Abū Bakr and ʿĀʾishah

Abū Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) visited his daughter ʿĀʾishah, and he saw her sifting and preparing wheat for the journey of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). It may have been a particular food that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would carry with him when he travelled on a ghazwah. So when Abū Bakr saw her doing that, he knew that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) intended to fight someone, but he did not know whom. In one narration it says that he asked ʿĀʾishah: is the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) planning a campaign? ʿĀʾishah said: yes. Abū Bakr asked her: is it the Romans? She did not answer. Then he asked her: is it such-and-such? She did not answer. So she was keeping it secret. In another narration, he asked her and she did not know; and then Abū Bakr waited until the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) came, and he asked him, and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told him. Obviously, Abū Bakr was the most prominent adviser of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and he confided his secrets to him. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told Abū Bakr: I am going to attack Makkah — attack Quraysh.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: it is as if I can see Abū Sufyān coming to you to ask for a renewal of our pact. And, subḥān Allāh, that is exactly what happened. Abū Sufyān, after what happened, started his journey towards Madīnah. When Banū Bakr were killing Khuzāʿah, it says that Quraysh gave support to Banū Bakr under the cover of darkness: they provided them with arms, and in fact it says that some of them participated in the killing. And they said: it is night, and no one will see what is happening, and therefore Muḥammad will not know of our participation. They were ignorant of the fact that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is a messenger of Allah, and that he receives waḥy from Allah (ʿazza wa jall). The news was delivered to Muḥammad (peace be upon him), and Abū Sufyān now became extremely worried that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) might attack.

So he immediately travelled to Madīnah to beg — literally to beg — the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) to renew the pact and extend its time limit. As for the time frame: this was seventeen or eighteen months after the signing of the Ṣulḥ of al-Ḥudaybiyah. The Ṣulḥ of al-Ḥudaybiyah was for ten years, and within a little over a year they had already committed a breach of the agreement. So this is what the kuffār had done, and now they wanted to apologise for what happened — as if an apology would do.