The Captives of Hawāzin

The people of Hawāzin sent a delegation to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), asking the Messenger of Allah to give them back their property, because they had lost everything: their women and their children and their livestock were all gone. Imagine an entire tribe: only the men are left, and everything else has been taken from them. And this narration is in al-Bukhārī (4318). When Hawāzin came to accept Islam, they asked the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) to return to them their wealth and their women and children. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: the most beloved words to me are the most truthful; so choose one of two: either your women and children, or the wealth. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told them: I cannot give both back; I will give you either the women and children or the wealth. And I waited for you. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was telling them: I actually waited before distributing the ghanīmah, in the hope that you would come to me, so that I could give it back to you; but now it has already been divided; it is now the property of individual Muslims, so I cannot take it away from them and give it back to you. But he told them: choose one of the two. So they said: if you are giving us the choice, then obviously we are going to choose our women and children.

So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told them: I am going to give them back to you, but I have to appeal to the Muslims. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) stood up before the Muslims, praised Allah (swt), and then said: fa-inna ikhwānakum hāʾulāʾi qad jāʾūnā tāʾibīn, wa innī qad raʾaytu an arudda ilayhim sabyahum; fa-man aḥabba minkum an yuṭayyiba bi-dhālika fa-l-yafʿal, wa man aḥabba minkum an yakūna ʿalā ḥaẓẓihi ḥattā nuʿṭiyahu iyyāhu min awwali mā yufīʾu Allāhu ʿalaynā fa-l-yafʿal. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: your brothers have come repenting — they have become Muslim — and I want to give back to them their women and children; so whoever among you is willing to give them back what belongs to them, let him do so; and whoever wants to be compensated, I will compensate him from the first ghanīmah we get. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was telling them: if you want to give them back what belongs to them, that is better; do it. If you want to give it back with a promise of reimbursement for what you have given, I will do that from the first ghanīmah I get after this battle.

So the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār — in the narration of al-Bukhārī it says that they all gave it back. But Ibn Isḥāq mentions — the scholars of sīrah say — that the Muhājirūn said: we give up what we have; the Anṣār said the same; but then al-Aqraʿ ibn Ḥābis stood and said: I and my tribe will not give up what we have. ʿUyaynah ibn Ḥiṣn said: we will not give up what we have. And then al-ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās said: we will not give up what we have; but then his tribe, Banū Sulaym, stood up and said: no, we are going to give up what we have. So al-ʿAbbās told them: you have disgraced me. But they had done the right thing. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) appealed to the people to give it back, and then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: I will not know who has given back and who has not, so let your ʿurafāʾ — the ʿurafāʾ are the shaykhs of the tribes, the leaders of the tribes — the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: let them report to me who has given up what they have and who has not. Anyway, the women and children were returned to Hawāzin, while the livestock was divided up; it says that every individual got forty sheep. That tells one that it was a huge ghanīmah.