The Second Badr (Badr al-Maw'id)

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

At the close of the Battle of Uḥud, Abū Sufyān had proposed the two sides meet again a year later at Badr to settle matters decisively. A year on, in Shaʿbān of the fourth year of the Hijrah, the Prophet (ﷺ) marched out with roughly 1,500 Companions to honor that promise, appointing ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as flag-bearer, and camped at Badr for over a week awaiting the Quraysh.

No army arrived. The Quraysh had indeed mustered a force of around 2,000, and even marched partway out of Mecca, but their resolve was half-hearted from the start, lacking the conviction the Muslims carried, and after considerable internal debate they turned back, citing a difficult year of drought as their reason for postponing to another time. The Muslims, by contrast, had shown up and waited without complaint.

Dr. Qadhi frames this episode as a clear marker of the shifting balance of power: the Quraysh's failure to make good on their own challenge, set against the Muslims' willingness to hold to theirs, reflected a widening gap between the conviction driving each side.