Prophet Muhammad's Caravan Raids Explained — Defensive Warfare, Not Offensive Aggression

One of the claims frequently made by anti-Muslim websites is that after Prophet Muhammad emigrated to Medina, he became a warlord and launched offensive wars against the tribes around him for worldly gains. The truth is that the Meccan aristocracy had been violently intolerant of the new religion from the very beginning, and the Muslims were forced to take up arms in defense of their right to practice Islam.

The Quraysh Declaration of War Against Medina

After the Prophet fled to Medina following thirteen years of persecution, the Quraysh issued an ultimatum to the leadership of Medina that they must kill the Prophet or face war.

The Meccans were not content to let the Muslims worship in peace. Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, one of the Prophet’s companions, went to Mecca to perform his pilgrimage at the sacred mosque. While he was there, Abu Jahl, one of the leaders of Mecca, issued an open threat:

In other words, if Sa’d had not been under the protection of Abu Sufyan, a powerful tribal leader, then Abu Jahl would have had him killed. In this context, Allah revealed a verse allowing the Muslims to defend themselves after having required them to patiently endure up to this point.

This verse makes clear that the reason the Muslims were allowed to fight was because they had been driven out and violently oppressed solely on account of their religion.

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The Prophet’s Prohibition of Plunder and Looting

As the Meccans were preparing for war, the Muslims prepared to launch raids on their caravans as a means to disrupt their economic war-making capabilities. The Meccans had confiscated the property that the Muslims had left behind in Mecca and were transporting it to Syria to be sold for war funds. Despite suffering this persecution, the Prophet commanded the Muslims to adhere to the highest standard of conduct and prohibited them from plundering the enemy’s wealth.

On one occasion, the Prophet saw that some of his companions had looted the enemy’s sheep. He commanded them to return the property to their owners.

Fighting for Worldly Gain Is Impermissible

Permission was given to fight back only as a response to aggression. Muslims are allowed to fight for the right to practice Islam and to defend innocent people from oppression. No other motives are permissible, and the Prophet was explicit that fighting for worldly gain carries no reward.

Nevertheless, the collection of spoils is an incidental consequence of war. The Prophet would collect the spoils and distribute them equitably among the community as charity.

The Prophet’s Commands to His Army Regarding Civilians

The Prophet forbade Muslims from killing non-combatants and civilians, and commanded them to behave magnanimously with the enemy.

The Prophet launched raids against the Meccan caravans in response to their declaration of war. The raids were meant to obstruct the Meccan plans to attack the new community in Medina. Even so, the Prophet prohibited his companions from stealing from the enemy and commanded his army to behave honorably with them.

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The Reason the Caravan Raids Took Place — The Full Context

The early Believers of Makkah were mercilessly persecuted for their faith, in their own hometown, by their own kinsmen and countrymen who could not tolerate their call to fix the injustices in their society, spanning from the spiritual to the societal. For thirteen years while the Prophet lived in Mecca, he was forbidden by God Most High to do so much as lift a finger in self-defense against his persecutors.

The early Muslims were powerless, outnumbered, and boycotted — yet for thirteen years they did not resort to guerrilla tactics, coup d’etats, terrorist methods, or assassinations, when all of that could have easily been attempted.

The command on them from God Most High to keep the peace and order within their society and respect its laws — even uphold the trusts and contracts they had — is telling for how Muslims who perceive themselves in similar situations today should behave. Their only response was to increase themselves in devotion to Allah and pray for ease. This attracted even more people to the message of Islam.

After the order by God to migrate to Medina, the Muslims had their own state, but the Makkans still sought to vanquish them. Thus, the raids were in self-defense, fully conducted within the laws of Islam which forbade the killing of innocent civilians or even the harming of people with whom there were covenants of peace. Even if the early raids were pre-emptive, the trade being conducted by the hostile Makkans was, at times, the selling of the stolen properties of the exiled Muslims, in order to amass materials and weapons to exterminate the nascent Muslim community of Medina in a looming war they were planning.

What took place after the migration of the Prophet to Medina with regards to the caravan raids were actions between two independent states with rulers and laws — not guerrilla leaders, militias, or vigilante terrorists. They did not occur on any one state’s land; rather, on the no-man’s-land of the vast Arabian desert. There were no international laws, no government relations, no treaties of peace and diplomatic ties, nor accepted rules of engagement like there are today. There were no covenants of citizenship, but even then, there was the concept that a visitor from a hostile state who entered the city legally was never to be harmed.

