The Road to Badr

After thirteen years in Makkah during which the Muslims were commanded only to be patient in the face of persecution, Allah revealed the first verses permitting military jihad: "Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory" and "[They are] those who have been evicted from their homes without right, only because they say, 'Our Lord is Allah.'" The permission was framed entirely around defending those who had been wronged and expelled from their homes for their faith, not as unconditional license. This began the first of four stages of jihad in the seerah: (1) the Makkan-era prohibition on any military response, (2) permission granted but not yet obligatory, immediately after the Hijrah, (3) jihad made obligatory against the Quraysh specifically for most of the Madani period, and (4) jihad eventually extended against the polytheists of Arabia generally.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 35 opens the road to Badr here: "Verses 39 to 40 of Surah al-Hajj provide the first concession for jihad." No month is given; placed first as the precondition of everything that follows.

While visiting Makkah on business, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (a leader of the Ansar and secret supporter of the Muslims, though not yet publicly known as one) went to perform tawaf at an off hour on the advice of his host and old business partner Umayya ibn Khalaf, to avoid drawing attention. Abu Jahal encountered them anyway, recognized Sa'd as a Yathribi known to be sheltering and helping "the renegades" (the Quraysh's term for the Muslims), and threatened him with violence, sparing him only because he was Umayya's guest.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 36 tells the tawaf confrontation as background to the caravan raids, roughly a year before Badr; no month is given.

The first military expedition of the Muslims. Hearing of a Qurayshi caravan, the Prophet ﷺ led the Muslims out to intercept it, but they could not reach it in time and no battle took place. During this expedition the Prophet ﷺ formed the first of many tribal alliances, with the Banu Damra, extending the reach of the young Islamic state roughly another 100 miles outside Madinah.

Placed here because: Ep. 35: "It appears the first military expedition that the Muslims engaged in was that of al-Abwa ... This took place on the 12th of Safar, 2nd year of the Hijrah, i.e., 11 months after the Emigration."

The Prophet ﷺ's cousin Ubaydah ibn al-Harith led this expedition against the Quraysh. Arrows were exchanged between the two sides but no blood was shed, and a neutral party intervened to broker a truce before the Quraysh and the Muslims went their separate ways. It was during this encounter that Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas became the first person to shoot an arrow fi sabilillah (in the Way of Allah). Afterward, the neutral tribe that had intervened formed an alliance with the Muslims.

Placed here because: ~ Dated 1 AH in the sources, but Ep. 35 presents al-Abwa as the first expedition; the two are placed side by side and this order is not settled.

The Prophet ﷺ led around 150-200 sahaba to intercept the Quraysh's major annual caravan to Syria, laden with 70-80 camels and some 70-80% of Makkah's wealth, led by Abu Sufyan ibn Harb. By the qadar of Allah, one of the caravan's party strayed and spotted the Muslims in the distance, prompting Abu Sufyan to divert the caravan's route, so the two sides never crossed paths. The caravan reached Syria safely and the Muslims returned to Madinah.

Placed here because: Ep. 36: "the Ghazwa al-Ushayra, which took place in Jumada al-Awwal of the 2nd year of the Hijrah ... camped there until the very first few days of Jumada al-Thani."

After allies of the Quraysh snuck into Madinah, stole a number of camels, and killed one or two herders, the Prophet ﷺ gathered 70 of the Muhajirun and pursued them, reaching the Plain of Badr for the first time. The 4-5 raiders, being faster, managed to flee, and the Prophet ﷺ was unable to capture them. As a direct consequence, the Prophet ﷺ decided he needed reconnaissance/spies to monitor the movements of the Quraysh and their allies, including toward Yemen; this led directly to the Sariyya Nakhla.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 35 narrates it after al-Ushayra and before Nakhla ("One of the consequences of the First Battle of Badr was ... spies for reconnaissance"); no month is given.

The Prophet ﷺ handpicked 8 of the Muhajirun, placed his cousin Abdullah ibn Jahsh in charge, and gave him a sealed letter with instructions to travel two days northeast before opening it, for secrecy and misdirection. The letter directed the group to proceed instead to Nakhla to watch the movements of the Quraysh, with permission for any companion to turn back. On the way, the shared camel of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas and Utbah ibn Ghazwan went missing; the pair stayed behind to search for it while the remaining 6 continued to Nakhla, arriving on the 30th of Rajab, the last day of the sacred month. There they sighted a small, undefended Qurayshi trade caravan. After debating the dilemma of the closing sacred month, they attacked: one caravaneer was killed and two were taken prisoner, among them al-Hakam ibn Kaisan. When the party returned to Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ told them, "I didn't command you to fight," and initially refused any share of the booty. The Quraysh publicized the bloodshed in the sacred month across Arabia, and the Prophet ﷺ, per Ibn Ishaq, felt great stress over the valid criticism. Allah then revealed Qur'an 2:217, acknowledging the gravity of fighting in the sacred month while affirming that the Quraysh's persecution, disbelief, and expulsion of the Muslims from Makkah were graver sins still. The Prophet ﷺ then accepted the booty and the prisoners, and stipulated that they would not be released until Sa'd and Utbah reached Madinah safely, which they eventually did after finding their camel.

