“My judgment is that the men shall be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoil divided among the army.”

Mahomet was exultant at the sentence.

“Truly the judgment of Sa’ad is the judgment of God pronounced on high from beyond the seventh Heaven.”

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.  Possibly he may have dreaded to acquire such a reputation for cruelty as this would bestow upon him, possibly he wished to make clear to the world that the Jews had been doomed to death by a member of their allied tribe.  Certainly he welcomed the terrible sentence, and ensured its accomplishment.  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 day dawned upon their uncompleted work, and not until the sun was high did they return to the heart of the city.  Then the men of the Koreitza were divided into companies and led out in turn to the trenches.  The slaughter began.  As they filed to the edge of the pits they were struck down by the waiting Muslim, so that their bodies fell into the common grave, mingled with the blood and quivering flesh of those who followed.  As one company after another marched out and did not return, their chief man asked the Muslim soldier concerning his countrymen’s fate: 

“Seest thou not that each company departs and is seen no more?  Will ye never understand?”

The doom of the Koreitza was wrought out to its terrible end, which was not until set of sun.  The number of butchered men is variously estimated, but it cannot have been less than between 700 and 800.

So the Koreitza perished, each moving forward to meet the irremediable without fear, without supplication, and when the carnage was over, Mahomet turned to the distribution of the spoil.  His eyes lighted upon Rihana, a beautiful Jewess, and he desired her as solace after this ruthless but necessary punishment.  He offered her marriage; she refused, and became of necessity and forthwith his concubine.  Then he took the possessions, slaves, and cattle of the vanquished tribe and divided them among the Faithful, keeping a fifth part himself, and the land he partitioned also.  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.