Then Quraysh sent out scouts to gauge the Muslims. They found that the latter had only two horsemen—al-Miqdad and al-Zubayr. ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah and Ḥakīm ibn Ḥizām tried to persuade Quraysh to turn back, but they refused; the one who definitively pressed for battle was Abū Jahl.

The next morning they marched toward the water. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saw them approaching he prayed, “O Allah, here is Quraysh advancing in its arrogance and pride, challenging You and denying Your Messenger. O Allah, grant me the victory You promised; O Allah, wipe them out tomorrow.”

Seeing ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah among them on a red camel, he ﷺ said, “If any good remains among these people, it is with the owner of the red camel; if they obey him, they will be guided.”

Khuffāf ibn ʿImāʾ ibn Raḥaḍah al-Ghifārī, when Quraysh passed by him, had sent his son to them with several camels as a gift, offering, “If you would like us to reinforce you with weapons and men, we will do so.” They replied, “You have maintained the bond of kinship and done what is fitting. By my life, if we are only fighting other people, we are not weak; but if we are fighting Allah, as Muḥammad claims, no one has any power against Allah.”

When the armies had taken their positions, a group from Quraysh came and drank from the cistern the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had prepared. He ﷺ said, “Let them be.” No one who drank that day survived, except Ḥakīm ibn Ḥizām; he later embraced Islam, and whenever he swore an emphatic oath he would say, “No, by the One who saved me on the Day of Badr.”

Quraysh then sent ʿUmayr ibn Wahb al-Jumaḥī to estimate the Muslims. He rode his horse around their camp, returned, and said, “They are three hundred, a little more or a little less. Give me time to see whether they have an ambush or reinforcements.” He searched the valley but found nothing, then reported, “I saw nothing. Yet, O people of Quraysh, I beheld calamities bearing death—the watering camels of Yathrib carrying…"