Banu Qurayza

Banu Qurayza were the last of Yathrib's great Jewish tribes. Their sentencing after the Trench siege is the most disputed of Medina's events, both in narration and in interpretation.

Medina accused them of opening channels to the polytheists during the siege of the Trench. They were besieged for days, then surrendered to the arbitration of Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, who ruled that their fighting men be killed and their dependants taken captive. About six hundred men were executed, and pits were dug in Medina's market with picks ¹.

In the Sunni tradition it was a just ruling on betrayal. Sa'd himself was one of their allies, and he was brought to them ill, and his verdict "by the judgement of God" meant the law of Moses. In the academic reading it was a turning point from a plural society to a single unitary state ^{2 3}.

The Qurayza massacre is the heaviest charge that critics bring against Muslims, from medieval clergy to writers today. It remains the one event in the Prophet's sira that both defenders and critics prefer to consider on its own 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.