A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Chapter 11/79
6.—Employment of Nueim to break up the confederates who had besieged Medina.
[Sidenote: 79. Nueim not employed by the Prophet to circulate false reports in the enemy's camp.]
When Medina was besieged for several days by the Koreish and their confederates, the army of Medina was harassed and wearied with increasing watch and duty. Nueim, an Arab of a neutral tribe, represented himself as a secret believer, and offered his services to the Prophet, who accepted them, and employed him to hold back the confederates from the siege, if he could, saying "war verily was a game of deception." Nueim excited mutual distrust between the Jews and the Koreish. He told the Jews not to fight against Mohammad until they got hostages from the Koreish as a guarantee against their being deserted. And to the Koreish he said that the Jews intended to ask hostages from them. "Do not give them," he said, "they have promised Mahomet to give up the hostages to be slain."[1]
This is one tradition, and there is another to the effect that the Jews had themselves asked for the hostages, but the Koreish had not replied yet, when Nueim came to the Jews and said, he was there with Abu Sofian when their messenger had come for the demand of hostages, and that Abu Sofian is not going to send them any.[2]
A third tradition in Motamid Ibn Solyman's supplement to Wackidi's Campaigns of Mohammad gives no such story at all. It has altogether a different narration to the effect, that there was a spy of the Koreish in the Moslem camp who had overheard Abdullah-bin-Rawaha saying, that the Jews had asked the Koreish to send them seventy persons, who, on their arrival, would be killed by them. Nueim went to the Koreish, who were waiting for his message, and told what he had heard as already related.[3] This contradicts the story given by Ibn Hisham and Mr. Muir. But anyhow the story does not prove that Mohammad had given permission to Nueim to speak falsehood or spread treacherous reports.