Early Islam · a Light

Badr was a watering stop on the road to Syria

Badr lies about 130 kilometres southwest of Madinah, near the coastal route that Makkan caravans took to Syria. It mattered because it had wells. Whoever held them controlled where an army could stand and where it could not, and on 17 Ramadan in year 2 of the Hijra the smaller Muslim force reached them first and filled in the rest. The place is an ordinary town today, with a mosque, a museum and a walled graveyard holding the fourteen Muslims who died in the battle. Historians still argue about exactly which depressions in the ground were the wells. What is not in doubt is that the whole engagement turned on water in a dry valley.

Badr, Hijaz · 17 Ramadan 2 AH, 624 CE