I once asked my uncle, who has told stories at family gatherings for as long as I can remember, which moment in the seerah he’d pick if he could only keep one. I expected Badr. Everyone expects Badr. He thought about i t for a good while, stirring his tea, and said, “the doorway of the Kaaba, the day after the city opened.” Then he told me why, and I’ve been thinking about it since.
Picture it. A man gets pushed out of his hometown, and eight years later he walks back in with ten thousand people behind him. The ones who hurt him and his friends are standing right there in the street. Nobody can stop him. What does he do?
According to the accounts, he bowed his head on his camel so low that his beard nearly touched the saddle. That’s how he came into Mecca.
How it started
It begins with a treaty. In 6 AH the Muslims and the Quraysh signed the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, a ten year truce. Two years in, Banu Bakr, allies of the Quraysh, attacked Banu Khuza’ah, who were allied with the Muslims, and the Quraysh helped them. People died. The treaty was broken, and Khuza’ah came to the Prophet asking for help. He told them they’d get it.
The Quraysh woke up to what they’d done pretty fast. Abu Sufyan went to Madinah to fix things and knocked on every door he could think of, Abu Bakr, Umar, even Ali and Fatimah. Nobody would take it on. He went home with nothing.
The march, and the fires
The Prophet set out in Ramadan of 8 AH, around January 630 CE, with about ten thousand men, and he tried to keep the destination quiet so the city could be taken without a fight. When the army camped at Marr al-Zahran, just outside Mecca, he told every man to light his own fire. So ten thousand small fires, all over the valley, at night.
Abu Sufyan came out to scout with a couple of others, saw the glow, and probably stopped breathing for a second. The Muslim guards caught him and took him to the Prophet. He accepted Islam. And the Prophet, who understood how much a proud man needs to keep some dignity, announced that anyone who entered Abu Sufyan’s house would be safe, anyone who stayed in his own home with the door shut would be safe, and anyone who entered the Masjid al-Haram would be safe.
Inside the city
The army went in through several routes, with orders not to fight unless they were attacked. One group, under Khalid ibn al-Walid, ran into a bit of resistance and a few Meccans were killed, along with two or three Muslims. Other than that, it fell almost without bloodshed. For a city that had fought him for twenty years, that’s remarkable.
The Prophet went to the Kaaba, did tawaf, and found it surrounded by idols, three hundred and sixty of them by the reports. He pointed at each one with his stick and recited the verse, “Truth has come and falsehood has vanished.” They fell. The images inside the Kaaba were removed.
Then Bilal climbed onto the roof of the Kaaba and called the adhan. If you’ve read about Bilal ibn Rabah, the man who was dragged across hot sand in this very city for saying one word, you’ll know why that detail makes people go quiet.
What my uncle meant
This is the part he told me about. The Quraysh were crowded around the Kaaba, scared, waiting. The Prophet stood at the door and asked them what they thought he was going to do with them. They said, you’re a noble brother, the son of a noble brother. And he said, go, you are free.
Now, hadith scholars grade the exact wording of that exchange differently, so I’ll say it comes from the sirah literature. But the pardon itself is part of the agreed story. A handful of people were excluded from the general amnesty, those guilty of serious crimes, and even some of them were forgiven later. Ikrimah, Abu Jahl’s son, ran away, and his wife pleaded for him, and the Prophet welcomed him back.
My uncle put his cup down when he got to the end. “Twenty years,” he said. “And the answer was three words.”
The key
There’s a small scene I like even more. The key of the Kaaba was held by Uthman ibn Talha, who had refused to give it to the Prophet years before. This time the Prophet took it, and then a verse came about handing trusts back to the people they belong to, and he returned it to Uthman. Not as a favor. As something that was already his. Power, quietly given back to a man who had nothing to bargain with.
What came next
People started accepting Islam in crowds, which Surah An-Nasr describes. Hunayn followed soon after. And the Prophet didn’t move his base to Mecca. He went back to Madinah, to the people who had taken him in when he had nothing.
If you want more on how far the community had come by this point, our post on the Battle of Badr is the starting line, and Mecca is where the story had arrived.
Conclusion
I don’t really tell it as military history anymore. When someone asks me about the conquest, I skip the army and go straight to that doorway, and the three words. My uncle was right. If you’d like to read these accounts in the language they were first told in, you’re welcome to study with us at Studio Arabiya.
Stories like this one hit differently when you can read the original accounts yourself, and that’s exactly what our Arabic Immersion program in Cairo prepares you for.
FAQs
When was the Conquest of Mecca? It took place in Ramadan of 8 AH, around January 630 CE. The Prophet marched from Madinah with about ten thousand men after the Quraysh broke the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, and the city fell with very little fighting.
Did the Prophet punish the people of Mecca? No. He announced a general amnesty and told them they were free. A very small number of people guilty of serious crimes were excluded, and several of those were forgiven later when they came and accepted Islam.
What happened to the idols in the Kaaba? The Prophet had them removed, reportedly pointing at each with his stick while reciting that truth had come and falsehood had vanished. The images inside the Kaaba were cleaned out, and Bilal called the adhan from its roof.
