The Prophetic Method

after besieging the town for three weeks, he ordered his army to retreat. On his return from Ta’if, the Prophet reached Ji’ranah, where the spoils of the Battle of Hunayn had been stored. Here the Prophet had an opportunity to take reprisals against the Thaqifs ally, Hawazin. But he did quite the opposite, accepting an appeal from a delegation of that tribe for the release of all their six thousand prisoners. His magnanimous treatment of them—he set them free and gave them clothes and provisions for their journey— was bound to make an impression on them. And it did: the whole Hawazin tribe accepted Islam, won over by the Prophet’s unbounded generosity. The effects of this event were also felt in Ta’if. The Hawazin and the Thaqif were two branches of one large tribe. The Thaqif felt much more threatened by the Hawazin’s conversion to Islam than they had been by the siege of their city. The severance of the Hawazin from their alliance was a mortal wound, which they knew would render them incapable of doing battle with the Muslims: The Thaqif consulted among themselves. They saw that they would not now be able to fight against all the Arabs around them who had sworn allegiance to the Prophet and accepted his Faith.75 In A.H. 9 (A.D. 630), a delegation from Ta’if arrived in Madinah. They were willing to accept Islam, but only under certain unusual conditions. For example, they denied the right of passage to the Muslim army through their territory; they refused to pay land tax; they declined