Burying the Martyrs of Uhud

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧SAFIYYAH STOPPED IN HER TRACKS

As Ṣafiyyah bint ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib made her way onto the battlefield toward her brother Ḥamzah's body, the Prophet (ﷺ), not recognizing her from a distance, called out "the lady, the lady", meaning whoever she was should be kept from a sight so traumatic. Her son al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām reached her first and tried to stop her; she pushed him back, insisting she had no need of his interference. But the moment he told her the instruction came from the Prophet (ﷺ) himself, she halted at once. She then handed al-Zubayr two burial cloths she had brought, meant as a gift for her brother, so that he could be shrouded.

When al-Zubayr went to prepare Ḥamzah's body, he found an Anṣārī fighter laid beside him with no shroud of his own at all. Uncomfortable giving Ḥamzah two cloths while another martyr had none, he had the two men draw lots for the cloths instead, so that each received a fair share regardless of which family had originally provided it. Dr. Qadhi draws out the fiqh principle here: a private gift, once given, can be redirected by those in authority toward the public welfare (maṣlaḥah ʿāmmah) when a communal obligation, here, that every martyr receive at least one shroud, is otherwise unmet. This authority belongs to those responsible for the community, not to individuals acting alone.

❧THE PROPHET SURVEYS THE DEAD

Walking the battlefield after the Quraysh withdrew, the Prophet (ﷺ) came upon Ḥamzah's mutilated body and wept, by some reports, sobbed, at the extent of what had been done: beyond the missing liver, fingers, and nose already known, further reports describe even greater desecration. It was here that he made his vow to mutilate thirty Qurashī bodies in retaliation, later overridden by the revelation of Q 16:126 and the Prophet's (ﷺ) permanent prohibition on mutilating any body, Muslim or enemy.

❧BURYING THOSE WHO KNEW THE MOST QUR'AN FIRST

Unable to dig a separate grave for each of the martyrs, the Companions buried multiple men together, two, three, or four to a grave depending on how large a pit could be dug in the time available. The Prophet (ﷺ) gave a specific instruction: whoever among each group knew the most Qur'ān should be laid in the grave first. Dr. Qadhi highlights this as a demonstration of the honor given to the Qur'ān and its carriers, living or dead, echoed in the hadith (Sunan Abī Dāwūd) that showing reverence to Allah includes showing honor to the elderly, the white-haired, and the Ṣāḥib al-Qur'ān (one who has memorized it).

❧A DU'A, NOT A JANAZAH

A point of confusion among some medieval scholars: did the Prophet (ﷺ) pray Janāzah over the dead of Uḥud? He did not, a martyr (shahīd) is not given the funeral prayer. Instead, as preserved in Musnad Aḥmad, he made an extended duʿāʾ over them: praising Allah regardless of what had happened, affirming that all things occur by Allah's will, asking that whoever among them had died, died in a state of īmān, and asking Allah to take up the matter of vengeance against those responsible Himself. He also said of them: "Ana shahīdun ʿalā hāʾulāʾ, I will testify for every one of them on the Day of Judgment," and spoke the well-known hadiths on martyrdom: that a martyr's wounds will appear on the Day of Judgment exactly as fresh as the moment he was struck, the color of blood but the scent of musk.

❧THE CASUALTY COUNT

No single agreed figure survives, though it is consistently reported that the Anṣār bore the overwhelming majority of the losses, by some accounts more Anṣār died at Uḥud than in any other battle of the Sīrah. Ibn Isḥāq records 65 Muslim dead; Ibn Hishām's additions bring the figure to about 70, mostly Anṣār with only a handful of Muhājirūn. The Quraysh lost 22. Qur'ānic confirmation of the scale is found in Q 3:165: "Awa lammā aṣābatkum muṣībatun qad aṣabtum mithlayhā", when a calamity struck you, though you had inflicted double that on them (at Badr, where roughly 70 Qurashīs were killed and 70 taken prisoner), a direct numerical echo confirming the approximate toll on both sides.