The Jewish Tribes of Medina

Jews had lived for centuries in the oases of the Hejaz in Arabia. In Yathrib, later Medina, three Jewish tribes lived beside the Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj: the Banu Qaynuqa, goldsmiths and traders who held the town's market, and the Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayza, date farmers in fortified estates. In 622 Muhammad came to Yathrib from Mecca, the Hijra with which the Muslim calendar begins. The agreement known as the Constitution of Medina counted the Jews allied to the Arab clans as one community with the believers, each keeping its own religion.

Relations broke down within a few years. According to the early Muslim biographies of Muhammad, such as Ibn Ishaq's, the Qaynuqa were expelled in 624 and the Nadir in 625, moving north to Khaybar; in 627, after the siege of Medina known as the Battle of the Trench, the Qurayza were besieged, their men were executed, several hundred by those accounts, and the women and children taken captive. Khaybar was conquered in 628 and its Jews kept their lands as tenants, until the caliph Umar sent the Jews out of the Hejaz. Jewish life went on in Yemen.