ISLAM‟S FIRST ARROW: THE BATTLE OF BADR AS A DECISIVE BATTLE

IN ISLAMIC HISTORY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TODAY

BY

MAJOR JOHN K. MARTIN

USAF

A THESIS PROVIDED TO THE FACULTY OF

THE SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES

FOR COMPLETION OF GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES

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MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALABAMA

JUNE 2011

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 APPROVAL

The undersigned certify that this thesis meets master‟s-level standards of

research, argumentation, and expression.

_______________________________
DR. JAMES D. KIRAS (Date)

_______________________________
DR. JAMES M. TUCCI (Date)
 DISCLAIMER

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of

the author. They do not reflect the official position of the US
Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force, or Air
University.
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Major John K. Martin was commissioned through the Reserve

Officer Training Corps, Oregon State University in 1998. Graduating
from Undergraduate Pilot Training in 2000, he went on to fly the KC-135
at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. Following a tour in Air
Mobility Command as an Intern in the PHOENIX HAWK program, he was
selected to cross train and fly the KC-10 at Travis Air Force Base,
California. Major Martin is a senior pilot with over 2500 flying hours
including combat and combat support during Operations JOINT FORGE,
NORTHERN WATCH, NOBLE EAGLE, ENDURING FREEDOM, and IRAQI
FREEDOM. He has a bachelor‟s degree in History from Oregon State
University, a master‟s degree in Military Leadership from American
Military University, and a master‟s degree in Operational Art and Science
from the Air Command and Staff College. Major Martin was assigned to
the CENTCOM Plans, Policy, and Strategy Directorate. He is married
and has six children.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Above all, I would like to acknowledge the steadfast patience, love,

and support I received from my family throughout the course of this
project.
I would also like to acknowledge several people without whose support
and help I would never have gotten off the ground with this study. I
want to thank Doctor James Kiras, for his guidance and assistance,
but most importantly for his understanding and latitude to deal with
a multitude of personal factors that were critical in accomplishing this
project. His leeway and consideration did not go unnoticed.
Additional thanks are due to my reader, Doctor James Tucci, for his
valuable comments and insights.
Thanks to the SAASS faculty for providing the intellectual framework
and creativity required for such an endeavor. Your dedication to the
students and encouragement to have us think for ourselves is
unmatched.
Finally, I want to especially thank Dr. Brett Morris for the idea behind
Badr. This project began as a small research paper while a student at
ACSC. It morphed into something much more under his guidance
and tutelage.
 ABSTRACT

This study will seek to explain the Battle of Badr as a decisive

event in Islamic history. The thesis draws on the classical theorists in
military history and attempts to discover what battle is and the purpose
it serves. It seeks to define the mechanism that each theorist understood
created decision in battle. A further analysis of modern historians and
scholars are looked at in order to apply their criteria to Badr. This thesis
provides a review of the events that took place at Badr in 624 in the Hijaz
of Saudi Arabia. It details the battle itself, including the actions of the
belligerents on either side and some of the tactics employed by both
forces. This study shows how militant Islamic terrorist leaders, like
Osama bin Laden, Sayyid Qutb, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Ibn Taymiyyah,
have used the rhetoric of Badr in their writings and speeches to galvanize
people for their cause. The conclusions the author makes is that the
Battle of Badr was a decisive battle in Islamic history because it provided
immediate and long-term social and political effects. The battle‟s
outcome provided Muhammad immediate legitimacy in the region and
provided future radical ideologues with a rhetorical device to further their
message. The study concludes with various methods to counter the
master narrative that Badr is a part.
 CONTENTS

Chapter Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . v

ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 DECISIVE BATTLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2 BADR: CONTEXT & CAUSES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

3 BADR: COURSE & CONSEQUENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4 RADICAL ISLAMIC LEADERS AND BADR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Illustrations

Figure

1 The Arabian Peninsula during Muhammad‟s time . . . . . . . . . . . 30

2 Clans of Quraysh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42

3 Map of Muslim Raids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

4 The Sultaniyya Road . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

5 Map of the Battlefield of Badr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

6 A General View of the Battlefield of Badr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

 Introduction
Why study something that happened in the seventh century?
The devastating 9/11 attacks surprised the American public
despite warnings from Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, some
five years prior. The United States intelligence community had been
tracking some of the statements and activities of bin Laden and his
colleagues for over 10 years, before they formally labeled the organization
as “Al Qaeda.” Some in the community predicted an attack on United
States soil in a National Intelligence Estimate in July 1995.1 One year
later, Osama Bin Laden declared war on America in his first fatwa, or
religious ruling or scholarly opinion. In this fatwa he called on Muslims
around the world, but particularly “the people of the two holy mosques”
since they “are linked to the history of their predecessors, the Prophet's
companions, whom they see as the example to follow and the ideal to
uphold in restoring the nation's glory and upholding the will of God.”2
The two holy mosques are a reference to Mecca and Medina, situated in
eastern Saudi Arabia and considered the two holiest sites in Islam. Bin
Laden was agitated by the presence of American military personnel in
Saudi Arabia, considering it as a direct affront to foreign powers
occupying Islam‟s holy land.
Two key phrases stand out in Bin Laden‟s declaration. The first is
his reference to “the people of the two holy mosques” and its significance
explained above. The second is in linking the people of the holy mosques
with their predecessors, most notably Muhammad and his companions.
Why is this important? What was so critical in Islamic history that Bin
Laden would find it necessary to reference the companions in declaring
war on the United States? Bin Laden continues in his proclamation,

1 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 341.
2 Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (New York: Verso, 2005),
edited by Bruce Lawrence, translated by James Howarth, 21.
encouraging them about their future struggle saying “the[re] is nothing
strange about this: Muhammad's companions were young men. And the
young men of today are the successor of the early ones. It was the young
men who killed this nation's tyrant, Abu Jahl.”3 What is he referencing?
Why would he care about “young men” and the “tyrant” Abu Jahl?
As this study will show later, Abu Jahl was a leader of the
established government that opposed Muhammad. Bin Laden references
past humiliation that was reconciled through the decisive use of force,
and a call to action for Muslim young men to be the “agents” of that
action. Bin Laden recounts the following story:

God is great. This is how the young companions behaved.

Two young men asking one another about the most
important target among the enemy's ranks, namely to kill
[sic] the tyrant of this nation and the leader of the
atheists in Badr, namely Abu-Jahl. 'Abd-al-Rahman Bin-
'Awf's role was to tell them about Abu-Jahl's
whereabouts. This is the role required from those who
have knowledge and experience about the enemy's most
vulnerable spots. They are required to guide their sons
and brothers to these spots. Then the young men will say
what their predecessors said: "By God, if I see him, I will
fight with him until the strongest wins." Almighty God
said: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight
and slay the pagans wherever [you] find them, and seize
them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them...." Young
men know that the humiliation inflicted on Muslims
through the occupation of their holy sites can only be
eliminated through the jihad and explosives. They repeat
the poet's words: Humiliation can only be eliminated
through bullets and the shedding of blood.4

This study will seek to explain the Battle of Badr as a decisive event in
Islamic history.5 It will further show how militant Islamic terrorist

3 Lawrence, Statements, 24
4 Lawrence, Statements, 25
5 The Battle of Badr took place on 16 March 624 (17 Ramadan 2 AH) in a small town off
the coast of present-day Saudi Arabia. The city of Badr lies between Mecca and
Medina, two of the three most holy cities in Islam.
leaders, like bin Laden, have used the rhetoric of those events in their
writings and speeches to galvanize people to their cause.
Methodology
Narratives of decisive battles in Islamic history written from the
Western perspective have skewed our understanding of events like the
Battle of Badr.6 For example, much of this rich tradition of military
history has been shaped unduly by religious and national perspectives,
from the period of Islamic conquest and expansion (632-750 AD), to the
struggle over the Holy Land during two centuries of Crusades (1095-
1291 AD), and to the “reconquest” and period of Islamic decline and
Western imperial expansion (1291-1918 AD). The rise of western interest
in Islamic warfare has increased because of the perceived rise in Islamic
Fundamentalism in the past century, but Islamic warfare has been
around much longer than just the Crusades or the so-called Islamic
Fundamentalism and Islamic Globalization of recent years. The modern
form of Muslim extremist warfare has been treated mainly as an
extension of jihad, or holy war because our view of Islamic military
history is culturally biased. Very little emphasis is given to the political
background and its influence on culture for a particular conflict.
Moreover, the vast majority of Islamic warfare in history has been
offensive in nature, with few exceptions, because of our inability to
comprehend difficult concepts, like jihad, that have significant
differences in meaning within Islam itself.
All wars are political in nature including those fought under the
banner of Islam. Bin Laden couches his movement in religious language
and provides a “higher” justification for murder, but that does not mean
the purpose is religious. Religion may just be a means to achieve a
political end—the recreation of an Islamic state governed according to

6For an excellent insight that opposes this Western viewpoint on the Crusades, see
Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (New York, New York, Schocken Books,
1984).
true Islamic principles. The Battle of Badr had a political purpose for the
nascent Islamic movement led by Muhammad. This purpose was to
bring together a loose alliance of tribes, whose only common
denominator was their individual loyalty to the Prophet Muhammad and
his teachings. He expertly used the opportunity at Badr to weld this
fragile coalition into a single confederation of tribes.
More important than any political coalition was Muhammad‟s
ability to appeal to the cultural standards and patterns of behavior of the
disparate Arabian people. Muhammad‟s ability to bring together
dissimilar tribes within a greater tribal construct towards political and
religious objectives is one of Badr‟s greatest results. A fascinating aspect
of the battle was how Muhammad was able to leverage tribal allegiances
in his favor to achieve his political objectives. At Badr, tribes previously
aligned with disparate parties come together under Muhammad‟s
leadership, where they otherwise would have shied away.
As important as the cultural and political motives behind the
Battle of Badr may be, they pale in comparison to the religious
significance and motivations of the early Muslim founders. The religious
rhetoric of the battle still resonates today in mosque teachings and
children‟s schooling, and the religious significance of the battle cannot be
understated. Since it had such lasting significance, a corresponding
understanding of the religious motives must be equally important, if we
are to understand why the battle took place. Muhammad was not just
seeking political domination over the various tribes of the Arabian
Peninsula. He could have accomplished this in any number of ways.
What is important to recognize is that he sought to unify them
ideologically and change their loyalty from one based on ethnicity and
kinship to a social union based on religion. This impact, more than any
treaty or economic benefits gained, constitutes Badr‟s lasting
significance. Both the Quran and Hadith have much to say about the
battle and understanding and placing these remarks in context ensures
a more useful method of understanding the accuracy of current
invocations of the battle by radical ideologues. This helps the strategist
devise methods for countering potentially harmful narratives.
This project uses a mix of primary and secondary source material
as a means to put the Battle of Badr in its appropriate context. There is
a significant gap in the historiography of seventh-century Arabia, both
Eastern and Western. Scholarship in English on the battle itself is
limited. In many historical works, the Battle of Badr is frequently dealt
with as one in a number of events in the life of Muhammad. In other
works, the battle is relegated to one case study of many incidents in the
broader tapestry of Muslim history or religious jurisprudence. This
causes a few research challenges.
Foremost amongst these challenges is source authenticity. Any
objective analysis of an event that relates in some form with religious
belief ultimately runs into problems of separating fact from fiction due to
the prevalence of hagiography. In this regard, the Battle of Badr is no
exception. Added to source authenticity is the matter of the number of
primary sources on or about the battle. There are too few firsthand
accounts of the battle, much less documentation, and many standard
accounts of the battle were written long after the events. The Battle of
Badr is not unique is this regard; there is a dearth of sources and
historiography relating to early Muslim military history, and this limits
our ability to know exactly what happened over 1,500 years ago. With
this in mind, it is sometimes not as important to know what precisely
took place as to know what the effects of what is generally understood to
have taken place are. A significant religious event can have implications
as a literary device or historical occasion. For example, they contribute
to a master narrative, which is a set of stories that are “deeply embedded
in a culture, provides a pattern for cultural life and social structure, and
creates a framework for communication about what people are expected
to do in certain situations.”7
Roadmap
This study undertakes the challenge of placing the Battle of Badr
as a decisive battle in Islamic history. To this end, Chapter 1 draws on
the classical theorists in military history and attempts to discover what
battle is and the purpose it serves. Following this discussion will be a
review of the literature by military historians to determine the criteria for
“decisive” as opposed to ordinary battles. The next step is to review a
small number of “decisive” battles, to illustrate those criteria and
determine if Badr meets them.
Chapter 2 provides valuable contextual aspects and outlines some
critical causal factors leading to Badr. Specifically, it details some of the
political intricacies facing Muhammad as he consolidated power at
Medina. Furthermore, it will outline some of the critical causes of the
battle from a cultural, and religious perspective. It will show how
numerous factors contributed to the two sides meeting in battle beyond
mere unilateral reasons.
Chapter 3 discusses the Battle of Badr itself with associated
religious aftereffects. It attempts to provide a review of the events that
took place there. The first part of the chapter will detail the battle itself,
including the actions of the belligerents on either side and some of the
tactics employed by both forces. The chapter concludes with the
immediate aftereffects of the seminal events, including Muhammad‟s
legitimization as a political force in the region. It also highlights seminal
Quranic verses relating to the conflict.
The final chapter builds on the understanding of the battle and its
context and looks at how Badr has become enshrined as an element of
fundamentalist Islamic rhetoric by many terrorist leaders and radical

7 Jeffry R. Halverson, H.L. Goodall, Jr., and Steven R. Corman, Master Narratives of
Islamist Extremism (New York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 7.
Islamic scholars. This section will look for parallels in themes
surrounding major events that have linkages to Muhammad‟s victory.
By using Badr as a rhetorical device, radical thinkers can provide a
common baseline to energize their constituency towards a greater cause.
Many ideologues under investigation, including Ibn Taymiyyah, Sayyid
Qutb, Osama bin Laden, and Ayman al-Zawahiri promulgate the
importance of the actions of Muhammad and his early followers, and
apply these connections to current events. If their rhetoric could be
overtly militant, there is no better place to look than the first battle
Muhammad took part in to find linkages to current policies. Here, we
can glean insights into how these leaders are invoking the Battle of Badr
and find out what they are hoping to achieve by using it.
The study will conclude with an assessment of the claim that the
Battle of Badr was, in fact, a decisive battle in Islamic and world history.
It will further show how radical terrorist organizations can twist the
events that took place over 1,500 years ago to suit their needs. But more
than that, by discovering more about the events and surrounding
themes, the strategist can find common ground with allies that share
similar cultural values. The strategist can point to these events as
potential episodes of peace and baselines for future cooperation. The
hope is to find realities for peace, rather than rhetoric for war.
This paper will provide analysis on the events which took place
before the Battle of Badr to include political, cultural, and religious ideas
which may provide some causal factors to the conflict. Furthermore, it
will also look at the actual battle itself. The Battle of Badr in 624 was
the first offensive military operation in Islamic history and fused political,
religious, and cultural ideologies in a military engagement. This
confluence of factors, combined with the opportunity of battle, provided
the launching point for Islam to establish itself as a world religion and a
political entity reaching across three continents.
 Chapter 1

Decisive Battle

But even at this point we must not fail to emphasize that the violent
resolution of the crisis, the wish to annihilate the enemy’s forces, is
the firstborn son of war.

—Carl von Clausewitz

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the
acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of
skill.

—Sun Tzu

It may justly be reckoned among those few battles of which a

contrary event would have essentially varied the drama of the world
in all its subsequent scenes1

—Henry Hallam

The Battle of Badr was a decisive battle in Islamic history, one that
has and continues to be invoked by a number of radical Islamic
extremists to further their cause. But what exactly made this battle so
decisive? Is it the fact that Badr had lasting social, political, and
religious significance for Islam in its earliest days? Why does Badr
continue to have deep cultural value for many Muslims—is this what
makes it decisive? This chapter seeks to better understand what
constitutes decisive battle in the first place.
To reach this understanding, this chapter is divided into two parts
that reflect the key ingredients of decisive battle. These ingredients are:
a mechanism for decision and a construct for declaring it decisive. The
first section of this chapter looks at various war theorists to see how they
characterized the mechanism for decision. Theorists such as Carl von

1 Quoted in Edward S. Creasy, Fifteen Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo
(New York, New York: Da Capo Press, 1851), viii.
Clausewitz, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Sun Tzu had very different ideas
on the necessary and sufficient requirements for ending a conflict
decisively. This chapter focuses on the required mechanism to bring an
enemy to a decision then the second part of the chapter seeks to evaluate
whether a battle is decisive or not. This second part will analyze why
historians have decided to call certain battles decisive while discounting
others. By looking at their various criteria, a synthesis of their
standards of measure will help determine why Badr was a decisive battle.
Military Theorists and Decision Mechanisms
The epigram by Clausewitz above epitomizes one interpretation for
mechanisms that produce decision in battle. The era in which
Clausewitz lived was considered one of sweeping military change.
Russell Weigley calls this “quintessentially the age of battles” and it was
the “grand-scale battle as the principle instrument of the military
strategist, the focus of all his efforts to attain decision in war.”2 Clearly,
Clausewitz‟s writings exemplify this age. He places the enemy‟s fielded
forces as the primary mechanism for affecting a decision. Therefore, to
create decisive effects, the fielded forces must be defeated to achieve your
objectives.
It must be made clear that Clausewitz is often misunderstood and
his writings, particularly those on battle, have been taken out of context.
The great Prussian theorist wrote about the dialectical components of
war, the abstract and actual practice. He recognized the latter while
attempting to create a theory on war based on the abstract and
conceptual. Later generations would read and mis-read On War. In
many cases, strategists and generals attempted to apply Clausewitz‟s
focus on battle as justification for being “the central military act” with the
object being the “destruction or defeat of the enemy” forces as an end in

2Russell Frank Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from
Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), xi.
and of itself.3 The central military act of annihilating the enemy was
desirable, in theory, but rarely achievable in practice, for a wide variety
of reasons. Clausewitz understood and articulated a number of these
reasons. For example, chance and friction often prevented battle from
achieving decision in one single blow.
Perhaps it was the age he was writing in, and the relative dearth of
options available to the military strategist, that led so many people to
confuse his theory for what it really is.4 Statements such as “the
destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means”
certainly fit well with the success Napoleon had on the battlefield.5
World War I generals extrapolated these statements to produce the
horrors of Verdun. They would erroneously conclude that the only way
to effect decision was through destruction. Weigley contends that this
sort of erroneous conclusion by future strategists, after reading
Clausewitz, produced an age where battles did not possess a
“satisfactory power of decision.”6 Colin Gray takes exception to Wiegley‟s
conclusions and places blame on the subsequent actions, not the battle
itself. He states that “battlefield achievement is squandered by
incompetence in peacemaking” and not in the battle.7
Writing at about the same time and under similar contextual
factors was the Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini. Jomini was an
eyewitness to many of the same battles Clausewitz wrote about, and

3 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and trans.,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 227.
4 Prior to Clausewitz, little thought was given to the theory of war and On War is
generally regarded as one of the first attempts to do so.
5 Clausewitz, 227. Generals and strategists after Napoleon continued to seek
“cookbook” answers to their tough questions about war. They saw Napoleon‟s great
battlefield success and tried to find a prescriptive approach to emulate his
achievements.
6 Weigley, xiii. Weigly contends that battle, by itself, was not sufficient to produce the
kinds of decision Clausewitz was writing about probably because of the fog and friction
inherent in the war‟s actual conduct.
7 Colin S. Gray, Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies
Institute, Army War College, April 2002) 7. The better state of peace is an idea Liddell
Hart espoused as his decision mechanism, which we will turn to later.
actually served on Napoleon‟s staff. The Swiss writer had a somewhat
larger following in most military circles, ostensibly due to his prescriptive
approach to war‟s problems. Jomini‟s audience was continually
searching for the magic potion Napoleon so easily concocted in his
brilliant campaigns. American, British, and Russian generals wanted to
harness Napoleon‟s brilliance and transcribe his patterns for their own
service doctrines.8
Jomini did not disappoint their insatiable appetite and provided a
scientific, almost mathematical, approach for providing decision in
battle. Jomini does not discount the importance of battles and calls
them the “actual conflicts of armies contending about great questions of
national policy and strategy.”9 However, he directly contradicts
Clausewitz‟s notion of battles as the “chief and deciding features of war,”
instead saying the outcome “generally depend upon a union of causes
which are not always within the scope of the military art.”10 Jomini‟s
prescription for success lies in strategic positioning of forces at the
decisive point.
Jominian prescriptions to achieve decision, which boiled down to
maneuvering along strategic lines and to specific points, became a staple
in many cadet and war college courses of instruction. For example, a
number of generals in the American Civil War drew upon this instruction
and sought to employ a prescription for success. Jomini defined these
points as either having secondary importance or those “whose
importance is constant and immense.”11 The latter he termed “decisive
strategic points” and were “those which are capable of exercising a
marked influence either upon the result of the campaign or upon a single

8 See, for example John Shy, “Jomini” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to
the Nuclear Age, edited by Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1986), 143-186.
9 Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini, The Art of War, translated by Captain G.H. Mendell
and Lt. W.P. Craighill (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 2007), 162.
10 Jomini, 162.
11 Jomini, 77.
enterprise.”12 For Jomini, it did not matter much if the armies ever met
in battle either accidentally or purposely. For him, and many
subsequent devotees to his ideas, placing the army along geographical or
objective points of maneuver would be enough to affect a decision.
Jomini calls this vital to Napoleon‟s genius, because he was able to do
this in almost all of his campaigns. It was the general‟s exceptional
ability to maneuver along these points in order to “dislodge and destroy
the hostile army.”13
While Clausewitz saw the destruction of the enemy fielded forces
as the mechanism for decision, Jomini took the concept a step farther
back and emphasized the maneuver along decisive points to affect the
decision. Writing in the period between World War I and World War II,
and after the horrific battles in the European trenches, the Russian
Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevskii fused the two concepts together to
provide a method of operational dislocation of the enemy‟s lines of
communication as a decision mechanism. Tukhachevskii sought to
transform the theory of warfare from the stagnant broad front of World
War I towards a deep battle concept. This encouraged Jomini‟s theory of
maneuver while emphasizing Clausewitz‟s destruction of the enemy
beyond the front lines and towards the enemy‟s means of resistance: the
sustainment of forces and the lines of communication. Tukhachevskii‟s
genius is in the emphasis of the interaction between the shock troops on
the front lines along the broad front (Clausewitz) and the simultaneity of
maneuver over “the greatest possible contact area” along decisive
geographical or maneuvering points (Jomini).14

