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The widely accepted account is that on the Day of Badr the captives numbered seventy and the slain among the idolaters likewise numbered seventy. This appears in numerous reports already cited—and others that will follow, God willing—including the ḥadith of al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, which states that they killed seventy men at Badr and captured seventy.
Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, however, says: “Six Muslims from Quraysh and eight from the Anṣār were killed at Badr, while forty-nine of the idolaters were killed and thirty-nine taken prisoner.” Al-Bayhaqī transmits this from him.
He adds that Ibn Lahīʿah narrated—through Abū al-Aswad, from ʿUrwah—the same figures for the Muslims martyred and the idolaters slain.
He then relates: “Al-Ḥākim, al-Aṣamm, and Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār told us, from Yūnus ibn Bukayr, from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, who said: ‘Eleven Muslims were martyred on the Day of Badr—four from Quraysh and seven from the Anṣār—while a little over thirty of the idolaters were killed.’”
Ibn Isḥāq mentions elsewhere: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ had forty-four prisoners with him, and the dead were equal to that number.”
Al-Bayhaqī further reports, through Abū Ṣāliḥ the scribe of al-Layth, from al-Layth, from ʿAqīl, from al-Zuhrī, who said: “The first to be killed among the Muslims was Mihjaʿ, the freedman of ʿUmar, along with a man from the Anṣār. On that day more than seventy of the idolaters were killed and about the same number taken prisoner.” Ibn Wahb relates the same through Yūnus ibn Yazīd, from al-Zuhrī, from ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr.
Al-Bayhaqī concludes: “This is the soundest narration we have regarding the numbers of idolaters killed and captured.” He then substantiates this with the report that both he and al-Bukhārī transmit through Abū Isḥāq, from al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib, who said: “On the Day of Uḥud the Messenger of Allah ﷺ placed ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jubayr in command of the archers, and seventy of us were struck down; yet the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions had already inflicted on the idolaters at Badr a loss of one hundred and forty men—seventy prisoners and seventy slain.”