Indeed, even many—perhaps most—jurists and theologians have no idea how many campaigns the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) undertook in which he actually fought the enemy. Yet every one of those encounters is a famous event, each plainly mass-transmitted among the scholars: the Day of Badr, the Day of Uhud, the Day of the Trench, the expedition against Banū al-Muṣṭaliq, the campaign of Khaybar, the Conquest of Mecca, the Day of Ḥunayn, and the siege of al-Ṭāʾif.
Accordingly, many learned people—let alone the general public—though they may have heard these names or some of them, do not know which preceded which; they do not know in what region each expedition occurred, nor do they know who the opposing force was in each case or how the battle unfolded.
Most laymen, for their part, do not even distinguish between Badr and Ḥunayn. Someone will say, “the Day of Badr and Ḥunayn,” imagining it to have been one day and one campaign, unaware that the two battles were separated by roughly six years. Badr took place in the second year of—