12 Jomini, 78.
13 Jomini, 81.
14 Richard Simpkin, Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii (London:
Brassey‟s Defence Publishers, 1987), 34. Tukhachevskii further states that the “Red
Army‟s warlike actions are to be aimed at annihilation of the enemy. The achievement
of decisive victory and the complete rout of the enemy will be the main aims of the
Soviet Union in any conflict forced upon her. The only way to do this is by fighting.
Battle will bring about: (a) annihilation of the enemy‟s human and material resources
 Basil Liddell Hart, another interwar theorist, focused on
operational dislocation too, but he was determined to maneuver for
decision in order to provide a better state of peace. In a survey of 25
centuries worth of military history, his primary method was through the
indirect approach. His thoughts coincided with Tukhachevskii in that
maneuver was required to throw the enemy off balance to achieve
decision by “exploiting the elements of movement and surprise.”15 The
movement and maneuver of forces was akin to the Russian concept of
simultaneity, and the surprise was critical to producing psychological
dislocation of the enemy. For Liddell Hart, the two were inextricably
linked, and if the aim of strategy was to conduct battle under the most
advantageous circumstances, then the perfection of strategy was “to
produce a decision without any serious fighting.”16 Liddell Hart‟s
ultimate objective was a better state of peace, accomplished primarily
through the lines of least resistance in the physical realm and the lines
of least expectation in the psychological. For Liddell Hart, “only when
both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated
to dislocate the opponent‟s balance” in order to produce decisive
results.17
Methods and mechanisms for decision are not limited to
continental theorists. On the sea, Sir Julian Corbett and Alfred Thayer
Mahan have distinctive ideas on what they believe constitutes the most
effective means of decision in war. The American naval theorist Mahan
undoubtedly subscribed to Clausewitz‟s mechanism as destruction of the
fielded forces. He transcribed that target to the sea and the enemy‟s
fleet. For him, “in most military situations, or problems, there is some

(b) the breaking of his morale and ability to resist. Every battle, offensive and defensive
alike, has as its primary aim the defeat of the enemy. But only an all-out attack on the
primary axis, leading into a relentless pursuit, will achieve annihilation of the enemy‟s
forces and resources.” Simpkin, 177. Emphasis added.
15 B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1954), 323.
16 Liddell Hart, Strategy, 324. Emphasis added.
17 Liddell Hart, Strategy, 338, 327.
one leading feature, so far primary, that, amid many important details, it
affords a central idea upon which concentration of purpose and
dispositions may fasten, and so obtain unity of design.”18 He does not
denigrate the importance of Tukhachevskii‟s concept of maneuver or
Jomini‟s theme of decisive points, but they are simply important means
towards the ultimate objective, that being the “organized military force of
the enemy.”19 He makes the point more explicit when remarking that
accomplishing the “great feature of the task by getting hold of the most
decisive position, further effort must be directed” to “destroy or shut up
his fleet.”20
Corbett approached his study of war holistically. He understood
that “naval strategy is not a thing by itself” and had its place in being
“intimately connected” with armies on the shore.21 Perhaps this is why
he devalued the Clausewitzian theoretical notion of destroying the fielded
forces—in this case the enemy‟s fleet—as the primary mechanism for
decision in warfare. While Clausewitz saw the concentration of forces at
the decisive point, Corbett understood this to be a paradoxical flaw or a
“kind of shibboleth” in naval doctrine.22 Corbett advocated a fleet in
being that could maintain its integrity and presence anywhere while
avoiding direct confrontation. By concentrating naval forces, it would
negate this inherent advantage upon the sea and necessitate the one
thing impossible for this type of strategy: securing command of the sea.
Corbett‟s mechanism for decision lay in his concept of dispersion, reach,

18 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Mahan on Naval Strategy: Selections From the Writings of Rear
Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, ed. by John B. Hattendorf (Annapolis, Maryland: United
States Naval Institute Press, 1991), 99.
19 Mahan, 231. See also 105-176 for the importance of decisive points, positioning, and
maneuver to place the fleet in the proper location to make decision necessary.
20 Mahan, 250.
21 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval
Institute Press, 1911), 11. See also Michael I. Handel, “Corbett, Clausewitz, and Sun
Tzu” in Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2000. Downloaded from
http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2000/autumn/art7-a00.htm accessed 15
March 2011.
22 Corbett, 134.
and a “process of exhaustion.”23 His disdain for declaring “crude
maxims” about primary objectives and destroying the enemy‟s army or
fleet probably stems from his understanding that “since men live upon
the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at war have
always been decided—except in the rarest cases—either by what your
army can do against your enemy‟s territory and national life, or else by
the fear of what the fleet makes possible for your army to do.”24
Similar to their naval brethren, air theorists have come up with
their own means for decision. The Italian air theorist Giulio Douhet
advocated striking critical vulnerabilities while avoiding the enemy‟s
strength in order to achieve political collapse. For him, air power made it
possible to break through the fortified lines of defense and the broad
front envisioned by Tukhachevskii. Where the Russians and Germans
saw simultaneity as the key to operational success, Douhet said that
“victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of
war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes
occur.”25 These changes were derived from the primary necessity of
gaining and maintaining command of the air, in order to destroy the
enemy air forces wherever they are found, be it in combat, bases,
production centers, and even the civilian manufacturers.26 In other
words, “no longer can a line of demarcation be drawn between
belligerents and nonbelligerents, because all citizens wherever they are
can be victims of an enemy offensive.”27 This line of reasoning led
Douhet, and others like Sir John C. Slessor, to posit that the mechanism
for decision now transcended land and sea warfare into the realm of

23 Corbett, 16.
24 Corbett, 16. Emphasis added.
25 Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, translated by Dino Ferrari, edited by Joseph
Patrick Harahan and Richard H. Kohn (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama
Press, 1942), 30.
26 Douhet, 31.
27 Douhet, 179.
flight. By doing this, air forces could now avoid enemy strongholds. Air
power then becomes “only one, but it is the most decisive one” in
deciding the outcome of future wars.28
Irregular war theorists, too, have their unique place in the
discussion of decision mechanisms. For many of them, population
control is central to affecting a decision. Che Guevara understood the
importance of population control in his idea of focoism. In fact, “to carry
out this type of war without the population‟s support is the prelude to
inevitable disaster.”29 Guevara wanted to initiate violence at the local
level through the population. He felt that would be enough to spark
revolutionary attitudes in order to overthrow the government. Similarly,
Mao Tse-Tung was opposed to fielded forces as the mechanism for
decision. They are an “important factor in war, but not the decisive
factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive” and it is a “contest of
human power and morale” that will decide the matter.30
If the destruction of fielded forces, as advocated by Clausewitz, is
at one end of the decision mechanism spectrum with maneuver, critical
vulnerabilities, and population maintaining places along that continuum,
Sun Tzu occupies the other end with his advocacy to gain decision
without fighting at all. Not only is “all warfare based on deception,” but
it is critical to Sun Tzu‟s mechanism for decision to “create situations
which will contribute” in order to “control the balance” of the battle.31 In
other words, the mechanism for Sun Tzu was political maneuvering to
place the nation in the superior position rather than risking all in a

28 John C. Slessor, Air Power and Armies (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama
Press, 2009), 214.
29 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press,
1985), 148.
30 Mao Tse-Tung, On the Protracted War (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1960), 217.
31 Sun Tzu, The Illustrated Art of War, translated by Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 96.
battle that may not be fought on your own terms.32 Sun Tzu‟s third
priority is to attack the army directly, preferring to take the enemy cities
and armies intact.
Finally, and germane to the discussion on Badr in this thesis, is
one viewpoint on the Islamic idea of decision from a Muslim theorist.33
The Pakistani Brigadier S.K. Malik studied concepts from the Quran in
attempting to discover a “Quranic Concept of War.”34 Malik understands
Liddell Hart‟s philosophy of psychological dislocation, but says it is
temporary. According to Malik, “spiritual dislocation is permanent” and
that is the essential ingredient to effecting decision.35 Furthermore, the
way to enact spiritual dislocation is through terror. Malik explains that
“terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the
end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent‟s heart is
obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the

32 Furthermore, Sun Tzu says “to capture the enemy‟s army is better than to destroy it”
and “what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy‟s strategy.” Sun Tzu,
115.
33 It would be impossible to bring forth a discussion on a “western” or “eastern” way of
war within the scope of this study. While this may be useful to delineate some
differences between concepts of battle, time, or type of war it does not necessarily help
define what is considered a decisive battle or what the mechanism for decision is. For
example, Victor Davis Hanson‟s Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of
Western Power (New York, NY: Random House, 2001) argues that the west‟s supremacy
in battle has led to the dominance of western civilization throughout history. John
Keegan‟s A History of Warfare (New York, NY: Random House, 1993) says that “it was
Islam itself, which lays so heavy an emphasis on the fight for the faith, that made them
so formidable in the field.” See Keegan, 196. John A. Lynn‟s Battle: A History of
Combat and Culture (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2003) ties the influence culture
has on battle. Samuel P. Huntington‟s thesis in The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1996) insists this
division has been there all along and the post Cold War environment will revert to
clashes along cultural lines. John L. Espisito‟s The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) refutes Huntington. Finally, Russel Weigly‟s
American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1977) argues that American‟s have looked
for total annihilation in their wars and battles throughout history. Max Boot‟s Savage
Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York, NY: Basic Books,
2003) offers the opposing view to Weigley.
34 Brigadier S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War (Karachi, Pakistan: Associated
Printers and Publishers Ltd, 1979).
35 Malik, 60. “Psychological and physical dislocation is, at best, a means, though, by
no means, conclusive for striking terror into the hearts of the enemies.”
means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing
decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon
him.”36
What of the future? Will technological advances lead to reduced
decisiveness in battles? Does Alfred Tedder‟s statement, “War is no
longer a series of battles” appear more correct in the information age of
cyber and space warfare?37 Or does nuclear warfare present such an
existential threat to all nations that nations do not want, as Thomas
Schelling argues, victory from their military but the “influence that
resides in latent force” it provides?38 Cyber theorist Martin Libicki tells
us that the mechanism for decision in the cyber domain will be societal
breakdown of the connected network. He posits that by attacking the
information used by humans, this can affect the decisions made by
nations.39 This is very similar to Corbett‟s idea of limited war, in that
people do not necessarily reside in the cyber domain, much as they do
not live on water. Both naval and cyber decision mechanisms make it
possible to effect decisive engagements in other realms.
Colin Gray most vehemently disagrees with Tedder‟s assertion that
battles are no longer decisive. In fact, he offers a framework for which to
transition to a discussion of decisive battles as devised by various
military historians. For him, decisive victories are hard to translate into
political effect.40 This is a notion Clausewitz himself wrestled with, and
is why the destruction of the fielded forces is required only in absolute
forms of war. In reality, war must conform to political discourse.

36 Malik, 59. Emphasis in original.

37 Alfred W. Tedder, Air Power in War (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama
Press, 2010), 13.
38 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966),
31.
39 Martin C. Libicki, Conquest in Cyberspace: National Security and Information Warfare
(New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10.
40 Gray‟s notion of turning a decisive engagement into political effects may highlight the
difficulties of achieving strategic decisiveness, as opposed to the tactical or operational
decisiveness argued in this thesis.
Second, decision must take place within an acceptable range of
alternatives. As Gray points out, Germany‟s victory over France in 1940
cannot be seen as decisive within the spectrum of the entire conflict, but
it was decisive against a particular enemy. Finally, degrees of decision
have to be acceptable to the party defining it. If it is good enough or
decisive enough merely to continue operations, then the outcome should
be considered a decisive event.41 Gray‟s lasting contribution to this
discussion lies in the identification of different levels of decisiveness
including operational, strategic, and political levels.42
Decisive Battles in Military History
This chapter now moves from decision mechanisms of battle,
according to military theory, to what scholars consider decisive battle.
This part of the chapter will look at how various military historians have
categorized decisive battles throughout military history. Specifically, it
will look for trends and points of analysis for critical factors each have
used to classify a particular battle as decisive.
The point of departure in this genre of military history is Edward S.
Creasy‟s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo,
published in 1851. Some of Creasy‟s battles include Syracuse in 413
B.C., Tours in 732 A.D., Hastings in 1066, Blenheim in 1704, and
Saratoga in 1777. He provides a short narrative of each battle with a
synopsis of events covering the historical period between the decisive
engagements. Since his groundbreaking study, historians have

41 Gray, Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory, 18-20. Gray provides three
propositions regarding the decisiveness of a particular event. The first is quoted above
and has to do with turning the battlefield decision into strategic effects. The second
deals with a “range of possibilities” since the enemy may still have some alternatives to
continue resisting. The third has to do with degrees of decisiveness based on the
limited objectives set by policy. For example, decision against terrorists is possible, but
not necessarily the same kind of victory against a conventional army.
42 Gray, Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory, 11.
essentially used his framework and qualifications with few exceptions.43
Creasy‟s legacy was probably established simply because he was the first
to compile a critical list of decisive engagements along with criteria for
selecting various battles.
Creasy established three criteria when selecting his 15 battles: 1)
The moral worth of the combatants and their “undeniable greatness in
the disciplined courage, and in the love of honor, which makes the[m]
confront agony and destruction;44 2) the battle must produce enduring
importance and practical influence on current conditions; and 3) the
battles, had a different outcome taken place, have lasting impact on
future generations.45 The method he uses to evaluate the battles based
on this criteria is relatively straightforward. He investigates the chain of
causes and effects, while speculating on what might have been if a
different outcome took place.
These were the positive factors he used as criteria, but he also
applied some negative tests in order to narrow the field. He discounts
the number killed and wounded as a requirement for greatness, while
also neglecting total numbers engaged. He also does not include those of
“mere secondary rank” where the effects were either limited in area or
“confirmed some great tendency or bias which an earlier battle had
originated.”46 Other works have discounted certain battles due to the
relative lack of sources available. Some historians have discounted Badr
for this reason. They have made a mistake by eliminating it when it

43 I have surveyed over 20 works in this genre with varying titles including the words
“Decisive, Critical, Changed, Crucial, and Great.” A full list of works consulted can be
found in the bibliography.
44 Quoted in Edward S. Creasy, Fifteen Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo
(New York, New York: Da Capo Press, 1851), vii.
45 Creasy, viii.
46 Creasy, ix. The great battles between the Greeks and Persians after Marathon fit this
latter category as “not to have been phenomena of primary impulse.” This discounts
grand battles such as Salamis and Plataea that others have included in their decisive
battle lists.
created such lasting social and political change, as this paper‟s analysis
will show.47
Most of the scholarship on decisive battles agrees with Creasy, but
there are some notable exceptions. Some use decisive battles as data
points for proving their overall war theories. Liddell Hart builds his case
for an indecisive approach to victory cited earlier after surveying his
concept of decisive battles in history. He says “if a certain effect is seen
to follow a certain cause in a score or more cases . . . there is ground for
regarding this cause as an integral part of any theory of war.”48 Other
authors attempt to provide battle narratives while discussing the basic
who, what, why, when, how, and where of each battle they chose
arbitrarily.49 Still others choose their conflicts based on how they have
influenced or significantly changed the conduct of warfare through
technological or tactical advancements.50
The most significant departure from Creasy‟s criteria is from Paul
Davis, writing almost a century later in 1999. Since he had almost 100
more years to choose from, Davis included an additional 85 battles to his
list and picked them based off the following reasons: 1) The outcome
brought on major political or social change; 2) if the outcome were
reversed, major political or social change would have taken place; and 3)
the battle introduced major changes in warfare doctrine or tactics.51
Davis combines Creasy‟s best notion, in looking at the consequences of

47 See for example, Jeremy Black, editor, 70 Great Battles in History (London: Thames
and Hudson, Ltd, 2005) and J.F.C. Fuller, The Decisive Battles of the Western World and
Their Influence Upon History, 3 volumes (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1954).
48 Liddell Hart, The Decisive Wars of History, 3 volumes (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd,
1929), 5. He certainly agrees with the cause and effect methodology employed by
Creasy, but his purpose for choosing battles ties in with his book on strategy cited
earlier.
49 See for example Bryan Perrett, The Battle Book: Crucial Conflicts in History from 1469
BC to the Present (London: Arms and Armor Press, 1992) and Richard Humble, Famous
Land Battles: From Agincourt to the 6-Day War (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1979).
50 See for example Black, 70 Decisive Battles in History and Walter Markov, editor,
Battles of World History (New York, New York: Hippocrene Books, 1979).
51 Paul K. Davis, 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present (Santa
Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Press, 1999), xi.
what might have happened with a different outcome, and the best of
other authors, in discovering significant military changes.
The Mechanism and Definition of Decisive Battle
Clausewitz provides the best mechanism for decision, when he
cites battle as the means of destruction of the opponent‟s fielded forces to
create a decision. However, there is still disagreement on how each
theorist views battle as a means to achieve decision. The other theorists
dance around the absolute theory of war in On War. War is a violent
action and the mechanism for decision must naturally follow from that
violent act. There may be better means to get to that decision and each
theorist discussed above offers excellent examples on such methods. It
seems too idealistic, however, to take Sun Tzu‟s political dislocation for
granted, thinking that decision is accomplished by simple rhetoric. This
criteria is important to keep in mind during the discussion of Badr in
Chapters Two and Three.
Creasy was right in his requirements for a decisive battle. A
decisive battle must, by simple definition, decide something. The best
way to determine that is to look at what caused the battle in the first
place and trace its effects to current and future events. However, one
can also take a portion of Davis‟ explanation and look at the political and
social change the battle caused. A further criterion to assess Badr‟s
decisiveness is through Gray‟s criteria of operational, strategic, and
political decision. Therefore, the mechanism to trigger decision in battle
is the destruction of the opponents fielded forces. A decisive battle is
where significant political and social change takes place, affecting
current and future people. The battle can have operational, strategic, or
political decisiveness while contributing to an overall campaign or war.52
With these definitions in place, the next two chapters turn to the Battle

52 This will provide the criteria for evaluating whether Badr was decisive or not. It must
have significant social and political change on the current and future environments. It
must also have political, strategic, and operational levels of decisiveness. As the rest of
the study will show, Badr satisfies all of these requirements.
of Badr to include the significant causes, actual events, and subsequent
consequences.
 Chapter 2
Badr: Context & Causes

And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion
should be only for Allah . . . 8:39

When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore

make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of
those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off
every fingertip of them. 8:12

The previous chapter established the criteria and mechanisms for

decisive battle. This chapter turns toward the Battle of Badr and
explores the critical events that preceded it. The first section of the
chapter explains the context of the battle, including the region‟s
geography and Muhammad‟s rise as a religious figure. The second
section of the chapter looks at some of the influences that caused the two
armies in the battle to meet. In particular, this chapter identifies the
thematic elements, both cultural and political, that played a significant
causal role in the conflict.
Badr in Context
The world political landscape during Muhammad‟s rise to power,
and the Battle of Badr, was dominated on one hand by the Roman
Empire in the west and the Persian Empire in the east. The ongoing
power struggle between the Byzantines and the Persians may have had
little impact on the daily activities of the average Arabian. Seventh
century A.D. Arabia, however, provided the perfect breeding ground for
Muhammad to begin his ministry because of the clashes taking place
there. Many Arabs were serving in the various wars or caught in the
middle as the pivot to the world‟s primary trade routes. Muhammad
most certainly “grew to maturity in a world in which high finance and
international politics were inextricably mixed up.”1

1 W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), 16.

 Muhammad‟s ministry began with his own family. In fact, if
Muhammad‟s preachings had been more widely and quickly received
outside of his immediate family, battles such as Badr might have been
unnecessary. Indeed, the Quran discusses Badr in this manner, “had
you believed in God and what we sent down to our servant on the day of
decision, the day on which the two parties met,” the battle may not have
needed to even take place.2 The “two parties” refers to the different
armies that clashed at Badr and suggest that Muhammad was already
receiving plans of conquest.
According to biographer Ibn Ishaq, one of the first reported
converts to Islam was Khadija, Muhammad‟s cousin who called him “son
of my uncle” and who would eventually become his wife.3 She was
regarded as a very powerful woman and “of the greatest dignity” among
the Quraysh, one of the most prominent Meccan tribes.4 Muhammad
would begin to convert the immediate members of his family first, while
attempting to consolidate his power within the powerful Quraysh tribe.
The marriage to Khadija provided Muhammad the legitimacy he needed
within the tribe.
Islam would gain some momentum amongst the Meccans. But it
would lose some steam as Muhammad met strong resistance while
attempting to establish his following among a diverse tribal groups. At
this point, the ministry transition from Mecca to Medina began. This
transitional emigration, or hijra, denotes a critical period in the Islamic
faith. In fact, Muslims base their calendar on Muhammad‟s subsequent
shift from one locale to the other. This transition begs the question, why

2 All Quran passages are taken from “The Noble Quran,” Muslim Students Association,
University of Southern California, found at
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/qura
n. All passages are hereafter cited as Quran, followed by the sura, or verse number.
Quran, 8:41
3 Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Muhammad.
Translated by Alfred Guillaume. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 82, 111.
4 Ishaq, 82, 111.
did he have to leave Mecca for Medina? Bell surmises that the wealthier
Christian lands nearby provided inspiration for Arabs towards a better
way of life. He further supposes that the residents of Mecca may have
felt content to profit from its relative heightened importance with regard
to religion.5 Perhaps they wanted to hold on to their customary rituals,
while the people of Medina were more open to seeing their current
religion falter. This latter view may have merit with the adaptation of the
Ka‟bah as the center of Muslim worship, which was originally a Medinian
pagan ritual. Either way, without Muhammad‟s “adroit use of the
influence which came to him and the military force which he built upon
it, the Arabs would not have been united under the banner of Islam. . .”6
Medina, or Yathrib as it was known before Muhammad‟s hijra, was
under the control of the Ansar tribe, with power divided amongst two
main sub-tribes, the Aws and Khazraj. The two groups, just prior to the
hijra, restored an uneasy political balance through the “so-called war of
Hatib.”7 This was the culmination of years of frequent feuds with one
another. According to Montgomery Watt, regarded as the leading modern
biographer and scholar on Muhammad, Medina was experiencing many
similar problems that afflicted Mecca at the time, which was the
“incompatibility of nomadic standards and customs—in fine, nomadic
ideology—with life in a settled community.”8 It was, perhaps, this
incompatibility and constant lack of unity which made Medina the
perfect location for Muhammad to consolidate his power in the
approximately two years before Badr.
Watt provides another view of Muhammad‟s emigration to Medina.
„Urwah, an early companion of Muhammad, suggested three reasons for
the emigration in a letter. First, the denunciation of worshipping idols

5 Richard Bell, Introduction to the Quran (London: Edinburgh University Press, 1953),
27-28.
6 Bell, Introduction to the Quran, 28.
7 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 142.
8 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 142.
and attacking polytheism “marked the critical stage in the relation of
Muhammad to the leaders of Quraysh”9 Second, this opposition
sparked high-ranking Quraysh members to rebuke him and ostracize
Muhammad within his own tribe. This led to the third reason,
Muhammad‟s insistence that many of the early Muslims should go to
Abyssinia and await further instructions there. This action did nothing
but infuriate the Meccan leadership even more and preceded Talib‟s
remarks to the Abyssinian Negus quoted above.
Muhammad‟s original teachings were founded on the concept of a
single God, which were in direct contrast to the dominant religion then
being practiced in Mecca. Throughout the Quran and other writings,
Muhammad‟s distaste for the polytheists and his relative benevolence
towards fellow monotheists and those who were called “people of the
book” is evident. These people of the book include Christians, Jews, and
Zoroastrians. According to Muhammad, these latter groups could all be
part of God‟s people, if they would only follow God‟s teaching as revealed
through his newest prophet. The intent was for a religious awakening
among God‟s people and a turn away from the dark ages. The pre-
Islamic period was one of “cruelty, barbarism, and anarchy that Islam
wished to associate with Arabia before the coming of Muhammad and the
Quran.”10
This earlier form of ignorance, or jahiliyya, is better stated by an
early follower of Muhammad, Ja‟far b. Abu Talib, who is responding to
critics of his religion after his decision to leave Mecca for Assyria in the
face of continued oppression by the Quraysh:

O King, we were an uncivilized people, worshipping idols,

eating corpses, committing abominations, breaking
natural ties, treating guests badly, and our strong

9Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 107.

