15. The massacre of the fortress of Banu Qurayza
According to the Prophet Muhammad, the order to attack the fortress at Banu Qurayza originated with the Archangel Gabriel, who told the Prophet to direct his followers to destroy the tribe occupying it, despite the existence of a treaty between Muhammad and the Jewish occupants. Pressure from other Jewish tribes on the Banu Qurayza led them to violate the treaty, and Muhammad’s followers responded by attacking and seizing the fortress, following a siege which lasted just over three weeks. The leader of the Muhammadans, Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, directed that the surrendering Jews be taken into custody with, “the men should be killed, the property divided, and the women and children taken as captives”. Muhammad cited the judgment as being in accord with the will of God in approving it, and the women and children became slaves of his followers.
The male captives old enough to have reached puberty, determined by the presence of pubic hair on their bodies, were separated from the others and beheaded. The exact number of men thus massacred is unknown, and subsequent scholars of the Quran and Islam have disputed whether the massacre took place, calling it Jewish propaganda and worse. The most commonly cited number of men thus killed is between 600 and 900. A Muslim jurist named Tabari, a writer of history and commentary on the Quran in the late ninth and early tenth century gave detailed accounts of the event, though they have since been dismissed as deliberate falsifications. Others have cited the event as being referenced to in the Quran itself, an assertion which is also disputed.