The March to Uhud and the Army Setup

❧The Timeline of Uhud: Three Days

Dr. Yasir Qadhi opens this session by acknowledging the fundamental challenge of the Battle of Uḥud narratives: unlike Badr (which was relatively compact and unambiguous), Uḥud was chaotic, and because it was a loss, the Companions naturally spoke less about it. Every book of Sīrah presents a slightly different chronological reconstruction. What follows is one coherent theory, grounded in Ibn Isḥāq and the majority of early authorities, but not the only possible reading.

The timeline as reconstructed:

- 13 Shawwāl (Thursday): The Qurayshi army was within scouting distance of Madinah; Muslim and Qurayshi scouts could observe each other's movements.

- 14 Shawwāl (Friday): The Prophet ﷺ prayed Jumu'ah (early, per the Ḥanbalī position that Jumu'ah is a separate ṣalāh from Ẓuhr and can be prayed before Ẓuhr time). Right after Jumu'ah he donned his armor, refused to remove it, and marched the army toward Uḥud.

- 15 Shawwāl (Saturday): The battle took place at sunrise. Ibn Isḥāq and the majority of early scholars agree on this date.

❧The Secret March Through the Date Palms

After Jumu'ah, the Prophet ﷺ departed Madinah toward Uḥud, but not on the main highway. He deliberately chose a route through the date palm groves. A guide was selected to navigate the back paths. The reason, which we have to infer: the Qurayshi army was within scouting distance; if the Muslims marched on the highway, enemy scouts would immediately relay their position and direction. The Prophet ﷺ wanted to arrive at Uḥud first, to choose and occupy the most favorable ground before the enemy could.

As the army moved silently through the plantations, they inadvertently passed through the garden of an old blind Munāfiq, a friend and associate of ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl. The man heard the rustling of hundreds of men and horses. He called out: "Who is this? Is this Muḥammad ﷺ and his companions? Verily, I do not allow you to walk through my land!" He began throwing pebbles and rocks blindly in their direction.

One of the Ṣaḥābah raised his sword. The Prophet ﷺ stopped him:

> "Daʿūhu, aʿmā al-qalbi aʿmā al-baṣar."

> "Leave him, he is blind of eye and blind of heart."

There is no reason to kill this man; his hostility is impotent. And from this we also derive confirmation that they were deliberately avoiding the main road, because there is no other reason to be walking through private gardens in the dark.

The army arrived at Uḥud on the afternoon of the 14th, easily by 2 o'clock, having marched what is today a 3-minute car ride or half-hour walk from the Prophet's Masjid. The Qurayshi scouts observed their arrival; the Qurayshi army repositioned toward Uḥud that same afternoon. By nightfall both armies were camped at Uḥud. Sunrise on the 15th would bring battle.

❧The Army Inspection: Minimum Age of 15

Upon arrival, the Prophet ﷺ reviewed each fighter individually, assessing their readiness. He turned away approximately a dozen fighters who were below the minimum age of fifteen. Among those sent back:

- ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar (son of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb)

- Zayd ibn Thābit (the future compiler of the Qurʾān; approximately 13 at the time)

- Usāmah ibn Zayd (son of Zayd ibn Ḥārithah; approximately 11–12 years old; his later service as an 18-year-old at Muʾtah allows us to calculate his age at Uḥud; he had tried to sneak into the army undetected)

- Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī (whose father Mālik ibn Sinān would be martyred in the same battle he was too young to fight in)

- Zayd ibn Arqam

Dr. Qadhi pauses here: compare Usāmah ibn Zayd at age 11 or 12, trying to sneak into a war, to the vast majority of 11-year-olds in the modern world. This is the quality of the Ṣaḥābah that allowed Islam to spread the way it did.