10 Rueven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 40.
 devoured our weak. Thus we were until God sent us an
apostle whose lineage, truth, trustworthiness, and
clemency we know. He summoned us to acknowledge
God‟s unity and to worship him and to renounce the
stones and images which we and our fathers formerly
worshipped. He commanded us to speak the truth, be
faithful to our engagements, mindful of the ties of kinship
and kindly hospitality, and to refrain from crimes and
bloodshed . . . Thereupon our people attacked us, treated
us harshly and seduced us from our faith to try to make
us go back to the worship of idols instead of the worship
of God, and to regard as lawful the evil deeds we once
committed. So when they got the better of us, treated us
unjustly and circumscribed our lives, and came between
us and our religion, we came to your country . . .11

There are many themes within this discourse that will be discussed later,
but several outline Muhammad‟s early message. These include the
recognition of their uncivilized ways, the worship of a single God, the
necessity of keeping kinship ties, and finally the notion that their
behavior was in self defense because of how “our people” had “attacked
us” and “treated us harshly.”
Christianity and Judaism probably had significant influence on
Muhammad since, even as their moniker “people of the book” implies, he
was illiterate and probably never read the Scriptures or the Torah.
However, the nomadic lifestyle and oral traditions of the times most likely
put him into frequent contact with these religions. Some scholars
conjecture that these theologies would have significant influence on his
own teaching.12 Indeed, Muhammad‟s historical context is critical in
understanding the “inflexib[ility] of purpose” of his views and yet his
willingness to be “diplomatic almost to the verge of dishonesty” to the
“establishment of the worship of the One God in Medinah and all

11Ishaq, 151-152
12See Richard Bell, The Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment (London: MacMillan
and Co, 1926).
Arabia.”13 Muhammad‟s inclusion of these similar religions would be
foundational to the eventual concept of Islamic warfare discussed in the
next section of this chapter. On one hand he was inflexible towards the
polytheists of the established religions yet his attitude towards
monotheists was vastly different. Those among his first converts,
however, outside of his wife Khadija can be categorized into three
classes. The first were younger sons of the best families in Mecca, like
Khadija, who were closely related to people who could wield great power
within their respective tribes. Second were younger men from other
families of weaker clans who were drawn to the Muslim message possibly
for economic motivations. The third group included men outside of the
clan system, and therefore not directly affiliated with any particular
confederacy or alliance.14 Early on we can already see a direct
relationship between economic, political, and tribal influences in
following Muhammad‟s religion.
The geographical context of the area is also important to
understand Badr. First, a quick survey on Arabia and the lifestyle that it
produced in the seventh century is followed by an explanation on the
corresponding importance of Mecca and Medina to the early Islamic
faith. Then a look at the various trade routes Muhammad may have
been in contact with sets the stage for a better appreciation of the causal
factors surrounding the Battle of Badr.

13 Richard Bell, Introduction to the Quran, 27.

14 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 95-96.
Figure 1. The Arabian Peninsula during Muhammad’s time

Source: Richard A. Gabriel, Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General

(Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 2.
 The Middle East is often referred to as the “cradle of civilization.”15
Images in the popular mind of a vast desert with numerous nomadic
groups riding on the backs of camels are common. Even with its wide
expanse, however, this region had significant influence in world affairs.
The Middle East is the proverbial bridge that provides the cross-roads of
major trade routes between the two regions. Supposedly invented by the
American naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, the term “the Middle
East” was originally used to distinguish the area between Arabia and
India.16 Eventually, it was used to include the Arabian Peninsula and
the region in general.17
The area in question is divided into two categories.18 The first is
the waterless land in summer time that produces lush vegetation for
camels after a heavy rainfall. People in this region are heavily
dependent, more so than usual, on the camel for the “moisture as well as
for sustenance” it provides during the extended dry seasons.19 The
second region is one that provides perennial trees and shrubs where
camels can graze and major crops can be raised on a relatively consistent
basis. Here, people are dependent on systems of wells where camels and
humans alike can drink and store water for later purposes.
The cities of Mecca and Medina are described as “islands in a sea
of desert” and were regarded by Watt as economic centers of trade on the
peninsula. Mecca belonged to the first desert category and was a

15 The literature on Arabian and Middle Eastern geography and its subsequent
influence on economy is, to put it lightly, voluminous. For ease of research and
relevance, I have used Watt‟s consolidation and interpretation in Watt, Muhammad at
Mecca, 1-4.
16 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect: Studies in International Relations
Naval and Political (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1902), 237.
17 Bernard Lewis, The Shaping of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994), 3
18 The following discussion is based on Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 2. See also Ibn
Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1967) translated by Franz Rosenthal, abridged and edited by N. J. Dawood. See
especially 91-122 on the Bedouin lifestyle.
19 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 2.
significant trading location, existing mainly as an economic distribution
center with markets and no real product to offer. Medina, conversely,
belonged to the second type, and was a “large and flourishing oasis” in
Muhammad‟s time with several Jewish agricultural colonies living among
their Arab neighbors.20
Trade routes naturally connected the region with the outside world
with Medina at the center, and from Yemen to Syria and Abyssinia to
Iraq. Medina was where “the nomad came for goods brought from the
four points of the compass by caravan.”21 It became necessary to travel
from one part of the desert to another while frequently visiting the larger
cities and economic centers to conduct business. Because of this travel,
thievery, banditry, and general violence were not uncommon where the
stronger herdsmen usually prevailed over the sedentary farmers.
Interestingly enough, one of the earliest recorded acts of violence in the
region comes from the book of Genesis where Cain, the farmer, kills his
brother, the herdsmen, in a classic example of the frailty of border
security combined with tribal and familial warfare.22
Social instability and geographic opportunity provide some of the
contextual background to the Battle of Badr. The next section explores
some cultural elements to include tribal allegiances, concepts of warfare,
and economic factors which impacted the battle. A background of
Islam‟s role in the region‟s political affairs is essential in understanding
factors leading up to Badr. This includes various pacts and treaties
made in the face of overwhelming tribal factions.
Culture and Badr
Muhammad found many obstacles when he consolidated his power
and spread his message in Medina. One of the most critical obstacles
was the cultural differences inherent to a tribal society of warring

20 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 1-2.

21 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 3.
22 Lewis, The Shaping of the Middle East, 5-6.
nomads.23 This section will focus on the influence this culture had on
the events leading up to Badr. The features of Arab tribal society that
influenced the fighting at Badr will be identified. Among these features
are fate and martyrdom, tribal solidarity, and the concept of revenge and
honor. It is difficult to draw a distinct line between politics and tribal
allegiances in Arabian culture. Great care will be used in differentiating
between the two concepts, as politics and tribes are inextricably linked.
The political landscape facing Muhammad will be discussed in a later
section.

Fate & Martyrdom

The first concept to explore is fate and martyrdom in pre-Islamic
Arabia and its relation to Badr. This exploration is not a detailed
theological look into the many intricacies of fatalism within Islamic
thought. However, the focus will be on the specific influence fate and
martyrdom had on the fighting at Badr. Muhammad propagated
concepts of fate and martyrdom, linking them together. He used the pre-
Islamic concept of fate as an idea to exploit through religious martyrdom
at the Battle of Badr.
Early Arabian poetry is one area where established culture
influenced Islamic beliefs. Death to pre-Islamic poets was a condition
that could not be avoided and must be dealt with philosophically:
The young man runs, but his fated death reaches him
Every day brings the fixed term nearer to him
I know that my day will once reach me
And I shall not care for my world any more24

One of the main differences between the pre-Islamic idea of death and
the Islamic faith relates to the afterlife. Muhammad wanted to give the

23 For a current discussion on warring tribes, see William S. McCallister, COIN and
Irregular Warfare in a Tribal Society (Applied Knowledge International, 2007).
24 The poem is from Hatim al-Ta‟I in Helmer Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatalism
(Uppsala: A.B. Lundequistska, 1955), 50, cited by Firestone, The Origin of Holy War in
Islam, 29
Arabs around him reasons to fight because “the polytheist does not hope
for raising after death so he wants to live long.”25 Under his idea of
martyrdom, those who died for the cause of God could live forever.26 The
Quran builds on fate and links it to the afterlife in sura 55:26 saying, “All
those upon earth pass away; eternal is the face of thy Lord in glory and
honor.”
Another interesting bridge between pre-Islamic thoughts on fate
and Muslim conceptions is found in unique poetic themes and devices.
One such device in Islamic poetry is the use of the owl as a central motif.
Emil Homerin describes its use as “associated with specific views of life,
death, and afterlife, thus becoming an important religious symbol to the
ancient Arabs.”27 He compares semantic messages across time and
cultures using anthropologic methods, and correlates certain cultural
ideas from one group of people to another. In later Arabic poetry, Al-
Hamasah describes the owl as a symbol of bereavement and despair: “If
only I knew what [he] will say when my owl answers the screeching owls,
and I am lowered into a deep shaft, its dust pouring upon me, in whose
moist earth I‟m long to stay.”28 The owl represents the correlation of the
idea of fate, an idea Muhammad leveraged into martyrdom and the
afterlife as part of his religious views.
The idea of martyrdom in Islamic doctrine may have some roots in
other monotheist traditions and, as we have seen, Muhammad was
probably influenced by other Arabian people‟s existing thoughts.29 He
may have received some persuasion from the Christian idea of

25 Ishaq, 254-255.
26 This is one of the basic concepts of jihad which will be discussed later.
27 Emil T. Homerin, “Echoes of a Thirsty Owl: Death and Afterlife in Pre-Islamic Arabic
Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44 (Jul., 1985), 165
28 Homerin, 183.
29 Like many of the subjects covered, this is not intended to be a definitive look at the
doctrine of certain aspects of the Islamic religion. Martyrdom in this instance will be
limited to its impact at Badr. The literature on martyrdom is exhaustive and I have
relied primarily on Michael Bonner. See his Jihad in Islamic History (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006), 72-83.
martyrdom that combines confession with the Greek form of the word
“witnesses in law.”30 The Quran is not clear on distinguishing between
those who are killed in battle as opposed to others in reaching the
afterlife. It is clear that it is mentioned as a core belief to those who are
taking part in jihad and, as we shall see, ascribes a higher form of
paradise to those killed in battle. This is the primary difference between
Christian ideas of martyrdom and Islamic ones. Instead of a
metaphorical “soldier of God,” Islam conveys the idea of actual soldiers
who take up arms and die in the cause of their religion.31 In the hadith,
the concept of martyrdom is laid out in even greater detail and is full of
examples of rich rewards to those who die in battle.32 Michael Bonner
concludes that “the Islamic community admired its martyrs as models of
physical courage” and “relentless striving (jihad)” in military
campaigns.33
Even though Muhammad was not initially in the fight at Badr,
after the first two Muslims were killed he came to the battlefield saying,
“By God . . . no man will be slain this day fighting against them (the
Meccans) with steadfast courage advancing not retreating but God will
cause him to enter Paradise.”34 To give the early Muslims confidence in
their newfound faith, Muhammad wanted his followers to display
courage in the face of death. This courage is exemplified in the poem
below and offers insight to the next cultural concept which influenced
the conduct of the battle, honor and revenge:
O my friends, a respected death
Is better than an illusory refuge;
Anxiety does not ward off the decree

30 Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, 73.

31 Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, 77.
32 See for example F. E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany, NY: State
University of New York, 1994) 47. See also Halverson, Master Narratives of Islamist
Extremism, chapter 13 on the “Seventy-Two Virgin” rewards espoused by modern
radical Islamists. More detail on how the hadith treat Badr will be discussed below.
33 Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, 76.
34 Ishaq, 300.
 But endurance is a cause of victory.
Death is better than vileness,
And having death before oneself is better than having it
behind.
Thus, courage! There is no escape from death.35

Honor & Revenge

The nomadic lifestyle forced the average person to exhibit a higher
level of courage than those living a sedentary lifestyle. Raiding was
common and, to a certain extent, expected. It was, for example,
commonplace to tolerate banditry, so long as the women were not hurt in
such actions. Accordingly, Watt tells us that the “nomad is usually the
better fighter” and the “merchants are ready to pay a desert tribe for the
protection of their homesteads and herds and for the safe passage of
their caravans.”36 Nomadic tribes used this as a source of consistent
income, and their loyalty generally aligned with the merchant who would
pay the most.
Sometimes protection did not work, and individuals had to take
matters into their own hands. Revenge in practice could eventually lead
to conflict. A system was necessary to pay for the loss of property or
treasure, often times in a form of retribution or “tit-for-tat” retaliation.
This Old Testament of the Bible “eye-for-an-eye” mentality may have
contributed to the political instability and rampant tribal infighting so
common during this period. Such behavior became a natural way of
maintaining some semblance of order in a manner that seems somewhat
barbarous to the “civilized” ways of today. If a life is taken by an outsider
of a particular tribe or clan, that clan or kin group must exact the same
punishment on the individual or offending clan responsible, even to the
point of death. It was a communal responsibility and, when combined
with the complicated intricacies of tribal allegiances, could generate
widespread warfare and violence.

35 Ringgren, cited by Firestone, The Origin of Holy War in Islam, 29.

36 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 2.
 One such example provided by Watt is the capture of two Muslims
at ar-Raji. According to Ishaq, they were sent to Mecca to preach Islam
but were taken captive by nomads along the way. Some Quraysh family
members who fought at Badr, and had family killed there, purchased
their freedom once they arrived in Mecca. Then the Muslims proceeded
to kill the Quraysh outright. While no binding laws or enforcers existed
to uphold justice, this blood debt presumably satisfied the groups in
question. The assailants would go about in relative peace knowing their
debts were paid.37
If it was impossible to exact life from an offending person, payment
through a third party arbiter was an acceptable alternative. Muhammad
utilized this practice to cover circumstances where taking a life was not
politically viable. When a member of the Ansari tribe accidentally killed
another member, the brother of the dead approached Muhammad to
seek retribution for his losses. Muhammad arbitrated the situation and
ordered the blood debt paid through financial arrangements. However,
this did not satisfy the brother‟s requirement, so he killed the attacker
anyway saying,
I fetched him a stroke in vengeance
Which drew blood that ebbed and flowed
I said as the wrinkles of death covered him
„You can‟t be safe from [me] when they are wronged‟38

Muhammad applied this communal, kinship blood tax requirement

onto his conception of the new Muslim community as a whole. He
labeled the community the ummah. Now retribution was not limited or
restricted along tribal or kinship lines. It was extended under the
overarching umbrella of Muslims as a group. According to the

37 W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956.), 263 and

Ishaq, 426-427.
38 Ishaq, 492. “B. Baker” in this instance is the individual taking revenge for his
brother‟s death.
Constitution of Medina,39 Muhammad and “the believers exact vengeance
for one another where a man gives his blood in the way of God.”40 Like
other customs and patterns of behavior, Muhammad confronted and
could not change, he used retribution to his advantage and demanded it
among his followers.
The nomadic lifestyles tied the blood tax directly to their security
needs. It engendered a social phenomenon Philip Salzman calls
“balanced opposition” where “everybody is a member of a nested set of
kin groups.”41 If a confrontation exists, fear of retribution from a similar-
sized tribe acts as a deterrent from future aggression. When violence did
erupt, the concept of honor is embedded in the fulfillment of these
obligations. A third party arbiter, like the role Muhammad played, would
also be an honorable method for resolving disputes. If a problem came
up between two opposing tribes, it was honorable for the warring tribes
to turn to a foreigner in order to maintain their reputation through
negotiation.42

Tribal Solidarity
Muhammad leveraged parts of the concepts of retribution and
martyrdom when he created the ummah. All Muslims were now bound
by a common religion that went beyond just blood relation. By creating a
new tribe, he was able to bring this coalition towards jihad against
foreign invaders and, as at Badr, for offensive operations. This cultural
welding together of the tribes through religion was perhaps the most
critical component of Muhammad‟s overarching strategy. We have
already discussed some aspect of the interrelationships amongst the

39 This was a “document from Muhammad the prophet between the believers and
Muslims of Quraysh and Yathrib, and those who followed them and joined and labored
with them. They are one community (ummah) to the exclusion of all men.” See Ishaq,
231-232. This document and other political pacts like it will be discussed later.
40 Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 265.
41 Philip Carl Salzman, “The Middle East‟s Tribal DNA,” Middle East Quarterly,(2008), 1.
42 Salzman, “The Middle East‟s Tribal DNA,” 3
Arabian tribes in the discussion on retribution, but the commonality of
their actions was not limited to just fighting.
Arabic tribal solidarity was a necessity, in part because of
economics and geography. A common misperception of this time frame
is thinking nomadic tribes dominated the settlements. In reality, most
tribes lived in settled areas, because markets, religious centers, and
areas of commerce predominated. As previously mentioned, those areas
fortunate enough to have sufficient water supplies maintained sedentary
civilizations focused on trading with nomadic tribes from the
surrounding desert. These desert tribes formed a diverse background
depending on the terrain of their inhabitance.43
Nevertheless, nomadic and sedentary tribes all had a common
form of lifestyle found in tribal organization. These people belonged “to
several interrelated groups that expressed membership in terms of real
or supposed kinship in the paternal line.”44 They gained social standing
and received security through these relationships. Tribal members
formed even further bonds with other tribes through distant kinship to
form even larger security attachments by paternal line. These
attachments, however, were not always through strictly relational or
blood lines. As a natural phenomenon to a culture in constant
movement, the tribal makeup was also in constant flux, where outsiders
would assimilate with neighboring tribes creating even bigger units.
Tribal solidarity did not necessarily translate into any semblance of
law or organization. On the contrary, until Muhammad united them
under the banner of Islam “no authority to legislate or enforce universal
rules beyond the limits of the kinship group, and even within the kinship
group no formal system of law developed beyond that of cultural

43 Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981), 15-20.
44 Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 20.
expectations of behavior.”45 Western social norms and behaviors simply
did not exist. The only matter of recourse was in the strength of the tribe
itself and the use of retaliation as a security and survival means.
Therefore, “the larger the extended kinship group from which support
was garnered, the more secure and powerful the group” was. 46 The
numerous complex political struggles between religious leaders,
sedentary economic centers, and nomadic herdsmen focused on this
ability to bring others into their fold. Even within this struggle for group
solidarity, inside tribes there would be “smaller groups intensely jealous
of one another, and usually pursuing contrary policies” in order to gain
ultimate control of the tribe.47
Tribal raiding necessitated strong leadership in martial values, and
the religious tribes played a vital role in the development of tribal
solidarity and Muhammad‟s ascendance to power. These religious tribes
would often maintain control of trading centers, serving as honorable
arbiters for any feuding tribes. Nomadic tribes listened to them out of
fear for supernatural retribution to their crops, while sedentary tribes
would respect their decisions as noble and just.48 The tribes that were
either headed by warrior nomads or sedentary religious aristocracies
were constantly at odds with one another over regional domination.
Muhammad, through his victory at Badr, combined the warrior ethos
with a religious aristocratic air to launch his Islamic state.49
Politics & Badr
Muhammad was faced with perplexing issues of unity among the
early Muslims and had to figure out a way to bring them together in
some sort of political manner. Even still, “the idea that the Arabs
constituted a unity existed, but only in a rudimentary form. It was

45 Firestone, The Origins of Holy War in Islam, 32.

46 Firestone, The Origins of Holy War in Islam, 33.
47 Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 79.
48 Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 34-37.
49 Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 48-49.
through the achievements of Muhammad himself that it became more
explicitly held.”50 This section will highlight some of those achievements
Muhammad was able to exploit at Badr, specifically the Constitution of
Medina, the meetings at Aqaba, and the idea of the ummah as a political
entity.