Placed here because: Ep. 35: "It took place in the month of Rajab, 2 AH ... they arrived at Nakhla on the 30th of Rajab. The last day of Rajab."

Initially the Prophet ﷺ was commanded to pray facing Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem), and did so throughout his time in Makkah, reportedly positioning himself so the Ka'bah was also in line, a kind of "double qibla." When he emigrated to Madinah, due north of Makkah with Bayt al-Maqdis further north still, he had to turn his back to the Ka'bah to face Jerusalem. As tensions grew with the Jews of Madinah, who had at first given the Prophet ﷺ real hope, believing in the same God, the same line of prophets, Paradise, Hell, and Judgment Day, and having a chief rabbi, Abdullah ibn Salam RA, who converted, the Prophet ﷺ began wishing to face Makkah instead. He could not change it by his own will: it is narrated that he once told Jibril AS, "O Jibril, I wish to pray facing Makkah," and Jibril AS replied that he was only a slave commanded by Allah, and that the Prophet ﷺ should make du'a. The Prophet ﷺ then began making du'a earnestly, by night and by day, looking up to the sky, something he did only at times of extreme distress. Allah then revealed the command in Qur'an 2:144 to turn towards Masjid al-Haram, followed by further verses in the opening of the second juz. The Jews and even some Muslims and mushrikun were confused, since abrogation (naskh) itself was a new concept; some Jews openly mocked the change, and Allah responded that piety is not about which direction one faces (2:177) and that no amount of proof would make the People of the Book follow the Muslims' qibla, or vice versa (2:145). The sahaba also asked whether those who had died praying towards Bayt al-Maqdis would have their prayers accepted, prompting the revelation that Allah would never let their faith go to waste (2:143), a verse later used by scholars such as Imam Bukhari as evidence that salah is inseparable from iman.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 34 places it "before the Battle of Badr [which will happen in a few months]"; the sources put it fifteen to sixteen months after the Hijrah, so after Nakhla and before Ramadan.