❧Rafi' ibn Khadij and Samura ibn Jundab: Exceptions Made

Two fourteen-year-olds successfully argued their way back into the army:

Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj: When told he was too young, his relatives pleaded that he was an expert archer, he didn't need to be in the front line; he could fight with bow and arrow from a distance. The Prophet ﷺ accepted this argument and allowed Rāfiʿ to remain.

Samurah ibn Jundab: Hearing that Rāfiʿ was allowed to stay, Samurah immediately stood up and protested: "Yā Rasūlallāh, if you will allow Rāfiʿ, I should be allowed too, I am stronger than he is and have beaten him in wrestling multiple times!" There and then the Prophet ﷺ had the two wrestle; Samurah pinned Rāfiʿ, and both were permitted to participate.

Dr. Qadhi contrasts these young men, bursting with Īmān and desperate to fight in the way of Allah, against the gray-haired Munāfiqūn who had slunk away the day before with every reason and ability to participate.

❧Positioning the Army: The Military Genius of the Prophet ﷺ

Ibn Isḥāq records that the Prophet ﷺ stationed the army with their backs to the mountain of Uḥud and faces toward Madinah (i.e., they turned 180°). This nestled them in a natural cove, protected on three sides by the mountain range. On the fourth (open) side, there was a small mountain called Jabal al-ʿAynayn (the Mountain of the Two Eyes), now called Jabal ar-Rumāh (the Mountain of the Archers), situated exactly in the center of the open flank.

The result: a force of 700 men versus 3,000+ was concentrated into an offensive corridor of roughly 300 meters wide. As Dr. Qadhi explains: "If you only have 300 meters to attack through, who cares how long your line is? The enemy's surplus numbers become largely irrelevant." The Prophet ﷺ had effectively made a 4.2-to-1 numerical disadvantage into something approaching man-for-man combat across a narrow front.

Note on Jabal al-ʿAynayn (Q&A): Today the hill is barely a rise, perhaps 50 feet. But Dr. Qadhi estimates it was 500–600 feet in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, citing the erosion of millions of pilgrims who have climbed it over fourteen centuries. To find it today when visiting Uḥud: stand facing the grave of Ḥamzah (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu), then look over your right shoulder, you will see the small hill. That is Jabal al-ʿAynayn. There is no sanctity attached to the site itself, in Islam there are no holy sites beyond the three masājid (Makkah, Madinah, Jerusalem). One visits it for historical reflection, not to seek blessing from the place.

❧The Command to the 50 Archers

The Prophet ﷺ positioned 50 of his best archers on Jabal al-ʿAynayn under their commander. Of all the events of Uḥud, this command is the one recorded most extensively and with the most authentic chains, appearing in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and nearly every book of Sīrah.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

> "Protect us with your arrows so their horses cannot come at us, for their horses will never charge through a rain of arrows."

And in the version recorded in Bukhārī:

> "Even if you see the birds eating our corpses, do not leave your positions until I send for you. Even if you see us victorious and collecting war spoils, do not leave until I send for you."

Dr. Qadhi underlines the graphic intensity of the Prophet's language: he is painting the most extreme scenario imaginable, "even if we are lying dead and birds are picking at our flesh", to make absolutely clear: this position must not be abandoned under any circumstances without explicit orders. This hyperbolism shows how acutely he understood the one remaining vulnerability in his otherwise near-perfect defensive position: that single open stretch of land protected only by the archers' arrows.

❧Jumu'ah vs. Ẓuhr: A Fiqh Note

Dr. Qadhi uses the Uḥud timeline to touch on a classical controversy: is Ṣalāt al-Jumu'ah a version of Ẓuhr, or a completely separate ṣalāh? The Ḥanbalī position (followed also at many mosques in the West) holds that Jumu'ah is a distinct ṣalāh with its own time, and therefore it may be prayed even before the time of Ẓuhr. This allows Jumu'ah at 11 a.m. or earlier. If correct, the Prophet ﷺ could have prayed Jumu'ah around 11 a.m., donned his armor immediately, and reached Uḥud comfortably before 2 p.m.