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The invasion and the conquest of Makkah was —
as we have already stated — a decisive battle that destroyed paganism utterly. The
Arabs as a result of that battle were able to differentiate the truth from the error.
Delusion no longer existed in their life. So they raced to embrace Islam. ‘Amr bin
Salamah said: "We were at a water (spring) where the passage of people was. So when
camel riders passed by us we used to ask them: ‘What is the matter with people? What
is this man (i.e. the Prophet) like?’ They would say, ‘He claims that Allâh has
revealed so and so.’ I used to memorize those words as if they had been recited
within my chest. The Arabs used to ascribe their Islamization to the conquest. They would
say: ‘Leave him alone to face his people. If he were a truthful Prophet he would
overcome them.’ So when the conquest took place, peoples hastened to declare their
Islam. My father was the quickest of all my people to embrace Islam. Arriving at his
people he said: ‘By Allâh I have just verily been to the Prophet [pbuh]. And he
said: ‘Perform so a prayer at such a time, and so and so prayers at such and such
time. When the prayer time is due let one of you call for the prayer and appoint the most
learned of the Qur’ân among you to be an Imam (leader) of yours. [Sahih Al-Bukhari 2/615,616]" This
Prophetic tradition manifests the great effect of the conquest of Makkah on the phase of
events. It certainly shows the influence of the conquest of Makkah upon the consolidation
of Islam as well as on the Arabs’ stand and their surrender to Islam. That influence
was absolutely confirmed and deeply rooted after the invasion of Tabuk. A clear and an
obvious evidence of that influence could be deduced from the great number of delegations
arriving in Madinah successively in the ninth and tenth years of Al-Hijra. The immense
crowds of people who raced to embrace the religion of Allâh and the great army which
included ten thousand fighters in the invasion of the conquest of Makkah had grown big
enough to include thirty thousand fighters sharing in Tabuk invasion. It was only in less
than a year after the conquest of Makkah that this growth in Islamic army had taken place.
A hundred thousand or a hundred and forty four thousand Muslim pilgrims shared in Hajjatul
-Wada‘ (i.e. Farewell Pilgrimage); it was such an enormous number of Muslims
surging — as an ocean of men — round the Messenger of Allâh [pbuh], that the
horizon echoed their voices and the expanses of land shook whereby while saying Labbaik
(i.e. Lord, here we are worshipping), glorifying and magnifying Allâh, and thanking Him.
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