The Battle
Ali, along with his uncle Hamza and cousin Ubaydah ibn al-Harith, proceeded to single duels. Ali's duel was against Walid ibn Utba, one of Mecca's fiercest warriors.
The youngest pair engaged first, Ali stepping forward to meet Walid. After a few moments of fencing, Waleed fell by the sword of his Muslim opponent. Then Hamza engaged Otba and cut him down. Ubayda ibn Harith, the third Muslim champion, received a fatal wound from Shaiba. Ali and Hamza hastily dispatched Shaiba, carrying Ubaida to die in the Muslim lines.
By noon the battle was over. The Quraysh fled. Forty-nine of the enemy had fallen and Ali had killed twenty-two, either alone or with the help of others. An equal number was captured. The believers had lost fourteen men on the field of battle.
Ali first distinguished himself as a warrior in 624, at the Battle of Badr. He defeated the Umayyad champion Walid ibn Utba as well as many other Meccan soldiers. According to Muslim traditions he killed at least twenty people and at most thirty five, but most of them agree with twenty seven.
Read more about this topic: Military Career Of Ali, The Battle of Badr
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“Oh, who will now be able to relate how Pantagruel behaved in face of these three hundred giants! Oh my muse, my Calliope, my Thalie, inspire me now, restore my spirits, because here is the ass’s bridge of logic, here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty of being able to describe the horrible battle undertaken.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)