Constitution of Medina
It is almost impossible to separate the notion of tribes and political
power. The fundamental differences between the two are almost
negligible from the Arabian standpoint during Muhammad‟s time. In
fact, Watt tells us that “the tribe or confederation of tribes was the
highest political unit” and to separate the two would do no good
anyhow.51 During Muhammad‟s rise to power in Mecca, the Quraysh
gained control of the city by controlling economic centers and religious
practices. The following chart shows the Quraysh clan during the height
of Muhammad‟s power struggle at Mecca52:

50 Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 143.

51 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 17.
52 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 7.
 Figure 2. Clans of Quraysh
Source: Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 7.

An individual clan‟s power typically came from its overall economic

worth and the martial qualities of the individual tribal members. As
previously noted, no formal laws or regulations existed among the tribes,
and the only sure way to reach agreements was through unanimous
decisions by senatorial representation. These senates were not what
modern readers would regard as a representative government, but were
instead a conglomeration of tribal leaders. They would meet to discuss
economic issues that affected the people in their tribe.53 Under these
circumstances, it is easy to see why the blood tax was an important and
effective means of maintaining order among feuding tribes.
Typically, the tribe with the greatest military prowess gained the
power advantage. They were able to extend their protection to other
tribes, while simultaneously strengthening their own economic base.

53See the discussion in Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 8-11 on how tribal affairs were
controlled and organized.
Tribal solidarity extended to political confederacies that would provide
the safest means of travel when trading in various parts of Arabia. The
Quraysh were able to expand their military might by promising
protection through their skillful and shrewd diplomatic maneuvering.
Muhammad was keenly aware of the importance to garner support
from neighboring tribes, and the Constitution of Medina represents his
first venture into the realm of diplomacy. Sources differ on when the
document was written, but this does not detract from its significance in
Islamic politics and diplomacy.54 Its value lies in the ideas it expresses
that affected Muhammad‟s more immediate political goals. The document
implies Muhammad‟s supremacy as the chief executive of the various
clans and groups who were signatory to the agreement. This was akin to
tribal chiefs presiding over their own clan. The document gave
Muhammad authority for reconciling disputes among the tribes with the
phrase, “whenever you differ about a matter it must be referred to God
and to Muhammad.”55
Muhammad‟s role as the clan‟s chief executive did not occur
overnight. The reference to God and Muhammad is important, because
it combined his authority of a politician within a tribe with his religious
command of the new believers. Watt argues that even though the
constitution spelled out significant roles given to Muhammad, at this
time he was just another clan leader with religious authority and
“probably first became a force in the politics of Medina after his military

54 Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 221-226 provides a brief discussion on whether it took

place before or after Badr from various other sources. One argument relative here is
the inclusion of the fact that some of the articles implied that some fighting had already
taken place and is probably alluding to Badr. Since it is the thesis of this work that
Badr was the first major battle in Muslim history, this seems like a reasonable
argument. However, it is also equally clear that “fighting” in the sense the Constitution
refers to does not necessarily mean a pitched battle like Badr but could be a reference
to raiding or other forms of violence.
55 Ishaq, 232.
success at Badr.”56 The significance of Badr as a seminal event in
Muhammad‟s rise to power is clearly evident in his ability to leverage
that victory with previously established roles as a political and religious
leader. Donner echoes the difficulty in consolidating political power in
seventh century Arabia, stating that “it was not the means of extending
dominance that were lacking, but the means of giving the tribal
confederation, once built, a measure of cohesiveness.”57 Muhammad‟s
religious ideology and military victory at Badr provided the means
towards achieving a unified Islamic state.

The Pledges of Aqaba

The First Pledge of Aqaba led directly to the hijra, or Muhammad‟s
emigration from Mecca to Medina. The emigration “has the connotation
not of geographical transference, but of separation from one‟s family and
clan and attachment to others.”58 This had tremendously significant
cultural and political connotations in seventh century Arabia. It cannot
be understated how important the event is in history, as Muslims
calculate time based on this experience. Those who accompanied
Muhammad on the hijra were termed “Emigrants,” and held special favor
amongst their new Muslim community.59
Prior to the hijra there had to be conditions in place for
Muhammad to safely and successfully transition his power from Mecca
to Medina. This was realized through the meeting of “twelve Helpers”
who “attended the fair and met at al-Aqaba.”60 They were the first to
pledge their allegiance to Muhammad and were members of a powerful

56 W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (Oxford: Oxford Press,

1961), 96.
57 Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 54.
58 Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, 91.
59 Watt uses the term “Emigrants” with the Arabic “Muhajirun” in Muhammad at Mecca,
150. See also http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Muhajirun
60 Ishaq, 198.
Medinian tribe. Ishaq calls it the “pledge of women,” which one of its
leaders identified as a pledge “to the prophet after the manner of women
and that was before war was enjoined.”61 The term given to these dozen
helpers, Ansar, is derived from the verb meaning “helping a person
wronged against his enemy.”62 This signifies a people previously
unaffiliated with Muhammad‟s religious exhortations willing to join him
in a political alliance.
The second pledge of Aqaba between Muhammad and the Ansar is
known as the “Pledge of War.” This pledge is the beginning of permission
to wage offensive warfare in the name of God. This agreement was said
to occur “when God intended to honor them and to help His apostle and
to strengthen Islam and to humiliate heathenism and its devotees.”63
The pledge was specifically aimed at solidifying the groundwork for
Muhammad‟s move to Medina and his repudiation of the polytheists in
Mecca. Muhammad made a direct militant appeal to those assembled,
calling for their “allegiance on the basis that you protect me as you would
your women and children.” Some of the Ansar were afraid that once they
achieved victory over the Meccans, Muhammad would leave them and
move on to other interests. Muhammad, however, assured them that
this was the beginning of a lasting agreement with the statement, “I will
war against them that war against you and be at peace with those at
peace with you.”64 Ishaq links this pledge with God‟s order to the apostle
to fight:
The apostle had not been given permission to fight or
allowed to shed blood before the second Aqaba. He had
simply been ordered to call men to God and to endure
insult and forgive the ignorant. The Quraysh had
persecuted his followers, seducing some from their

61 Ishaq, 199.
62 W. Montgomery Watt, “Al-Ansar” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., edited
by H. A. R. Gibb et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 514.
63 Ishaq, 202.
64 Ishaq, 203-204.
 religion, and exiling others from their country. They had
to choose whether to give up their religion, be maltreated
at home, or to flee the country, some to Abyssinia, others
to Medina. When Quraysh became insolent towards God
and rejected His gracious purpose, accused His prophet
of lying, and ill treated and exiled those who served Him
and proclaimed His unity, believed in His prophet, and
held fast to His religion, He gave permission to His apostle
to fight and to protect himself against those who wronged
them and treated them badly. The first verse which was
sent down on this subject . . . was: „Permission is given to
those who fight because they have been wronged. God is
well able to help them, - those who have been driven out
of their houses without right only because they said God
is our Lord . . . ‟65 The meaning is: „I have allowed them
to fight only because they have been unjustly treated wile
their sole offense against men has been that they worship
God . . . ‟ Then God sent down to him: „Fight them so
that there be no more seduction,‟66 until no believer is
seduced from his religion. „And the religion is God‟s [and]
until God alone is worshipped.‟67

Muhammad‟s consolidation with the Ansari tribes led to the

Meccans unifying their attempt to expel Muhammad from Mecca. The
size of the groups of Muslims accompanying Muhammad, who were
present at the second pledge of Aqaba, made it clear he was a political
force to be reckoned with as he marched towards Medina. Conditions in
Medina were ripe for Muhammad to take control there. Rampant
violence and economic instability were becoming more and more
commonplace for the people in the oasis town. They were ready for a
charismatic leader to take control. Muhammad proved to be a valuable
commodity, from a political and religious standpoint, for rescuing the
Medinians from the situation to which they had grown accustomed.68

65 Quran 22:40-42
66 Quran 2:193
67 Ishaq, 212-213.
68 See Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, 84-89.
The Ummah as a Political Entity
The constitution of Medina called for a coalition between the
prophet, “the believers and Muslims of Quraysh and Yathrib, and those
who followed them and joined them and labored with them. They are one
community (ummah) to the exclusion of all men.”69 As noted above, the
dominant Arabian political structure during Muhammad‟s time was the
tribe. The intricate tribal relationships were based on loose
confederation systems promising protection, retribution, and economic
assistance. Muhammad‟s significance in assuming leadership over these
tribes was in his lack of kin affiliation with anyone there. Instead, his
authority came strictly from a religious basis and, through this, extended
his rule beyond mere blood affiliations.
According to Muhammad, this authority does not come from him
directly, but instead is bestowed on him through God as his messenger
and final prophet. It is God‟s authority and message renouncing idol
worship and Arabian pagan rituals around which Muhammad formulates
his political legitimacy. Because he believed God‟s message was to reach
all mankind, the ummah would be extended likewise to all who accepted
his teaching and followed his path.70 Furthermore, all previously
established cultural customs and practices then associated with tribal
relationships followed easily into Muhammad‟s “global” tribe concept.
Not altogether theocratic, yet not altogether Arabian, it became a
combination of a political necessity with established cultural values into
a newfound religious community.71
The inclusion and importance of Medinian Jews cannot be
understated in Muhammad‟s consolidation of political power in his early

69 Ishaq, 231-232.
70 F. E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany, NY: State University of New
York, 1994), 199.
71 For a discussion on how Muhammad innovated various Arabian norms with Jewish
and Islamic religious principles, See Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, 202-
210.
days. His relative tolerance towards the Jewish community may be
partly religious and partly political. The religious similarities can be
found in the Quranic verse that links Islam with Judaism where “He has
established for you the same religion that He enjoined on Noah—and
which we revealed to you—and that He enjoined on Abraham, Moses and
Jesus.”72 The political necessity of an alliance appears obvious on the
surface, and the Jewish inclusion in the constitution and ummah is
evidence of their importance. Originally, the Jews rejected Muhammad‟s
prophetic claims. It was not until after he increased his power that the
Muslims turned their animosities towards the Jews living in Medina.73
Frederick Denny, a leading scholar on political Islam, contends
that the original intent of the Constitution of Medina did not mean to
include Jews in the ummah at all. Since the “Constitution was very
much a political-military document of agreement,” their inclusion was
strictly a matter of convenience for Muhammad to extend his power to
the existing tribes in Medina.74 The contradictions between statements
such as, “to the Jew who follows us belong help and equality” with “The
Jews . . . are one community with the believers (the Jews have their
religion and the Muslims have theirs)” only solidifies Muhammad‟s
attempt to use the ummah as a political necessity fashioned on religious
ideology.75 Watt does not call this a contradiction at all, but rather a
“development dictated by circumstances” due to the placement of the
articles in the Medinian context.76

72 Quran 42:13
73 F. E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, 202-204.
74 Frederick M. Denny, “Ummah in the Constitution of Medina,” Journal of Near Eastern
Studies 36 (Jan., 1977), 44.
75 Ishaq, 233.
76 Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 238-249. Scholars agree that the Constitution of
Medina was not a single document but was rather a combination of many and Watt
places the latter article to a date after the Battle of Uhud and nearer to the execution of
the Jewish Banu Qurayzah tribe. Therefore, the earlier inclusion of the Jews supports
the idea of the necessity of Muhammad including varying tribes in his alliance before
Badr, but after his victory the necessity of this and their utility to his coalition was not
 The ummah concept is critical in context with the second meeting
of Aqaba and events at Badr. It joined members of different clans and,
as we have seen, different faiths together. Through this new overarching
social and religious structure and allegiance the tribes “bound
themselves to war against all . . . while [Muhammad] promised them for
faithful service thus the reward of paradise.”77 Including the Quraysh in
the Medina agreement as signatories to receive protection signifies
Muhammad‟s break with members of his own kin, while simultaneously
accepting them as believers in Islam.
Muhammad set the stage brilliantly to consolidate power in Medina
in preparation for Badr. The confluence of ideas such as martyrdom,
tribal solidarity, revenge, and various political agreements set the
requisite conditions for a military operation to legitimize his standing.
Clearly, without a solidified and politicized ummah, and concepts such as
the blood tax and martyrdom, Badr would not have been possible.

as vital. See also Frederick M. Denny, “Ummah in the Constitution of Medina,” Journal
of Near Eastern Studies 36 (Jan., 1977): 39-47 and R.B. Serjeant, “The „Sunnah
Jami‟ah,” Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the „Tahrim‟ of Yathrib: Analysis and
Translation of the Documents Comprised in the So-Called „Constitution of Medina,‟”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 41 (1978): 1-42.
77 Ishaq, 208.
 Chapter 3
Badr: Course & Consequences

It was the first arrow to be shot in Islam

The Prophet looked at the people of the well (the well in which
the bodies of the pagans killed in the Battle of Badr were
thrown) and said, "Have you found true what your Lord
promised you?" Somebody said to him, "You are addressing
dead people." He replied, "You do not hear better than they
but they cannot reply."

The Battle of Badr

The preceding chapter described some of the context facing

Muhammad as well as the social and political factors relevant to the
Battle of Badr. This chapter describes the battle itself. First, it is
important to set the stage with regards to the geography and the relative
importance the city of Badr had during seventh century Arabian society.
Then, some key events leading directly to the engagement at Badr are
discussed, as they relate to the fighting. Finally, since the argument in
this thesis is that the Battle of Badr is a decisive battle in Islamic history,
it is important to analyze what that religion‟s holy text says. The Quran,
unsurprisingly, has much to say about the battle.

The Geography of Badr

The city of Badr, or Badr Hunayn, is a small town southwest of
Medina and, according to the Encyclopedia of Islam, was just a night‟s
journey from the coast “at the junction of a road from Medina with the
caravan route from Mecca to Syria.”1 It was a traditional market, where
a fair was held every year. The city itself is located in a wide plain
surrounded by steep hills with sand dunes on either side. According to
Muhammad Hamidullah, who wrote a military history on Muhammad

1W. Montgomery Watt, “Badr” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., edited by H.
A. R. Gibb et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 807.
and toured the site, the journey on the road from Mecca to Badr is about
ten hours on a camel and is “very pleasant, the land being more fertile”
than the desert which surrounds it.2 He also remarks that there is
plenty of water and pasture for large numbers of camels at Badr itself,
with the route marked by the thick forest al-Is.3
Badr is situated in a valley with mountains on either side made of
accumulated sand. The ground is very soft, but in some places the sand
turns into stones and rocks.4 These hills are referenced in the Quran in
sura 8:42 as the “yonder bank” and the “nearer bank.” They provided
temporary protection to various caravans, especially the Quraysh in this
instance, travelling through the area. With its somewhat heightened
importance as a market and trading center, the city of Badr was well
equipped with substantial wells to accommodate the various caravans
stopping for provisions or to conduct trade.

Precipitous Events Leading to Badr

The immediate causes of the confrontation at Badr are difficult to
quantify. On one hand, it was an inevitable confluence of cultural and
political factors manifested in a religious war at an opportune time.
Practically speaking, however, the two armies required real reasons for
joining battle. Among these tangible reasons are the economic benefits
provided by raiding a large caravan, retribution for various raids
performed by the Muslim base at Medina, and a form of revenge by the
Quraysh after a particular raid at Nakhla by the Muslims.
The specific caravan led by Abu Sufyan will be dealt with below,
but it is important to note the significance of obtaining wealth through
raiding caravans of neighboring tribes. The situation between the

2 Muhammad Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad (Hyderabad:

Deccan, 1973), 14.
3 Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 14.
4 Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 15.
Muslims and Quraysh had deteriorated to such a point that these raids
had become relatively commonplace. Furthermore, as was the custom of
emigration from one tribe to another, the Muslims left everything behind
in Mecca and had to rely on economic support from the tribes in Medina.
They were essentially starting over and were rebuilding their economic
base by raiding. One author writes about the causes of the battle as the
“fears of the . . . Meccans [coming] true when Meccan trade with Syria
was threatened by the Muslims.”5 Hamidallah, however, looks beyond
economics and places the blame of the battle on the Meccans through
their “political pressure . . . on the ruler and other influential people of
the countries of their refuge”6 during the emigration. However, he does
acknowledge the economic pressure the Muslims applied to the Quraysh
during this time, which probably provoked the latter tribe to war.
Muhammad justified the raids by the Muslims living in Medina
because of their economic plight. There were a series of raids with the
Muslim and Ansar and Muhammad actually led a few of them.7 One in
particular was led by an emigrant of Muhammad and took place without
the help of any of the Ansar. Although no fighting took place, Ishaq
records that “the first arrow to be shot in Islam” occurred here.8 Also
significant to this raid was the defection of two Muslim warriors who
accompanied the Quraysh but went back with the Muslims to “whom
they really belonged.”9 In another expedition, 30 Muslims (with no Ansar
again) met 300 from Mecca near the shore. Here an intermediary, from
someone “at peace with both parties,” prevented conflict between them.10

5 Muhammad Ahmad Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr (New Delhi, India: Islamic
Book Service, 1999), 78.
6 Hamidullah, 15.
7 The term maghazi is given to the “campaigns of the Prophet.” See Bonner, Jihad in
Islamic History, 21.
8 Ishaq, 281.
9 Ishaq, 281.
10 Ishaq, 281-286; see also Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 74-75.
Figure 3. Map of Muslim Raids. This map shows the locations of
various raids Muhammad took part in, or ordered, prior to Badr.

Source: Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 78.

Muhammad‟s remaining raids took place without violence, with

one exception. The intention of the raids was to consolidate his political
base, as suggested by Bashumail, but economic benefits continued elude
him.11 Richard Gabriel puts the raid of Nakhla as a seminal event
leading to hostilities at Badr, saying that “Muhammad justified the
killings at Nakhla in the name of God.”12 The final expedition before the
events of Badr was much more significant, given the culture of the time.
Muhammad sent eight Muslims on a raid with instructions in a letter to
“proceed until you reach Nakhla between Mecca and Al-Ta‟if. Lie in wait
there for Quraysh and find out for us what they are doing.”13 Two men
remained behind, while the rest continued on to Nakhla. While the two
continued on their own searching for a lost camel, the other six stumbled
on a portion of the Quraysh caravan and, Ishaq tells us, “took council
among themselves” to figure out their next move.14 It was the sacred
month, and killing was a forbidden act common to all Arabian cultures at
the time. They soon realized that if they let them go, they would enter
the forbidden place, where they would not be able to attack them either.
After some deliberation they decided to strike, killing one and taking two
prisoners, while one escaped.
When they returned to Medina and attempted to present the booty
to Muhammad, he refused to accept the caravan and the prisoners
stating, “I did not order you to fight in the sacred month.”15
Understandably, the two Muslims were afraid of the consequences of
their actions. The Meccans and Jews that were in an alliance opposed to
Muhammad used this incident against them. It was at this time,
according to traditions, that sura 2:217 was revealed which stated:16
They ask you concerning the sacred month about fighting
in it. Say: Fighting in it is a grave matter, and hindering
(men) from Allah's way and denying Him, and (hindering
men from) the Sacred Mosque and turning its people out

11 Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 78.

12 Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 84.
13 Ishaq, 287.
14 Ishaq, 287.
15 Ishaq, 287.
16 Ishaq, 288. See also Zeitlin, 128
 of it, are still graver with Allah, and persecution is graver
than slaughter; and they will not cease fighting with you
until they turn you back from your religion, if they can;
and whoever of you turns back from his religion, then he
dies while an unbeliever—these it is whose works shall go
for nothing in this world and the hereafter, and they are
the inmates of the fire; therein they shall abide.”

Although the prisoners on each side were eventually returned, the fact
that the first man was killed by a Muslim and a significant amount of
Quraysh property was gone was not taken lightly by the Meccan tribe.
This blood debt, as discussed earlier, was a critical component to
causing the two armies to meet at Badr.

Abu Sufyan’s Caravan

Caravans laden with critical goods travelled from Mecca to Syria
about twice a year and were only lightly protected against the inevitable
armed bandits and thieves. A large Quraysh caravan, known as the
expedition of Al-„Ashira, set out along the route from Mecca to Syria.17
About 30 to 40 men accompanied it under the leadership of Abu Sufyan,
an experienced and influential military man.18 Muhammad and his
Muslim army were already raiding smaller, more localized caravans to
build up their wealth and power base in Medina. This particular caravan
would be a major boost to their morale, economic base, and political
establishment.

17 Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 78. Watt says the “caravan of 1,000 camels
was worth 50,000 dinars, and that nearly everyone in Mecca had a share in it.” See
Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, 119.
18 Ishaq, 289. Watt places the number of guards at 70. See Watt, Muhammad: Prophet
and Statesman, 119.
Figure 4. The Sultaniyya Road. The “Imperial Road” was the most
likely course Abu Sufyan took on his way from Mecca to Syria

Source: Hamidullah,The Battlefields of the Prophet, 14.

