Hilf al-Fudul (Arabic: حلف الفضول) was an alliance or confederacy created in Mecca in the year 590 AD,[1] to establish justice for all through collective action, especially for those who were not under the protection of any clan.
Montgomery Watt notes that the war resulted in Meccan control of the commercial road between Iraq and al-Hirah.
[3] The principle of hilf was established previously by Hashim ibn Abd Manaf as a way to set up new alliances between merchants of similar power, whether they be Meccans or foreigners.
Having taken possession of the goods, the Qurayshi refused to pay the agreed price, knowing that the merchant had no confederate or kinsman in Mecca whom he could count upon for help.
So the merchant went to the mountain Abi Qays to recite poems asking for justice : ô the people unjusted in their trade, in the heart of Mecca, distant from home and people A portected transgressed, who did not spend his days, ô the men between al hijr and the stone The interdiction for whose honnor is achieved, no interdiction for the immoral treachery Al-Zubayr ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib, Muhammad's uncle, is believed to have been the first to call for a pact.
[7] At the meeting, various chiefs and members of tribes pledged to assist anyone who was treated unjustly, to collectively intervene in conflicts to establish justice and to defend people who were foreigners in Mecca or who were not under the protection of a clan:[8] Al-Zubayr b. c Abd al-Muttalib spoke the following verses about this pact: "I swore, Let's make a pact against them, though we're all members of one tribe.
We'll call it al-fudul; if we make a pact by it the stranger could overcome those under local protection, And those who go around the ka'ba will know that we reject injustice and will prevent all things shameful."
To make the pact imperative and sacred, the members went into the Ka'aba and poured water into the receptacle so it flowed on the black stone.
[8] This presumption is based on the fact that Abdullah ibn Jad'an, whose house was the venue for this pledge, was Abu Bakr's fellow clansman.
[14][15] Anas Malik sees the pact as an example of libertarianism in Islam,[16] and Anthony Sullivan considers it as a support for Muslim democrats.