Muhammad Returns to Mecca and Destroys the Kaaba's Idols
The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah gives way to a bloodless conquest of Muhammad's home city
Quick facts
- Treaty
- Hudaybiyyah, 628 CE
- Conquest
- 630 CE, largely bloodless
- Outcome
- Idols removed from the Kaaba
- Final pilgrimage
- 632 CE, the Farewell Pilgrimage
What happened
In 628 CE, Meccans blocked Muslim pilgrims from entering the city for the Hajj, and the two sides settled the standoff with the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, which allowed Muslims to perform pilgrimage the following year and guaranteed mutual safety. When the Meccans broke the treaty in 630 CE by backing an attack on a tribe allied with the Muslims, Muhammad marched on Mecca with a large force. The city's gates opened without a fight, and Muhammad offered amnesty to residents who took refuge in the Kaaba or in the house of the newly converted Meccan leader Abu Sufyan. He then had the idols inside and around the Kaaba destroyed and declared it a site for Islam alone, and in 632 CE he performed his final pilgrimage there, remembered as the Farewell Pilgrimage, shortly before his death.
Why it matters
The peaceful capture of Mecca removed the last major rival power in the Hejaz and put Islam's holiest site under Muslim control without the destruction a prolonged siege would have caused. Within two years most of Arabia's tribes had aligned with Muhammad, setting up the political consolidation his successors would inherit.
How we know
The sequence from the Hudaybiyyah treaty to the 630 CE conquest is consistently recorded in the early Islamic historical tradition, including the terms of amnesty Muhammad offered and the destruction of the idols.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Prophet Muhammad · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Timeline: Prophet Muhammad · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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