Badr is a well, named for the man of the Banu Damra who dug it, on the plain 130 km south-west of Madinah where the road to Syria runs. The battle fought there on Friday, 17 Ramadan 2 AH, was never meant to be a battle. In the year since the Hijrah permission to fight had come down and the Muslims had begun to strike at the one thing that made the Quraysh what they were, the caravan road past Madinah: al-Abwa, the first arrow shot in the way of Allah, al-Ushayra, where the Prophet ﷺ missed Abu Sufyan's great caravan on its way north by a single day, and Nakhla, where eight men killed a Qurashi in the sacred month and handed the Quraysh a grievance. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh RA, threatened by Abu Jahl at the Ka'bah for sheltering the Muslims, had sworn in front of it to cut the Quraysh off from something dearer to them than tawaf: their trade. Shortly before the battle, in Sha'ban by Ibn Ishaq's report, the qibla turned from Jerusalem to Makkah. When the same caravan was due back from Syria in Ramadan, a caravan under Abu Sufyan, by some reports a thousand camels, carrying the money and merchandise of the Quraysh and guarded, Ibn Ishaq says, by thirty or forty men, the Prophet ﷺ sent out scouts. One of them, Busaysah, brought his report to a house where only the boy Anas RA was present (Muslim); other reports name Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA and Sa'id ibn Zayd RA, and Ibn Ishaq names Basbas ibn Amr and Adiy ibn Abi al-Zaghba' as the two sent ahead to Badr. He told the people that whoever had his mount ready should ride with him at once, and would not wait for those whose animals were grazing outside the town; in Ibn Ishaq's telling he named the Quraysh caravan as the target when he called them out. It was to be a quick seizure, and the men came as they were: around 313 or 315 of them, 83 Muhajirun, 61 of the Aws, 170 of the Khazraj, with two horses by one report, belonging to Zubayr RA and al-Miqdad RA (Ali RA said al-Miqdad was their only horseman), and seventy camels shared three to a beast. The Prophet ﷺ shared his with Ali RA and Abu Lubaba RA in Ibn Mas'ud RA's report (Ibn Ishaq names Ali RA and Marthad ibn Abi Marthad RA), and when they begged him to ride he answered that they were no stronger than he, and he no less in need of the reward than they. He judged too young to fight al-Bara' ibn Azib RA and Abdullah ibn Umar RA. Hudhayfah RA and his father were held back because the Quraysh had once made them swear never to fight against Muhammad ﷺ, and an oath is an oath even to an enemy. A pagan of Madinah famous for his courage asked three times to join and was refused twice, for the Muslims do not seek help from an idolater, until he took the shahada. The blind Ibn Umm Maktum stayed behind in Madinah, and by one report Abu Lubaba RA was sent back from the road to take charge of it. Abu Sufyan, on his guard since al-Ushayra, found the scouts' campsite, broke open the camel droppings and recognised the date stones of Yathrib. He turned the caravan down to the coast road and sent Damdam ibn Amr al-Ghifari racing to Makkah. Three days before Damdam arrived, Atikah bint Abdul Muttalib had dreamt of a crier on a camel calling the Quraysh traitors and promising them death in three days, then a rock rolled from Abu Qubays that shattered against every house in the city; her brother al-Abbas told her to keep it to herself, told one friend, and before long Abu Jahl was sneering at the Banu Abdul Muttalib for having produced a prophetess. On the third day Damdam rode in with his camel's nose slit and his shirt torn, crying that Muhammad ﷺ was upon the caravan. Makkah raised an army at speed, every household sending a man or hiring one; by some reports it set out 1,300 strong with a hundred horses and six hundred coats of mail, and it stood at Badr about a thousand strong (Umar RA's report in Muslim and Ahmad). Abu Lahab stayed behind and paid a debtor to go in his place. By some reports Utbah ibn Rabi'ah had no wish to fight his own kin until his brother Shaybah shamed him into it. Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt, who, the same reports say, had once spat in the Prophet ﷺ's face and been promised death outside Makkah, dared not go until a kinsman lent him the fastest camel in the city. Umayyah ibn Khalaf, fat and fearful, meant to stay at home until Abu Jahl told him that if the chief of the valley stayed the people would stay (al-Bukhari), and Uqba brought him a censer and told him to scent himself, for he belonged with the women (Ibn Ishaq); he bought the best camel in Makkah and told his wife he meant to go only a short way. Every one of these men was on the list the Prophet ﷺ had named in his prayer the day the entrails were thrown on his back. Before they marched, by one report, the Quraysh held the curtains of the Ka'bah and asked Allah to give victory to the better of the two parties, a prayer the Qur'an says was answered, against them. Outside Makkah the army nearly turned back for fear that the Banu Bakr would raid the empty city, until Iblis himself, in the shape of the Kinani chief Suraqa ibn Malik, promised them his protection and rode with them. At Juhfa Juhaym ibn al-Salt of the Banu al-Muttalib dreamt of a crier naming Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl and Umayyah among the dead and of a camel stabbed in the chest whose blood spattered every tent, and Abu Jahl scoffed at another prophet from the Banu al-Muttalib. Then Abu Sufyan's messenger arrived: the caravan was safe, go home. Abu Jahl said they would go on to Badr, camp three days, drink and be sung to, and let Arabia hear that the Quraysh feared no one. Al-Akhnas ibn Shariq told the Banu Zuhrah to lay the charge of cowardice on him and go home, and they did, as did Talib ibn Abi Talib with some others. The Muslims meanwhile had begun to hear of an army. By some reports the Prophet ﷺ, who had been shown in a dream that he would fight, asked them twice what they thought of meeting the Quraysh instead of the caravan, and twice they answered that they had come for a caravan, with no armour and no supplies, a reluctance the Qur'an records without calling them anything but believers. He and Abu Bakr RA went scouting themselves and drew from an old Bedouin the exact positions of both the Muslims and the Quraysh, telling him only that they were "from water". Two Qurashi water-carriers were caught; the Companions beat them for saying they were from the army until they said they were from the caravan, and the Prophet ﷺ, finishing his prayer, told them they had beaten the truth out of the boys and let the lie stand. He asked instead how many camels the Quraysh slaughtered each day, nine or ten, and said the army was nine hundred to a thousand strong; when the boys named its nobles, Utbah, Shaybah, Abu Jahl, Umayyah, he told the Companions that Makkah had thrown them the pieces of its liver, and pointed out on the ground where each of those men would fall. Earlier, at Dhafiran, when news came