Sirah
The Emptied Market of the Goldsmiths
The departure of Banu Qaynuqa from Madinah, Shawwal 2 AH
2 AH / 624 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
The quarter and market of Banu Qaynuqa, Madinah
24.4636, 39.6147 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
The Banu Qaynuqa were one of the three principal Jewish tribes of Madinah, settled in their own quarter and known in the sources as craftsmen, smiths and goldsmiths, rather than primarily as cultivators. They were party to the covenant of Madinah that bound the city's groups under the new order established after the Hijrah. In Shawwal of the second year after the Hijrah, 624 CE, in the weeks after the Muslim victory at Badr, a breakdown of relations, traced in Ibn Ishaq's Sira and al-Waqidi's Maghazi to an incident in the Qaynuqa market and a breach of the compact, led the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) to besiege the tribe in their stronghold. After a siege of some days they surrendered, and the outcome, according to the Sunni historical tradition, was their expulsion from Madinah: they departed with their movable property, leaving their fixed property behind, and travelled north, most accounts directing them toward Wadi al-Qura and onward to the Syrian frontier. The episode is the first of the expulsions of the Madinan Jewish tribes recorded in the Sira, followed by the Banu Nadir in 4 AH and the Banu Qurayza after the Khandaq. The Sunni sources treat these as consequences of the politics of broken compacts within the city-state rather than as a single undifferentiated event, and the classical tradition preserves variant detail and chronology among them. This scene depicts the aftermath of the surrender: the artisans' quarter emptying, the abandoned forges and goldsmith's benches, and the column of the departing tribe on the northern road. It shows no violence, the historical outcome was expulsion, not slaughter, and is framed soberly. In keeping with the strictest visual ethics, no figure is identifiable and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is not depicted.
What you see
A dense town quarter of mud-brick workshops and shop-rows opening onto a market street, the artisans' quarter of an oasis town, with the small forges and benches of metal-workers rather than the open stalls of a produce market.
Goldsmith's and smith's workbenches stand abandoned mid-task: crucibles, tongs, half-finished metalwork, scales and weights left where they were set down. The trade of the quarter, the Banu Qaynuqa were known as smiths and goldsmiths, is legible in the tools.
A column of people with loaded camels and pack-animals is filing out of the quarter and away along the road north, carrying movable goods. The quarter behind them is emptying; the scene is a departure, not a battle.
Doors stand open on vacated houses; bundles of household goods are roped onto camels. What can be carried is going; the fixed property, the workshops, the houses, is being left behind.
Date-palm gardens and the mud-brick fabric of Madinah surround the quarter; the road out leads north, toward Wadi al-Qura and the Syrian route the departing tribe took.
The subject is the consequence of a broken compact in the early Madinan polity: the orderly but final emptying of a tribal quarter, shown soberly and without violence.
The event is dated to Shawwal of the second year after the Hijrah, 624 CE, in the weeks after the fighting at Badr.
Primary sources
Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham, Sirat Rasul Allah (compiled 8th-9th c.): The narrative of the Qaynuqa market incident, the breach of the compact, the siege, the surrender, and the expulsion. The principal source.
Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi (early 9th c.): Detailed account of the siege and the departure; dating to Shawwal 2 AH after Badr. Used with the usual caution on al-Waqidi's elaboration.
Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (9th c.): The tribal and demographic detail of the Banu Qaynuqa as the smiths/goldsmiths of Madinah and the sequence of the Madinan expulsions.
al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-al-Muluk (early 10th c.): Compiles the earlier accounts and fixes the episode in the post-Badr sequence; preserves variant reports.
al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan and Ansab al-Ashraf (9th c.): Sunni historical detail on the Madinan tribes and the destination of the departing Qaynuqa toward the north.
Further reading & cross-references
W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford, 1956): Non-confessional academic cross-reference on the politics of the Madinan compact and the sequence of the three expulsions; used for framing, not for religious tone.
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