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He promised bribes of money, slave girls, and land from the Prophet if they would betray their new-found allies. Self-interest prevailed; at last the plan was agreed upon, and the messenger returned to Mahomet with the good news of the breaking-up of the confederacy. The treachery of the Koreitza spread discouragement among the Arab chiefs. Moreover, their supplies were already running short.
It is uncertain whether there was ever a treaty between this tribe and the Prophet, or what its provisions were supposing such a document to have existed, but it is evident that there must have been some peaceable relations between the Muslim and the Koreitza, and that the latter were of some account politically.
The Disaffected, it is true, remained sufficiently at variance with him to resent, though impotently, his severity towards the Koreitza, and to declare that Sa'ad ibn Muadh's death, which occurred soon after, was the direct result of his bloody judgment. But their resentment was confined to speech. The Meccans had retired discredited, and were unlikely to attack again for some time at least.
The period is characterised by the absence of pitched battles, and by the employment of very small raiding parties, who go out simply to plunder and to disperse the hostile forces. His first expedition after the Koreitza massacre in June 627 was directed against the Beni Lahyan, in revenge for their slaughter of the Faithful at Radji.
The Koreitza were dragged pitilessly to Medina, the men kept together under strict guard, the women and children made ready to be sold at the marts within the city. That night the outskirts of Medina became the scene of grim activity. In the soft darkness of the Arabian night Mahomet's followers laboured with dreadful haste at the digging of many trenches.
The Faithful were eager for rest, but at the command of their leader they forgot their exhaustion and rallied round him again with the same loving and invincible devotion that had sustained them during the terrible days of siege. The expedition marched to the Koreitza fortress, and laid siege to it in March, 627.
It accorded with his mood of angry resentment against the earlier treachery of the Koreitza, but why he deputed its pronouncement to Sa'ad instead of taking it upon himself is not easy to discover.
He sent for Sa'ad ibn Muadh, the chief of the Beni Aus, and into his hands he gave the fate of all those souls who belonged to the tribe of Koreitza. Sa'ad was elderly, fat, irritable, and vindictive. He had a long-standing grudge against this people, and knew nothing of the mercy which greater men bestow upon the fallen.
A few women who had found favour in the eyes of Muslim were retained, the rest were sent to be sold as slaves among the Bedouin tribes of Nejd. The Koreitza no longer existed; their treachery had been visited again upon themselves. The massacre of the Koreitza and the War of the Ditch cannot be viewed apart. The ruthlessness of the former is the outcome of the success which made it possible.
In sorrow Abu Lubaba went into the camp of the Koreitza, and when they questioned him he told them openly that they must abandon hope. Their doom was decreed by the Prophet, sanctioned by Allah; it was irrevocable. When the Koreitza heard the sentence they bowed their heads, some in wrath, some in despair, and charged Abu Lubaba with supplications for Mahomet's clemency.
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