that the Quraysh had marched, he had asked the army for its counsel. Abu Bakr spoke and sat, Umar RA spoke and sat, al-Miqdad said they would not say as the Children of Israel said to Musa but would fight at his right and his left and before and behind him, and still the Prophet ﷺ asked again, until Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (Sa'd ibn Ubadah in Muslim's report) understood that he was waiting for the Ansar, whose pledge at Aqaba had been to defend him in Madinah, not to march out to war. Sa'd told him to go where he wished: were he to ride them into the sea they would follow, and perhaps Allah would show him through them what would comfort his eyes. The Prophet ﷺ was delighted, and told them to go forward, for Allah had promised him one of the two parties, and it was as though he already saw the enemy lying slain. The Muslims reached the water of Badr before the Quraysh. Al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir RA asked whether the campsite was revealed or a soldier's choice, and being told the latter, proposed camping beyond the wells so that the water lay behind the Muslims and the enemy had only what they carried; the Prophet ﷺ took his advice, the other wells were stopped and a cistern built and filled for the Muslims. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh had a shelter built from which the Prophet ﷺ could watch the field. That night a light rain fell that firmed the sand on the Muslim side and, by some reports, drenched the Quraysh, and the Companions slept, all of them, as Ali said, except the Prophet ﷺ, who prayed under a tree until dawn: O Allah, if this band perishes, You will not be worshipped on earth. In a doze he was shown the enemy as few, which the Qur'an says spared the Muslims dispute and despair. At dawn on the 17th he drew the army up in ranks, straightening the lines with an arrow in his hand; when he prodded Suwad RA in the belly and Suwad demanded his right of retaliation, he bared his own stomach, and Suwad kissed it, saying that if he was to die he wanted his skin to have touched the Prophet ﷺ's. He had given the flag to Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA, with two black banners carried by Ali and by one of the Ansar, and put Qays ibn Abi Sa'sa'a RA over the rearguard. He ordered that al-Abbas, the Banu Hashim who had been dragged out to fight, and Abu al-Bukhturi, who had helped break the boycott, were not to be killed. Across the plain he saw a man on a red camel riding up and down the Quraysh lines and said that if there was any good in them it was in that man: it was Utbah, offering to pay the blood money for Amr al-Hadrami, the man killed at Nakhla, and pleading with the Quraysh not to kill their own sons and brothers but to leave Muhammad ﷺ to the other Arabs. Hakim ibn Hizam carried the offer to Abu Jahl, who mocked him as Utbah's errand-boy, stirred up al-Hadrami's brother, and called Utbah a coward who had lost his nerve at the sight of the Muslims. Utbah, who had told them to blame him for cowardice, could not bear to hear it from Abu Jahl, and called for his brother and his son. The Quraysh scout Umayr ibn Wahab reported three hundred men with nothing but their swords and warned that not one of them would die without taking a Qurashi with him; Abu Jahl, by one report, told him no one had asked his opinion, and as the armies closed he prayed aloud that Allah destroy whichever army had cut the ties of kinship and brought the stranger religion, another prayer against himself. Al-Aswad ibn Abd al-Asad swore to drink from the Muslims' cistern or die trying, and Hamzah RA cut him down at the water: the first man killed at Badr. Utbah, Shaybah and al-Walid ibn Utbah stepped out and called for champions. Three young Ansar answered, Awf and Muawwidh, the sons of Afra', and Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA, and were waved away: the Quraysh had no quarrel with them, send us our equals. The Prophet ﷺ sent Ubaydah ibn al-Harith RA, Hamzah and Ali. In Ibn Ishaq's account Hamzah and Ali killed Shaybah and al-Walid at once, while Ubaydah and Utbah felled each other, Utbah cutting off Ubaydah's leg, until the other two turned and killed Utbah; in Ali RA's own report in Abu Dawud, Hamzah faced Utbah, Ali faced Shaybah, and Ubaydah and al-Walid wounded each other. Ubaydah died of the wound at al-Safra on the way home, the Qur'an's "two adversaries who dispute about their Lord". The Prophet ﷺ faced the qibla with his hands raised to the sky, pleading for the promised help until his cloak fell from his shoulders and Abu Bakr put it back and told him it was enough, his Lord would give what He had promised; and Allah revealed that He would help them with a thousand angels (Muslim). In the shelter, Ibn Ishaq says, he dozed and woke to tell Abu Bakr to be of good cheer: here was Jibril holding the rein of a horse and leading it, with dust on his front teeth. A thousand angels were coming in file. He recited "the host will be routed and turn their backs", a verse Umar is reported to have said he had not understood until that morning, took up a handful of pebbles, threw them at the Quraysh with "may these faces be disfigured", and, by reports in the tafsir, every man of them got grit in his eyes; the Qur'an says it was not he who threw but Allah. What followed can only be told in the dozen stories the Companions left. The Prophet ﷺ called them to rise to a Paradise as wide as the heavens and the earth, and Umayr ibn al-Humam RA, chewing dates, said that if he lived to finish them it would be too long a life, threw them down and fought until he was killed. Arrows were held until the enemy was in range and swords sheathed until they were upon them. Ali said the Prophet ﷺ was the nearest of them all to the enemy, and, by another report, that he found him three times in his shelter in prostration crying "O Living, O Sustaining", Abu Bakr at his side; he moved between the two. Iblis saw the angels and ran; al-Harith ibn Hisham caught at "Suraqa" and was flung on his back, and in a mursal report in the Muwatta' the Prophet ﷺ said Satan is never more abased than on the day of Arafah, except for what he was shown on the day of Badr, when he saw Jibril arranging the angels in ranks. Companions heard a rider above them urge his horse, Haizum, and saw the pagan before them lose his head before their own blow landed; the man who brought in al-Abbas was a slight Ansari, and al-Abbas insisted he had been taken by a beautiful horseman on a piebald horse, and the Prophet ﷺ told the Ansari to be quiet, an angel had helped him. By one report the angels wore the yellow turban of Zubayr; Ibn Ishaq's report from Ibn Abbas RA says white turbans. Ukasha ibn Mihsan RA broke his sword, was handed a stick of wood, and found a blade in his hand. By a report with a broken chain, Abu Ubaydah RA avoided his father Abdullah ibn al-Jarrah until the old man came at him and he killed him, and the closing verse of Surah al-Mujadilah came down about him, that no believer loves those who fight Allah and His Messenger ﷺ even if they are his father. Abu al-Bukhturi refused to be taken without his friend and was killed by an Ansari who had tried to spare him. Abu Hudhayfah RA, whose father, uncle and brother were the three of the duel, said aloud that the Muslims killed their own kin while the Prophet ﷺ's uncle went untouched, and regretted it until he died at Yamamah. Two boys of the Ansar, Mu'adh ibn Amr ibn al-Jumuh RA and a son of Afra' (Mu'adh in al-Bukhari, Muawwidh in Ibn Ishaq), had each asked Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA to point out Abu Jahl, and when he did they went through the press like hawks; Mu'adh's leap took off Abu Jahl's leg and cost him his own arm to Ikrimah's sword, which he tore off and fought on without, and Muawwidh struck the second blow. