Opening Phase of the Battle of Uhud

❧Abu Dujana Takes the Sword

On the morning of the 15th of Shawwāl, as the sun rose on the Saturday, the Prophet ﷺ turned to the army to inspire them. Every military force has its method of motivating troops before battle. The Prophet's ﷺ method was unmatched: the promise of Allah and His Messenger.

He drew his own sword and raised it:

> "Who will take this sword from me?"

The sight of the Prophet's own sword, blessed, carried by the Nabī of Allah, sent every man surging forward: "I will! I will! Ana yā Rasūlallāh!" Among the first was Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām (the Prophet's cousin).

But the Prophet ﷺ paused them all: "Who will take it with its right (biḥaqqihi)?"

Silence. Then Abū Dujānah stepped forward: "What is its right, yā Rasūlallāh?"

The Prophet ﷺ answered: "That you fight the enemy with it until it breaks or is no longer serviceable, you continue to use it until you can no longer use it."

Abū Dujānah said: "I will take it with that right, yā Rasūlallāh."

He was given the sword. And then, before marching forward, Abū Dujānah did something he had not done since the days of Jāhiliyyah: he tied on his Turban of Death (blood-red; worn only in the most extreme moments of battle) and walked in front of the Qurayshi army with a slow, proud, swaggering gait, unsheathed sword in his hand, chest forward, letting everyone see him.

The Prophet ﷺ watched and said:

> "Inna hādhihil mishyata Allāhu subḥānahu wa taʿālā yabghaḍuhā illā fī mithli hādhāl waqti wa hādhāl makān."

> "This type of walking, Allah despises it, except at such a time and such a place."

In other words: normally, walking with arrogance and swagger is disliked by Allah. But on the battlefield, before the enemy, the purpose transforms, it instills fear in the opponent, courage in your own ranks, and resolve in the moment. The goal is not personal arrogance but military psychology.

Al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām later admitted he had felt a pang of envy when the sword went to Abū Dujānah instead of to him, and so kept an eye on Abū Dujānah through the battle to see what set him apart. By al-Zubayr's account, Abū Dujānah barely met an opponent that day without cutting him down. At one point he spotted a figure whipping up the Qurayshi ranks with relentless taunts and moved in, sword raised, only for the figure to cry out in a woman's voice as he closed the distance. It was Hind bint ʿUtbah, wrapped in a cloak that had hidden her from behind. Abū Dujānah lowered the sword rather than strike her: he held that the Prophet's ﷺ own blade should not be turned against a woman, whatever she had been shouting.

❧The Quraysh's Pre-Battle Diplomacy: Attempt to Split Ansar from Muhajirun

Before the battle began, Abū Sufyān made two attempts to break the Muslim force apart by separating the Anṣār from the Muhājirūn.

❧Attempt 1: The Messenger

Abū Sufyān sent a messenger who came within shouting distance:

> "O people of Madinah! Leave us to our cousins. We have no quarrel with you. Go back to your homes safe and sound. We only want to deal with the Muhājirūn. You are free to leave!"

The calculation was obvious: the Muhājirūn numbered fewer than a hundred; the Anṣār were the bulk of the 700. Without the Anṣār, the Muslim force would collapse.

The Anṣār's response was a volley of curses and insults. The Prophet ﷺ had noted that battlefield language follows different rules, harsh expressions that would normally be unbefitting of a Muslim have their place in the heat of war. The messenger returned humiliated.

❧Attempt 2: Abū ʿĀmir al-Fāsiq

A man stepped forward from the Qurayshi ranks: "Leave this to me. I know my people."

This was ʿAbd ʿAmr ibn Ṣayfī, known as Abū ʿĀmir ar-Rāhib, the former paramount leader of the Aws tribe. He had refused Islam before Badr, abandoned Madinah and his own people, and gone to live in Makkah, boasting to Abū Sufyān about his influence over the Aws. He now walked in front of the Aws contingent:

"Ya Aws! It is I, your Abū ʿĀmir, I have returned!"

Before he could finish his pitch, the Aws cut him off:

> "May Allah curse you and give you no pleasure! You are not Abū ʿĀmir ar-Rāhib, you are Abū ʿĀmir al-Fāsiq!"

They stripped his honorary title (ar-Rāhib = the Monk) and replaced it with the most degrading (al-Fāsiq = the Evildoer). He was so stunned he could not speak. He retreated to Abū Sufyān and said: "My people have been afflicted with some disease; I do not recognize them anymore."

This is exactly what Īmān does. The Aws did not care who he was before Islam. The bonds of Jāhiliyyah, tribal loyalty to a pre-Islamic chief, had been dissolved and replaced by the Walāʾ of Allāh and His Messenger.

A striking contrast: Abū ʿĀmir al-Fāsiq fought on the Qurayshi side trying to destroy Islam. His own son, Ḥanẓalah ibn Abī ʿĀmir, was fighting on the Muslim side. Father against son, apostasy against martyrdom. Ḥanẓalah would be martyred in this same battle and honored by the angels.

