The campaign of Uhud: Quraysh’s preparation

The campaign of Uhud was in Shawwal of the year three, as az-Zuhri and Qatada and Musa ibn Uqba and Muhammad ibn Ishaq and Malik said; Ibn Ishaq said at mid-Shawwal, and Qatada said on the Saturday, the eleventh of it, and Malik said the encounter was at the first of the day. It is, upon the famous account, that in which Allah sent down His word: and when you went forth from your family at dawn assigning the believers their places for battle [Ali Imran: 121], and the verses after it to His word: and Allah would not leave the believers upon what you are until He separates the evil from the good [Ali Imran: 179]; and we have discussed all its details in our book of Tafsir. Let us mention here the summary of the encounter from what Muhammad ibn Ishaq and others of the scholars of this affair cite. Ibn Ishaq said: of the story of Uhud, as Muhammad ibn Muslim az-Zuhri and Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Hibban and Asim ibn Umar ibn Qatada and al-Husayn ibn Abd ar-Rahman ibn Amr ibn Sa’d ibn Mu’adh and others of our scholars related to me,

each relating part of this hadith of the day of Uhud, and all their hadiths gathered in what I quote: they said: or whoever said of them: when there were struck on the day of Badr of the disbelievers of Quraysh the men of the well, and the defeated of them returned to Mecca, and Abu Sufyan ibn Harb returned with his caravan, there walked Abdallah ibn Abi Rabia and Ikrima ibn Abi Jahl and Safwan ibn Umayya with men of Quraysh whose fathers and sons and brothers had been struck on the day of Badr, and they spoke to Abu Sufyan and the men of Quraysh who owned that caravan of trade, and said: O assembly of Quraysh, Muhammad has mutilated you and killed your best; aid us with this wealth against his war, that we may attain our vengeance from him. And they did; and of them, as one of the people of knowledge mentioned to me, Allah sent down: indeed those who disbelieve spend their wealth to avert from the path of Allah; they will spend it,

then it will be for them a regret, then they will be overcome [al-Anfal: 36]. They said: Quraysh gathered for the war of the Messenger of Allah when Abu Sufyan and the men of the caravan did that with their companies and whoever of the tribes of Kinana and the people of Tihamma followed them. Abu Azza, Amr ibn Abdallah al-Jumahi, upon whom the Messenger of Allah had bestowed favor on the day of Badr, was poor, with family and need, and was among the captives; Safwan ibn Umayya said to him: O Abu Azza, you are a poet; aid us with your tongue and go out with us. He said: Muhammad has favored me, and I will not support against him. He said: rather aid us with your person, and Allah will be yours if you return that I shelter you, and if you are slain that I place your daughters with my daughters, receiving what they receive of hardship and ease. Abu Azza went out ranging through Tihamma calling the Banu Kinana and saying: ’O sons of Abd Manat the Ruzzam,

you are the guardians and your father a guardian; your aid shall not fail me after this year; give me no peace, no peace is permitted.’ And Musafi’ ibn Abd Manaf ibn Wahb ibn Hudhayfa ibn Jumah went out to the Banu Malik ibn Kinana urging them and saying: ’O possessors of the precedence of lineage, I call upon the near kin and the praised one: whoever has kinship and whoever shows not mercy: the oath in the middle of the sacred city, at the hatim of the magnified Kaaba.’ Jubayr ibn Mu’im called a Abyssinian lad of his called Wahshi, who hurled his lance with the hurling of the Abyssinians, seldom missing, and said to him: go out with the people, and if you kill Hamza, the uncle of Muhammad, in requital for my uncle Tu’ayma ibn Adi, you are free. Quraysh went out with its edge and its iron and its name and its companies, and whoever followed it of the Banu Kinana and the people of Tihamma, and they went out with them the laden camels,

seeking the guard and that they not flee. Abu Sufyan Sakhr ibn Harb went out, and he was the leader of the people, and with him his wife Hind bint Utba ibn Rabi’a; and Ikrima ibn Abi Jahl went out with his wife his cousin Umm Hakim bint al-Harith ibn Hisham ibn al-Mughira; and his uncle al-Harith ibn Hisham went out with his wife Fatima bint al-Walid ibn al-Mughira; and Safwan ibn Umayya went out with Barza bint Mas’ud ibn Amr ibn Umayr the Thaqifi; and Amr ibn al-As went out with Rayta bint Munabbih ibn al-Hajjaj, mother of his son Abdallah ibn Amr; and he mentions others who went out with their wives. Wahshi, whenever Hind bint Utba passed him or she passed him, would say: courage, O Abu Dasmah, heal and seek healing: meaning she urged him to kill Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib. They came forward until they camped at two springs of a mountain in the belly of the marshy flat of Qanat upon the edge of the valley opposite Medina. When the Messenger of Allah and the Muslims heard of them he said to them:

by Allah I have seen good: I saw cows being slaughtered, and I saw a notch in the pommel of my sword, and I saw that I put my hand into a solid coat of mail, and I interpreted it as Medina. This hadith al-Bukhari and Muslim both reported, from Abu Kurayb, from Abu Usama, from Burayd ibn Abdallah ibn Abi Burda, from Abu Burda, from Abu Musa al-Ash’ari, from the Prophet, who said: I saw in a dream that I emigrate from Mecca to a land of palms, and I thought it was al-Yamama or Hajar, and behold it was Medina, Yathrib; and I saw in this dream that I brandished a sword and its edge broke, and behold that is what befell the believers on the day of Uhud; then I brandished it again and it returned better than it was, and behold it is what Allah brought of the conquest and the gathering of the believers; and I saw in it also cows, and Allah is better, and behold they are the company of the believers on the day of Uhud; and the good is what Allah brought of good and the true reward Allah gave us after the day of Badr.

Al-Bayhaqi said: Abu Abdallah the hafiz informed us: al-Asamm informed us: Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Abd al-Hakam informed us: Ibn Wahb informed us: Ibn Abi az-Zinad informed me, from his father, from Ubaydallah ibn Abdallah ibn Utba, from Ibn Abbas: the Messenger of Allah drew his sword Dhu l-Faqar on the day of Badr. Ibn Abbas said: it is that in which he saw the dream on the day of Uhud; and that is because when the idolaters came to the Messenger of Allah on the day of Uhud his view was to stay in Medina and fight them there. People who had not witnessed Badr said: go out with us, O Messenger of Allah, to them, that we fight them at Uhud; and they hoped to attain of merit what the men of Badr attained, and they kept pressing the Messenger of Allah until he donned his armor; then they regretted and said: O Messenger of Allah, stay; the view is yours. He said to them: it befits not a prophet who has donned his armor to set it down until Allah judges between him and his enemy.

He had said to them that day, before donning the armor: I saw that I was in a solid coat of mail and interpreted it as Medina, and that I rode behind a ram and interpreted it the ram of the battle, and I saw that my sword Dhu l-Faqar was nicked and interpreted it a nick among you, and I saw cows being slaughtered, and cows are a people; and Allah is better. At-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah reported it from Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abi az-Zinad, from his father, likewise. Al-Bayhaqi reported, through Hammad ibn Salama, from Ali ibn Zayd, from Anas, raised to the Prophet, who said: I saw in what the sleeper sees as though I rode behind a ram, and as though the pommel of my sword broke; I interpreted that I would kill the ram of the people, and interpreted the breaking of my sword’s pommel as the killing of a man of my kin. So Hamza was slain, and the Messenger of Allah slew Talha, who was the standard-bearer.