The Day of the Criterion

In the second year after the Hijrah, news reached Madinah of a great Quraysh caravan returning from Syria led by Abu Sufyan. The Prophet ﷺ set out with about three hundred and thirteen men to intercept it, lightly armed, with only a couple of horses and seventy camels they took turns riding. The caravan escaped, but Quraysh had already marched out nearly a thousand strong, with cavalry, drums and singing-girls, to teach Madinah a lesson. Battle, not booty, was now at hand.

The Prophet ﷺ consulted his companions, anxious that the Ansar had pledged to defend him in Madinah, not to march to war. They reassured him without reserve. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (ra) spoke for them: go where you wish; by the One who sent you with the truth, if you plunged into the sea we would plunge in with you; we are patient in war, faithful in meeting the enemy; perhaps Allah will show you from us what delights your eye.

They met at the wells of Badr. The night before, Allah sent rain that firmed the sand under the believers and mired the enemy, and a sleep of security fell over the Muslims. The Prophet ﷺ stood in prayer through the night, and in the morning straightened the rows and raised his hands until his cloak fell, begging: O Allah, if this band perishes today, You will not be worshipped on earth. Abu Bakr (ra) took his hand: enough, O Messenger of Allah; Allah will fulfil what He promised you.

And Allah fulfilled it. He sent down angels, a thousand of them, then three thousand, then five thousand swooping, as the Qur'an and the Companions describe, and the believers fought with a courage beyond their numbers. The chiefs of Quraysh fell one after another, the very men who had tortured Bilal and the family of Yasir and mocked the Prophet ﷺ in prostration: Abu Jahl himself was killed, the pharaoh of this ummah, by two young boys of the Ansar who had asked which man was the one that insulted the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. By midday the mightiest tribe in Arabia fled, leaving seventy dead and seventy captive.

The Qur'an named the battle Yawm al-Furqan, the Day of the Criterion, the day that separated truth from falsehood; and it reminded the victors lest they grow proud: you did not slay them, but Allah slew them; and you threw not when you threw, but Allah threw. Badr was the hinge of the whole story: the despised band of Makkah had become a power, and everyone in Arabia now knew the name of the believers.