الخندق
Dhu al-Qa'da 5 AH (about late March 627 CE): the morning the trench was finished, before the confederates came
In 5 AH Quraysh, Ghatafan and their allies marched on Madinah. On the Prophet's ﷺ order the Muslims dug a trench across the town's open northern side, with Mount Sal' at their backs; the other sides were closed by lava fields, buildings and palm groves. The digging took six days, in a season of cold and hunger, and he carried earth with them. This model shows the trench on the morning it was finished, before the confederates came: Quraysh would camp at the confluence of the torrents near al-Jurf and Ghatafan beside Uhud, beyond the northern edge of this view. The siege lasted fifteen nights in al-Waqidi and twenty-odd in Ibn Ishaq, and ended when a cold east wind tore down their tents. The sources give the trench's ends but not its exact course, length or width, so its line and section, the bank and the stones, and the houses, palms and towers round about are estimates. Ibn Ishaq dates the campaign to Shawwal; al-Waqidi and Ibn Sa'd to Dhu al-Qa'da.
Sources: al-Waqidi, al-Maghazi (ed. Marsden Jones) 2:440–488 · Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya 2:214–228 · Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra 2:51–56 · al-Samhudi, Wafa' al-Wafa bi-Akhbar Dar al-Mustafa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya) 1:232–233, 3:39, 3:49–50, 4:70–73, 4:87, 4:125 · Sahih al-Bukhari 4099, 4101, 4104, 4105 · Terrain: AWS Terrain Tiles (SRTM-based), sampled every 22.5 m; the trench, its bank and Dhubab are modelled in (estimates)