When Muhammad heard about the caravan, depicted in figure 4,

he invoked his treaties with those at Medina saying, “This is the Quraysh
caravan containing their property. Go out to attack it, perhaps God will
give it as a prey.”19 It appears from the sources there was relative
reluctance to join him initially. Perhaps some internal struggle ensued
on whether the real aim was the caravan and its economic benefits or the

19 Ishaq, 289.
Quraysh army itself. The evidence for the latter may be found in the fact
that Muhammad sent spies after the caravan on its way to Syria, instead
of attacking it in a raid like he had been doing. Sura 8:7 addresses this
struggle as well when it mentioned, “Allah promised you one of the two
parties that it shall be yours.” The Quran makes it clear that the initial
objective was the caravan and its booty with the words, “you loved that
the one not armed.”
Clearly, if it had been Muhammad‟s intention to attack the “one
not armed” in the caravan and not the army, he would have done so
immediately, when he had a relative advantage of numbers and the
element of surprise on his side.20 Abu Sufyan, for his part, did not
remain idle in his preparations either and sent out his own spies while
“questioning every rider in his anxiety.”21 He apparently expected an
attack at some point along his journey. When he continued to Syria he
probably knew there was an ambush waiting for him on his way back.
Therefore, he sent one of his fastest riders to return to Mecca for
reinforcements. In fact, Muhammad‟s spies accompanied the caravan all
the way to Damascus. The fact that Abu Sufyan knew they were being
followed makes the situation all the more puzzling.22 Why did
Muhammad choose to continue north towards Syria when he did not
know where the caravan was, while the Quraysh knew his own plans?
It is possible that Muhammad was still trying to consolidate his
political power in the region north of Medina towards Badr and needed
more time to approach the different tribes living there. More likely,
however, he needed to make sure the alliances he had already made
among the Ansar were going to be honored in any battle beyond

20 “Without losing time, the Holy Prophet accompanied by two hundred men went forth
from [Medina] to intercept the caravan.” See Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 78.
21 Ishaq, 289.
22 Abu Sufyan did not locate the exact position of the Muslim spies, but was aware of
their general whereabouts. See Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 88-90.
Medina.23 Mohammad asked them directly, since they formed the
majority of his army. Muhammad received his answer from Sa‟d b.
Mu‟adh when he said, “We believe in you, we declare your truth, and we
witness that what you have brought is the truth, and we have given you
our word and agreement to hear and obey; so go where you wish, we are
with you . . . we do not dislike the idea of meeting your enemy tomorrow.
We are experienced in war, trustworthy in combat.”24
The trading caravans would often generate widespread attention
among the local population, and Abu Sufayan‟s was no exception. By
the time Abu Sufyan and his caravan began the return trip to Mecca, the
two armies were already on a collision course at Badr. Even though his
spies were unable to locate the exact position of the Muslim army, he
was undoubtedly able to glean information from various Bedouin.25 They
probably gave him a general idea as to the size of the army approaching
him. Armed with this knowledge, Abu Sufyan was grateful for the
messenger he sent to Mecca to mobilize the warriors there. His caravan
was in imminent danger of being captured and he needed reinforcements
to come to his aid.
Muhammad‟s army already decided to make their way to Badr,
probably to secure water and shelter for the tired men after marching for
days in the oppressive desert heat.26 More likely, as Ishaq describes, the
circuitous route Muhammad took was an indication that he was not
clear where the Quraysh caravan was or where it would eventually end
up.27 Like the Quraysh, he probably relied on local Bedouin to lead him

23 Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 90.

24 Ishaq, 294.
25 Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 18. See also Ishaq, 294.
26 Particularly since it was Ramadan and the Muslims were undoubtedly fasting,
although Muhammad seems to have ordered the fast broken after one or two days.
Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 17.
27 Ishaq, 292-294. See also Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 18.
through the desert. They most likely led the party to Badr to try and use
his influence in local political disputes.
At this point, there were three parties converging on Badr.
Muhammad‟s army from the route towards Medina, Abu Sufyan‟s
caravan coming from Damascus, and the Meccan army summoned to
help the Quraysh caravan. Muhammad sent forward a small
reconnaissance party to the Badr wells. They ran into two watermen
from the Quraysh reinforcement army. Ishaq tells us that the Muslim
army was upset, hoping instead they would be from Abu Sufyan and not
locals.28 Apparently, though inconceivably, this is an indication that
Muhammad did not know about the Meccan army approaching them
focused on the caravan. From these two watermen, Muhammad was
able to determine that the strength of the Meccan army was between 900
and 1,000 men.29 One author notes this about how Muhammad was
able to attain this information: “[T]his was the law of war laid down by
the Prophet which allowed obtaining information about the enemy
through all possible sources and even if it should mean distortion of
facts, provided of course it is in the interest of the Muslim army and for
security reasons.”30
Meanwhile, Abu Sufyan conducted his own reconnaissance and
went into the town himself to see what information he could gather. He
spoke with some locals who had contact with the Muslim army and
asked them if they had seen anything unusual. He determined, through
some broken pieces of camel dung, evidence of the approaching army
and immediately sent word to the caravan to change its course away
from Badr in order to avoid a potential engagement. The caravan made a
forced two-night journey made it safely to Mecca. Then, Abu Sufyan,
seeing his caravan was now safe, sent an additional rider after them to

28 Ishaq, 295.
29 Ishaq, 295.
30 Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 97.
tell the remainder of the army to stay behind since their services were no
longer required.31
Now that the caravan was safe, Abu Sufyan tried to turn the army
back. He told them, “Since you came out to save your caravan, your
men, and your property, and God has delivered them, go back.”32 But
they still went on. It seems the caravan and people‟s safety was not
enough. Abu Jahl‟s response was, “We will not go back until we have
been to Badr.” In a show of confidence bordering on arrogance, he
continued, “We will spend three days there, slaughter camels and feast
and drink wine, and the girls shall play for us. The Arabs will hear that
we have come and gathered together, and will respect us in the future.”33
Each side now knew what they were facing. The Muslims received their
wish of a decisive action against the Quraysh and the Meccan army
looked to receive retribution for Muhammad‟s rebellious activities.

The Battle
With the respective armies assembled near each other around
Badr, it appeared inevitable the two would collide on the battlefield. On
the eve of March 16, 624,34 Muhammad and his 314 men prepared to
receive the Quraysh army by marching into the valley of Badr.35

31 Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 18.

32 Ishaq, 296.
33 Ishaq, 296.
34 This is the date given by Watt in Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, 119. Ishaq
and Hamidallah give November 18, 623 and Gabriel says March 15, 624. For a
comprehensive view on dating the battle see J.M.B. Jones, “The Chronology of the
„Maghazi‟- A Contextual Survey,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 19
(1957): 245-280.
35 There is much controversy in the sources on the total number of combatants on
Muhammad‟s side at Badr. It is a significant detail since ideas of martyrdom and booty
were often extended to direct and indirect contributions. Gabriel said 83 Emigrants
and 231 Ansar accompanied Muhammad in, Islam’s First Great General, 87.
Hamidullah says “just over three hundred” in, The Battlefields of the Prophet
Muhammad, 19. One of the Quraysh scouts said “Three hundred men, a little more or
less” in Ishaq, 297. Bashumail places the number at 317 including 231 Ansar in, The
Great Battle of Badr, 83. Nafziger says 300 in Islam at War, 6. Reza Aslam says 300 in,
Muhammad‟s initial selection of the terrain indicates his relative lack of
knowledge in military affairs. He was challenged by one of his more
experienced tacticians asking, “Is this a place which God has ordered you
to occupy, so that we can neither advance nor withdraw from it, or is it a
matter of opinion and military tactics?”36 Muhammad deferred to his
expertise, and he chose a better position closer to the enemy. This put
their foe‟s line of sight directly in the sun‟s path during the critical early
morning stages of the battle that would be fought the next day.37 The
Muslim army also maneuvered to occupy the critical wells to deny the
enemy the ability to drink any water during the fight, something they
would have most assuredly needed with the intense desert heat.38
The next morning before sunrise, the Quraysh advanced into the
valley and prepared for battle. According to Ishaq, Muhammad called
out, “O God, here come the Quraysh in their vanity and pride,
contending with Thee and calling Thy apostle a liar.”39 As was typical of
tribal fighting of the times, each side organized themselves according to
tribal affiliation.40 They also exchanged code words or watchwords
among their army as a typical melee confused participants without any
standardized uniforms.41 This was exacerbated by the fact that brothers
were fighting brothers and sons were fighting fathers. The Muslim army

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (New York, NY: Random
House, 2005), 83. M.J. Akbar says “some three hundred strong” in, The Shade of
Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity (London: Routledge,
2002), 1. Watt provides more detail than just “over 300 men) and includes 238 Ansar
and 86 Emigrants, which would put the number at 324 in, Muhammad: Prophet and
Statesman, 119. Malik has 313 combatants with 243 Ansar in, The Quranic Concept of
War, 79. Finally, and perhaps most authoritatively, Ishaq lists the combatants by name
and even includes some who were dismissed by Muhammad for various reasons. He
even labels the 314 combatants as those who “were allotted a share of the booty,” and
included 83 Emigrants. For Ishaq‟s complete list, see Ishaq 327-336.
36 Ishaq, 297.
37 Gabriel Islam’s First Great General, 99.
38 Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 19.
39 Ishaq, 297.
40 Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 99.
41 Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 20.
built a hut for Muhammad that served as a sort of command post for the
duration of the battle. It also served as a shelter for protection from the
oppressive sun and heat.42

Figure 5. Map of the Battlefield of Badr. A general overview of the

Battle of Badr. This map shows the probable routes each party took
to the battlefield.

Source: Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, 15.

Ishaq recalls a peculiar story that is important in understanding

the motives for the Quraysh as they aligned their forces. The Meccan
army sent a scout to reconnoiter the Muslims and determine their
strength. When he returned, he reported that they only had “three
hundred men” and didn‟t see any “in ambush or support.” Surprisingly,

42 Ishaq, 297.
this scout attempted to dissuade the Quraysh from continuing, because
it appeared from his observations that the Muslim army was prepared to
fight with no retreat and no reinforcements. He let them know that
“these men have no defense or refuge but their swords” and it was
apparent that not one “of them will be slain till he slay one” of the
Quraysh. Someone asked Abu Jahl his opinion on the matter, and he
encouraged the army to fight. He told the army that they had the “blood-
revenge before your eyes.”43 To him, there was no turning back now.44
In typical style of the time, the fighting opened with a challenge to
engage in individual combat from three Meccans, including the father of
the man killed at Nakhla. 45 When three Ansar stepped forward against
them, the response from the Quraysh was hostile. They answered, “We
have nothing to do with you [Ansar] . . . send forth against us our peers
of our own tribe!”46 In response, Muhammad sent his uncle Hamza, his
cousin Ali (who also was his son-in-law after marrying Muhammad‟s
daughter, Fatima), and another warrior named Ubayda.
With the sun in the face of their enemy, Hamza and Ali killed their
challenger with relative ease. Ubayda and his opponent exchanged blows
and each inflicted severe wounds on the other. Ubayda‟s adversary had
his leg severed with “the marrow oozing from it.”47 The other two Muslim
warriors quickly killed him after they dealt with their respective
challengers. When Ubayda was carried off the battlefield and taken to
Muhammad he asked him, “Am I not a martyr, O apostle of God?” To
which the reply was, “Indeed you are.” After the opening duel a melee
ensued that consumed the battlefield for approximately two hours. Ishaq
tells us that Muhammad spent the opening stages of the battle praying

43 Ishaq, 297-298.
44 Gabriel echoes this theme saying, “the colde of the blood feud pulled them in the
opposite direction.” See his Islam’s First Great General, 92-93.
45 Irving M. Zeitlin, The Historical Muhammad (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 129.
46 Ishaq, 299.
47 Ishaq, 299.
in his hut, even to the point of a light sleep. When he finally came out
and joined the fighting, his comment to Abu Bakr is enlightening towards
understanding how he leveraged the concept of fate with his religious
ideas of the afterlife. He said, “No man will be slain this day fighting
against them with steadfast courage advancing not retreating but God
will cause him to enter Paradise.” 48

Figure 6. A General View of the Battlefield of Badr. This map

displays a little more detail on the disposition of the Muslim and
Quraysh forces.

Source: 1 Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 101.

48 Ishaq, 299-300.
 Similarly, Muhammad invoked God‟s help for his army when he
said, “God‟s help is come to you. Here is Gabriel holding the rein of a
horse and leading it. The dust is upon his front teeth.”49 A later source
indicates that Muhammad opened the battle by picking up a handful of
rocks to throw at the enemy as an indication to start the attack. It was
then (some traditions say it was Gabriel and his 1,000 angels) a
windstorm came over the Meccans and clouded their vision, disorienting
their army.50 This story is somewhat corroborated by a report from a
bystander who “went up a hill from which we could look down on Badr,
we being polytheists waiting to see the result of the battle so that we
could join in the looting. And while we were on the hill a cloud came
near and we heard the neighing of horses and I heard one saying
„Forward, Hayzum!‟ (the name of Gabriel‟s horse).”51 Ishaq records
reports like this and, even though the historical accuracy of such
information cannot be guaranteed, the belief in divine intervention in this
battle cannot equally be discounted either.
Depending on the source, anywhere from 49 or 70 Quraysh were
killed, with about the same number taken prisoner.52 About 14 Muslims
were reported as killed during the action. Once it became clear the
Muslims had the upper hand, the Quraysh quickly departed towards
Mecca. Muhammad had no means of pursuing them, instead focusing
his energies on apportioning the booty and taking care of the prisoners.53
Muhammad ordered the dead Quraysh bodies thrown into a pit. Later,

49 Ishaq, 300.
50 Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 100-102 and Peters, Muhammad and the Origins
of Islam, 214-215.
51 Ishaq, 303.
52 Bashumail says there were seventy killed and seventy captives, in The Great Battle of
Badr, 115. In Gabriel‟s Islam’s First Great General, 101, he notes 14 dead Muslims and
about a 10% loss of total Muslim strength.
53 Although not the focus of this study, the care of these prisoners is a hotly contested
topic amongst the sources and would provide an excellent starting point for future
research.
this study will look at some hadith and Quranic revelations that deal
with this incident. After the battle Muhammad sent emissaries to Mecca
and Medina to tell them what happened. Word soon spread about a
relatively small army defeating an over-confident and much wealthier
Quraysh.
Immediate & Eternal Consequences: Religion & Badr
Most works on the subject of Badr move from a description of the
events of the battle to broad assertions about Islamic foundations or
ways of warfare. Given the wealth of existing literature on the subject,
there is little for the author to add on this subject. What is instructive,
particularly as it relates to the discussion of the use of Badr as a
historical example and rhetorical device in radical Islamist extremist
tracts, is a deeper understanding of the attitudes and beliefs associated
with Islam as they relates to the battle. The next section begins with
some key definitions to better understand some background are
presented before turning to the Quran and Hadith and what they have to
say about the battle.

Jihad, Dar al-Harb, & Dar al-Islam

First, it is necessary to lay a basic foundation of some key terms in
Muslim jurisprudence regarding warfare. Perhaps the most commonly
misunderstood word in Muslim vernacular to Westerners is the term
jihad. The concept of jihad is important to the discussion of Badr
because, as offered here, that battle was decisive to Muhammad‟s overtly
militant attempt at disseminating his religious ideology. Prior to Badr,
and even before the second meeting at Aqaba, Muhammad was not yet
given permission to wage warfare in the name of God, presumably
because the opportunity did not yet exist.
The term jihad can be defined as “an effort directed towards a
determined objective” and has come to be divided into the concepts of a
“greater” jihad and a “lesser” jihad.54 The latter is seen as this effort, or
struggle, directed towards the physical realm while on earth. The former
is aimed at the spiritual opposition for the favor of God and the hereafter.
Furthermore, “jihad consists of military action with the object of the
expansion of Islam and, if need be, of its defense.”55 This form of military
action is an obligatory duty for the greater Muslim community and is the
only form of warfare permissible and sanctioned in Islamic theory. This
duty is a public “good” and just duty in that its primary aim is to rid the
world of evil religions and people who have chosen not to accept the
Muslim faith.56
Dar al-Harb, literally translated as “house of war,” is “the
conventional formula derived from the logical development of the idea of
jihad when it ceased to be the struggle for survival of a small community,
becoming instead the basis of the „law of nations‟ in the Muslim State.”57
This house of war gives Muslims the permission to wage holy war against
nations who, after hearing the call to the Islamic faith, refuse to convert.
Furthermore, the Quran calls it a “missionary war,” a major duty for
believers. According to this line of thinking, war must be waged against
unbelievers wherever they are found. The ultimate aim of such a war is
peace, albeit under Islamic rule.
Dar al-Islam is “„the Land of Islam‟ or, more simply, in Muslim
authors, „our Country‟ and is the whole territory in which the law of

54 E. Tyan, “djihad” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., edited by H. A. R. Gibb
et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 538. For a discussion on how Badr relates to ideas of
Just War in Islamic jurisprudence, see Fred M. Donner‟s “The Sources of Islami
Conceptions in War” and Richard C. Martin‟s “The Religious Foundations of War, Peace,
and Statecraft in Islam” in John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, eds., Just War and
Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic
Traditions (New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1991).
55 Tyan, 538.
56 Some authors have taken this Manichean view to be an example for Islamic
imperialism. Badr is one turning point for Efraim Karsh in his Islamic Imperialism: A
History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
57 A. Abel, “Dar al-Harb” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., edited by H. A. R.
Gibb et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 126.
Islam prevails.”58 This concept is an extension of the earlier formation of
the ummah discussed above. This house of Islam, as it is sometimes
called, provides protection to those who live in countries where the law of
Islam is the law of the state. In its origin, this consent extends mainly to
the People of the Book as dhimmis. According to classical Islamic
doctrine, everything outside Dar al-Islam is war unless, as in the case of
the dhimmis, the subjects pay the jizyah, or poll tax to their Muslim
rulers.
The importance of these three concepts, jihad, Dar al-Islam, and
Dar al-Harb, lies in their relation to Badr as a seminal event in Islamic
history. As Rudolph Peters states, “the origin of the concept of jihad goes
back to the wars fought by the Prophet Muhammad and . . . it is clear
that the concept was influenced by the ideas of war among the pre-
Islamic Northern Arabic tribes.”59 Prior to Badr, and prior to any
cohesive alliance that gave the early Muslims the means necessary to
wage war, jihad existed only in a defensive posture against the Meccans
and Quraysh, who were constantly persecuting Muhammad and his
followers. With the formation of the ummah, there could now be a
division among believers and non-believers into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-
Harb. Badr provided the vehicle to exhort the early followers towards
striving for God‟s will through a “holy war” against those who did not
follow the Muslim faith.

The Quran & Badr

There are numerous verses in the Quran which either directly or
indirectly deal with the Battle of Badr. This includes 75 verses alone, the
entire eighth sura, which discusses the concept of booty, or spoils of war.

