Banu Qaynuqa: The Marketplace Incident — Trigger of the First Expulsion, or a Weak Report?

A Pinned Garment in the Goldsmiths Market

Madinah, the second year of the Hijrah, shortly after the battle of Badr. In the market of Banu Qaynuqa — the goldsmiths quarter of the city — an Arab woman comes to sell her goods and sits down at a goldsmith''s shop. The men around her press her to uncover her face. She refuses. The goldsmith quietly pins the hem of her garment to her back. When she stands, she is exposed. The market erupts in laughter. She screams. A Muslim leaps upon the goldsmith and kills him; the Jews of the market kill the Muslim; his family calls the Muslims to arms — and the first confrontation between the young Muslim polity and a Jewish tribe of Madinah has its spark.

This is the scene repeated in countless sirah books, sermons and documentaries as the trigger of the siege and expulsion of Banu Qaynuqa. But open the earliest sources and three questions rise from the page: Who narrated this story, and with what chain? Why does the earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, not have it in his own text? And why do Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim — which do record the expulsion — never mention a goldsmith, a pinned garment, or a woman in the market at all?