Muhammad and The Jews — Page 85
THE FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY Since the captives included women, children, and old and sick people they must have walked to Medina at a much slower pace- ten to eleven hours. Neither during this march nor during their captivity in the house of Bint al-Harith did any incident take place. No one tried to escape except c Amr b. Sueda al-Qura?i, and no one accepted Islam to save his life except Rifa"-a b. Samaw?al al-Qura?i. It was both a tame and a brave crowd. If the story is true the martyrs who fell under Bar Kochba (A. D. J 32) against overwhelming odds were nothing in comparison to the martyrs of the B. Quray?ah. The disposal of nine hundred bodies did not seem to have posed any problems. The trenches neatly dug were filled by the same night. There was apparently a complete absence of any sentiment among the Muslims who watched this execution. It must have been a shatter- ing experience for many and an unforgettable event even for those who thought it to be fully justified. Several heart-rending incidents must have taken place during the day; some must have tried to struggle and run, others would have uttered words of dismay and repentence, and there must have been many who either did not die at the first blow, or died of fright even before the executioner's sword struck. Swords must have blunted and broken. cAli and Zubayr, who were the execu- tioners, must have faced several problems, and witnessed many facets of human nature on that day. But neither "-Ali nor Zubayr, in fact no one, ever later mentioned anything about his experience of this execution. A detailed scrutiny indicates that the whole story of this massacre is of a very doubtful nature. As Ibn Khaldiin has pointed out "the rule of distinguishing what is true from what is false in history is based on its possibility or impossibility". 1 We have already pointed out that Medina in the Apostle's time was not equipped to imprison four to five thousand people and execute 600 to 900 people in a day. Killing such a large number of people and disposing of the dead bodies created problems even for Nazi Germany, with hydrogen cyanide2 as an efficient lethal agent. A massacre in the midst of a town where people live is very different from a massacre in a town which is being sacked by a conquering army marchlng onwards from town to town with dead bodies left to make it uninhabitable. 1 Vide R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Repr. Cambridge, 1966), p. 438. 2 Raul Hilberg, ed. Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry 1933-1945 (Chicago, 1971), p. 219. 85