Banu Qaynuqa'

Banu Qaynuqa' were the craftsmen and the market of Yathrib's Jews, and the first of its tribes to be expelled. Their case was the first open confrontation between Medina's state and its Jews after Badr.

Qaynuqa' were the Jews most inclined to the alliance with the Khazraj Ansar and to their companionship. After Badr came the "market of Qaynuqa'" incident, a quarrel over a headscarf that ended in deaths. The state besieged them for two weeks until they surrendered ¹. In the Sunni tradition, Abdullah ibn Ubayy interceded for their release. The Prophet accepted his pledge that they would leave with their property but without iron weapons, and they emigrated north to Adhri'at ².

Historians see in the event the application of an internal siege against those who had refused the Charter of Medina after the balance shifted at Badr, more than a punishment for the quarrel itself ³.

Qaynuqa' is the first of three cases in the treatment of Medina's Jews: Qaynuqa', then al-Nadir, then Qurayza. The Sunni tradition reads this sequence as escalating betrayal and punishment. Historians read it as the gradual dismantling of the independent tribes ³.

Al-Raheeq al-Makhtum counts this tribe among the well-known Jewish tribes when Islam came: Khaybar, al-Nadir, al-Mustaliq, Qurayza and Qaynuqa'. It reports from al-Samhudi that the number of Jewish tribes exceeded twenty. Their settlement in the Hijaz began with the migration of Jews to Yathrib, Khaybar and Tayma' after the Romans took Palestine in 70 CE ^{4 5 6}. See Judaism in the Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish tribes of the Hijaz.

It was one of the three Jewish tribes of Yathrib. It stirred up wars between the Aws and the Khazraj through incitement, and its people lent money to the Arabs at interest (Medina's society at the time of the Hijra) ⁷.