The Nine Defenders and Refuge in the Mountain Crevice

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Perhaps ten to fifteen scattered reports exist about what happened to the Prophet (ﷺ) personally during the chaos of Khālid ibn al-Walīd's counter-attack, piecing them into one narrative requires interpretation, since the exact chronology can never be known with certainty.

When Khālid's contingent struck, most of the Ṣaḥābah were dispersed across the battlefield collecting ghanīmah or fighting elsewhere, believing the battle already won. The group left with the Prophet (ﷺ) numbered only nine: two Muhājirūn, Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ and Ṭalḥah ibn ʿUbaydillāh, and seven Anṣār whose names were not preserved.

Recognizing that nine men could not hold against Khālid's roughly two hundred riders, the group retreated toward the mountain, likely using a decoy strategy: sending individual fighters in different directions to draw pursuers away while the Prophet (ﷺ) made for a hiding place. The Anṣār among them likely knew the terrain of Uḥud intimately, a decisive advantage the Quraysh, unfamiliar with the mountain, did not have.

One by one, all seven Anṣār were martyred fending off pursuers, each time with Ṭalḥah volunteering to go and the Prophet (ﷺ) telling him to wait, preserving him, the best of the group, for as long as possible. Eventually only the Prophet (ﷺ), Ṭalḥah, and Saʿd remained, having reached a small crevice in the mountainside, not truly a cave, just a narrow opening barely large enough for one or two people.

This moment, the Shaykh notes, may be the single most dangerous juncture in the entire Sīrah, more perilous even than the persecution at Ṭāʾif (which sought humiliation, not death) or the Hijrah with only Surāqah in pursuit (who wanted the bounty alive, not dead). Here, in open war, there was no restraint on either side.

Ṭalḥah, an expert warrior, and Saʿd, an expert archer, held off the approach. Ṭalḥah begged the Prophet (ﷺ) not to look outside for fear of stray arrows, saying: "Naḥrī dūna naḥrika, yā Rasūl Allāh, my chest before your chest, O Messenger of Allah." The Prophet (ﷺ) himself gathered fallen arrows from the ground and handed them to Saʿd, urging him with words never used for any other Companion: "Fidāka abī wa ummī, irmi, May my mother and father be ransomed for you, shoot, O Saʿd, shoot!" While the phrase "Fidāka abī wa ummī" was commonly used by Companions toward the Prophet (ﷺ), the Prophet (ﷺ) himself only ever used it once, for Saʿd, at Uḥud.

When all seven Anṣār had fallen and one more attacker approached, the Prophet (ﷺ) sent Ṭalḥah to face him. Ṭalḥah killed him single-handedly but lost several fingers in the process, crying out "Ḥiss!" (an exclamation of pain). The Prophet (ﷺ) told him: "Had you said 'Bismillāh' instead, the angels would have lifted you up before the people's eyes." There was nothing sinful in the cry of pain, but a mention of Allah's name in that instant would have earned him a visible, immediate honor.

As this unfolded, Qatādah ibn al-Nuʿmān al-Awsī had joined the defense. The Prophet (ﷺ) had given him an extra bow, evidence he had been collecting weapons along the way, and Qatādah used it so relentlessly it lost all flexibility. When arrows kept coming, Qatādah resolved to use his own body as a shield, until one arrow struck his eye, dislodging it. The Prophet (ﷺ) wept and made duʿāʾ: "O Allah, Qatādah has protected Your Prophet with his face; let his eye become the best of the two, and the most precise." He replaced the eye with his own hand, and it healed instantly, becoming, by Qatādah's own account, sharper than his other eye for the rest of his life.