By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

“When you were fleeing without paying any attention to anyone, while the Prophet was calling you from your rear, He requited you with grief upon grief, so that you may not grieve for what you lose (of booty) nor for what befalls you, and Allah is well aware of what you do. (Holy Qur’an 3:153)
The above passage is the wording of God. It refers to the day when most of the companions of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) fled the Battlefield of Ohad. It is clear that the Almighty Creator is well aware of what one actually does and harbours in the heart. In other words, this Ayah – along with the preceding and subsequent Ayahs – means to say: There were many amongst the companions of the Prophet who hid disbelief deep down in their hearts, despite claiming to be Muslims.
For this reason, those afraid of their life listened to the words of the ever-tempting Satan rather than of the Prophet, and decided to desert the Messenger of God, ignorant of the fact that death is unavoidable and could come any moment – even in the safety of the home and on the comfort of the bed.
As all exegetes of the Heavenly Scripture – whether Sunni or Shi’ite – say with one voice, these Ayahs describe the tumultuous scene during the Battle of Ohad, when one of the pagan commanders, Khaled bin Waleed, ambushed the Muslims from behind the mountain pass.
Although several years later on the eve of the surrender of Mecca to the Prophet in 8 AH realizing that the pagan plots against Islam were a lost cause, Khaled came to Medina claiming he has decided to become a Muslim, he or anyone of his heathen accomplices, such as Wahshi who cowardly martyred the brave Hamzah (AS) at Ohad, could have martyred the Prophet as well, if not for the valour of Imam Ali ibn Abil Taleb (AS) on that decisive day.
, there are lessons to be learnt from this armed encounter between truth and falsehood by contemplating on the events preceding it and its aftermath, as well as in the heat of battle on the battlefield itself.
It is for this reason God has preserved till eternity some of the happenings of this particular battle, although the Holy Qur’an is not a biography of the Prophet.
be more precise, every time we recite these Ayahs of Surah Aal-e Imran our minds open up to crucial facts of faith that could help us cleanse the rust of the false notions that sectarian prejudice has accumulated over the centuries.
As those who have visited the Land of Revelation know, the Mountain of Ohad and the plain of the same name lie 5 km north of Medina. It was here that a decisive encounter took place in the first half of the month of Shawwal in 3 AH (625 AD), when a three-thousand-strong force of Arab infidels of Mecca imposed a battle on the Prophet to avenge the surprising defeat they had suffered a year earlier at Badr.
The Prophet could assemble only 1,000 able-bodied defenders, but of these, 300 of the so-called Muslims, who were hypocrites at heart, deserted him before the start of the battle. When the battle ensued and the Meccans were repulsed in the initial encounter, there was again disobedience in the ranks of the 700 Muslims as most of them – including those whom the Prophet had entrusted to guard the mountain pass –went for the booty left by the retreating infidels.
At this juncture, the pagan warlord Khaled bin Waleed, who lay in ambush, seized the opportunity and burst upon the Muslims martyring several of them and forcing most of the Prophet’s companions to flee the battlefield. The Prophet himself was injured and lost some of his teeth.
However, thanks to the valour of Imam Ali (AS) the day was saved for the Prophet and for Islam, although in the process the Prophet was injured and his brave uncle, Hazrat Hamzah (AS), was martyred by Wahshi, who tore out his victim’s liver and took it to his mistress Hind, the wife of the pagan commander, Abu Sufyan, as proof of his savagery. Hind, who was the mother of Mu’awiyya and grandmother of Yazid, tried to chew it, but God made it as hard as a stone so that a part of the blessed body of a man of paradise should not enter a person destined for the fires of hell.
Thus, without the least doubt, Islam is indebted to the valour of Imam Ali (AS), in whose praise on the Day of the Battle of Ohad the angels chanted: “There is no sword except Zu’l-Feqar; there is no brave youth except Ali.”
Among the immortal scenes of the Battle Ohad is the rushing of Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA) to the place of the encounter to nurse the wounds of her father, the Prophet, when some of the prominent Muslims were fleeing in the other direction.
It was at Ohad, from the clay of the grave of her martyred grand-uncle, Hamza (AS) that the Prophet’s noble daughter made her famous rosary of earthen beads.
Alas, the holy mausoleum of the noble Hamzah, along with the sacred graves of the 70 martyrs of Ohad, was destroyed in 1925 by the Godless Wahhabi hordes of Najd when they seized the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, desecrated the sanctities of Islam, and massacred Muslims in tens of thousands – in the precincts of the holy Ka’ba, in the holy shrine of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), in the mountain resort of Ta’ef, and in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.