The gate of Khaybar

At the siege of Khaybar the Muslim army could not break the fortress. The Prophet ﷺ said: tomorrow I will give the banner to a man who loves Allah and His Messenger. That morning, Ali stood before him with eye pain so severe he could barely see. The Prophet blessed his eyes with his own saliva. Ali was healed. He was given the banner.

In the seventh year after the Hijra, the Muslim army moved against the fortresses of Khaybar, an oasis complex north of Medina held by the Jewish tribes that had allied with the Meccans against the Muslims in the trench war. Khaybar was a series of walled forts. The Muslims took several of them but were stopped at the greatest of them, al-Qamus, whose gates would not break.

Abu Bakr led an assault. The gate held. Umar led an assault. The gate held. Two of the most respected commanders in the Muslim army came back without breaking through. That evening the Prophet ﷺ said: "Tomorrow I will give the banner to a man who loves Allah and His Messenger, and whom Allah and His Messenger love, and Allah will grant victory through his hand."

The Muslim companions did not sleep that night. Each one hoped he would be called forward in the morning. Umar himself said later: I never wanted command in my life until that night.

In the morning the Prophet ﷺ called out: where is Ali ibn Abi Talib? The companions answered: he is in the camp, but he has such severe eye pain he cannot see. The Prophet said: bring him to me. Ali was led forward with his eyes closed against the light. The Prophet ﷺ took Ali's face in his own hands, brought his own blessed lips to Ali's eyes, and applied his own saliva to Ali's inflamed eyes. Ali later said: my eyes never troubled me again for the rest of my life. He opened his eyes clear. He took the banner.

The classical sources are careful with this detail because they know how it sounds. Abu Rafi', one of the Prophet's companions who was present, said afterward: seven of us tried together to lift that gate off the ground after the battle, and we could not do it. What Ali did on that day was more than the strength of one man.

Al-Qamus fell. Khaybar was taken. The Muslim army returned to Medina with the northern frontier secure. Ali carried the gate as a shield throughout the assault and did not lay it down until al-Qamus surrendered. The Muslim historians recorded his exact words as he took the banner from the Prophet's hand: "O Messenger of Allah, on what basis shall I fight them?" The Prophet answered: "Fight them until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger. If they say that, their lives and property are safe from you, and their reckoning is with Allah."

Ali's answer, and the Prophet's answer to him, became one of the most-cited exchanges in classical Islamic jurisprudence on the rules of jihad. It stated the principle that the war was religious, not tribal, and that the shahada, not tribute, not surrender, not colour of skin, settled who was at peace with the Muslim community and who was not.

What the story teaches

The gate of Khaybar is remembered in Islamic tradition for three things at once. First: the healing of Ali's eyes by the Prophet's saliva is one of the intimate physical miracles of the Sirah, a scene of paternal-filial tenderness at the beginning of a battle. Second: Ali's superhuman strength that day, the strength that seven ordinary men could not match afterward, is remembered as an act of divine assistance granted to a man Allah loved and who loved Allah. Third: the exchange between Ali and the Prophet about the terms of the fight became a foundational text in the Islamic law of war. All three of these threads run through the same morning at Khaybar, and Muslim mothers have named their sons Ali for fourteen hundred years because of it.