The life of the Prophet Muhammad (10/11): the expeditions (maghazi)

By Michel Abdallah Grimbert · November 17, 2023 · 8 min read

Contents

By Michel Abdallah Grimbert, disciple of the tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya.

Badr

First there was the founding victory of the Muslims, in particularly remarkable circumstances, miraculous in some respects (under the guidance of the divine Spirit), at the battle of Badr, on 17 March 623 (19 Ramadan of the year 2 of the Hegira). A victory whose reverberation was considerable, though not yet decisive, among all the Arab tribes. It pitted, indeed, 305 Muslims (including 1 Meccan convert on the battlefield, 74 muhajirun emigrants and 230 Medinan ansar) against a thousand Meccans. Its teachings are extremely numerous and all constitute direct signs on God’s part.

Thus, first of all, the support of the angelic armies indicated in the Qur’an: (III, 123-126) ‘Yet God succoured you at Badr, when you were humiliated… Does it not suffice you that your Lord should aid you with three thousand of His angels sent down towards you?’. Then the order of battle adopted, as a disciplined body, contrary to the habits of the desert Arabs, who had until then used attacks by skirmishes or raids (ghaziyat, rendered in the form ‘razzia’), guided by the fighting instinct alone: (LXI, 4) ‘God loves, in truth, those who fight in His way in serried ranks, as if they formed a building sealed with lead’. Then the direct intervention of God in His Prophet’s conduct, when, to herald the start of hostilities, he cast a handful of pebbles in his enemies’ faces: (VIII, 17) ‘… Thou didst not thyself cast the darts when thou didst cast them, but God cast them…’.

Or again the revelation of the importance of sound, right into the first post-mortem states; since the Prophet of God also addressed directly the slain unbelievers, already in their graves, thereby indicating that they could still hear his message. This has been taken up in the Muslim funeral rite, in which the petitions made for the dead person are, according to tradition, accepted by God, who covers all things with His mercy¹. Lastly, the comparison between the numbers of the slain on either side: fourteen of the Muslims, though far fewer in number, lost their lives, against fifty dead and as many captured among the Meccans.

Uhud

There followed the battle of Uhud, in the year 625, which was, through their own doing, a bitter defeat for the Muslims; but, thanks to God, not a decisive one. For the Prophet of God himself was wounded there, and he had to mourn the death of companions and distinguished fighters, among them his uncle Hamza ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib. It must be remembered that in the course of this battle the Muslims showed themselves divided, disobeying the orders of the Prophet of God whose cover they were supposed to ensure, thereby opening a decisive breach to the opposing cavalry². And finally, some of them showed themselves faint-hearted, thirsting after the thought of the booty to be shared out³; to the point of causing the death of valiant companions, who died as martyrs (shahid, pl. shuhada’). Yet the Meccan troops cried victory too soon; believed, without verifying it, in the Prophet of God’s death; and withdrew without taking a decisive and definitive advantage: (VIII, 19) ‘Your troops will avail you nothing, however numerous they be. God is with the believers!’.

God, fortunately, was watching! But the lesson was a bitter one indeed!

Khandaq, the battle of the Ditch

Next came the battle called of the Ditch (khandaq), in the year 627, also called the ‘war of the confederates’ (ahzab), made up of Meccans and of various Bedouin and Jewish tribes, numbering some 10,000 combatants, including a thousand horsemen, against some 3,000 combatants on the Medinan side. This essentially defensive battle, which the Prophet was largely able to anticipate (by gathering in the harvests before his enemies’ arrival, thus depriving their horses of fodder), was the occasion for putting in place a defensive stratagem unprecedented in the Arabs’ art of war, consisting of a deep ditch surrounding the place to be preserved; against which the confederates’ cavalry broke. Discouraged and subjected to violent storms: (XXXIII, 9) ‘When the armies marched against you, We sent against them a hurricane and invisible armies’, the confederates soon acknowledged their defeat and beat a retreat. Salman al-Farisi, or Salman the Persian, the companion who, as we have indicated, was so close to the Prophet that the latter considered him a member of his family (ahl al-bayt), was at the origin of this stratagem. His journey, from his native Persia to his allegiance to Muhammad, whom he recognised as the announced Prophet (thanks in particular to the mark on his back which he spotted), passed first through a conversion to Christianity; he was then betrayed by his companions of the time, which led to his being sold as a slave. He was to buy back his freedom with the Prophet of God’s help. Thanks to this eminent proximity, he became a model of initiatic transmission, notably for the non-Arab peoples of the Sassanid empire: from Iraq to Khorasan, from Baghdad to Kabul, with whom his personal genius had a deep affinity.

Hunayn

Then came the battle of Hunayn, in 630, which marks the importance of the ‘prophetic model’ (uswatun hasanatun): (IX, 25-28) ‘God succoured you… on the day of Hunayn, when your great number availed you nothing… God then sent down His sakina upon His Prophet and the believers. He sent down invisible armies… O you who believe! The polytheists are nothing but impurity: they shall therefore no longer draw near the Sacred Mosque (al-Masjid al-Haram), after this year has run its course’. For on the one hand, even as difficulties and doubts came stealing in upon the companions during the harsh and trying fighting, the Prophet repeated the gesture of the ‘casting of pebbles’ which God had directly inspired in him at the battle of Badr; thereby re-enacting, it is true, Abraham’s gesture against Satan, which the pilgrims repeat on the three stelae (jamarat) set up at Mina. On the other hand, the Prophet of God, on this occasion, reminded the Muslims of their ‘pact’ (bay’ah) initiated at ’Aqaba in the year 620, and had his order carried by the voice of al-’Abbas, to which each man answered with the famous ‘here we are!’: labbayk! which wraps the pilgrimage to Allah’s sacred House in its grace, from Abraham’s call onwards: (XXII, 26-27) ‘We established for Abraham the site of the House. Associate nothing with Me, purify My House… Call men to the pilgrimage: they will come to thee, on foot or on a swift mount. They will come by ways deep in the ravines (deep, in the outward as in the inward sense)’.

Tabuk

Finally came the battle (maghazi) of Tabuk, on the margins of the Byzantine empire, in the year 631; and it happens to be the last expedition led by the Prophet of God. It prefigures and represents the Arab conquest (al-fath), after the Prophet of God’s death in 632, through successive annexations and rallyings of the tribes, then of the peoples encountered; thereby constituting what would become the dar al-islam, that is, the territories where Islamic religious law (shari’a) predominates, protective of the other communities. In this regard, two complementary notions are to be considered: firstly, which communities are to be respected by Islam? And secondly, what legal status was granted them? Concerning the first point, it concerns those called ahl al-kitab, or ‘people of the Book’, which the Qur’an specifies thus: (X, 47) ‘A prophet has been sent to every community’ and (V, 48) ‘We have given to each of them a law (shir’a) and a code (minhaj)’. History, unfortunately, restricted this very broad Qur’anic vision to those peoples alone who received the revealed scriptures: (II, 62 and V, 69) ‘Such as the Jews, the Christians and the Sabians, who are those who believed in God, in the Last Day, and will have practised the good’. As for the legal status granted them, it is called adh-dhimma; and provided they paid a tax per head (jizya) and a land tax (kharaj), they had the right to keep their institutions, notably in matters of justice, and were protected by the Muslims. It is said, as we have already noted, very pertinently among the Muslims, that the territories thus conquered had in a manner of speaking been prepared by the conquest of Alexander the Great, called in the Qur’an Dhu al-Qarnayn (XVIII, 83-92).