March 31, AD 627

Battle of the Trench

Confederate army reaches Medina and begins the trench siege

The confederates arrived with hundreds of cavalry, and found that horses could not carry them across a newly dug ditch.

31 March 627, at the ditch

On the standard scholarly reconstruction, Abu Sufyan’s Meccan and tribal confederates reached Medina on 8 Dhu al-Qa‘dah 5 AH — converted as 31 March 627 — and began an effective siege.

They found the open northern approach blocked by a trench that Muhammad’s followers had already dug, with lava fields protecting the oasis on its other sides. The fortification stopped them exploiting their cavalry advantage, turning the confrontation into a standoff.

Qur’an 33:9–11 remembers enemy forces coming against the believers from multiple directions, and describes the defenders as severely shaken.

The numbers, and the name

The Cambridge account gives the confederates 7,000 to 10,000 men, including about 600 cavalry, against roughly 3,000 Medinans with some twelve to twenty-four horses.

Across the whole siege, three Meccans and six Medinans are reported killed.

“Battle” can mislead: the trench produced a siege and standoff with limited crossings, not a single pitched engagement.

“27 days” is a composite

The consulted Cambridge narrative describes approximately a fortnight of siege. The frequently repeated twenty-seven days combines a claimed six-day digging period with a different twenty-night chronology.

The date itself is a scholarly conversion, and converting early Islamic dates is not wholly mechanical, because the calendar’s operation before the formal abolition of intercalation is debated.

The Banu Qurayza surrender was not part of 31 March: it followed the confederate withdrawal and a separate Muslim siege of their strongholds.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

The date 31 March 627 is a scholarly conversion of the traditional date 8 Dhu al-Qa‘dah 5 AH. Exact conversion of early Islamic dates is not wholly mechanical because the calendar’s operation before the formal abolition of intercalation is debated.
The consulted Cambridge narrative describes approximately two weeks of siege. The frequently repeated “27 days” combines a claimed six-day digging period with a different 20-night siege chronology and should not be presented as an uncontested duration.
Detailed narratives come primarily from sira and hadith works written generations later. The Qur’an is earlier but supplies few names, numbers or tactical details.