He ﷺ said: “Our camp tomorrow, if Allah wills, is at Khayf Banî Kinâna, where they swore together on unbelief.”
He said it again before Hunayn, and again at the Conquest of Mecca.
What had they sworn? Quraysh and Kinâna had sworn together against Banû Hâshim and Banû al-Muttalib.
Not to marry with them, not to trade with them, until they handed over the Prophet ﷺ.
The biographers tell how it began. The emigrants had found safety in Abyssinia; the Negus had refused to give them up.
'Umar had embraced Islam. He and Hamza stood with the Prophet ﷺ, and Islam was spreading through the tribes.
So Quraysh met, and agreed to write a document against the two clans.
The terms: no marriage with the two clans, nothing sold to them, nothing bought from them.
They swore to it, and hung the document inside the Ka'ba, “to bind themselves”.
The man who wrote it is remembered by name: Mansûr ibn 'Ikrima.
Then the two clans gathered around Abû Tâlib and went with him into his ravine, the shi'b.
Muslims and others alike: some went in out of faith, some out of pride for their kin.
One man of Banû Hâshim went out to Quraysh and backed them against his own clan: Abû Lahab.
Khadija (may Allah be pleased with her), of another clan, is reported to have gone in with her husband.
Years after the boycott, on his way back from Minâ, the Prophet ﷺ chose where to camp for the night.
Why that place? And what had Quraysh sworn there?
Quraysh swore, hung their pact in the Ka'ba, and shut two clans in a ravine. Years later he ﷺ camped on that very spot.
Tonight, make du'â' by name for a family you know that is being cut off or shunned.