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud RA, the shepherd Abu Jahl had despised, found him dying, put a foot on his neck, heard him say to the end that a man killed by his own people was not disgraced and that Ibn Mas'ud stood on a high place, and finished him with his own sword. By a report with a weak chain in Ahmad, the Prophet ﷺ made him swear three times before he went to look, and called Abu Jahl the Pharaoh of this community. Umayyah ibn Khalaf begged his old friend Abd al-Rahman to take him and his son prisoner saying he was worth more than the coats of mail Abd al-Rahman was carrying; Bilal RA saw the man who had tortured him on the sand of Makkah, called the Ansar, and Umayyah and his son died under their spears while Abd al-Rahman was wounded in the foot trying to shield them. Umayyah's corpse was the only one that could not be moved to the well; it came apart when lifted, and they covered it where it lay with stones. Seventy of the Quraysh were dead and about seventy taken, one man in seven of their army; fourteen or fifteen Muslims had been killed and none taken. The Quraysh fled by the one road the Muslims had left open. The Prophet ﷺ stayed three days on the field, to bury the martyrs and to make plain who had won. The Quraysh dead were thrown into a dry well and covered, all but Umayyah, and on the third day, before leaving, he stood at its mouth and called them by name, Utbah, Shaybah, al-Walid, Abu Jahl, Umayyah, and asked whether they had found their Lord's promise true, for he had found his; when Umar asked how he could speak to bodies without souls, he answered that they heard him no worse than the living, though they could not reply. On the field the Companions had already fallen to arguing over the spoils, the collectors, the pursuers and the Prophet ﷺ's bodyguard each claiming the better right, and Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA asking for the sword he had won; the opening verses of Surah al-Anfal came down there, that the spoils belong to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, and every man received an equal share, with shares for some who had been kept away on duty, among them Uthman RA, nursing his dying wife Ruqayyah. Looking over the prisoners the Prophet ﷺ said that if Mut'im ibn Adi, lately dead, had asked him for them he would have freed every one, for the shelter Mut'im had given him after Ta'if. Abu Bakr counselled ransom, they were kin; Umar counselled giving each Companion his own kinsman to kill; the Prophet ﷺ likened the one to Ibrahim and Isa and the other to Nuh and Musa, and chose ransom, and the next day Umar found him and Abu Bakr weeping under a tree at the verses that had come down, that no prophet should take captives before he has subdued the land, and that but for a prior decree a punishment would have touched them. Two prisoners were executed on the road home, al-Nadr ibn al-Harith, who had mocked the Qur'an as fables he could better, and Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt, who asked who would look after his children and was told, the Fire. That was the end of the only two Badr captives put to death. Zayd ibn Harithah RA brought the news to Lower Madinah, naming the dead one by one, while Abdullah ibn Rawahah RA took it to Upper Madinah; by some reports Zayd rode the Prophet ﷺ's own camel and was thought mad; Abdullah ibn Ubayy, hearing him, said the matter was now settled, and the hypocrisy of Madinah dates from that day. Uthman heard the shouting as he finished burying Ruqayyah. The prisoners were lodged with their captors, who were ordered to treat them well and gave them their bread while they themselves ate dates; Suhayl ibn Amr was kept in the Prophet ﷺ's own house, where Sawda RA, seeing the chief of the Quraysh bound in a corner, cried out that he should have died a noble death, and when the Prophet ﷺ rebuked her, said she could not contain herself. The ransoms were set by each man's means, the poor freed for nothing and and some who had nothing to pay for teaching the children of the Ansar to write (Ahmad); al-Abbas, who protested that he was a Muslim, was told that Allah knew his heart but he had fought, and then told where he and Umm al-Fadl had set money aside when no one else was present, and paid for himself, Aqil and Nawfal too; by one report he used to say that Allah had given him twenty merchants for those twenty ounces. Abu Sufyan refused to pay for his son Amr, having already lost a son on the field, and later kidnapped an old Ansari pilgrim in Makkah to force an exchange. Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi' was ransomed with a necklace that had been Khadija RA's wedding gift to their daughter Zaynab RA; the Prophet ﷺ's face changed at the sight of it, the captors returned it at his word, and Abu al-As went home on his promise to send Zaynab to Madinah. In Makkah the first survivor to arrive, al-Haysaman al-Khuza'i, reeled off so many dead nobles that Safwan ibn Umayyah tested him by asking after himself, and was told he had watched Safwan's father and brother die. The Quraysh banned wailing so that the Muslims should take no pleasure in it, and al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib, who had lost three sons, was overjoyed to hear a woman keening until he learned she wept for a camel. Abu Lahab, who heard from his nephew Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith of men in white on piebald horses that no one could withstand, beat al-Abbas's slave Abu Rafi' for saying they were angels until Umm al-Fadl split his head with a tent pole, and died of a foul sickness within days. On the same day, at the far end of the world, Rome beat Persia as Surah al-Rum had foretold, too late for the Makkan who had bet Abu Bakr it never would. Within weeks Umayr ibn Wahab came to Madinah with a poisoned sword to kill the Prophet ﷺ and went home a Muslim, and the Banu Qaynuqa, who told the Prophet ﷺ he had beaten only men who knew nothing of war, were besieged and sent out of Madinah. Jibril asked how the Muslims regarded those who had fought at Badr, and was told, the best of the Muslims; so, he said, do the angels regard the angels who were there.