There was also no khiyana — treacherous deception — even though the migrants were Makkans and looked just like their aggressing countrymen, even being from the same families. Yet they clearly declared the renunciation of their citizenship, identified themselves openly, and separated before they defended themselves, and never harmed civilians or acted as an enemy from within in Makkah. They were never a fifth column in their countries, nor attempted assassinations, overthrows, or terrorist attacks to force Makkah to accept their demands, even when it was possible to do so, even under the worst persecution.

History Is Not the Same as Islamic Sacred Law

Historical events in the life of the Prophet are not Islamic legal rulings. One cannot pick up a book of Prophetic biography by themselves and come to conclusions on how to deal with complex modern-day issues of international gravity. Rather, one returns to the mainstream scholars, both for guidance on how to view past and new incidents in an Islamic light, and for rulings on how to behave in contemporary contexts.

When a Muslim is supposed to return to mainstream scholars on minute issues of personal law rather than go into the primary texts to find their own solutions, it is even more obvious that people should return to them for clarity on major issues which hold innocent life and millions of people’s safety in the balance.

Likewise, for those outside of Islam looking in, they should know that any wars and violent resistance in the prophetic biography should be seen in the same light as any mention of war in the holy books of other world religions — such as the Battle of Jericho and those fought by Moses, David, and Solomon in the Old Testament, or the wars between the Kauravas and Pandavas in the Hindu Gita, or stories of self-defense which are the cornerstone of Sikh history. While all of these religions’ stories of struggle have been twisted by extremists to justify expedient political ends and even terrorism, the main purpose of remembering those events should be to teach good values and condemn oppression, not to justify terrorism.

This space is too short to get into the detailed legal particulars of how and why senseless violence, terrorism, and traitorous vigilante attacks are impermissible and completely against the spirit of Islam. A 600-page fatwa by Shaykh Tahir al-Qadri elucidates more or less what the position of the mainstream scholarship is, and it is clear from that work that the caravan raids of Islamic history can never justify the terrorist attacks that take place today.

Violent Interpretations Must Be Refuted and Marginalized, By All Sides

This seems obvious when it comes to terrorists and extremists justifying their hideous actions through distorting religious teachings. However, the misconceptions of some people who fanatically criticize and negatively portray prophetic history are the other side of the same coin that bears the warped understandings of modern-day terrorists and militants.

Both groups actually employ the same misunderstandings of the same past events and push them on one another to fuel each other — except that the terrorists claim to be believers and use these misinterpretations to justify their heinous actions today, while the Islamophobes do not believe, and use their misinterpretations to justify fear-mongering and demonization of Muslim communities in their countries, communities which are by and large peaceful, moderate, loyal, and law-abiding. No doubt the side of the terrorists is inexcusable; however, the Islamophobes still have a right to their opinions.

Both sides blame the other for their own existence and need to struggle. Furthering violent misinterpretations of Islamic history on either side only leads to self-fulfilling prophecies which convince misguided and uneducated Muslim youth that Islamophobes represent the majority of the other, and rather than refuting their misinterpretations logically through the religion, they accept them and actually make them their own while being rebelliously proud of it. While the chicken-or-egg blame game continues, its consequences distract the mainstream good people of both sides from reaching lasting solutions for peace.

Hence, those who call themselves Muslims and claim to follow the highest moral example of the Prophet Muhammad need to speak up first, to break this vicious cycle, and clarify the truth for themselves and instruct their own people in it before anything else, and trust that good people of all walks of life will notice, listen, and thus marginalize those who propagate misinterpretations from their side.

How Muslims Should Deal with These Types of Historical Incidents

Although an event-by-event exercise in apologetics has its place, if one is looking to answer these types of questions it will never end because the heart of the matter is not being discussed — the greater context. It is easier to adopt a general approach unless one has time to delve deeply into history and fair sources.

One must look at the overarching teachings through source texts — in this case the Quran and prophetic narrations — which will clearly show the sacredness of life and the importance of respecting covenants and legal systems. The prophetic biography, taken as a whole with the Makkan and Madinan periods considered together, will also show this. This should teach the spirit of the law. Then, for the law itself, one must return to the mainstream scholars, who follow the way of the majority, preferably those from the same land as the questioner so that language and mentalities are clearly understood and communicated — all of whom would condemn the types of modern-day militant attacks in question.