❧The Women of Quraysh as a Psychological Force

The Qurayshi women, led by Hind bint ʿUtbah, accompanied the army not as fighters but as a psychological motivation unit. They recited war poetry taunting the men: promising reward (firāsh, the marriage bed) if they fought bravely, and threatening social ostracism and abandonment if they retreated. Ibn Isḥāq records their songs verbatim. The intent was the same as a modern military morale division: ensure no man could retreat without facing shame before the women of his own family.

❧The Mubārazah: Ṭalḥah ibn Abī Ṭalḥah vs. ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

The Battle of Uḥud, like all Arab battles, began with single combat (mubārazah). The Qurayshi champion who stepped forward was Ṭalḥah ibn Abī Ṭalḥah from Banū ʿAbd al-Dār, the clan entrusted with carrying the Qurayshi battle standard (liwāʾ).

Ṭalḥah wore full body armor, even his hands were covered. He called out: "Who will fight me?"

ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib stepped forward. He had no armor.

The moment they closed:

- Ṭalḥah swung first with all his force.

- ʿAlī blocked the blow on his shield with one hand, simultaneously, with the other hand, he struck downward below the armor, below the thigh, with such force that the leg was severed clean.

Ṭalḥah collapsed. His robe flew upward, exposing his ʿawrah. As ʿAlī moved in for the finishing blow, Ṭalḥah (helpless on his back) cried: "I beg you, by the ties of kinship! Don't kill me!"

They were, in fact, distant Qurayshi cousins, ʿAlī through ʿAbd Manāf, Ṭalḥah through ʿAbd al-Dār (the two were brothers). Third or fourth cousins.

ʿAlī paused. He felt ḥayāʾ, a sense of dignity and embarrassment at the sight of this man in his exposed, pitiable state, and murūʾah (noble warrior's ethic): there is a code to how one kills an opponent; killing a man who is naked and helpless on his back is not that code. ʿAlī lowered his sword and walked away.

The Ṣaḥābah asked him why he hadn't finished it. ʿAlī said: "He begged by the Raḥam (kinship ties), and I felt... I couldn't do it in that state."

Ṭalḥah died from his wounds anyway. The clan of Banū ʿAbd al-Dār had been entrusted with carrying the Qurayshi liwāʾ precisely because of their reputation for defending it to the last man, and this is what followed. Ṭalḥah was not the only standard-bearer to fall that day: one after another, further men of Banū ʿAbd al-Dār picked up the fallen standard and were themselves cut down in turn, each holding to the same vow that the flag would not touch the ground while any one of them still lived. By the time the standard finally fell for good, most of the clan's fighting men who had carried it that morning were dead. Before the battle, Abū Sufyān had needled them into this vow in the first place, reminding them that a kinsman of theirs had dropped this very standard and fled at Badr, and daring them to either defend it properly this time or hand it to someone who would. Stung, they swore the opposite of what he expected, and paid for it one man at a time. Carrying the liwāʾ made a man doubly exposed: it marked him as the single most visible target on the field, and it left him fighting one-handed while his other arm was bound to the standard.

Dr. Qadhi: "This is what you call a noble warriorship. One minute Ṭalḥah is swaggering: 'Who will fight me?' Two minutes later he is on his back, helpless, begging. Look at the difference, and look at ʿAlī's response. That restraint, that murūʾah, is what defines a true warrior."

❧The Initial Muslim Assault

After ʿAlī's victory in the mubārazah, the Muslim forces charged. What happened next is recorded in very few narrations, precisely because it was so overwhelming that there was little to narrate. The historical record gives us only fragments, but those fragments are enough to paint the picture.

All that is known from the sources: the Qurayshi forces could not sustain the Muslim assault. Despite their 4-to-1 numerical advantage, despite their heavy armor and cavalry, the sheer ferocity of the Muslim attack, driven by Īmān, by the sword of the Prophet ﷺ in Abū Dujānah's hand, by men who believed they were fighting for Allah, broke through the Qurayshi lines.

The decisive indicator: the Qurayshi women were forced to flee.

The women were stationed at the very rear of the Qurayshi encampment, their last line before the open desert. The fact that they were fleeing means the Muslims had punched all the way through to the back of the Qurayshi position. The men had disintegrated; the women were now running up the mountain of Uḥud itself, helter-skelter, with no one to protect them.

Al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib's account, preserved in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, recalls the Qurayshi women so thoroughly undefended that he could see their ankle bracelets flash as they hitched up their skirts and scrambled up the mountainside. Another eyewitness adds: "I clearly remember seeing Hind and her female companions, all running away, climbing up the mountain."

That single image captures the scale of the initial Muslim victory. In those first minutes, the Battle of Uḥud was a Muslim rout of the Quraysh.