Hunayn: The Ambush and the Rally
historicalShaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:
At twelve thousand, never so many before, a Muslim boasted, "How can we be beaten today?" The Prophet ﷺ rebuked it, telling of a prophet of old who gloried in his great army and Allāh destroyed it before it ever met the foe. The camp's guard was given glad tidings of Paradise; and seeing the enemy's vast herds the Prophet ﷺ smiled: تِلْكَ غَنِيمَةُ الْمُسْلِمِينَ غَدًا إِنْ شَاءَ اللَّه, "tomorrow, Allāh willing, these are the Muslims' spoils", optimism, and "in shāʾ Allāh" for the morrow.
❧The Ambush
Ḥunayn was Thaqīf's own ground. They set archers in the crags along a narrow pass and a bait-force of Hawāzin at its mouth; when the Muslims charged and the bait feigned flight, more poured in, and at a signal the volleys rained from every height. Untrained new converts, unarmoured, taken wholly by surprise, panicked and fled en masse. This is وَيَوْمَ حُنَيْنٍ إِذْ أَعْجَبَتْكُمْ كَثْرَتُكُمْ فَلَمْ تُغْنِ عَنكُمْ شَيْئًا… ثُمَّ وَلَّيْتُم مُّدْبِرِين, "the day of Ḥunayn, when your numbers pleased you but availed you nothing… then you turned back in flight" (9:25).
❧The Prophet's ﷺ Firmness
Left almost alone on his mule, he did not flee but pressed toward the enemy, calling, هَلُمُّوا إِلَيَّ! أَنَا رَسُولُ اللَّه، أَنَا مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ عَبْدِ اللَّه, "To me! I am the Messenger of Allāh, Muḥammad son of ʿAbdullāh." He bade his loud-voiced uncle al-ʿAbbās call the people by name, first "O people of al-Ḥudaybiyah!", then the Anṣār tribe by tribe, and as each heard its name they woke as from sleep and streamed back, لَبَّيْكَ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّه. He cried the famous lines, أَنَا النَّبِيُّ لَا كَذِبْ، أَنَا ابْنُ عَبْدِ الْمُطَّلِبْ, "I am the Prophet, no lie; I am the son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib", binding faith and lineage together, for many of these new Muslims answered to the name of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib as readily as to prophethood. (A right pride in heritage is no sin, so long as it never outweighs the pride of Islam.)
❧Who Stood, and Who Wavered
Among those who held firm was his cousin Abū Sufyān ibn al-Ḥārith, gripping the stirrup: "Who is this?" "I am the son of your mother", the nearest of kin. But new faith was thin in some: Ṣafwān ibn Umayyah's brother exulted, "Today the magic spell is broken!", and Ṣafwān, still a pagan himself, snapped, أُسْكُت, "Be silent; by Allāh I would rather be ruled by a man of Quraysh than by one of Hawāzin," and cursed his brother's mouth. Bare tribalism, which is why the Prophet ﷺ invoked ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Then, as the Companions surged back and closed, the Prophet ﷺ said the words no Arab had said before him, الآنَ حَمِيَ الْوَطِيس, "now the furnace has grown hot", took a handful of dust and flung it at the enemy: شَاهَتِ الْوُجُوه, "may the faces be disfigured", and it is said this blinded them, and their archers could loose no more.