Those Who Were Killed and Those Who Were Spared

How would they separate between the men and the children? Well, they didn't have any birth certificates in those days to tell how old a person is. The way they would do it was by seeing if a person has grown hair: facial hair, or the hair that comes along with puberty. In fact, in Abū Dāwūd, ʿAṭiyyah al-Quraẓī said that they uncovered his pubic area, and since he hadn't grown any pubic hair, they set him free (Abū Dāwūd 4404). They spared his life, but he was enslaved. So this is how they separated between the young and the old.

How many of them were killed? There's a variation in numbers. It's between four hundred and nine hundred. Some narrations say four hundred, some say seven hundred, some say eight hundred, some say nine hundred. These were the men, the men of fighting age, who were executed.

Only one woman was executed, and that is because she killed one of the Ṣaḥābah by throwing a stone on top of him. And this woman was sitting with ʿĀʾishah, and ʿĀʾishah has no idea about what this woman has done. And this woman was laughing and joking, and then, ʿĀʾishah said, suddenly we heard her name announced. "So I told her, 'Why is your name being called?' She said, 'They want to kill me.'" She said, "Why would they kill you?" She said, "Because of something, a crime that I've committed." ʿĀʾishah said, "I will never forget how high-spirited she was, even though she knew that she was facing death, and she was joking and laughing about it" (Abū Dāwūd 2671). Probably it's just the hysteria that comes in the last moments. Maybe she thought there's nothing she could do about it.

All of them were killed except for some who became Muslim; their lives were spared. A few men here and there, not many, but some of them did become Muslim, and they were treated as part of the ummah. See: no racism in Islam, no antisemitism. You repent from your sins, you become one of the ummah, and that's it. We completely forget about your past.

One of their women, her name is Rayḥānah, was taken by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). She was a slave. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) invited her to Islam. At the beginning she refused, but eventually, it says, she did become Muslim. And the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave her the option. He said, "Do you want to remain as a slave, or do you want to be freed, and I will marry you?" She preferred remaining in the state of slavery, so she was a slave girl.