Conquest of Mecca

In 628 Muhammad and the Quraysh had made a ten-year truce at al-Hudaybiyya, under which the Arab tribes were free to ally with either side. When the Banu Bakr, allies of the Quraysh, attacked the Khuza'a, allies of the Muslims — with men and weapons supplied by some Qurayshite leaders — Muhammad treated the truce as broken, and the Meccan leader Abu Sufyan failed to renew it. Muhammad gathered an army of some 10,000. Before it reached Mecca, Abu Sufyan came to his camp and submitted, and the Meccans were promised safety if they stayed in their houses, in Abu Sufyan’s house or in the sanctuary. The army entered the city from several sides; only the column of Khalid ibn al-Walid met armed resistance.

Muhammad circled the Kaaba and had the idols in and around it destroyed — 360 of them, according to tradition — so that the sanctuary was devoted to the worship of the one God alone. He pardoned the Meccans, including many of his former enemies; of the few people proscribed, only a handful were executed. The fall of Mecca brought the Quraysh over to Islam and made Muhammad the strongest ruler in Arabia: soon afterwards he defeated the Hawazin at Hunayn and besieged al-Ta'if, and one tribe after another submitted to him.

In 632, a few months before his death, Muhammad led the pilgrimage to Mecca remembered as the Farewell Pilgrimage; on 8 June 632 he died in Medina after a short illness. The leaders of the community chose his companion Abu Bakr as his successor (khalifa), the first caliph. Several tribes refused to accept the authority of Medina, and the Ridda wars that followed ended in 633 with the whole peninsula united under the caliph on the eve of the great conquests. The dates of the conquest of Mecca are uncertain: the sources give different days of Ramadan of year 8, which convert to December 629 or January 630; the date given in many works is 11 January 630.