The Jewish communities of Khaybar

The Jews of Khaybar — a rich oasis of the northern Hijaz — the last independent Arab-Jewish power in the Prophet's era; they came out of the war of Khaybar in 628 CE as farmers on a share, then were expelled under Umar.

Banu al-Nadir's refugees settled at Khaybar after their expulsion from Yathrib, and it became the centre of Arab-Jewish opposition ¹. Medina's army besieged it for weeks in the spring of 628 CE until its fortresses fell one by one, and the peace decided the farmers would stay on the land for half the crop — a precedent for the agricultural jizya ².

In Umar's caliphate they were expelled to Syria and Iraq under "the leave to remove them"; historians judge the event a shift from local settlement to regional policy ³.

Khaybar became a many-sided cultural symbol: in the Sunni tradition the last crown of the prophetic conquests; in modern Arab memory the title of Palestinian resistance; and in studies of early Jewish history another chapter of Jewish independence's passing in the peninsula ³.