In fact, the women and children were not guilty of treason, and deserved no punishment. Sád's judgment must be either wrong regarding them, or applied only to those who were guilty. "One woman alone," according to Sir W. Muir, "was put to death; it was she who threw the millstone from the battlements" (Life of Mahomet, Vol. III, page 277). I conclude, therefore, that all the women and children were released afterwards; some ransomed themselves, others went off with their freedom. But nobody was ever sold in slavery. The assertion of Hishamee, quoted by Sir W. Muir, that the women and children were sent to be sold among the Bedouin tribes of Najd in exchange for horses and arms (Vol. III, page 279), is void of all authority, and is in direct contradiction of what Abul Mo'tamar Soleiman bin Tarkhan (died 143 A.H. and was prior to Hishamee) says, and whose account seems to be more probable. His version is that the horses of Bani Koreiza were sent by Mohammad to Syria and Najd for the purpose of breeding, and that they got big horses. Vide Wákidi Campaigns of Mohammad, page 374, Calcutta, 1855. This shows that only horses, and not women and children, were sent to Najd. The words of Hishamee (page 693) are "sabáya min sabáya Bani Koreiza." Sabáya, plural of sabi, applies to both person and property, as they say sabal adúvva vaghairohu, he made captive, captured or took prisoner the enemy, and other than an enemy. (Vide Lane's Arabic Dictionary, page 1303, col. 1.) So probably Hishamee had in view only the horses captured of the Bani Koreiza and sent to Najd, but not the women and children of the captives of Koreiza.
Rihána.
5. Rihána, a woman of the captives of Koreiza, is said by Sir W. Muir to have been taken by Mohammad "for his concubine." He always confounds prisoners with slaves, and female captives as well as slaves with concubines. There are several conflicting and contradictory traditions regarding Rihána. Mohammad bin Sád Kátib Wakidi has related various traditions from Omar-bin-al Hakam, Mohammad bin Káb, and from other various sources that Mohammad had married Rihána. The Kátib says "this tradition is held by learned men. But he has also heard some one relating that she was his concubine."[348] But Sir W. Muir chooses the latter uncertain and unauthentic traditions. He writes in a footnote:—
"She is represented as saying, when he offered her marriage and the same privileges as his other wives: 'Nay, O Prophet! But let me remain as thy slave; this will be easier both for me and for thee.'"[349]
Even if this tradition be a genuine one, he is not authorized in his remarks in the text, where he says—
"He invited her to be his wife, but she declined; and chose to remain (as indeed, having refused marriage, she had no alternative) his slave or concubine."
She was neither enslaved, nor made a concubine. It is to be regretted that the writer of the "Life of Mahomet" most absurdly confounds slavery and concubinage.
Omar, the second Khalif, liberated all the Arab slaves.