Placed here because: Ep. 36: "the Prophet ﷺ left Madinah on the 12th of Ramadan in 2 AH." Ep. 38: "thus began the 17th of Ramadan in the 2nd year of the Hijrah ... And it was a Friday."

Of the 70 prisoners taken from Badr back toward Madinah, two were executed on the way: al-Nadr ibn al-Harith and Uqba ibn Abi Mu'ayt, both counted among the shayatin of the Quraysh. When Uqba was brought out, he asked why he alone was singled out; Ali ibn Abi Talib RA answered that it was for his animosity to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, and it is said Ali RA carried out the execution.

Placed here because: Ep. 41 tells the two executions on the march back, before the army reaches Madinah.

Ruqayyah bint Muhammad ﷺ, wife of Uthman ibn Affan RA, passed away in Madinah. Uthman RA, who had stayed behind from Badr at the Prophet ﷺ's instruction to nurse her, had just finished burying her at Baqi' al-Gharqad when he heard Zayd ibn Harithah RA entering the city shouting takbir with news of the victory at Badr.

Placed here because: Ep. 41: "As Zayd ibn Harithah was coming into the city chanting takbir, Uthman ibn Affan was burying Ruqayyah RA ... And the Prophet ﷺ arrived back the same day, with the 70 prisoners."