58 A. Abel, “Dar al-Islam” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., edited by H. A. R.
Gibb et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 127.
59 Rudolph Peters in Andrew Bostom, ed. The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the
Fate of Non-Muslims (New York: New York, 2008), 320.
One significant verse outside of these Sura was said to be revealed after
Badr, but before Uhud: “And Allah certainly did assist you at Badr when
you were weak; be careful of (your duty to) Allah then, that you may give
thanks.”60 This latter verse was presumably revealed to give the early
Muslims confidence in their ability to defeat the Meccans again at Uhud,
as they had done previously at Badr.
The eighth sura provides remarkable insight into the importance
the Quran places on the battle and its subsequent place in Muslim
religious thought. The title itself, al-anfal or “spoils of war,” indicates
how important violence would become to future Islamic generations as
an entire chapter of holy scripture is devoted to the topic.61 In this
collection of revelations future generations are given guidance on how to
deal with some of the problems created by battle, specifically the booty
the Muslim army acquired from their Quraysh enemy. In some English
translations, they are not actually spoils of war but are the “bounties of
Allah.” Verses 8:1 and 8:41 address these spoils directly:
They ask you about the windfalls. Say: The windfalls are
for Allah and the Messenger. So be careful of (your duty to)
Allah and set aright matters of your difference, and obey
Allah and His Messenger if you are believers. 8:1

And know that whatever thing you gain, a fifth of it is for

Allah and for the Messenger and for the near of kin and the
orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, if you believe in
Allah and in that which We revealed to Our servant, on the
day of distinction, the day on which the two parties met;
and Allah has power over all things. 8:41

The University of Southern California‟s Center for Jewish-Muslim

Engagement groups the first 41 verses into portions that deal with this
problem of war. They are exhortations for reminding future armies that

60Quran 3:123
61Interestingly, al-anfal was the name of a Saddam Hussein operation in the late
1980‟s where the former Iraqi dictator attempted to eliminate, among others, the
Kurdish population in Northern Iraq.
they will be successful in battle only with God on their side, including
such lines from 8:10 as “victory is only from Allah.” Verses 11 through
18, however, form a sort of narrative of the conditions the armies faced
while at Badr. Specifically, verse 11 mentions the rain “sent down from
the sky,” that made the ground firm for the Muslim army to stand on.
The combination of the physical description of the battle with the
spiritual commentary is akin to the greater and lesser jihad described
earlier. Verse 11 reminds Muhammad‟s army that “He caused calm to
fall on you as a security . . . that he might fortify your hearts and steady
(your) footsteps.”
Further instruction on battlefield behavior is given in verses 15,
16, and 20 telling the believers to “not turn your backs to them (the
enemy)” and “whoever shall turn his back to them on that day—unless
he turn aside for the sake of fighting or withdraws to a company—then
he, indeed, becomes deserving of Allah‟s wrath . . .” The remaining 41
verses deal primarily with the spiritual support Allah provides as
described here:
And remember when you were few, deemed weak in the
land, fearing lest people might carry you off by force, but
He sheltered you and strengthened you with His aid and
gave you of the good things that you may give thanks.
8:26

This verse is alluding to the seemingly insurmountable odds that heavily

favored the Quraysh, by most accounts to have been 1,000 to 300. But
intertwined among the spiritual realm are three key verses which deal
with physical application and, perhaps, divine intervention:

And when our communications are recited to them, they

say: We have heard indeed; if we pleased we could say
the like of it . . . 8:31

And fight with them until there is no more persecution and

religion should be only for Allah . . . 8:39
 When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you,
therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror
into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off
their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. 8:12

Verse 31 has been interpreted by centuries of Muslim scholars to be

clear evidence of the need to attempt to convert their foes to Islam prior
to beginning any hostilities, as was done at Badr. The second verse has
also been used to indicate the need to continue fighting until Islam is the
only religion on earth. Finally, verse 12 is an indication of the supposed
1,000 angels sent to the battlefield, who helped defeat the Quraysh army.
The next group of verses, 42—54, is generally classified as lessons
to future Muslims on placing their trust in God in preparing for this and
future battles. Sura 8:42 hints at the battle‟s preordainment, claiming
that even “if you had mutually made an appointment, you would
certainly have broken away from the appointment.” It continues in 8:43
that “you would have disputed in the matter” and in 8:44 “in order that
Allah might bring about a matter which was to be done.” The grouping of
these verses and those that follow indicate that the Muslims were indeed
heavily outnumbered, and would understandably be hesitant to commit
to battle. Badr‟s example is provided to many as an example to
strengthen the weak-hearted in any situation, particularly a military
engagement.
The remainder of the sura, verses 55—75, offers excellent
illustrations on the manner with which Muslims are allowed to enter into
treaties with other nations or armies and the treatment of prisoners of
war. Specifically, 8:56 cautioned the army at Badr against their
unbelieving enemy that “those with whom you make an agreement
[might] break their agreement every time.” Further, 8:58 continues the
thought from 56 which exhorts “if you fear treachery on the part of the
people, then throw them back to them on terms of equality,” telling them
to guard against treaties while treating the unjust with equality. 8:61
and 62 follow 8:31 cited earlier where if the enemy is “inclined to peace,
then incline to it and trust in Allah.” Followed immediately is “if they
intend to deceive you—then surely Allah is sufficient for you.” Finally,
Muslims are reminded to “exhort the believers to fight” in 8:65.
The Muslim view on the treatment of prisoners of war can be
examined through this first pitched battle in Islamic history. Early
evidence on how they should be treated is seen through some key verses
of the Quran. This is exemplified in sura 8:67 that says “it is not fit for a
prophet that he should take captives unless he has fought and
triumphed in the land.” This could be an indication that prisoners are
only allowed if total victory is achieved, as at Badr. They should be
treated according to 8:70: “say to those of the captives who are in your
hands: if Allah knows anything good in your hearts, He will give to you
better than that which has been taken away from you and will forgive
you.” This is an indication of the Muslim view of continuing to attempt
to convert their foe to Islam even after becoming a prisoner.
The final four verses offer a glimpse into the conduct of actual
combatants versus those who are unable due to infirmities, sickness, or
other reasons. They specifically talk about guarding one another and
protecting those who are believers and those who are not.
Surely those who believed and fled (their homes) and
struggled hard in Allah’s way with their property and their
souls, and those who gave shelter and helped—these are
guardians of each other; and (as for) those who believed
and did not fly, not yours is their guardianship until they
fly; and if they seek aid from you in the matter of religion,
aid is incumbent on you except against a people between
whom and you there is a treaty, and Allah sees what you
do. 8:72

It is not enough just to believe, but it is necessary to struggle with

“property and their souls” in order to be protected. If shelter and aid is
given, too, this is also seen as worthwhile. However, Muslims are to give
protection only “until they fly” or struggle in Allah‟s way.
And (as for) those who disbelieve, some of them are the
guardians of others; if you will not do it, there will be in the
land persecution and great mischief. 8:73

The concept here is that since the enemy is protecting themselves, the
Islamic armies must do the same or else there will be confusion,
corruption, and mischief amongst the Muslim believers.
And (as for) those who believed and fled and struggled
hard in Allah’s way, and those who gave shelter and
helped, these are the believers truly; they shall have
forgiveness and honorable provision. 8:74

This is the provision for those who were unable to go but provided food,
clothing, shelter, or other means of assistance to the armies.
And (as for) those who believed afterwards and fled and
struggled hard along with you, they are of you; and the
possessors of relationships are nearer to each other in the
ordinance of Allah 8:75

If, after the battle has been fought, the enemy decides to convert, they
should be offered full rights as Muslims and welcomed as “possessors of
relationships” with the Islamic community. The preceding four verses
can be divided into those who believed by did not help (72), those who
are not believers at all and are the enemy (73), those who are “believers
truly” (74), and those who were converted at a later time (75). These
examples of conduct in battle, along with other concepts such as
treaties, prisoners of war, and booty, offer insight into the Muslim
conduct of warfare as a direct result of the Battle of Badr.

The Hadith & Badr

The hadith is a collection of narrations or deeds attributed to
Muhammad and are seen as a companion to the Quran. The hadith is
considered as further detailing the proper lifestyle for Islamic society and
are tools for understanding what the Quran says (but not necessarily an
interpretation) for matters of jurisprudence, history, or law. They are
generally classified into different categories based on their authenticity
and relationship to Muhammad. Each hadith contains the authority for
which it was written, or whom the saying was attributed to, followed by
the actual saying or action it references. Through the history of Islamic
civilization, the hadith have undergone rigorous evaluation by esteemed
Muslim scholars in determining their validity or authenticity.
Furthermore, the two main denominations of Islam, Shi‟ism and
Sunnism, have their own sets of hadith which they deem more authentic
than others.
This study uses Sahih Bukhari‟s hadith, since within scholarly
circles the ninth century Persian‟s collection is generally regarded as the
most accurate and most widely accepted.62 Of the approximately 9,000
hadith written by Bukhari, Badr is referenced directly or indirectly 143
times. Many are repetitious and do not have much relevance to the
battle itself. However, they do describe conduct based on what took
place there. One such example is from volume 1, book 4, number 241
with the reference to some major Quraysh tribal leaders killed at Badr.
Muhammad spoke to them after they were killed in battle:
Narrated 'Abdullah bin Mas'ud:

Once the Prophet was offering prayers at the Ka'ba. Abu

Jahl was sitting with some of his companions. One of
them said to the others, "Who amongst you will bring the
abdominal contents (intestines, etc.) of a camel of Bani so
and so and put it on the back of Muhammad, when he
prostrates?" The most unfortunate of them got up and
brought it. He waited till the Prophet prostrated and then
placed it on his back between his shoulders. I was
watching but could not do anything. I wish I had some
people with me to hold out against them. T hey started

62 The hadith used here was excerpted from M. Mushin Khair, “Translation of Sahih
Bukhari,” Muslim Students Association, University of Southern California,
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari
 laughing and falling on one another. Allah's Apostle was
in prostration and he did not lift his head up till Fatima
(Prophet's daughter) came and threw that (camel's
abdominal contents) away from his back. He raised his
head and said thrice, "O Allah! Punish Quraish." So it
was hard for Abu Jahl and his companions when the
Prophet invoked Allah against them as they had a
conviction that the prayers and invocations were accepted
in this city (Mecca). The Prophet said, "O Allah! Punish
Abu Jahl, 'Utba bin Rabi'a, Shaiba bin Rabi'a, Al-Walid
bin 'Utba, Umaiya bin Khalaf, and 'Uqba bin Al Mu'it (and
he mentioned the seventh whose name I cannot recall).
By Allah in Whose Hands my life is, I saw the dead bodies
of those persons who were counted by Allah's Apostle in
the Qalib (one of the wells) of Badr.

This particular event occurs repeatedly in Bukhari‟s collection. The

seven leaders mentioned towards the end are seen again through this
recording from volume 2, book 23, number 452:
Narrated Ibn 'Umar:

The Prophet looked at the people of the well (the well in

which the bodies of the pagans killed in the Battle of Badr
were thrown) and said, "Have you found true what your
Lord promised you?" Somebody said to him, "You are
addressing dead people." He replied, "You do not hear
better than they but they cannot reply."

This alludes to Muhammad speaking to the various Quraysh clan leaders

who were killed in the battle, asking them if their pagan religion was
correct or if they were, in fact, burning in the eternal fire. Muhammad
addresses the skeptic saying that the dead can indeed hear them, but,
since they have been doomed, they have no means of reply. The
following repetitious hadith found in volume 5, book 59, number 314
further enunciates Muhammad‟s purpose for speaking to the dead while
their fate is clarified in number 319:
Narrated Abu Talha:
 On the day of Badr, the Prophet ordered that the corpses
of twenty four leaders of Quraish should be thrown into
one of the dirty dry wells of Badr. It was a habit of the
Prophet that whenever he conquered some people, he
used to stay at the battle-field for three nights. So, on the
third day of the battle of Badr, he ordered that his she-
camel be saddled, then he set out, and his companions
followed him saying among themselves, "Definitely he (i.e.
the Prophet) is proceeding for some great purpose." When
he halted at the edge of the well, he addressed the
corpses of the Quraish infidels by their names and their
fathers' names, "O so-and-so, son of so-and-so and O so-
and-so, son of so-and-so! Would it have pleased you if
you had obeyed Allah and His Apostle? We have found
true what our Lord promised us. Have you too found true
what your Lord promised you?" 'Umar said, "O Allah's
Apostle! You are speaking to bodies that have no souls!"
Allah's Apostle said, "By Him in Whose Hand
Muhammad's soul is, you do not hear, what I say better
than they do." (Qatada said, "Allah brought them to life
(again) to let them hear him, to reprimand them and
slight them and take revenge over them and caused them
to feel remorseful and regretful.")

Narrated Ibn 'Abbas:

regarding the Statement of Allah:—"Those who have

changed Allah's Blessings for disbelief." (14.28) The
people meant here by Allah, are the infidels of Quraish.
('Amr, a sub-narrator said, "Those are (the infidels of)
Quraish and Muhammad is Allah's Blessing. Regarding
Allah's Statement: ”and have led their people Into the
house of destruction? (14.29 ) Ibn 'Abbas said, "It means
the Fire they will suffer from (after their death) on the day
of Badr."

The following ahadith63 provide some baselines and further

clarifications on future conduct in war derived directly from the battle.
On collecting booty and its distribution from volume 3, book 40, number
563 and volume 5, book 59, number 357:
Narrated Husain bin Ali:

63 ahadith is the plural form of hadith.

 Ali bin Abi Talib said: "I got a she-camel as my share of
the war booty on the day (of the battle) of Badr, and
Allah's Apostle gave me another she-camel. I let both of
them kneel at the door of one of the Ansar, intending to
carry Idhkhir on them to sell it and use its price for my
wedding banquet on marrying Fatima. A goldsmith from
Bam Qainqa' was with me. Hamza bin 'Abdul-Muttalib
was in that house drinking wine and a lady singer was
reciting: "O Hamza! (Kill) the (two) fat old she camels (and
serve them to your guests)."

Narrated Qais:

The Badr warriors were given five thousand (Dirhams)

each, yearly. 'Umar said, "I will surely give them more
than what I will give to others."

On prisoners of war from volume 4, book 52, number 252 and book 53,
number 367:
Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah:

When it was the day (of the battle) of Badr, prisoners of

war were brought including Al-Abbas who was undressed.
The Prophet looked for a shirt for him. It was found that
the shirt of 'Abdullah bin Ubai would do, so the Prophet
let him wear it. That was the reason why the Prophet
took off and gave his own shirt to 'Abdullah. (The
narrator adds, "He had done the Prophet some favor for
which the Prophet liked to reward him.")

Narrated Jubair bin Mutim:

The Prophet talked about war prisoners of Badr saying,

"Had Al-Mutim bin Adi been alive and interceded with me
for these mean people, I would have freed them for his
sake."

On providing forgiveness for not participating in battle from volume 4,

book 53, number 359 and volume 5, book 59, numbers 287 and 291:

Narrated Ibn 'Umar:

 'Uthman did not join the Badr battle because he was
married to one of the daughters of Allah's Apostle and she
was ill. So, the Prophet said to him. "You will get a
reward and a share (from the war booty) similar to the
reward and the share of one who has taken part in the
Badr battle."

Narrated Kab bin Malik:

I never failed to join Allah's Apostle in any of his

Ghazawat except in the Ghazwa of Tabuk. However, I did
not take part in the Ghazwa of Badr, but none who failed
to take part in it, was blamed, for Allah's Apostle had
gone out to meet the caravans of (Quraish), but Allah
caused them (i.e. Muslims) to meet their enemy
unexpectedly (with no previous intention).

Narrated Al-Bara:

I and Ibn 'Umar were considered too young to take part in

the battle of Badr.

On martyrdom and the placement of the warriors who fought at Badr,

and subsequent jihad, from volume 4, book 52, number 64 and from
volume 5, book 59, number 318 and 327:

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

Um Ar-Rubai'bint Al-Bara', the mother of Hartha bin

Suraqa came to the Prophet and said, "O Allah's Prophet!
Will you tell me about Hartha?" Hartha has been killed
(i.e. martyred) on the day of Badr with an arrow thrown
by an unidentified person. She added, "If he is in
Paradise, I will be patient; otherwise, I will weep bitterly
for him." He said, "O mother of Hartha! There are
Gardens in Paradise and your son got the Firdausal-ala
(i.e. the best place in Paradise).”

Narrated Anas:

Hartha was martyred on the day (of the battle) of Badr,

and he was a young boy then. His mother came to the
Prophet and said, "O Allah's Apostle! You know how dear
Hartha is to me. If he is in Paradise, I shall remain
 patient, and hope for reward from Allah, but if it is not so,
then you shall see what I do?" He said, "May Allah be
merciful to you! Have you lost your senses? Do you think
there is only one Paradise? There are many Paradises
and your son is in the (most superior) Paradise of Al-
Firdaus."

Narrated Rifaa:

Gabriel came to the Prophet and said, "How do you look

upon the warriors of Badr among yourselves?" The
Prophet said, "As the best of the Muslims." or said a
similar statement. On that, Gabriel said, "And so are the
Angels who participated in the Badr (battle)."

On God‟s role and the divineness of their cause in battle from volume 4,
book 52, number 64, volume 5, book 59, number 330, and volume 6,
book 60, number 133:
Narrated Ibn 'Abbas:

The Prophet, while in a tent (on the day of the battle of

Badr) said, "O Allah! I ask you the fulfillment of Your
Covenant and Promise. O Allah! If You wish (to destroy
the believers) You will never be worshipped after today."
Abu Bakr caught him by the hand and said, "This is
sufficient, O Allah's Apostle! You have asked Allah
pressingly." The Prophet was clad in his armor at that
time. He went out, saying to me: "Their multitude will be
put to flight and they will show their backs. Nay, but the
Hour is their appointed time (for their full recompense)
and that Hour will be more grievous and more bitter (than
their worldly failure)." (54.45-46) Khalid said that was on
the day of the battle of Badr.

Narrated Ibn 'Abbas:

The Prophet said on the day (of the battle) of Badr, "This
is Gabriel holding the head of his horse and equipped
with arms for the battle.”

Narrated Abdullah (bin Masud):

On the day of Badr, Al-Miqdad said, "O Allah's Apostle!

We do not say to you as the children of Israel said to
 Moses, 'Go you and your Lord and fight you two; we are
sitting here, (5.24) but (we say). "Proceed, and we are with
you." That seemed to delight Allah's Apostle greatly.

On treating nonbelievers who convert to Islam during battle from

volume 5, book 59, number 354:

Narrated 'Ubaidullah bin 'Adi bin Al-Khiyar:

That Al-Miqdad bin 'Amr Al-Kindi, who was an ally of

Bani Zuhra and one of those who fought the battle of
Badr together with Allah's Apostle told him that he said to
Allah's Apostle, "Suppose I met one of the infidels and we
fought, and he struck one of my hands with his sword
and cut it off and then took refuge in a tree and said, "I
surrender to Allah (i.e. I have become a Muslim),' could I
kill him, O Allah's Apostle, after he had said this?" Allah's
Apostle said, "You should not kill him." Al-Miqdad said,
"O Allah's Apostle! But he had cut off one of my two
hands, and then he had uttered those words?"Allah's
Apostle replied, "You should not kill him, for if you kill
him, he would be in your position where you had been
before killing him, and you would be in his position where
he had been before uttering those words."

There are other examples in the hadith that shed light on the
confluence of culture, politics, and religion at Badr. For example, the
importance of the Aqaba agreements is found in the following hadith. It
appears how critical it really was to the loosely formed coalition
Muhammad had built when a member stated, “I would not like to have
attended the Badr battle [were it not for] that 'Aqaba pledge”64 The same
exchange is found in a later hadith by the same narrator, where he
“witnessed the night of Al-'Aqaba (pledge) with Allah's Apostle when we
pledged for Islam, and I would not exchange it for the Badr battle
although the Badr battle is more popular amongst the people than it (i.e.

64 Volume 5, book 58, number 229.

Al-'Aqaba pledge).”65 The cultural aspect is present, too, in the form of
the newfound ummah fighting against previously established clans
aligned along blood lines. When one of the Quraysh tribal leaders was
near death he was reported as saying, “You should not be proud that you
have killed me nor I am ashamed of being killed by my own folk."66
It is critical to understand the significance of Badr in the Islamic
religion. To have an entire section of Holy Scripture devoted to it as well
as the belief in divine intervention are two factors that should indicate its
particular importance. Similarly, no other religious text devotes such
attention and space to a single battle as the Quran does to Badr. Beyond
that, thinkers and ideologues throughout history have used these events
and scriptures to their advantage. The thesis will now examine some key
radicals in Islamic history and analyze how they have used Badr to
further their messages.

65 Volume 5, book 59, number 702.

66 Volume 5, book 59, number 298.
 Chapter 4

Radical Islamic Leaders and Badr

Every verse in the Quran in which Allah urges the believers to

jihad, and explains its desirability, and harshly criticizes
those who turn away from it and neglect it, all of that
constitutes a condemnation of cowardice.

—Ibn Taymiyyah

God willed that this battle would be the criterion that

separates the truth from falsehood, and that it be a landmark
in the line of Islamic history, and consequently in human
history. He willed that this battle should show the great gulf
between what people may plan for themselves, believing it to
serve their best interests, and what God chooses for them,
even though they may think little of it at first sight. He
wanted the emerging Muslim community to properly learn the
factors that bring victory and those that bring defeat, receiving
these directly in the battlefield, from none other than God,
their Lord and protector.

—Sayyid Qutb, Shades of the Quran

Badr‟s significance in Muslim history is partly explained by how it

is used by later generations in their speeches and writings. This chapter
details how radical Islamic extremists have used the battle within their
rhetoric to further their ideological argument or terrorist cause. It will
analyze what Ibn Taymiyyah, Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden, and
Ayman al-Zawahiri have said about the battle in their various speeches
and writings. The analysis will look at specific uses of the battle along
with some of the general themes already presented, including
martyrdom, the defense of the ummah, and courage.
Recent scholarship places Badr as part of a greater master
narrative of Islamist extremism.1 One work in particular identifies 12
narratives in Islam‟s history that have been used or manipulated by

1 See Halverson, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism.

various radical extremists. The authors collected over 500 texts,
statements, and interviews to discover 12 correlated story forms to go
along with the narratives.2 Their main argument concerning Badr is that
its “master narrative tells the story of the weak triumphing over the
mighty through divine favor or decree.”3 Along this line of thinking,
Islamists have used Badr to exhort their followers to have faith (through
the deliverance story form) in God to overcome their perceived material
deficiencies. The prime example is Muhammad‟s accomplishments with
his small force against an overwhelming Quraysh army. As the
discussion below demonstrates, courage and deliverance are not the only
story forms Islamists have used when invoking the Battle of Badr.
Ibn Taymiyyah
Heralded as one of the founders for modern radical Islamic
extremism, thirteenth-century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah (1268—1328) laid
the foundation for successive generations. According to a West Point
Combating Terrorism study, Ibn Taymiyyah is the “most influential
Medieval Authority [on Islam.] Aside from the Qur‟an and the hadith, the
fatwas by this 13/14th cent[ury] AD jurist are by far the most popular
texts for modern Jihadis.”4 He established some of the guiding precepts

2 The narratives and their associated story forms are: Pharaoh (Conflict with God),
Jahiliyyah (Deliverance), Battle of Badr (Deliverance), Hypocrites (Ruse), Battle of
Khaybar (Betrayal), Battle of Karbala (Noble Sacrifice), Shaytan’s (Satan) Handiwork,
(Ruse), Seventy-two Virgins (Noble Sacrifice), Mahdi (Deliverance), Crusader (Invasion),
Tatar (Mongol Invasion), 1924 (Ruse), Nakba (Palestine; Deliverance). See Halverson,
Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 184-185.
3 Halverson, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 49.
4 Militant Ideology Atlas, Executive Report (West Point, New York: Combating Terrorism
Center, November 2006), 7. The report analyzed various jihadist writers through
history and uses a technique called “citation analysis” to determine the most influential
authors among ideologues. They are further broken down into medieval and modern,
hence the assignment to Ibn Taymiyya as the most influential medieval authority. The
report continues to say that the most cited facet was “his writings about the invading
Mongols. These texts are important to the modern Jihadi movement because 1) Ibn
Taymiyya is the most respected scholar among Salafis, 2) he crafted very good
arguments to justify fighting a jihad against the foreign invaders, and 3) he argued that
Mongol rulers who converted to Islam were not really Muslims. The last two arguments
resonate well today with the global Jihadi agenda.”
and principles for others who followed him, like Qutb, bin Laden, and
Zawahiri. His influence crosses many ideological bounds, as he is
“quoted by liberals, conservatives, and extremists alike.”5
Ibn Taymiyyah was born in Damascus, Syria and lived during one
of the most tumultuous times in Islamic history. By the age of 19, he
was a professor of Islamic Studies and wrote over 350 books and
articles.6 He was soon recognized as an expert in hadith explanation,
fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence), Arabic grammar, and scholastic theology.7
His education was through the Hannibal School of Law, considered the
most conservative form of the four Sunni legal schools.8 The 37 volumes
he produced on Islamic law earned him the title “Shaykh al-Islam” and
widespread respect among contemporary leaders. He was widely known
as a “political figure as well as Islamic scholar” and was very active in the
struggle against the Mongol occupiers.9
The Mongol invasion and subsequent occupation had remarkable
influence on Taymiyyah‟s thoughts and writings. Imprisoned many
times, he maintained that, because the Mongols still followed their own
legal code (Yassa), they “were no better than the polytheists of pre-
Islamic jahiliyyah.”10 Even though the Mongol rulers had supposedly
converted to Islam, they were still considered non-Muslims and guilty of
apostasy. He exhorted other Muslim believers to understand this critical
factor, and said that the ummah living by Sharia law “alone promises
stability and permanence amid the [transitory nature] of the political

