The Wound and the Judgment

During the Trench, Sa'd was struck in the arm by an arrow. He prayed that Allah would not take his life until he had seen justice done on Banu Qurayzah, who had been his clan's allies in the days before Islam and who had broken their pact with the Prophet ﷺ at the height of the siege. 'A'ishah reported that the Prophet ﷺ had a tent set up for him in the mosque so that he could be tended close by.

When Qurayzah surrendered, they asked that Sa'd, their old ally, decide their fate. He came on a donkey, and the Prophet ﷺ told the Ansar to stand for their chief. Sa'd asked them to accept the judge's ruling and then gave it: that their fighting men be killed, their women and children taken, and their property divided. The Prophet ﷺ said that he had judged by the judgment of Allah.

This is one of the hard passages of the seerah, and scholars treat it with care. They stress that Qurayzah chose the judge themselves, that the penalty answered treason in a war for the city's survival, and that Sa'd ruled on the basis of the law they already knew. Some modern readers find it difficult, and the numbers given for those executed vary among the sources and cannot be settled with certainty.