The Battle of Uhud, 625 CE

The road to Uhud

In March 624 CE (Ramadan 2 AH), a small Muslim force had routed a much larger Quraysh army at Badr, killing several of Mecca's leading men. For the Quraysh the defeat was a wound to both pride and commerce — Medina now sat astride their caravan route to Syria. Through the following year Abu Sufyan raised an army of about 3,000 men, financed in part by the profits of the very caravan that had escaped at Badr, and marched north. In Shawwal 3 AH — March 625 CE — the Meccans camped in the plain beneath Mount Uhud, some five kilometres north of the Prophet's Mosque.

In Medina, counsel was divided. The Prophet Muhammad initially favoured defending the town from within, where its forts and lava fields favoured the defenders; younger companions who had missed Badr urged open battle, and that view prevailed. The army that marched out numbered about 1,000, but on the way Abdullah ibn Ubayy — the Khazraj chief whose ambitions the Hijrah had eclipsed — turned back with roughly 300 men, leaving about 700 Muslims facing 3,000.

Archers' Hill and the turning of the battle

The Prophet drew up his line with the mass of Uhud protecting the rear, and posted around fifty archers under Abdullah ibn Jubayr on a small rise on the flank — known today as Jabal al-Rumah, Archers' Hill — with strict orders, recorded in the hadith collections, not to leave their position whatever happened, victory or defeat. Their task was to close the one open approach around the Muslim flank to the Meccan cavalry commanded by Khalid ibn al-Walid, then still fighting against Islam.

The battle opened well for the Muslims. Champions fell in the duels, the Quraysh line buckled, and their camp was overrun. Seeing the enemy in flight, most of the archers concluded the battle was won and came down to join the spoils. Khalid saw the hill empty, swung his cavalry around the flank, and struck the Muslim rear. Caught between two fronts, the Muslim army broke into confusion. A cry went up that the Prophet had been killed; in fact he was wounded — struck in the face, a tooth broken — and drew the survivors up the slopes of Uhud, where the terrain blunted the cavalry and the fighting ebbed.

The martyrs of Uhud

Tradition puts the Muslim dead at about seventy — the figure most sources give, though as with most early battles exact numbers vary between accounts — against a much smaller number of Meccan dead. Among the fallen were Mus'ab ibn Umayr, the first envoy sent to Medina before the Hijrah, and Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, the Prophet's uncle, killed by the javelin of Wahshi and mutilated after death; the Prophet mourned him as "the lord of martyrs". The dead were buried where they fell, at the foot of the mountain, in what is now the Martyrs' Cemetery visited by millions each year — see the Mount Uhud visitor page for what stands at the site today.

Abu Sufyan withdrew toward Mecca without attempting the city itself. A defeat, then — but not a decisive one: Medina's community and the pact of the Constitution of Medina held, and two years later the Quraysh had to return with a far larger coalition, to be stopped at the Battle of the Trench.

Uhud at a glance

The battlefield, Archers' Hill and the Martyrs' Cemetery are a standard stop on every ziyarat circuit — see our itineraries and the interactive map for how the sites fit together.