In order to rescue a large caravan from danger and distress, the Koreish marched into the field a thousand strong, with seven hundred camels and one hundred horses. The train of merchandise escaped the ambush by the clever management of Abu Sufyan, but nevertheless Abu Jahl persisted in the conflict. At Bedr, a camping ground and market, noted even at the present day for its plentiful supply of water, the Meccans encountered the hostile bands, who were not half so strong, and made ready for battle. Three Meccans, kinsmen of those who had fallen at Nakhla, came forward and challenged three of the opposite party to single combat. Hamza, Ali, and Obaida opposed themselves to them and slew them, whereupon the fight became general. Mohammed, who was watching the encounter from a leafy hut on a rising ground and praying to God with great ardour and excitement that he would not allow his faithful few to be destroyed, suddenly declared that victory had been promised him in a vision, and flinging a handful of dust after the Koreish, he called out, “Shame on their faces!”
Soon confusion seized the enemy and the battle ended with a complete defeat of the Koreish. Seventy heads of distinguished houses were slain during the battle or on the flight. Amongst the fallen were Otba and Shaiba, and, above all Abu Jahl (called the enemy of God), Mohammed’s bitterest opponent; amongst the prisoners were his uncle Abbas and Abul-Aas, the husband of his eldest daughter Zainab. Both were ransomed and returned to Mecca. Abbas probably henceforth served his nephew as a spy and Abul-Aas had to send his wife back to her father. Two other prisoners, Al-Nadr and Okba, who had belonged to Mohammed’s most eager adversaries in Mecca, were executed. But the prophet, always inclined to mildness, deplored the rash act when he heard the touching lament of the former’s daughter, a lament which is still preserved to us. For the rest, the battle of Bedr was of the greatest importance for the victory of Islam, and in consequence all the combatants whose names were entered in the lists henceforth formed the highest nobility of the Moslems. The spoil and the ransoms were equally divided, but soon after a saying of the Koran commanded that in future the fifth part of all spoil should go to the prophet, for himself, his kinsmen, for the poor, orphans, and wanderers.
BATTLE OF OHOD (MARCH, 625 A.D.)
[625 A.D.]
The battle of Bedr was the first step of Islam to dominion. Whilst the inhabitants of Medina and the Bedouin tribes of the neighbourhood drew from the prophet’s success a belief in his divine mission and gathered round him with enthusiasm, in Mecca there was great despair. Abu Lahab, Mohammed’s uncle and enemy, died seven days later of a disease resembling smallpox, full of affliction and anger at the success of his nephew; and Okba’s daughter Hind, the passionate wife of Abu Sufyan, cried day and night in ungoverned fury for revenge for her fallen kinsmen. Her lord actually went against Medina with two hundred Koreish; but their belief in their own cause was shaken, and when Mohammed marched against them they fled home in such haste that they left their stock of meal behind.
In the months after this “meal-campaign,” certain Jews in Medina, having made a mock of Mohammed in their verses, were put to death, and their co-religionists who had refused to go over to Islam, in particular the Beni Kainoka, the most skilful of the wealthy goldsmiths in the country, were driven into banishment in Syria. Abu Sufyan now marched a second time to the fight, on this occasion with a force of three thousand Koreish, at whose head stood three brave men, Akrama a son of Abu Jahl, Khalid, and Amru, afterwards the most distinguished heroes of the faithful. In the rearguard was the terrible Hind, with fifteen other women and certain poets who roused the spirit of vengeance in the army by laments over those slain at Bedr.
Mohammed wished to await the enemy in the city, but the young men, in their eagerness for war, demanded a pitched battle. The prophet yielded to their demand with inward misgivings. On the mount Ohod, whose solitary granite mass, bare of tree or bush, rises about a league to the north of Medina, he ranged his warriors, who did not exceed seven hundred, as he had disdained the help of the Jews and thus so deeply offended their patron, the Khazrayite Abdallah ben Obayyah, who apart from this was a secret envier and opponent of Mohammed, that he too had withdrawn with his army. Mohammed himself fought in the front rank; wearing a red fillet round his head and waving “the sword of God and his envoy,” he encouraged his men with axioms of the new faith. Here, too, victory seemed first to incline to the Moslems; strenuously as Hind and her women, “the daughters of the stars, with cloudy hair and pearl-ornamented necks,” might encourage the combatants, promising loving embraces to the victors, and threatening the flying with shame and death, the ranks of the Meccans nevertheless gave way. Seven members of the family of Abd ad-Dar, who each in turn performed the hereditary office of standard-bearer, rolled in the dust. Then the bowmen, fearing to be too late for the spoil, left the secure position which Mohammed had assigned them behind the mountain, and thus gave Khalid an opportunity to fall with his cavalry on the Moslem rear. The battle now suddenly took a new turn; the superior numbers of the Koreish carried the day, Mohammed was wounded and fell, face downwards, into a trench. His standard-bearer Mussab, fell, and as he resembled Mohammed in appearance the rumour, “Mohammed is dead,” was quickly disseminated and proved as encouraging to the infidels as it was destructive to the Moslem. The defeated were already hurrying away towards Medina, when the poet Kaab, the son of Malik, recognised the prophet amongst the wounded, in his helmet and coat of mail.
Arab Warrior, Time of Mohammed
Encouraged by the joyful tidings that Mohammed was still alive, ten or twelve of his trusty followers, including Abu Bekr and Omar, collected round him and carved themselves a way with the sword towards a rocky height, where they defended themselves bravely until the enemy, who, supposing the prophet to be dead, had paid no special heed to this little band, had begun their homeward march after insulting and mutilating the dead. Hind and her companions took the severed noses and ears of the enemy, strung them together like pearls, and wore them as necklaces and bracelets. The former even carried her rage so far that she tried to tear the heart out of the corpse of Hamza whom the Abyssinian slave Washi had slain in the midst of the fight, and to rend it in pieces.[31] The fall of the faithful Hamza touched Mohammed nearly; he frequently bewailed him, and the women of Medina raised a general lament over the fallen hero, whose name was henceforth mentioned in every death-song.