The March to Uhud and Ibn Ubayy's Withdrawal

❧The March Begins

On the 14th of Shawwāl, 3rd year of Hijrah, the Muslim force of 700 marched northward out of Madinah toward the mountain range of Uḥud. The Prophet ﷺ had made the decision: since the younger Sahabah wanted to go out, he would maximize the strategic value of the departure by choosing Uḥud, forcing the Quraysh to march an extra half-day around the entire city before they could even engage.

❧ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy's Withdrawal

Midway through the march, ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl began what became the first open act of Nifāq in Islamic history. He didn't announce anything. He didn't confront the Prophet ﷺ. He simply began whispering among his own group, the 300 Munāfiqūn, and they gradually slowed, fell back, and finally turned their backs entirely on the Muslim army and marched away.

When the Sahabah rebuked them, "Where are you going?!", ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy responded: "He listened to these youngsters and ignored my advice. Why should I risk my life when he doesn't listen to me?"

Allah responded in Q 3:166-168:

> "Whatever afflicted you on the day the two armies met, it was by the permission of Allah, so that He could expose the hypocrites. They were told: 'Come, fight in the way of Allah or at least defend.' They said: 'If we really knew there would be fighting, we would have followed you.' They are closer to kufr than to īmān that day. They say with their mouths what is not in their hearts."

Allah directly quoted ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy's lie, "Law naʿlamu qitālan l-attabaʿnākum", and called it what it was: a lie spoken knowingly. He knew there would be fighting. He was simply afraid.

❧The Purpose of Uḥud: Exposing the Munāfiqīn

Dr. Qadhi highlights that this was one of Allah's deliberate purposes in allowing Uḥud to unfold as it did: "Liyamyīza Allāhu al-khabītha minat-ṭayyib", to separate the filthy from the pure. The Muslims had been innocently unaware of how deep the Nifāq went. Uḥud ripped off the mask.

❧Two Tribes Waver: Banū Ḥārithah and Banū Salimah

When 300 Munāfiqūn peeled away, two Anṣārī clans were infected by the doubt:

- Banū Ḥārithah (from Aws)

- Banū Salimah (from Khazraj)

Both clans nearly followed ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy. But the believers among them won the internal argument, and both clans stayed with the Prophet ﷺ.

Allah mentioned this in Q 3:122:

> "Idh hammat ṭāʾifatāni minkum an tafshalā wa Allāhu walīyyuhumā."

> "When two groups among you were about to lose heart, but Allah was their protector."

A minor embarrassment became a source of eternal honor: descendants of Banū Ḥārithah and Banū Salimah have boasted about this āyah ever since, because Allah Himself said "He was their protector," even though they nearly went astray.

❧The Muslims Divided Over the Munāfiqūn

When the 300 left, the Muslims themselves split into two positions (Q 4:88):

- Some wanted to turn back and fight the Munāfiqūn as traitors

- Others said: leave them, focus on Uḥud

Allah revealed Q 4:88: "Fa mā lakum fīl-munāfiqīna fiʾatayn", "Why have you split into two groups about the hypocrites?", gently reprimanding even the positive argument. Don't disunite over them; leave them to Allah.

❧700 Muslims Reach Uḥud

Despite the Munāfiqūn's withdrawal, 700 Muslims set up camp at Uḥud. Their backs faced the mountain; they were looking south toward the city of Medina. This forced the Qurayshi army, approaching from the south, to march all the way around the perimeter of Madinah before they could even face the Muslims. This additional half-day march was deliberately intended to tire the enemy further.

❧The Mountain of Uḥud: Geography and Sanctity

Uḥud is not a single mountain but a range of mountains over one mile long, located North-Northwest of Madinah. Dr. Qadhi notes that today the journey by car from the Prophet's Masjid to Uḥud takes less than ten minutes.

❧Prophetic aḥādīth about Uḥud:

1. "Uḥud is a mountain of Jannah", authentic hadith; scholars say either it is beloved by Allah, or it will physically be transported to Jannah.

2. From Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: The Prophet ﷺ was once climbing Uḥud with Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān when the mountain began to shake. The Prophet ﷺ stamped his foot on it and said:

> "Uthbut Uḥud. Fa innamā ʿalayka Nabīyyun wa ṣiddīqun wa shahīdayn."

> "Be still, Uḥud. For on you there is only a Prophet, a ṣiddīq, and two martyrs."

This is foreknowledge of the deaths of ʿUmar and ʿUthmān (the two shahīdayn). Abu Bakr is the ṣiddīq. The mountain, sensing its honored guests, trembled. The Prophet commanded it to stillness.