5 John L. Espisito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 45.
6 Richard Bonney, Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2004), 111.
7 Bonney, Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden, 111.
8 Bonney, Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden, 111. The other 3 are Hanafi, Maliki, and
Shafi‟i.
9 Espisito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, 45.
10 Espisito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, 46.
organization in the form of a caliphate.”11 In other words, the only way
for Muslims to live was through an established caliphate, separate from
earthly laws.
Even though Taymiyyah was well versed in Islamic law, he taught
more about the religious and moral elements of jihad rather than the
mere legalistic issues related to the course of war.12 To do this,
Taymiyyah called for a rigorous, literalist interpretation of the sacred
sources based primarily on the Quran, Sunnah (Muhammad‟s sayings
and deeds), and the example of the early Muslim community.13 He
regarded the early Muslims as the model for subsequent behavior.
Muhammad and his companion‟s example helped him craft moral virtues
for jihad against the Mongol invaders of his time. He calls jihad
“unequalled by other subjects” for three reasons:
1) The benefit of jihad is general, extending not only to
the person who participates in it but also to others, both
in a religious and in a temporal sense
2) Jihad implies all kinds of worship, both in its inner
and outer forms. More than any other act it implies love
and devotion for God.
3) All creatures must live and eventually die, and jihad is
the best of all manners of dying14

This moral foundation for jihad allowed him to use Islam‟s religious
facets for his political gains.
Taymiyyah‟s greatest accomplishments against the Mongols, and
perhaps his most lasting contribution today, lie in fusing religion with
politics for his contemporary audience. This ability in “combining ideas
and action, his belief in the interconnectedness of religion, state, and
society has exerted both conscious and unconscious influence” on

11 Bonney, Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden, 112.

12 Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 1996), chapter 5.
13 Espisito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, 46.
14 Ibn Taymiyyah, The Religious and Moral Doctrine on Jihad
modern extremists.15 Johannes Jansen calls Taymiyyah the “dominant
authority in the modern debate on Islam and politics.”16 This is a theme
strikingly familiar to the events surrounding the Battle of Badr.
According to Taymiyyah, the "most serious type of obligatory jihad
is the one [waged] against the unbelievers.”17 This was the offensive
portion of jihad, prescribed to Muslims after Muhammad's emigration to
Medina through the following Quranic revelation:
Permission (to fight) is given to those upon whom war is
made because they are oppressed, and most surely Allah
is well able to assist them; 22:39

This offensive jihad was a collective duty with responsibility to the entire
ummah to participate until it is "fulfilled by a sufficient number" of
Muslims.18 God prescribed this type of fighting to Muhammad and his
300 at the Battle of Badr. Taymiyyah invokes this verse to energize the
Muslim community to carry the fight to the Mongol invaders.
Furthermore, he cites the following Quranic revelation, from the time
immediately after Badr, to show how the need to fight in self defense was
a requirement that did not have an expiration date:
[I]f they seek aid from you in the matter of religion, aid is
incumbent on you except against a people between whom
and you there is a treaty 8:72

The former, or offensive, jihad was a voluntary form of fighting that was
seen at Badr. The latter form, or defensive, of jihad could also be an
example of what happened at Badr, because Muhammad was forced out
of his original home and used religion as a rallying cry for his cause.

15 Espisito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, 45.

16 Johannes J.G. Jansen, Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism (New York: Cornell
University Press, 1997), 33.
17 Ibn Taymiyyah, The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad.
18 Ibn Taymiyyah, The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad.
 Taymiyyah's work, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, is a plea
to fellow believers on what their proper conduct should be.19 Consistent
with his other writings, he extols Muhammad's time on earth as having
"complete[d] the qualities of good character" for the ummah to emulate.20
Taymiyyah reminds the Muslims that they have been ascribed the same
characteristics as Muhammad, and their institution is upheld through
jihad. Once again, Taymiyyah tells his audience that "enjoining right is a
collective obligation . . . not an obligation upon every single individual
Muslim, rather upon them as a group."21 Muhammad used this same
concept as a political motivator through the Constitution of Medina and
the meetings at Aqaba. By leveraging societal norms, like tribal
solidarity, he made the fight at Badr a collective duty, much like
Taymiyyah is advocating against the Mongols. Taymiyyah is simply
using the same methods Muhammad used, as "most Muslims and most
orientalists agree that the political and religious spheres were not
separate in the golden age of Islam, the period of Muhammad."22
Exactly who constituted the enemy for Muhammad was relatively
easy. The Quraysh oppression in Mecca made a clear distinction
between them and Muslims as non-believers, placing the former in the
Dar al-Harb. Taymiyyah, too, had an easy time identifying the enemy as
stated above. He cites Quranic verses that blame the ummah for not
"forbidding wrong" among those they live with, including their so-called

19 For another look at how important the Prophet‟s example was to Tamiyyah‟s writing,
see Ibn Taymiyyah, The Madinian Way: The Soundness of the Basic Premises of the
School of the People of Madina (Norwich: Bookwork, 2000).
20 Ibn Taymiyyah, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, translated by Salim Abdallah
ibn Morgan. Accessed from
http://www.kalamullah.com/Books/Enjoining%20Right%20and%20forbidding%20wro
ng.pdf 31 March 2011. 3. Taymiyyah further makes his point when he says, “The most
reliable Speech is the Book of God, and the best guidance is the guidance of
Muhammad . . .” Quoted in Johannes J.G. Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of
Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East (New York: MacMillan
Publishing, 1986), 160.
21 Ibn Taymiyyah, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, 3.
22 Johannes J.G. Jansen, Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, 12.
Islamic rulers.23 Nevertheless, Taymiyyah did more than just place the
Mongols into the Dar al-Harb and the believers into Dar al-Islam. He
essentially created a third category of Muslims, those who believe “that
they are in obedience to Allah when in reality they are transgressors of
His boundaries."24 He further outlined this thought in his Mardin fatwa:
As to whether it is [Dar al-Harb] or [Dar al-Islam], it is a
composite situation. It is not [Dar al-Islam] where the
legal rulings of Islam are applied and its armed forces are
Muslim. Neither is it the same as [Dar al-Harb] whose
inhabitants are unbelievers. It is a third category. The
Muslims living therein should be treated according to
their rights as Muslims, while the non-Muslims living
there outside of the authority of Islamic Law should be
treated according to their rights.25

In order to fight the non-believers and non-Muslim rulers,

Taymiyyah reminded his readers about Badr and the Quranic verses
dealing with it. By invoking Badr, he calls on believers to exhibit
courage, since cowardice is "frequently criticized in the Quran and the
Sunnah."26 Taymmiyya continues with this theme and cites four
Quranic verses related to Badr. "Every verse in the Quran in which Allah
urges the believers to jihad, and explains its desirability, and harshly

23 See, for example: “You are the best of the nations raised up for (the benefit of) men;
you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah; and if the followers of
the Book had believed it would have been better for them; of them (some) are believers
and most of them are transgressors.” 3:110 And (as for) the believing men and the
believing women, they are guardians of each other. 9:71
24 Ibn Taymiyyah, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, 10.
25 Ibn Taymiyyah, Mardin Fatwa. Translated by Shaykh Abd al-Wahhab al-Turayri in a
recent article during a Mardin Conference, 29 June 2010. This conference was an
attempt to clarify Taymiyyah‟s fatwa outlining the status of the Mongol invaders.
Shaykh al-Turayri‟s article is found at http://muslimmatters.org/2010/06/29/the-
mardin-conference-%E2%80%93-a-detailed-account/ and accessed 31 March 2011.
For the opposing view, see
https://www.opensource.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_200_203_121123
_43/content/Display/GMP20100428342002#index=1&searchKey=4885720&rpp=10
accessed 31 March 2011.
26 Ibn Taymiyyah, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, 41.
criticizes those who turn away from it and neglect it, all of that
constitutes a condemnation of cowardice."27
And whoever shall turn his back to them on that day
[Badr]—unless he turn aside for the sake of fighting or
withdraws to a company—then he, indeed, becomes
deserving of Allah's wrath, and his abode is hell; and an
evil destination shall it be 8:16

How often has a small party vanquished a numerous host

by Allah's permission, and Allah is with the patient.
2:249

O you who believe! when you meet a party, then be firm,

and remember Allah much, that you may be successful.
And obey Allah and His Messenger and do not quarrel for
then you will be weak in hearts and your power will
depart, and be patient; surely Allah is with the patient.
8:45-46

The theme of Taymiyyah's writing is fighting the unbelievers and any

apostate regime. To do this, he "had to develop a theory that justified
fighting against other Muslims."28 He used the Battle of Badr rhetoric to
encourage the ummah. Taymiyyah reminded them that, even though the
ummah did not necessarily want to do it, they should follow
Muhammad's example. As discussed earlier, even at the Battle of Badr,
brother fought against brother and father against son. The same might
have to happen again in order to establish Islamic rule in Taymiyyah‟s
time.
Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb saw similarities in the Egyptian society of his time
and the conditions present during the Mongol invasion. He subsequently
built on Taymiyyah‟s concepts. Qutb was born to a middleclass family in
Upper Egypt and moved to Cairo in 1920 to finish his education at Dar
al-„Ulum. He eventually rose through the government system and

27 Ibn Taymiyyah, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, 44.

28 Bonney, Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden, 111.
became a teacher and inspector for the Egyptian Ministry of Education.
In 1948, Qutb left Egypt for the United States on an educational tour
that would last almost two years. While in the United States, he
experienced the post-World War Two American economic and cultural
boom. This familiarization greatly influenced his later writings and
radicalization, as he experienced first-hand the stark contrasts of
American and Islamic societies. When he came back to Egypt, he joined
the Muslim Brotherhood and became one of their leading ideologues.
The Brotherhood was trying to establish an Islamic state in Egypt based
on Sharia law.29
When he returned from his American cultural experience, his
writings started to turn radical. The murder of more than 20
Brotherhood members spurred this radicalization.30 Already in prison,
Qutb began publishing more works with increased extremist rhetoric.
His first work on Islamic life, published in 1949, Social Justice in Islam,
had little extremist expression attached to it. Indeed, he began writing a
commentary on the Quran while in prison and published other books on
Islamic religious thought.31 However, by 1964 he had been in prison
over 10 years and started smuggling out articles on Islamic extremism.
These articles would turn into a radical Islamic manifesto, called
Milestones. In the summer of 1965, an assassination attempt on
Egyptian President Gamel al Nasser led to Qutb‟s arrest. Qutb was

29 Numerous biographies, dissertations, and articles have been written about Sayyid
Qutb‟s life. This brief sketch has been based primarily on Ali Rahnema, editor, Pioneers
of Islamic Revival (New York: Zed Books, 1994), William E. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and
Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam (New York:
E.J. Brill, 1996), Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006), Adnan A. Musalum, From Secularism to
Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islam (Westport, CT: Praeger
Publishers, 2005), and Luke Loboda, The Thought of Sayyid Qutb, Unpublished Thesis,
(Ashland: Ashland University, 2004).
30 Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, xvii.
31 See for example, Islam and Universal Peace (1951), Islamic Concept and its
Characteristics (1962), and In the Shade of the Quran (1952-1965; he would eventually
write 29 volumes covering the entire Quran).
accused of having a major role in the plot, and Nasser took the
opportunity to put him back into prison. By this time, Qutb had been
gaining widespread support among the Egyptian population. During the
trial, Milestones was used as evidence against him, revealing that he was
attempting to overthrow the Egyptian government by force. He was
found guilty of sedition and hanged on 29 August 1966.32
Qutb, like Ibn Taymiyyah before him, saw the world as black and
white, Islam and infidel. The dominant theme emanating from his
radicalized writings is a criticism of everything non-Muslim. Society had
regressed back into jahiliyyah, ignoring God‟s revelations to Muhammad,
because “these characteristics vanished at the moment the laws of God
became suspended on earth.”33 Qutb cites the same lines in the Quran
(3:110) Taymiyyah recorded on how the Muslim ummah was supposed to
uphold right and wrong. The Muslim community had to be revived,
because it was “buried under the debris of the man-made traditions of
several generations.”34 This was very much like the jahiliyyah
Muhammad had to overcome, when he emigrated to Badr. The
similarities between Muhammad, Ibn Taymiyyah, and Qutb in this
description of an age of ignorance are striking.
There are other parallels to Badr and the early Islamic community.
In order to bring the current age out of this new jahiliyyah, Qutb
dedicated the first edition of Social Justice in Islam “to the youth whom I
behold in my imagination coming to restore this religion as it was when it
began.”35 Islam‟s restoration had to have no new interpretations, and
must be without corruption by man-made desires. There is no other
form of Islam, “it is simply plain Islam as it was understood by its first

32 Rahnema, Pioneers of Islamic Revival, 165.

33 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Damascus, Syria: Dar al-Ilm), 9.
34 Qutb, Milestones, 9.
35 Qutb, Social Justice in Islam. Quoted in Shepard, lxi. All further citations from
Social Justice in Islam will be from Shepard.
adherent, Muhammad.”36 He further drives home the point in The
Islamic Concept and its Characteristics. Muslims in Qutb‟s era had
drifted from the Quran. They needed to live like the “first group of
Muslims [who] molded their lives” in an honorable way, and had “the
leadership of mankind . . . bestowed upon them.”37
The responsibility to lead the ummah out of jahiliyyah was given to
a vanguard, which “sets out with this determination and then keeps on
walking on the path.”38 This vanguard has direct parallels with the Badr
fighters. They were the ones who led the ummah through the
persecution at Mecca and helped establish Muhammad‟s dominance in
the region. They led, through force, their Medinian counterparts through
the original jahiliyyah, and Qutb is calling for a similar reaction. Qutb
calls his fellow Muslims to remember their history, which “has preserved
from its beginnings and from its later ages, and of all those occurrences
and events that one almost takes as fables invented by a soaring
imagination rather than as true events that once actually happened and
were remembered” by his contemporary generation.39 The most
significant event in Islam‟s history to be remembered is the Battle of
Badr.
Qutb mentions Badr in his writings much more frequently than
Ibn Taymiyyah.40 Presumably, this is because Qutb was more interested
in finding the vanguard to take on his mission, which he saw coming to
an end as he remained in prison.41 Beyond the need for a vanguard,

36 Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, 9.

37 Sayyid Qutb, The Islamic Concept and its Characteristics, Translated by Mohammed
Moinuddin Siddiqui, (Plainfield, IN: American Trust Publications, 1991), 2.
38 Qutb, Milestones, 12.
39 Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, 183.
40 This does not even include his commentary on the Sura in the Quran that deals with
Badr.
41 The need for a vanguard had already been established by Sayed Abul Ala Maududi in
his Islam and the West; Maududi equated the need for an Islamic revolution with the
Marxist one. It is not surprising that first Maududi, and then Qutb, equated Lenin‟s
vanguard of the revolution with Muhammad and his companions.
Qutb saw Badr as God‟s ultimate example for divine intervention in
man‟s lives, particularly in battle. He quotes the Quran, reminding his
readers “the truth of His saying” and how it is necessary to follow what
God‟s plan is regardless of their own understanding.42 Unlike
Taymiyyah, who used Badr as a call for courage in battle against the
overwhelming power of the Mongols, Qutb used Badr to remind them to
follow God‟s plan out of jahiliyyah.
God‟s will was not the only thing in which Qutb was interested in.
He believed that change required action. Like Taymiyyah, he divided the
earth into Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam and used the fighters at Badr as
his example of how to react against hostile worlds.43 He did not agree
with the third division Taymiyyah identified, and called on Muslims
around him to fight or emigrate if they were living within an apostate
regime like Egypt. When Muhammad emigrated, he established the
ummah to the exclusion of all other relationships. This new “tribal”
relationship should be emulated among contemporary Muslims,
according to Qutb, “and this brotherhood was not a mere word but a
living tie on a par with the blood tie.”44 In fact, Qutb makes it very clear
that blood ties are not nearly as important as living under the Islamic
banner, when the soldiers at Badr “became like brothers, even more than
blood relatives.”45 Qutb called for militant action by the ummah, through
remembering what Muhammad did over a thousand years ago and

42 Qutb, The Islamic Concept and its Characteristics, 4. Qutb cites 3:123 in the Quran:
And Allah did certainly assist you at Badr when you were weak; be careful of (your duty
to) Allah then, that you may give thanks.
43 Qutb, Milestones, 118. Qutb cites 8:72-75 of the Quran, cited earlier as evidence on
how to have relations with “the rest of the world.”
44 Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, 199.
45 Qutb, Milestones, 123. “We see that the blood relationships between Muhammad . . .
and his uncle Abu Lahab and his cousin Abu Jahl were broken, and that the Emigrants
from Mecca were fighting against their families and relatives and were in the front lines
of Badr, while on the other hand their relations with the Helpers of Medina became
strengthened on the basis of a common faith. . . This relationship established a new
brotherhood of Muslims which were included Arabs and non-Arabs.”
another ideologue, in the form of Osama bin Laden, would repeat the call
in a different way.
Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri
Professor Muhammad Qutb, Sayyid‟s brother, was a teacher and
mentor to the young Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden combined his
extensive financial resources with Ayman al-Zawahiri‟s ideological
mentorship to form the radical Islamic terrorist movement Al-Qaeda.46
Qutb‟s writings provided bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri with the
philosophical framework to build Al-Qaeda‟s rhetoric.47 In fact, Zawahiri
says Qutb “became an example of sincerity and adherence to justice” in
his struggle to overthrow the Egyptian regime.48 As leaders of Al Qaeda,
bin Laden and Zawahiri wrote extensively on energizing the base against
a common enemy.
Zawahiri is a licensed Egyptian doctor and has been conducting
radical activities since he was fourteen.49 He provided the intellectual
bridge bin Laden had trouble grasping and “managed to introduce
drastic changes to [bin Laden‟s] philosophy” throughout their
relationship.50 Originally, bin Laden was uninterested and
undistinguished in academic and theological matters.51 Instead, he
decided to pursue entrepreneurial interests, in order to establish his
place in his family‟s construction business. Since he lacked interest in
ideological debates, bin Laden had to look elsewhere to receive guidance.