When the Quraysh survivors began returning to Makkah with news of the crushing defeat at Badr, Abu Lahab refused to believe it and awaited Abu Sufyan ibn Harb's own account. The two met at the house of al-Abbas, whose wife Umm al-Fadl and household were there (al-Abbas himself was a prisoner of war in Madinah). Abu Sufyan described how the Muslims overpowered the Quraysh, taking prisoners and killing as they pleased, and how he saw riders with white faces on black-and-white horses, hovering between heaven and earth, whom no one could overpower. Al-Abbas's slave, overhearing, cried out with joy that these had been angels helping the Muslims. Abu Lahab, enraged at the slave's open joy over the Quraysh's defeat, threw him to the ground and beat him near to death; when Umm al-Fadl intervened, he beat her too, until she rebuked him for how he was treating her husband's household in al-Abbas's absence, shaming him into fleeing.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 42: Abu Lahab heard Abu Sufyan's account at al-Abbas's house, "and he was not seen after this; he died shortly after." Days, not weeks; exact date unknown.

In the weeks after Badr, Safwan ibn Umayyah, whose father and brother had both been killed there, sat in the Hijr beside the Ka'bah with his cousin Umayr ibn Wahab al-Jumahi, the scout who had ridden round the Muslim lines on the morning of the battle and warned Abu Jahl that three hundred men with nothing but their swords would each take a Qurashi with them before they died. Umayr's own son was a prisoner in Madinah and he had not paid his ransom. Safwan cursed the new religion and what it had cost them, and Umayr said that but for a debt he could not pay and a family he could not leave, he would go to Madinah himself and kill Muhammad ﷺ. Safwan, a rich man, took him up on it: he would pay the debt and keep Umayr's family as he kept his own. Umayr agreed and asked him to tell no one. He went home, sharpened his sword, soaked it in poison, and rode alone to Madinah without a word to his wife. He came into the city with his face wrapped like any traveller and the sword slung from his neck, and walked to the mosque. Umar knew him by his eyes and said aloud that this dog, this enemy of Allah, had come for no good; he went to the Prophet ﷺ, who told him to bring the man in, and Umar took his own sword, escorted Umayr in, and stood with his hand on the hilt, having been told to watch every move, for this one could not be trusted. Umayr greeted the Prophet ﷺ in the old way, a good morning, and was told that Allah had given the Muslims a better greeting, the greeting of the people of Paradise. Why had he come? For his son's ransom. Then what was the sword for? What good had swords done them at Badr? Tell me the truth, Umayr. He held to his story. So the Prophet ﷺ told it for him: he and Safwan had sat alone in the Hijr and spoken of their dead at Badr, and Umayr had said that but for his debt and his family he would kill Muhammad ﷺ, and Safwan had taken both on himself so that Umayr would come and do it; but Allah had come between him and his plan. No one had been in the Hijr but the two of them. Umayr had told no one, not even his wife; he had ridden the fastest road, and no rider could have outrun him. There was only one way the man in front of him could know, and Umayr said it at once: I bear witness that you are the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. They had called him a liar, he said, when he told them revelation came from the sky; but this no one knew except him and Safwan. The Prophet ﷺ told Umar to teach his brother his religion, teach him the Qur'an, and free his prisoner. He stayed in Madinah learning, and before he left asked leave to go back to Makkah and call people to Islam as hard as he had once driven them from it, and to defend the Prophet ﷺ as he had once tormented him. Ibn Ishaq says many became Muslims at his hands. In Makkah Safwan had spent a fortnight promising the Quraysh good news, and when he learned what the news was he swore never to look at Umayr, speak to him or sit under a roof with him again. Umayr made Hijrah to Madinah, and at the conquest of Makkah six years later it was he who went after Safwan, now the one in flight, and brought him back under the Prophet ﷺ's protection to say the shahada in front of the man they had once plotted to kill.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 43 opens with Safwan and Umayr "whose father and brother had just died in Badr"; no date is given beyond shortly after the battle.

