A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Appendix B/4

[Sidenote: Bani Koreiza not enslaved.]

4. Some will contend regarding the Bani Koreiza that their women and children were made slaves, and as such sold in Najd. Sir W. Muir quotes the judgment of Sád in the case of the Bani Koreiza,&mdash;"That the female captives and the children shall be sold into slavery," and that it was approved of by Mohammad. He writes further:&mdash;


 * "A fifth of the booty was, as usual, reserved for the Prophet, and the rest divided. From the fifth Mahomet made certain presents to his friends of female slaves and servants; and then sent the rest of the women and children to be sold among the Bedouin tribes of Najd in exchange for horses and arms."

I have shown in para. 30 of this book (pages 37 and 38) that Mohammad never appreciated the judgment of Sád. And I have further to add that the said judgment, according to true reports, did not contain the illegal verdict of enslaving the women and children of the Bani Koreiza, as this might have gone directly against the Koran and the precedents of the Prophet. In the collections of Bokhari, Book of Campaigns, Chapter on Bani Koreiza, there are two traditions cited on the subject. Both of them quote the words of Sád to the effect that "the women and children be imprisoned." The same is the case in Bokhari's other chapters (Book of "Jihád", Chapter on the Surrender of Enemy, Book of Manákib, Chapter on the Merits of Sád).

It is not a fact that Mohammad made certain presents to his friends of the female slaves out of the captives of Bani Koreiza. The captives were not made slaves, therefore it is wrong to confound captives with slaves. There is no proof to the effect that they were enslaved. The Koran distinctly says that they were prisoners (Sura XXXIII, 26).

In fact, the women and children were not guilty of treason, and deserved no punishment. Sád's judgment must be either wrong regarding them, or applied only to those who were guilty. "One woman alone," according to Sir W. Muir, "was put to death; it was she who threw the millstone from the battlements" (Life of Mahomet, Vol. III, page 277). I conclude, therefore, that all the women and children were released afterwards; some ransomed themselves, others went off with their freedom. But nobody was ever sold in slavery. The assertion of Hishamee, quoted by Sir W. Muir, that the women and children were sent to be sold among the Bedouin tribes of Najd in exchange for horses and arms (Vol. III, page 279), is void of all authority, and is in direct contradiction of what Abul Mo'tamar Soleiman bin Tarkhan (died 143 A.H. and was prior to Hishamee) says, and whose account seems to be more probable. His version is that the horses of Bani Koreiza were sent by Mohammad to Syria and Najd for the purpose of breeding, and that they got big horses. Vide Wákidi Campaigns of Mohammad, page 374, Calcutta, 1855. This shows that only horses, and not women and children, were sent to Najd. The words of Hishamee (page 693) are "sabáya min sabáya Bani Koreiza." Sabáya, plural of sabi, applies to both person and property, as they say sabal adúvva vaghairohu, he made captive, captured or took prisoner the enemy, and other than an enemy. (Vide Lane's Arabic Dictionary, page 1303, col. 1.) So probably Hishamee had in view only the horses captured of the Bani Koreiza and sent to Najd, but not the women and children of the captives of Koreiza.