The Archers Abandon Their Post
battleShaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:
Allah (subḥānahu wa taʿālā) references the archers' crisis in Sūrah Āl-i ʿImrān:
"Ḥattā idhā fashiltum wa tanāzaʿtum fī-l-amri wa ʿaṣaytum min baʿdi mā arākum mā tuḥibbūn" (حَتَّىٰ إِذَا فَشِلْتُمْ وَتَنَازَعْتُمْ فِي الْأَمْرِ وَعَصَيْتُمْ مِنْ بَعْدِ مَا أَرَاكُمْ مَا تُحِبُّونَ), "Until you yourselves faltered, disputed among yourselves, and disobeyed after He had shown you what you loved." This tanāzuʿ (dispute) includes the archers' internal debate atop Jabal ar-Rumāh.
When the Muslims routed the Quraysh, the archers could see, from their vantage point atop the mount, their companions below collecting massive quantities of war booty: weapons, tents, animals, food. The full rules of ghanīmah had not yet been finalized; many archers did not understand that the booty would be distributed equally regardless of who physically collected it. They felt neglected at their post while others gathered the spoils.
ʿAbdullāh ibn Jubayr (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu), their commander, reminded them repeatedly of the Prophet's categorical command: "Kūnū makānakum (كُونُوا مَكَانَكُمْ), Stay in your position until my command comes to you." He declared: "By Allah, I will not move from my place until the command comes." But the debate continued, not in a single exchange, but over an extended period of perhaps forty minutes to an hour. Slowly the majority shifted. Eventually forty of the fifty archers descended, leaving only ten men at the post.
Those who rushed for the booty neither obtained it, ghanīmah is not kept by whoever physically collects it, it goes into a common pool, nor preserved the victory they had just won. As the Shaykh observes, this is the timeless symbolic lesson of Uḥud: those who preferred dunyā obtained neither dunyā nor the better reward.
Khālid ibn al-Walīd (then still a Mushrik), though retreating with the rest of the Quraysh, was watching the battlefield even as he fled. This is the mark of military genius. The moment he saw the archers descend, he moved immediately. He gathered a force, estimated by historians at roughly one hundred to one hundred and fifty riders, and led them through the dry riverbed (a low channel invisible from ground level) that ran below Jabal ar-Rumāh. This reconstruction by Ṣafiyy ar-Raḥmān al-Mubārakpūrī is more historically plausible than the tradition of circling the entire mountain of Uḥud, which would have taken hours on foot.
ʿAbdullāh ibn Jubayr and the ten remaining archers stood their ground. They were overwhelmed and martyred at their posts. The Qurashī cavalry then struck the Muslim camp from behind, and total chaos erupted.