The year of the reciters

In Ṣafar of 4 AH men of ʿAḍal and al-Qārah asked for teachers; at ar-Rajīʿ they were betrayed to Hudhayl and ten Companions were killed or sold to Makkah, among them Khubayb ibn ʿAdī, crucified there after praying two rakʿahs. In the same month Abū Barāʾ asked for reciters for Najd; about seventy were killed at Biʾr Maʿūnah by ʿĀmir ibn aṭ-Ṭufayl and the tribes of Sulaym. The Prophet ﷺ made qunūt against those tribes for a month — the only time he is reported to have done so at such length.

• Teachers were sent unarmed, in good faith, and the treachery was the other side's.
• He ﷺ grieved publicly for a month; loss was not hidden from the community.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3989, 4090; ar-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm, al-Mubārakpūrī

He ﷺ went to Banū an-Naḍīr over blood money owed under the covenant. They sat him against a wall of a house and agreed among themselves to drop a millstone on him from the roof. Revelation informed him and he left at once. They were told to leave Madinah; ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy promised them support that never came, and after a siege of some days they left for Khaybar and Shām, carrying what their camels could hold. Sūrat al-Ḥashr was revealed about them.

• 59:2 — He it is who expelled those who disbelieved from among the People of the Book.

• The breaches were acts of war — assassination attempts, not differences of religion.
• Sūrat al-Ḥashr reads this expulsion as a sign: fortresses do not protect against Allah.

Ibn Hishām; Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4028; ar-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm, al-Mubārakpūrī