The Banu Qaynuqa were the largest of the three Jewish tribes of Madinah, some seven hundred men, goldsmiths with the biggest market in the city, and the first to break with the Prophet ﷺ. Ibn Ishaq gives the affair less than a page, as the early historians did with every falling-out, and records only that after Badr they grew openly hostile and were grieved by the Muslim victory. The Prophet ﷺ went to their market, gathered them, and reminded them of the Constitution they had signed, each to protect the other against outsiders. One of their leaders answered him to his face: he should not be fooled by beating a handful of nobodies; had he fought men, men like them, he would have seen a different result. Then a crude incident lit the fuse. An Ansari woman sold her goods in the market and sat down at a goldsmith's to buy. He pestered her to uncover herself and she refused; he signalled to a man behind her, who pinned her garment so that when she stood it fell away, and she was left uncovered while the men of the market laughed. She screamed for help. A Muslim who was there drew his sword and killed the goldsmith, and the Banu Qaynuqa, on their own ground, closed round him and killed him. The Prophet ﷺ sent them word that the treaty was at an end, for Islam does not break a treaty in secret; the Qur'an says that if you fear betrayal from a people, throw their treaty back to them openly. They did not expect him to do more, trusting their numbers and their walls, but he marched at once, and they shut themselves in their fortress. The Muslims had no means of breaching it, so they cut off its supplies, and after fifteen days the Banu Qaynuqa surrendered. The Prophet ﷺ had the men bound while their fate was decided. In the days before Islam the tribe had two allies among the Khazraj, and they appealed to both. Ubadah ibn al-Samit went straight to the Prophet ﷺ and renounced them: his protector now was Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, and he had cut his ties with the Banu Qaynuqa. Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul went to the camp where they were held and told the Companion guarding them to release them or he would, and was told that if he tried he would be killed. So he found the Prophet ﷺ and called him by his bare name, Muhammad ﷺ, as he always did, and asked him to be generous to his allies. The Prophet ﷺ said nothing. He asked again and the Prophet ﷺ turned away, and then Ibn Ubayy thrust his hand into the neck of his armour and held him. Let go of me, the Prophet ﷺ said, and Ibn Ishaq says the anger showed in his face; woe to you, let go. Ibn Ubayy swore he would not until the Prophet ﷺ promised to treat them well: seven hundred men, three hundred in mail, who had shielded him from every enemy, red and black, and was he to cut them down in a morning? He was afraid, he said, of a turn of fortune. The Prophet ﷺ said: they are yours. He had never said he would kill them; but he gave Ibn Ubayy their lives in public, and there was wisdom in it, for the man was still the most respected chief of old Yathrib, and there was still hope of him. The verdict was three days to leave Madinah. They begged for more, tried Ubadah, who told them he would not have given them three, and Ibn Ubayy tried again to have the sentence lifted and failed. Ubadah saw them out. They took their gold and what they could carry and left the rest, which came to the Muslims. Allah sent down the verses of Surah al-Ma'idah on not taking Jews and Christians as protectors, quoting Ibn Ubayy's fear of a turn of fortune from the mouths of those with sickness in their hearts, and praising the choice Ubadah had made: your only protectors are Allah, His Messenger ﷺ and the believers. It was the lightest of the three punishments the Jewish tribes of Madinah brought on themselves, and the true colours of the hypocrites had begun to show.

Placed here because: Ep. 43: "The Banu Qaynuqa, according to al-Waqidi, they were expelled on the 15th of Shawwal in the 2nd year of the Hijrah. Thus 3½ weeks after the Battle of Badr."

About a month after Badr, Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi' was freed from captivity on condition that he send his wife Zaynab bint Muhammad ﷺ back to her father. Hind bint Utbah visited Zaynab under the guise of offering to help her pack, hoping she would betray her plans and remain in Makkah as a hostage; Zaynab, sensing something was wrong, did not confide in her. Zaynab's brother-in-law Kinana openly led her out of Makkah by camel in daylight, and a Qurashi party led by Habbar ibn al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib caught up with them; Habbar thrust a spear at the camel, which reared and threw Zaynab 15 feet to the ground, and she miscarried. Kinana stood over her and drove the party back at swordpoint until Abu Sufyan ibn Harb arrived and calmed the situation, promising Zaynab would leave quietly at a later, less public time. Some days later, Kinana took her out again by night and handed her to two Companions sent by the Prophet ﷺ, who brought her safely to Madinah.

Placed here because: Ep. 41: "One month after the Battle of Badr, the Prophet ﷺ sent two Companions to a certain place outside of Makkah ... And it turns out Zaynab RA was that visitor."

Several months after Badr, the elderly Ansari Sa'd ibn al-Nu'man traveled to Makkah to trade and perform Umrah. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, still refusing to ransom his captured son Amr ibn Abi Sufyan, kidnapped Sa'd in broad daylight inside the Haram and declared he would not release him until his son was freed. Sa'd's tribe brought the matter to the Prophet ﷺ, who released Amr without ransom to secure Sa'd's freedom.

Placed here because: ~ The sources place it several months after Badr, once Abu Sufyan had refused to ransom his son; no closer date is given.