One cannot compare between a prophet who is directly instructed by God on what to do, and modern-day followers who claim to draw lessons from that prophet while completely violating known and set-down principles of the sacredness of life explicitly taught by that same prophet. Today, we have limited knowledge of exactly what took place and how in religious history. Thus, we accept that because God sanctioned these events, they fully took place within the context of the broader moral teachings of respect for life and justice, though we may not understand every detail. This applies in the life stories of Moses, David, Krishna, and Muhammad, to name a few across various traditions. Then we return to the greater teachings that the Prophet himself laid down for our own actions, and emphasize historical events in a positive light that reflects the lessons of those greater teachings.

Patience, being peaceful and just, and taking the higher road has always been the hardest path, but this cannot be explained to those who follow what suits them or their situation, because they did not imbibe the compassionate teachings of their own faith before acting in its name. It is obvious that people who violate Islam’s teachings on the sacredness of life will never win their struggle. While they continue with their misguidance, it is the duty of Muslims before any other people to stop them — through force of arms, education, and prayers for guidance — because the way to help your oppressive brother is to stop his hand from committing oppression, regardless of whether he feels oppressed.

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The Three Strategic Aims of the Early Expeditions

The first actions of jihad were the campaigns — ghazawat — and smaller expeditions — saraya — directed against places to the west of Medina. These had three aims:

First, to threaten Quraysh’s trade routes to Syria, a serious blow to the mercantile economy of Makkah.

Second, to make peace treaties and agreements with the other tribes who lived in the area, in order to guarantee their support or at least their neutrality in the conflict between the Muslims and Quraysh. This plan was important, and its accomplishment was a success for the Muslims, because originally these tribes had tended to favor the Quraysh, as there were historical alliances between them — which the Quran describes as ilaf or “covenants of security and safeguard” (Quran 106:1) — through which the Quraysh sought to secure their trade with Syria and Yemen. These tribes had a real interest in the Quraysh as the custodians of the Ka’bah, to which all the Arabs performed pilgrimage in order to worship the idols surrounding it. The tribes and the Quraysh shared common beliefs and joined together to oppose Islam. Undoubtedly, the fact that the Muslims were able to make treaties with these tribes and ensure their neutrality during the conflict was a great victory for them at that stage.

Third, to demonstrate the power of the Muslims in Medina to the Jews and the Mushrikun. Muslim dominance was no longer confined to Medina; the Muslims were now beginning to establish control over the surrounding areas and tribes and influence their interests and relations.

The majority of the time, in practically all cases, these caravan raids did not entail any form of looting of the actual caravans. Rather, they were to send the caravans off course from their trade routes in order to thwart and puncture holes in the economic flourishing of the Quraysh. Furthermore, the goods being transported in these caravans were the property of the Muslims anyway, and in the cases where the caravans were actually looted, it was merely a confiscation and retrieval of goods stolen from them by the Quraysh.

The Individual Expeditions — A Historical Record

The first expedition was Ghazwat al-Abwa, also known as Ghazwat Wuddan. These are two adjoining sites, six or seven miles apart. Al-Abwa is approximately 14 miles from Medina.

It was mentioned in Sahih al-Bukhari, in a hadith from Zayd ibn Arqam, that the first ghazwah was al-Ashirah. Al-Hafiz ibn Hajar reconciled this report with that of Ibn Ishaq by explaining that Zayd ibn Arqam meant that the first ghazwah in which he personally took part with the Prophet was al-Ashirah. (Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah, 3/246.)

There was no battle during Ghazwat al-Abwa, but the peace treaty with Banu Damrah from Kinanah was concluded. This ghazwah took place on 12 Safar in the second year of the Hijrah. According to al-Mada’ini’s report (Khalifah ibn Khayyat al-Usfur, al-Tarikh, 56), the army stayed outside Medina until Rabi al-Awwal before they returned. (Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fath al-Bari, 7/279; Khalifah: al-Tarikh, 56, from a report of Ibn Ishaq without isnad.)

Urwah ibn al-Zubayr mentions that the Prophet sent a sariyah out from al-Abwa, consisting of sixty men under the leadership of Ubaydah ibn al-Harith. (Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari, 7/279.) Ibn Ishaq mentions that the sariyah was sent to Sayf al-Bahr after the return to Medina, and that another sariyah, consisting of thirty men under the leadership of Hamzah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, also went to Sayf al-Bahr at that time, in order to intercept a Quraysh caravan.

