The number of combatants in Muhammad’s battles never exceeded a few thousand, but in importance they rank among the world’s most decisive battles.
- Alfred Guillaume, Islam
General Editor
Gregory J. W. Urwin, Temple University, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
Advisory Board
Lawrence E. Babits, East Carolina University, Greenville
James C. Bradford, Texas A & M University, College Station
Robert M. Epstein, U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies,
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
David M. Glantz, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Jerome A. Greene, National Park Service
Victor Davis Hanson, California State University, Fresno
Herman Hattaway, University of Missouri, Kansas City
Eugenia C. Kiesling, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York
Timothy K. Nenninger, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
Bruce Vandervort, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Maps xi
Important Dates xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
1. The Land of Arabia 3
2. The Strategic Setting 11
3. Arab Warfare 23
4.Muhammad 53
5. Insurgency 67
6. Battle of Badr 86
7. Battle of Uhud 108
8. Battle of the Ditch 131
9. Battles of Kheibar and Mu’ta 152
10. Conquest of Mecca 166
11. Battle of Hunayn 178
12. The Tabuk Expedition and the Death of Muhammad 191
13. Muhammad’s Military Legacy 205
Notes 221
Bibliography 241
Index 245
Maps
1. Important Places in Muhammad’s Arabia 2
2. Arabia: The Land 4
3. Strategic Setting during Muhammad’s Life,
570–632 c.e. 16
4. Arab Conquests after Muhammad’s Death,
632–652 c.e. 20
5. Muhammad’s Raids, 623 c.e. 78
6. Battle of Badr, 624 c.e. 94
7. Battle of Uhud, 625 c.e. 112
8. The Battlefield of Uhud 116
9. Battle of the Ditch, 627 c.e. 134
10. The Conquest of Mecca, 630 c.e. 174
11. Battle of Wadi Hunayn, 630 c.e. 183
12. Military Campaigns of the Riddah, 632–633 c.e. 209
PEAK INTO THE INTRODUCTION [IN THE AUTHOR'S WORDS]
"......This book is about the military life of Muhammad, the founder of the great world religion of Islam. Any work about Muhammad confronts all of the problems noted above. Despite Muhammad’s outstanding military accomplishments, there is no biography of this great man that examines his military life in detail. Extant biographies of Muhammad have focused on his role as a great seer who founded the religion of Islam, or his achievements as a social revolutionary, or his abilities as a statesman and administrator who created new institutions to govern
the peoples of Arabia. There is no biography written from the perspective of Muhammad’s role as Islam’s first great general and leader of a successful insurgency.
Those biographies that do treat of Muhammad’s military achievements do so mostly in passing so that his role as a competent military commander has been largely overlooked, or treated as a matter of secondary importance, or, as with some biographies written by Muslim scholars, even attributed to miracle and divine guidance. This is a curious state of affairs in light of the fact that had Muhammad not succeeded as a military commander Islam might have remained but one of a number of interesting religious sects relegated to a geographic backwater, and the conquest of the Byzantine and Persian Empires by Arab armies might never have occurred. Samuel P. Huntington has remarked in this regard that Muhammad is the only founder of a great religion who was also a military commander. Previous generations of Western scholars often took note that Muhammad was a military man. James L. Payne, writing in 1899, said that “Muhammad is remembered as a hard fighter and skillful military commander............."
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