).

[1] Jewish tribes reportedly arrived in Hijaz in the wake of the Jewish–Roman wars and introduced agriculture, putting them in a culturally, economically and politically dominant position.

[2][7][8] While the city found itself at war with Muhammad's native Meccan tribe of the Quraysh, tensions between the growing numbers of Muslims and the Jewish communities mounted.

[2] Al-Isfahani writes in his 10th century collection of Arabic poetry that Jews arrived in Hijaz in the wake of the Jewish-Roman wars; the Qurayza settled in Mahzur, a wadi in Al Harrah.

According to Ibn Ishaq, he was stopped from doing so by two rabbis from the Banu Qurayza, who implored the king to spare the oasis because it was the place "to which a prophet of the Quraysh would migrate in time to come, and it would be his home and resting-place".

On approaching Yemen, tells Ibn Ishaq, the rabbis demonstrated to the local people a miracle by coming out of a fire unscathed and the Yemenites accepted Judaism.

[3][5] William Montgomery Watt however considers this clientship to be unhistorical prior to 627 and maintains that the Jews retained a measure of political independence after the Arab revolt.

[4][6] The Qurayza appear as a tribe of considerable military importance: they possessed large numbers of weaponry, as upon their surrender 1,500 swords, 2,000 lances, 300 suits of armor, and 500 shields were later seized by the Muslims.

[28][29] Meir J. Kister notes that these quantities are "disproportionate relative to the number of fighting men" and conjectures that the "Qurayza used to sell (or lend) some of the weapons kept in their storehouses".

[4][6] Ibn Ishaq recorded that after his arrival in 622, Muhammad established a compact, the Constitution of Medina, which committed the Jewish and Muslim tribes to mutual cooperation.

He had one of the Banu Nadir's chiefs, the poet Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, assassinated[38] and after the Battle of Uhud accused the tribe of treachery and plotting against his life and expelled them from the city.

[48] As this would have allowed the besiegers to access the city and thus meant the collapse of the defenders' strategy,[11] Muhammad "became anxious about their conduct and sent some of the leading Muslims to talk to them; the result was disquieting.

As their morale waned, Ka'b ibn Asad suggested three alternative ways out of their predicament: embrace Islam; kill their own children and women, then rush out for a charge to either win or die; or make a surprise attack on the Sabbath.

According to Ibn Ishaq, Abu Lubaba felt pity for the women and children of the tribe who were crying and when asked whether the Qurayza should surrender to Muhammad, advised them to do so.

[63] Sa'd dismissed the pleas of the Aws, according to Watt because being close to death and concerned with his afterlife, he put what he considered "his duty to God and the Muslim community" before tribal allegiance.

[43] Tariq Ramadan argues that Muhammad deviated from his earlier, more lenient treatment of prisoners as this was seen "as sign of weakness if not madness",[57] Peterson concurs that the Muslims wanted to deter future treachery by setting an example with severe punishment.

[10] Lings reports that Sa'ad feared that if expelled, the Qurayza would join the Nadir in the fight against the Muslims, as happened with the qurayshi captives after the battle of Badr.

[31] Ibn Ishaq describes the killing of the Banu Qurayza men as follows: Then they surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of B. al-Najjar.

Huyayy was brought out wearing a flowered robe in which he had made holes about the size of the finger-tips in every part so that it should not be taken from him as spoil, with his hands bound to his neck by a rope.

[51][52][64]Several accounts note Muhammad's companions as executioners, Ali and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam in particular, and that each clan of the Aws was also charged with killing a group of Qurayza men.

The spoils of battle, including the enslaved women and children of the tribe, were divided up among the Islamic warriors that had participated in the siege and among the emigrees from Mecca (who had hitherto depended on the help of the Muslims native to Medina.

[52] Arab Muslim theologians and historians have either viewed the incident as "the punishment of the Medina Jews, who were invited to convert and refused, perfectly exemplify the Quran's tales of what happened to those who rejected the prophets of old" or offered a political, rather than religious, explanation.

[70] In the 8th and early 9th century many Muslim jurists, such as Ash-Shafii, based their judgments and decrees supporting collective punishment for treachery on the accounts of the demise of the Qurayza, with which they were well acquainted.

[72][73][74][75][clarification needed][76] In his 1861 biography of Muhammad, William Muir argued that the massacre cannot be justified by political necessity and "casts an odious blot upon the prophet's name".

[80][81][82] Aiming at placing the events in their historical context, Watt points to the "harsh political circumstances of that era"[43] and argues that the treatment of Qurayza was regular Arab practice ("but on a larger scale than usual").

[68] On the other hand, Michael Lecker and Irving Zeitlin consider the events "unprecedented in the Arab peninsula - a novelty" and state that "prior to Islam, the annihilation of an adversary was never an aim of war.

[98] Arafat disputes large-scale killings and argued that Ibn Ishaq gathered information from descendants of the Qurayza Jews, who embellished or manufactured the details of the incident.

[100] Historians Fred Donner and Tom Holland cast doubt not only on the scale of the killings, but on their having happened at all, arguing that existence of the tribe and its slaughter is at odds with a more reliable document known as the Constitution of Medina.

Donner concludes that the story of the massacre may have been invented or exaggerated a couple hundred years after the event to explain a break between the Jewish and Muslim communities at that time, but it is not certain.

Tom Holland also notes that the sources talking about this exile and slaughter "are all suspiciously late" and "date from the heyday of Muslim greatness" when anti-non-Muslim sentiment was much greater.