But the two sariyahs did not engage the Quraysh in battle, because in the case of Hamzah’s sariyah, the tribes who had peace treaties with both sides prevented any fighting, and in the case of Ubaydah’s sariyah there was only an exchange of arrows between the Muslims and the Quraysh. (Khalifah, al-Tarikh, 61–62; Abu Muhammad Abd al-Malik Ibn Hisham al-Himyari, al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, 1/591–2, from a report of Ibn Ishaq without isnad; Al-Umawi, Maghazi, also without isnad, as mentioned in Fath al-Bari, 76/279.)

So the majority of the time there was no actual looting nor actual fighting involved.

Undoubtedly the two sariyahs were aimed, in the first instance, at threatening the trade of the Quraysh. This was the first warning to them that their trade would be in danger unless they changed their obstinate attitude towards Islam. In Rabi al-Thani, the Muslims continued their campaign against the trade routes. Ghazwat Birwat took place in Ridwa, near Yanbu, with two hundred fighters who went to intercept a Quraysh trade caravan. Then Ghazwat al-Ashirah in Yanbu took place in Jumada al-Ula. There was no fighting in Ridwa and al-Ashirah, but a peace treaty was concluded with Banu Mudlaj in al-Ashirah in Jumada al-Akhirah. (Khalifah, al-Tarikh, 57, transmitted through Ibn Ishaq without isnad.)

Immediately after al-Ashirah, Karaz ibn Jabir al-Fahri came to the outskirts of Medina and stole camels and cattle. The Prophet pursued him as far as Safwan in the vicinity of Badr — hence this was called the first Ghazwah of Badr. Karaz managed to escape from his pursuers, but this event convinced the Muslims of the necessity of securing their relations with the neighboring tribes, so the expeditions continued.

The Muslims did not limit themselves to intercepting Quraysh’s trade with Syria; they also intercepted their trade route with Yemen. The sariyah of Abd Allah ibn Jahsh, with eight Muhajirun, was sent to Nakhlah, south of Makkah, at the end of Rajab, solely to find out and assess the latest news about the Quraysh. But they intercepted a Quraysh trade caravan, seized it, killed its leader, took two of its men prisoner, and took it back to Medina. Because this event occurred during the sacred month, the Mushrikun caused a great outcry insisting that the Muslims had violated the sanctity of the sacred month.

The event had a serious impact on both city dwellers and desert nomads, because it broke a tradition which had long been established in the Arabian Peninsula well before Islam. Abd Allah ibn Jahsh was aware of the seriousness of this violation and had taken the decision to fight after consulting with his companions. When he returned to Medina, he wanted to hand over the booty, but the Prophet refused to accept it, saying: “I did not order you to fight during the sacred month. Quraysh has spread the propaganda that Muhammad and his companions have violated the sacred month, spilt blood, seized wealth, and taken men prisoner during this month.”

Some verses of the Quran were revealed which clarified the soundness of the Muslims’ position. The Prophet thus took the booty and ransomed the two prisoners to Quraysh.

The verse clearly stated that the Quraysh’s actions in oppressing the Muslims and driving them out of Makkah were worse than the Muslims’ fighting during the sacred month. (Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah, 159–60, from the mursal ahadith of Urwah; Al-Bayhaqi, Abd Bakr Ahmad ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali, al-Sunan al-Kubra, 9/12, 58–9, with a sahih isnad going back to Urwah. There are other similar reports in al-Tabarani with hasan or other isnads. See: al-Isabah 2/278; Ibn Kathir, 3/251; and al-Haythami, Majma al-Zawaid, 6/66–7. When all the chains of narrators are taken into account, the hadith becomes sahih li ghayrihi.)

Some doubtful individuals may mistakenly think that the Muslims’ interception of the Mushrikun’s caravans was the action of bandits. The response to these doubts is that the Muslims were in a state of war with the Quraysh, and their attempts to weaken the Quraysh — both in economic and human terms — were a necessity of this state of war. Another reason was the fact that the Quraysh had seized the Muslims’ wealth when they emigrated from Makkah. Even in modern times, it is still allowed to strike at the human and economic resources of the enemy in time of war.

Another important event also took place in Rajab and should be mentioned because of its effect on affirming the distinctness of the Muslims and their independence: this was the changing of the qiblah from Bayt al-Maqdis in Jerusalem to the Ka’bah in Makkah.

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