Battle of Khandaq

The Battle of Khandaq (627 CE), also called the Battle of the Trench, was a twenty-seven-day siege of Medina by a coalition of some ten thousand Quraysh and allied tribes. On Salman al-Farsi's advice the Muslims dug a defensive trench, and the coalition withdrew without a decisive battle.

Safiyya bint Abd al-Muttalib, paternal aunt of Prophet Muhammad and mother of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, killed an armed intruder at the fortress sheltering Medina's women during the Battle of Khandaq, and met the mutilation of her brother Hamza at Uhud with open grief and firm patience.

Salman al-Farsi was a Persian who left Zoroastrianism for Christianity, was sold into slavery on his way to Arabia, and became a Companion of Prophet Muhammad. His own first-person account of that search survives, and he is credited in the biographical sources with proposing the trench at Khandaq.