Jaysh al-ʿUsrah: The Army of Hardship

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The expedition's second and, among the Companions, more common name is Jaysh al-ʿUsrah, the Army of Hardship, Bukhārī heads the chapter with both names. There was in fact no battle at Tabūk, no clash of armies at all; yet its hardships surpassed those of any real battle.

❧Why it was so hard

It was to be the largest army Arabia had yet seen, the sources say twenty or even thirty thousand, though such figures are naturally inflated (people round numbers up for their own side and down for the other; call it simply the largest force the Prophet ﷺ ever led). It set out in the fierce heat of late July, when Medina climbs past 110°F. It was the furthest he ever traveled with an army, near a thousand miles north. The round trip would take a month, and it fell in harvest season, which for an agrarian society was not a month's wage but the year's, men were being asked to abandon their only livelihood. And the army ran out of both rations and water: they grew so thirsty their throats felt they would collapse, some slaughtering their own camels to squeeze the foul water from the stomach-sacs, knowing it meant walking the whole way home.

❧The rain

At last Abū Bakr pleaded, "Yā RasūlAllāh, make duʿāʾ for us", they needed a miracle. The Prophet ﷺ said, "If you wish," and raised his hands; ʿUmar narrated that he did not lower them before the sky poured rain, and they filled every canister. This teaches akhdh bil-asbāb, the taking of means: though he was the Messenger ﷺ and miracles were his, he would not simply lean on them; he waited, letting the struggle run its course, as at Badr, Uḥud, and the Aḥzāb, where relief came only after sacrifice. So too, the shaykh says, the sincere believer who struggles will see his own "small miracles" in the end.

"The hour of hardship." The rations were so scarce that two or three men shared a single date a day, then passed the pit around to suck for its last taste. The Qurʾān names this obliquely: لَّقَد تَّابَ اللَّهُ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ وَالْمُهَاجِرِينَ وَالْأَنصَارِ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوهُ فِي سَاعَةِ الْعُسْرَةِ, "Allāh has turned in mercy to the Prophet, the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār who followed him in the hour of hardship" (9:117). Qatādah, the student of Ibn ʿAbbās, said this verse is about Tabūk.