After the Battle of Badr, the Muslims at Medina continued to attack Meccan shipping. When a caravan took a northeastern route to Iraq, Muhammad’s adopted son Zayd led 100 men to stop it and bring its trade goods back to Medina. Their business in overland hauling was effectively blocked. And so Mecca mobilized for war.
Abu Sufyan ibn Harb led 3000 men from all of the Quraysh clans, and he also let his wife come along. Some of the other fighters brought their wives, too. In their customs, this meant they were getting serious. The women would be a vulnerability that would force them to fight harder, and the women also beat drums and screamed at them to fight harder. Abu Sufyan’s wife, Hind, promised an Abyssinian slave that if he would kill Hamzah, Muhammad’s same-age uncle, she would free him. She intended to eat Hamzah’s liver.
The Meccan army settled in around the mountain of Uhud, north of Medina. It had enough agriculture for their men and horses to live off the unharvested crops, and it allowed them to wait for the Muslims to come out to fight on the plain.
The Muslims made the decision to summon their best numbers and go meet the battle. Muhammad set out with 1000 men, but along the road, one of the Arab leaders took his clan and turned back, leaving only 700 to go on. They camped on the opposite side of the same mountain, facing Medina.
Muhammad knew that the key to managing their grossly unequal numbers was going to be an archery squad perched on the hilltop above the camp, watching for cavalry coming round to encircle them. Determined archers could pick off horses and riders, maintaining a defensive wall from a distance. He put 50 archers there, and he told them sternly that they were not to leave the hilltop no matter what. No. Matter. What. The mountain itself was also a key, since the Meccan cavalry could not ride on or over it. A surprise attack could come from around it (which the archers would stop), but its bulk acted as a wall to their backs, otherwise.
The battle began with some single-combat duels, as before, then it broke into full-scale battle. By numbers, the Meccans should have won, and then they would have gone on to occupy Medina. But although the Muslims were a smaller force, they had more spirit and determination, and for a while it looked like they would prevail. Using Muhammad’s sword, a fighter called Abu Dujunah cut down many Meccans. He was remembered for wearing a red turban, while Ali had a white plume, and two other champions had green and yellow turbans. But in the middle of these Muslim victories, the Prophet’s kinsman Hamzah was killed by the Abyssinian who had been sent in for this task.
When the archers looked down the hill and thought they saw some of their army heading out to plunder the Meccan camp, they ignored Muhammad’s orders and most of them ran down the mountain to join in. With the archery post so greatly weakened, a Meccan force was able to overwhelm the rest of them, and then their cavalry could come around to the rear of the Muslim army. Many of the Muslims who were stationed there grew frightened and ran up the mountain, where horses could not follow.
In this hour, the greatest danger came closest. Muhammad was wounded on the head and fainted, so that some were afraid he had died. A rumor spread that he was dead, and one man called out “Let us die with him,” plunging into the battle recklessly. But the rumor of Muhammad’s death also worked for the Muslims, because the Meccans got the idea that it was over, too. One of the men with Muhammad gave him some very simple first aid, and he was again able to stand.
At the end of the Battle of Badr, one Meccan had promised Muhammad that he would be back on his horse to kill him. Now this man closed in, charging the small group around the Prophet. But borrowing a spear, Muhammad stepped out and speared him through the neck as he rode forward. The man rode back to his camp and died.
If that wasn’t literally the end of the battle, it was nearly so. Both sides were falling back, exhausted, unsure who had won, to count and tend their dead. The mountain was large enough that they were soon out of each other’s sight, and once the event of the battle was over, neither side sent anyone to seek out further fights or assassinations. It was just over. The Meccans were pretty sure Muhammad had been killed, so they searched for his body. The losses they counted on their side had been only 22 out of their 3000, while the 700 Muslims had lost 65. Modern battle customs would not have armies breaking off and going home with so few dead and so many alive, but this was not a time of “total war.”
But it was a time when they practiced something we take pains to stop our men from doing: mutilating the dead. Abu Sufyan’s wife Hind did indeed take a bite out of Hamzah’s liver, then she went onto the field and cut more bits of him off (but not to eat). Some of the women strung pieces of mutilated warrior onto string, as jewelry. Then the Meccans packed up to leave. They did think about assaulting Medina, but they had heard that a force of men stayed there (true, but outnumbered 10 to 1 by the Meccans, so it’s a bit odd that they were scared off by 300).
The Muslims’ first act was to have their noon prayer, and they only returned to the battle plain when the mutilation was over and the Meccans had pulled back. The Muslims encouraged the Meccans to beat a fast retreat home by setting many campfires as though one of their allied tribes had come in after dark. They buried their dead on the field, and even some who died later in Medina were carried back to the new memorial cemetery. One of the surprises among the dead was a rabbi from one of the Jewish tribes that had decided not to honor its defense pact with Muhammad. He had believed them to be in the wrong, so he went on his own. We’ll come back to the Jewish tribes of Medina.
Who won the Battle of Uhud? If you add up the dead, the Meccans won. But the goal of the Meccans had been to stop the Muslims from raiding their caravans. They had set out with an overwhelming force but went home without anything being settled. In a defensive situation, the defender who is left standing has won. As things played out, Medina’s power to raid caravans and cause problems for Mecca was far from diminished.