the Hijrah, whereas Ḥunayn took place in the eighth year, after the Conquest of Mecca. Badr is a site lying between Mecca and Medina—north of Mecca and south of Medina—while Ḥunayn is a valley near al-Ṭāʾif, to the east of Mecca. The two battles are coupled in popular parlance only because Allah sent down the angels at both, strengthening His Prophet and the believers so that they overcame their enemy: despite the foe’s greater power at Badr, and despite the fact that most of the Muslims initially retreated at Ḥunayn.

Allah reminds the believers of this favor in His Book when He says,
“Allah has already given you victory at Badr when you were weak; so be mindful of Allah, that you may be grateful” (Āl ʿImrān 3:123),

and when He says,
“And on the Day of Ḥunayn—when your great numbers pleased you but availed you nothing, and the earth, spacious as it is, felt tight around you, then you turned and fled” (al-Tawbah 9:25),

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“Then Allah sent down His tranquility upon His Messenger and upon the believers, and sent down hosts you did not see” (al-Tawbah 9:26).

…

So much so that even one of the foremost, well-known muftis was rebuked by a colleague after objecting to that colleague’s study of the Prophet’s campaigns. The colleague said to him, “Be quiet, or I will ask you, in front of the people: which came first, Badr or Uhud? For I know you do not know.” Yet it is among the mass-transmitted facts—about which no one with the slightest knowledge of historical reports can doubt—that Uhud