❧The Boundaries of Madinah's Ḥaram

Madinah is a ḥaram (sacred sanctuary), and the Prophet ﷺ delineated its boundaries:

> "Al-Madīnatu ḥaramun min ʿAyrin ilā Thawr" (Bukhārī, Muslim)

> "Madinah is a sanctuary from ʿAyr to Thawr."

And in another narration: "bayna lābatayhā", between its two volcanic plains (East and West).

ʿAyr is a small mountain north of Uḥud (making Uḥud included within the Ḥaram). Thawr is a mountain to the South. The four directions of the Ḥaram: North (ʿAyr), South (Thawr), East (Ḥarrah Sharqiyyah), West (Ḥarrah Gharbiyyah).

❧The Tactical Genius of Positioning at Uḥud

Once the younger Ṣaḥābah's pressure to go out and fight had carried the day, the Prophet ﷺ faced a genuine tactical question: where to meet the enemy. There were only two real options, an open battlefield, or a constrained area where terrain favored the side that knew it better.

An open battlefield would have been sheer disaster. With the Quraysh outnumbering the Muslims roughly four to one, meeting them on open ground was, in Dr. Qadhi's words, "pure folly", there is no way a force that badly outnumbered wins on flat, unrestricted terrain.

By choosing Uḥud instead, the Prophet ﷺ effectively multiplied the value of his small 700-man force:

- Three sides of the Muslim position were blocked by geography (the mountain behind, the flanking terrain)

- The Qurayshi force of 3,000 could only attack from one narrow front

- The Prophet ﷺ positioned 50 archers on Jabal ar-Rumāt (the small "Mountain of the Archers") to block the remaining open flank

- This maximized the effectiveness of 700 men against 3,000 in a way that open-field combat never could

Dr. Qadhi notes that the Prophet ﷺ had no formal military schooling, no equivalent of Sandhurst or West Point, to arrive at this. This was fiṭrah: an innate, Allah-given clarity of judgment, not academic training.

There was also a second, simpler advantage: by marching out and occupying Uḥud himself, the Prophet ﷺ made sure the Quraysh had to come and fight on his terms. If the battle was going to happen outside the city regardless, better that it happen "on our terms, on our ground, on our soil, in a land that we have chosen," rather than wherever the Quraysh decided to force the engagement.

❧The Reflection: 700 Who Changed the World

Dr. Qadhi closes with a stirring observation: at this moment, 700 was the total of all fighting-age Muslim men on earth. Perhaps a thousand in the whole world including secret Muslims in Makkah and Yemen. Yet:

- Within 15–20 years they knocked on the doors of Damascus

- Within a generation they wiped away the Sassanid Persian Empire

- Within 50 years they were in Andalusia

- Within 100 years the Muslim world stretched from China to the Atlantic

"They didn't have the weapons, the army, or the horses. But they had what we don't have, that īmān in Allah that no superpower could resist." (Q 3:160: "In yanṣurkumullāhu falā ghāliba lakum", "If Allah helps you, none can overcome you.")

❧Q&A: How Did the Prophet ﷺ Know This? (Ghayb Nisbī vs. Ghayb Muṭlaq)

A questioner in the audience asked: when the Prophet ﷺ told the mountain "Uthbut Uhud, fa innamā ʿalayka Nabiyyun wa Ṣiddīqun wa Shahīdān", foreknowing that ʿUmar and ʿUthmān would both die as martyrs, isn't that knowledge of the unseen (ʿilm al-ghayb), which only Allah possesses?

Dr. Qadhi distinguishes between two categories. Ghayb Muṭlaq (absolute unseen) is total, comprehensive knowledge of everything hidden, this belongs to Allah alone: "Qul lā yaʿlamu man fis-samāwāti wal-arḍi-l-ghayba illa-llāh" (Q 27:65), "Say: none in the heavens or the earth know the unseen except Allah." Ghayb Nisbī (relative unseen) is knowledge that is hidden from one person but not from another, what is happening in the next room is ghayb to those outside it, but not to the person inside.

Allah says: "Wa lā yuḥīṭūna bi-shayʾin min ʿilmihi illā bimā shāʾa" (Q 2:255), His creation grasps nothing of His knowledge except what He wills to give them. Allah therefore gives ʿilm of the relative-unseen to whomever He pleases, including His Prophets. The Prophet ﷺ was shown things during al-Isrāʾ wal-Miʿrāj, Jannah, the punishments of Jahannam, details of the ʿālam al-ghayb ordinary people never see. Of that knowledge, he knew that Abū Bakr would be aṣ-Ṣiddīq and that ʿUmar and ʿUthmān would both be martyred. He likewise foreknew, and warned ʿAlī and ʿĀʾishah about, the civil strife that would one day arise between them, and he wept in foreknowledge of al-Ḥusayn's future martyrdom, saying his own Ummah would kill his grandson. None of this required absolute ghayb, only what Jibrīl had informed him of.