Signs & Miracles · Help Sent in Battle

What happened at Uhud

Handle with care. Do not soften Uhud or skip the seventy dead. Honesty here is the credibility that carries everything else.

In short

• 1.At Uhud the archers left their position, the line broke, and around seventy Muslims were killed.
• 2.The Prophet's tooth was broken and his face wounded; a rumour spread that he had been killed.
• 3.The Qur'an does not hide it. It says the loss came from their own conduct, and rebukes the disobedience.
• 4.Say this out loud in a conversation about miracles. It stops the whole thing sounding like a fairy tale.

The claim being examined

A year after Badr the Muslims lost badly at Uhud. Seventy were killed, the Prophet was wounded, and the Qur'an discusses the defeat openly.

The Islamic position

Include this whenever you talk about Badr. A record that keeps its defeats is a record worth taking seriously.

Analysis

Q 3:152 and the surrounding passage address the reverse at Uhud (3 AH) directly, attributing it to the disobedience of the archers and to the desire for spoils, and Q 3:165 asks the believers why they are surprised when the loss came from themselves. Bukhari records the wounding of the Prophet. The presence of self-critical material in the Qur'an and hadith is a recognised historical criterion: sources that preserve embarrassing detail about their own community are treated as more reliable, not less.

From the Qur'an

From the Sunnah

Sources

Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari · Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah · Q 3:152; Q 3:165; Sahih al-Bukhari 4073

More in Help Sent in Battle

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• The handful of dust
• The promise made under siege