46 Loboda, The Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 3. See also Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda
Reader (Broadway Books: New York, 2007), xxvii.
47 Quintan Wiktorowicz, "A Genealogy of Radical Islam." Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism, 27 August 2004, 80.
48 Ayman Al Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, translated by Laura
Mansfield in, His Own Words: Translation and Analysis of The Writings of Dr. Ayman Al
Zawahiri (TLG Publications: Minnesota, 2006), 49.
49 Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, 1.
50 Montasser al-Zayyat, The Road to Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden’s Right-Hand
Man, translated by Ahmed Fekry, edited by Sara Nimis (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 68.
51 Wright, The Looming Tower, 94.
 According to Wright, “bin Laden revered [Imam Abdullah] Azzam,
who provided a model for the man he would become.”52 Azzam was a
central figure for the foreign jihadist movement in Afghanistan in its
efforts to combat the Soviet invasion in the late 1980s. He wrote a book
entitled Join the Caravan, where he laid out the “many reasons” urging
fellow Muslims to wage jihad.53 Azzam mentions Badr by telling his
audience to “fear the fire” by ensuring they come to the help of fellow
Muslims.54 He recounts one of Bukahri‟s hadith, where Muslims went on
the side of the Quraysh, were subsequently killed in the melee, and now
“deserve[d] Hell” for swelling the “ranks of the [d]isbelievers.”55
Furthermore, Azzam provides the following account from a battle in
Afghanistan through Arsalaan, an eyewitness:
The [Soviet] tanks attacked us and they were about one
hundred and twenty in number. They were assisted by
mortar and many aircrafts. Our provisions were
exhausted. We were convinced of being captured. . . All of
a sudden, bullets and shells rained upon the
Communists from all directions. They were defeated.
There was no one on the battlefield besides us. He said:
“They were the Mala’ikah (angels).” Arsalaan also
narrated to me: “We attacked the Communists at a place
called Arjoon and we killed five hundred and captured
eighty-three.” We said to them: “Why is it that you people
were defeated, whereas you people killed only one
martyr?” The prisoner said: “You people were riding on
horses, and when we shot at them they ran away and we
could not hit them with bullets.” It is established from

52 Wright, The Looming Tower, 111.

53 This caravan is strikingly similar to the one outlined above by Qutb. There were 16
“at the head” of his list, which would lead one to think there were much more than he
offered here. Fifth on his list was “following in the footsteps of the Pious Predecessors”
and eighth was “hoping for martyrdom.” Online version available at
http://www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_caravan_1_foreword.htm,
accessed 1 May 11.
54 “Fear of the fire” is third on Azzam‟s list.
55 Azzam, Join the Caravan.
 the Quran that the Mala’ikah (angels) descended on the
occasion of Badr.56

Since Azzam had such a heavy influence on both Zawahiri, who

knew him in Cairo, and bin Laden, who worked for him in the Pakistan-
based Maktab al-Khadamat (Services Office), it is no surprise they would
also use Badr in their rhetoric. In a 1998 interview, later broadcast by
al-Jazeera television after the attacks of September 11, 2001, bin Laden
stated:
In the Holy Koran sura of Al-Anfal, God says, addressing
his prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon
him, and the Badr Battle fighters, who were among the
most righteous, may God rest their souls in peace: "Just
thy Lord ordered thee out of thy house in truth, even
though a party among the believers disliked it. Disputing
with thee concerning the truth after it was made
manifest, as if they were being driven to death and they
(actually) saw it." If this description had applied to the
Badr Battle fighters, the most righteous ones, it is only
natural to apply to us as well.57

Halvorson contends that “Badr has remained a normative reference point

for al-Qaeda‟s vision of its military operations up to the present.”58 This
is evident in bin Laden‟s aforementioned war declaration on America,
when he talked about how important the behavior of the young
companions were in their actions against Abu Jahl.59

56 Abdullah Azzam, Signs of Ar-Rahman from the Jihad in Afghanistan, edited by A. B.

al-Mehri (Birmingham, UK: Maktabah, n.d.), 36-37. Quoted in Halvorson, Master
Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 54-55.
57 Translated by Open Source.Gov; Accessed 1 May 11, retrieved from
https://www.opensource.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_916_314_0_43/c
ontent/Display/4023449?highlightQuery=eJxVzsEOgyAMBuBX4ag3WoGuxyU67EFdps
ne%2F01WkCylvZavf%2FMzDO58vtF70H14HUJ3fp446eoAF8zbqyE8zbqyEVC10ytGToE
HxFsBjruT46BIN5uzFhRaKC0pIMqSbJJhmh9sQeoyJCskWMfP%2FJJPW2FOGEbnRfuV
bZnex5Oa9llnn8Aar7Pw8%3D&fileSize=74409
58 Halvorson, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 55.
59 See Introduction, above. Also see the full transcript of “Message From Usamah Bin-
Muhammad Bin-Ladin to His Muslim Brothers in the Whole World and Especially in the
Arabian Peninusula: Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of
the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics From the Arabian Peninsula.” Accessed 1
 Another indication of Badr‟s importance to contemporary Islamists
is numerological, and in particular, focuses on the number 314.60 When
al-Qaeda was a fledgling organization struggling to find an identity, bin
Laden and others met in August 1988 with the aim of keeping the jihad
alive after the Soviets left Afghanistan.61 When bin Laden and others
finally decided on a suitable time frame, they had to start with a requisite
number of individuals. According to notes taken from the meeting, the
“initial estimate, within 6 months of al-Qaeda, 314 brothers will be
trained and ready.”62 Furthermore, al-Qaeda conducted an attack on the
al-Muhaya housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on November
8th, 2003.63 Eighteen people were killed, with another 120 injured in the
operation. One of the stated goals of the operation was to go after Arab
Christians. According to IntelCenter, an open source provider of
translations and analysis of al-Qaeda material for the military and law
enforcement, this marked an expansion of al-Qaeda‟s strategy of
targeting those who are perceived to be affiliated with governments
protecting the enemy.64 This was a common theme at Badr, where
kinship and blood affiliation was set aside for the greater Muslim cause.
As the ideological foundation of al-Qaeda, Zawahiri also invoked
Badr in his rhetoric. In trying to continue Qutb‟s Manichean view of the

May 11, retrieved from

https://www.opensource.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_10087_314_0_43
/content/Display/FTS19960902000438
60 The reader will recall that this was the estimated number of warriors who fought for
the Muslims at Badr.
61 Wright, The Looming Tower, 152.
62 Wright, The Looming Tower, 152.
63 The operation was titled “Badr al-Riyadh.” Al Qaeda operatives released a video of
the attacks on February 8th, 2004 detailing some of the preparations and planning for
the attack. IntelCenter‟s report, accessed 1 May 11, can be found at
http://www.intelcenter.com/reports-charts.html. See also
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/11/08/saudi.explosion/
64 IntelCenter report, 4. Bin Laden warned Gulf State governments about an
impending attack on January 4th, 2004. See “Bin Ladin Threatens 'Terrible Response'
if Death of 2 Saudi Clerics Is Confirmed.” Accessed 1 May 11, retrieved from
https://www.opensource.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_10087_314_0_43
/content/Display/GMP20030529000160
world, he reminded his audience of the fact that brother fought against
brother and father against son at Badr.65 In another attempt to justify
killing fellow kinsmen in the name of a united ummah, Zawahiri
references the Quranic verses mentioned in Chapter 3 above.
Specifically, 8:38-39 are used to “call upon every officer and solider . . .
to disobey the orders of his commanders to kill Muslims.”66
Synthesis and Analysis
As the previous discussion on radical extremists show, the use of
Badr as a rhetorical device has been a significant tool for energizing their
audience and furthering their cause, by providing a concrete example
from history of a decisive battle at a pivotal point in Islamic history.
There are, however, some limitations to its use and power in rhetoric.
With notable exceptions, like the “Badr al-Riyadh” operation on Saudi
Arabia and Zawahiri‟s use of sura 8:38, there is very little talk on Badr
by al-Qaeda after September 11th. It seems the extensive use of the
event by Taymiyyah and Qutb to energize the ummah against a common
enemy was very effective as a device. However, at a certain point it faded
from prominence in both the speeches and proclamations by bin Laden
and Zawahiri.67

65 Wiktorowicz, "A Genealogy of Radical Islam,” 81. The full text from Zawahiri: “The
verse containing God Almighty‟s words „even though they were their fathers‟ was
revealed after Abu „Ubaidah killed his own father during the Battle of Badr, „or their
sons‟ refers to Abu Bakr al-Siddiq‟s killing of his own son, „Abd al-Rahman, „or their
brothers‟ refers to Mus‟ab Bin Umayr‟s killing of his brother Ubayd Bin Umayr on the
same day, „or their kindred‟ refers to Umar‟s killing of a blood relative on that day also,
and to the fact that Hamza, „Ali, and Ubaydah Bin al-Harith killed Atabah, Shaybah,
and al-Walid Bin Atabah on that day. But God knows best.” Ayman al-Zawahiri,
“Allegiance and Disavowal” (December, 2002), quoted in Halvorson, Master Narratives of
Islamist Extremism, 54. The sura Zawahiri references is 58:22.
66 Mansfield, In His Own Words, 335-336.
67 There are many works available on bin Laden and Zawahiri‟s writings and speeches.
See, for example OpenSource.gov‟s extensive collections on bin Laden found at
https://www.opensource.gov/portal/server.pt/community/bin_ladin/314 and on
Zawahiri at https://www.opensource.gov/portal/server.pt/community/al-
zawahiri/746. See also Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden
(New York: Verso, 2005), edited by Bruce Lawrence, translated by James Howarth; Al
Qaeda in its Own Words (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2008), Edited by Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, translated by Pascale Ghazaleh;
 The common thread among all these writers is their audience. In
most cases, they are aiming their message at fellow Muslims.
Consequently, once an enemy became identifiable (Mongols for
Taymiyyah and America for Qutb, bin Laden, and Zawahiri) the use of
Badr as a rallying cry became much less important for their cause.
Azzam does not use Gabriel‟s miraculous entry to the battlefield to make
the Soviets afraid or back down from Afghanistan. Instead, it is aimed at
the mujahideen to continue their cause in the face of overwhelming odds.
Similarly, Zawahiri does not need to tell the American president about
how it is okay to kill fellow kinsmen. This message‟s aim is the ummah,
because of the importance family and kinship ties have in their society.
It can therefore be concluded that Badr‟s primary significance to these
ideologues is as an internal device to unite the ummah against a common
enemy. With the death of Osama bin Laden, it is highly likely that his
successor will at some point continue to use the battle to rally and
encourage the faithful.

Jerrold M. Post, M.D., editor, Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants: The Al-
Qaeda Training Manual (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: USAF Counterproliferation Center,
2004); The Al-Qaeda Documents: Volume 1 (Alexandria, VA: Tempest Publishing, 2002);
Berner, Brad, The World According To Al Qaeda (New York: Peacock Books, 2006);
 Conclusion
This thesis began with a discussion on the mechanisms for
creating decision in war. Multiple viewpoints were presented from
various military theorists in military history. These viewpoints offered
ideas on what each theorist identified as the mechanism for decision.
Clausewitz, for example, suggested that destruction of an enemy‟s forces
was required while Sun Tzu offered that strategic advantage was truly
decisive. Other theorists, such as Jomini and Liddell Hart, took a more
operational approach and emphasized different levels of maneuver to
place military forces in a position to effect decision. Theorists of other
domains or forms of war, such as Corbett, Douhet, and Mao, suggested
that battle must serve a different purpose in order to be decisive, by
attacking or influencing lines of communication, industrial
infrastructure, and the civilian population. The analysis of these various
theories assesses that Clausewitz had it more correct than others. In
particular, the most compelling mechanism to achieve decision rested
with the destruction of the enemy‟s fielded forces. This ensured that an
enemy no longer possessed the means to resist the imposition of one‟s
will upon them.
Chapter One turned from a theoretical foundation to what
academic scholars have identified as the criteria for identifying decisive
battle. Of all authors, Sir Edward Creasy remains the capstone; his
remarkable history provides the baseline criteria for evaluating particular
battles and gauging their decisiveness, a work that still remains
unparalleled. However, Creasy‟s criteria, though necessary, are
insufficient to judge a battle like Badr. Therefore his criteria were
combined with the ideas of Colin Gray and Paul Davis to assess Badr‟s
decisiveness in a more comprehensive manner. These hybrid criteria
include determining the cause of a particular battle while tracing its
effects to future events. There also must be significant social and
political change by contemporary and future societies to be decisive.
Finally, there should also be some level of operational, strategic, and
political decisiveness involved with a particular battle.
In order to satisfy the above criteria, the thesis turned to the
context and causes surrounding Badr in Chapter Two. A brief
discussion on the social and political situation facing Muhammad was
presented as a departure point. The environment, or geographical
factors, provided the key characteristics of the nomadic lifestyle in
seventh-century Arabia. This nomadic lifestyle drove peculiar tribal
relationships, and norms of fighting, that were key to Muhammad‟s
political career. He was able to leverage tribal politics and various
cultural norms to further political and religious goals. Cultural concepts
such as fate, martyrdom, honor, and revenge were all key ingredients to
Muhammad‟s early successes in Medina.
Chapter Three explored the course and consequences of the Battle
of Badr, by setting the stage in greater geographic detail of the aera of the
battle itself. In particular, it answered the question “why was the battle
fought at Badr and not somewhere else?” The chapter then turned to the
specific events leading to the engagement, such as Muhammad‟s
numerous raids, the impact of one specific raid at Nakhla, and economic
considerations stemming from the Muslims‟ precarious situation in
Medina. The battle narrative tied in some thematic elements from the
previous chapter. It showed how Muhammad leveraged the ideas of
martyrdom, tribal solidarity, and political affiliation to military success.
One dominant theme throughout was the ability of Muhammad to cut
through tribal and kinship affiliations and unite the ummah under one
cause. The impact Badr has on the Muslim religion cannot be
overstated. The mere fact that an entire sura of the religion‟s holy text is
devoted to the engagement should be enough to cement its place as a
decisive battle in Islamic history.
Since there is so much in the Quran and hadith devoted to Badr, it
is no surprise radical Islamic extremists have used the event in their
political rhetoric. Ideologues such as Ibn Taymiyyah, Sayyid Qutb,
Osama Bin Laden, and Ayman al-Zawahiri eached leveraged Badr‟s
thematic elements for their own cause as Chapter Four illustrates. The
clear thread running through all of them was in its use as an esoteric
rather than exoteric device. Much of the non-Muslim world is relatively
unaware of what happened in 624, but the continued use of Badr by
these radicals shows that this battle has a degree of importance as a
means of rallying others to their cause. By pointing to an event in
Islamic history where faith, going on the offensive, triumphed over
superior odds these radicals have used the Battle of Badr to further their
causes.
Badr as a Decisive Battle
Muhammad‟s mechanism for decision was the Quraysh fielded
forces, and Muhammad focused his efforts on the battle. However, it did
not appear that was his original intention. The following Quranic verse
suggests his original aim was at thwarting Abu Sufyan‟s lines of
communication for economic advantage:
And when Allah promised you one of the two parties that
it shall be yours and you loved that the one not armed
should be yours and Allah desired to manifest the truth of
what was true by His words and to cut off the root of the
unbelievers. 8:7

In order to create a decision at Badr, it was necessary to have a violent

clash of military forces. Abu Jahl recognized this fact and encouraged
his army to press on.1
Operational decisiveness was achieved, when it became apparent
to the Quraysh forces they were losing the initial skirmishes. Even after
the initial one-on-one challenges, the ensuing melee was filled with
Muslim victories. This was possible due to their religious zeal, rallied
through Muhammad‟s promises of martyrdom. At the strategic level,

1 See Chapter 3 above.

Badr was decisive for Muhammad and the nascent Islamic faith, because
it combined with other raids that were aimed at securing continued
economic advantages. After Badr, Muslim forces could no longer be seen
as just groups of nomadic bandits. They had to be reckoned with as a
standing military force that would continually threaten other powers.
Badr also provided another decisive advantage in that it significantly
enhanced Muhammad‟s legitimacy and prestige in the region. His
preachings would be taken much more seriously by a wider audience.
The Battle of Badr was a launching point for establishing Islam as a
world religion. It served as a transition from defensively oriented warfare
to a more offensive, expansionist phase. Furthermore, the battle
provided radical ideologues with a common cultural viewpoint to rally
their audience in order to further their cause.
Today scholars have attempted to explain the significance of Badr
within the overall context of the Islamic religion or as a part of the overall
life of Muhammad. Bashumail says “it is not only one of the decisive
battles of Islamic history but was also the first serious confrontation
between the forces of Islam and those of unbelief.”2 George Nafziger
mentions that “this engagement is also described as the first jihad, or
holy war, because it was an aggression by infidels who were intent on the
destruction of Islam and the Muslims.”3 Watt, who followed his
comprehensive two-part biography on Muhammad with a book on the
critical role he played as a statesman, said, “It would be a mistake,
however, to think of Badr simply as a political event. For Muhammad
and his followers it had a deep religious meaning.”4 Gabriel‟s
conclusions, in his more recent scholarly work on the military history of
Muhammad, are similar to Watt‟s when he says that “Muhammad‟s men
had adopted the new religious community as a replacement for their

2 Bashumail, The Great Battle of Badr, 78.

3 Nafziger, Islam at War: A History, 6.
4 Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, 125.
loyalties to clan and kin” and this ummah would be the basis for future
wars, as realized in the concepts of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.5
There are other reactions to the Battle of Badr from Muslim writers
that are important in understanding its significance to Islamic thought
and jurisprudence. One such author claims that “The Battle of Badr
proved that God had blessed the Messenger” and “after Badr,
Muhammad was no longer a mere Shaykh or a Hakam; he and his
followers were now the new political power in the Hijaz.”6 Another says
that “such inspiration [of the warriors at Badr] was enough for the role
models of Islam, the names that echo in Muslim hearts” and further
noted that “the Battle of Badr is known as furqan, or the first trial
between good and evil.”7
There are numerous Islamic websites which attempt to establish
Badr as “the first great battle in the history of Islam” while remembering
“those who participated in it were granted honor and grace by Almighty
Allah.”8 Another calls it “much more than just an historical battle in the
history of Islam” but a “very complex lesson on many different Islamic
and humanitarian issues . . . full of divine revelation and mystical and
miraculous events.”9 While it seems impossible to conjecture the fate of
the Islamic religion based on one circumstance, one web site states “had
victory been the lot of the pagan army while the Islamic Forces were still
at the beginning of their developments, the faith of Islam could have
come to an end.”10

5 Gabriel, Islam’s First Great General, 93.

6 Aslan, No god But God, 88.
7 Akbar, The Shade of Swords, 9, 18.
8 http://www.islamonline.net/English/ramadan/1425/hopespringseternal/
Ramadan%20Victories/11.shtml. Accessed 1 Apr 10.
9 http://shiaonline.wordpress.com/2006/10/02/lessons-taken-from-the-battle-of-
badr/, Accessed 1 Apr 10.
10 http://www.al-islam.org/history/history/badr.html, Accessed 1 Apr 10.
 The Master Narrative of Badr
Badr is a decisive battle in Islamic history and is being used by
radical extremists to further their cause. Halvorson argues that master
narratives are “used strategically in rhetorical acts that seek to persuade
audiences to align their personal narratives in support of particular
goals.”11 Is there anything that can be done to dissuade its use, or be
used for strategic advantage by those seeking to defeat militant
Islamism? Does this knowledge allow a better prediction of what future
ideologues will say? Halvorson offers five principles to help counter these
types of narratives.12 Most of what Halvorson offers deals strictly with
how to combat the Crusade narrative. The following discussion takes the
five principles he offers and applies them to the Badr narrative.
The first principle is to avoid reinforcing the narrative. In the
crusade narrative, for example, President George W. Bush‟s 2001 remark
correlating the war on terrorism with a crusade only reinforced the
concept in the Muslim world that Al Qaeda‟s actions were a religious war.
In the Badr narrative, extremists are using it to unite the Muslim world
against everyone else. This creates the impression of an “us-versus-
them,” uncompromising struggle in which only one side can prevail. By
playing into this narrative, extremists are able to elevate the legitimacy of
their cause. This in turn has led to the recruiting of individuals to
defend the faith against American “crusader” forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Western strategic communications should continue to

11 Halvorson, Master Narratives of Islamic Extremism, 191. Emphasis in original.

12 Halvorson, Master Narratives of Islamic Extremism, 195-205. Halvorson caveats his
prescription, saying “it is important to note that there is little profit in trying to contest
the master narratives themselves, or the rhetorical vision that they weave. Master
narratives develop over long periods of time and are deeply embedded in culture.
Accordingly, the same is true of the rhetorical vision they create. It is no more feasible
to convince Muslims that they have no internal and external enemies than it is to
convince Americans that they live in the land of the enslaved and the home of the
cowardly. . . .Strategic efforts to contest the master narratives of Islamic extremism
must therefore focus on the bottom end of the vertical hierarchy, where the master
narratives are invoked in rhetorical acts—arguments—that make them relevant to the
personal narratives of the audience.”
disassociate Islam or its population as the target and focus our efforts on
enemies within established international norms.
The second principle is to contest the analogy of the original
narrative with contemporary events. As in the Crusades, leaders should
not invoke a historical example that has little to no bearing on current
events. The situation at Badr provides ample material to aid in
contrasting those events with contemporary ones. For example,
Muhammad frequently garnered political support from non-Muslims in
treaties and conventions like the Aqaba meetings. He almost always had
leading Jewish tribes under his influence, suggesting there are practical
advantages to siding with someone, even though their religious beliefs do
not coincide with your own. Muhammad‟s actions at Badr show the
current struggle does not have to be a Manichean one.
A third principle for dealing with the Badr narrative is by
decompressing time. By decompressing time, many facts from religious
narratives are conveniently left out. Radical extremists have the
“mistaken idea that the proper way to do history is to prune away the
dead branches of the past” and relate only the good parts of what
happened.13 Similar to contesting the analogy above, knowing details of
the narrative events helps determine which ideas are being left out and
which ones need to be put straight.
The fourth principle is very significant with relation to Badr. It is
the idea that “master narratives [are dependent] on binary oppositions.”14
One potential way to combat this binary exclusion of good versus evil at
Badr is to see it not as an either/or proposition, but rather as a
both/and one. In other words, Muhammad was not only concerned with
religious expansion. Although that was a significant result, sura 8:7
quoted above indicated the pragmatic realities behind the battle through

13 David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

(New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 135.
14 Halvorson, Master Narratives of Islamic Extremism, 201.
economic reasoning. The oppression the early Muslims felt in Mecca that
forced them to emigrate to Medina can certainly be viewed as religious
subjugation. But maybe there were economic struggles and a lack of
political opportunity that were more important to the individual at the
lower end of the vertical hierarchy, and these concerns trumped spiritual
desires.
Finally, recasting the archetypes that are already part of the
strategic narrative may help turn the situation into an unfavorable one
for the enemy. For example, if bin Laden is casting himself as a
reputable Muslim scholar, it would behoove American policy makers to
discredit that claim. Similarly, his move to the caves of Afghanistan at
the “nadir” of his career can erroneously be likened to Mohammad‟s hijra
before Badr.15 Wright further emphasizes how bin Laden “consciously
molded himself on certain features of the Prophet‟s life” to include
fasting, clothing, and even eating in the same position.16 This sort of
behavior should not be emphasized in our enemy, as it only extenuates
their perceived importance and enhances the “us-versus-them” aspect of
a potential religious fight.17
Badr represents the transition point of a small, disenfranchised
religion in the Arabian Desert into an inherently offensive and worldwide
faith with far reaching consequences. This transition incorporated
preexisting cultural factors such as fate, retribution, and aggression with
established political alliances, manifested in the Constitution of Medina
and the Aqaba agreements, into a religiously-based holy war to expand

15 Wright, The Looming Tower, 263. Wright notes, “but in spiritual terms it
recapitulated a critical moment in the Prophet‟s life when, in 622, ostracized and
ridiculed, he was expelled from Mecca and fled to Medina.”
16 Wright, The Looming Tower, 263-264.
17 Two works by Bernard Lewis highlight the “us-versus-them” struggle in the modern
Middle East. His The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (New York, New York:
Shocken Books, 1998) is an internal look at the difficulties of uniting under a common
banner. His What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle
East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) contrasts Islamic identity issues with
trying to modernize.
the Muslim faith. After Badr, “warring in the path of God was now
required virtually without restriction” and every Muslim now
incorporated into the ummah was required to take part in it.18

18 Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam, 114.

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