The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah

In 628 CE, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ set out from Medina with over a thousand companions intending to perform Umrah in Mecca, not to fight. When the Quraysh refused to let them enter the city, negotiations at a place called Hudaybiyyah produced a ten-year peace treaty between the two sides. The terms initially struck many of the Prophet's ﷺ own companions as unfavorable to the Muslims: they would not enter Mecca that year, and a clause required that any Meccan who joined the Muslims without a guardian's permission be returned, while the reverse did not apply. Some companions, including Umar ibn al-Khattab, openly questioned the terms, yet the Prophet ﷺ accepted them. The Quran later describes this treaty as 'a clear victory,' and history bore that out: the ten years of peace it created allowed open contact between Muslims and Meccans for the first time in years, and large numbers of people entered Islam during this period — more, by some traditional accounts, than had entered in the entire period before the treaty. It stands as a well-known example within Islamic tradition of a decision that looked like a concession in the moment but changed the course of events.