Cities & Lands · Yawm al-Furqan · The first criterion
آبار بدر
The Wells of Badr
A watering stop on the caravan road where 313 met a thousand, and the angels wore turbans.
The account
Badr was nothing before 2 AH: wells, a market season, a stop on the Syria road southwest of Madinah. Then two columns converged on its water, and the place became a word: "the day of the criterion, the day the two forces met" (8:41). At these wells the 313 camped by the counsel of a companion who asked whether the position was revelation or war-craft, and the rain firmed the sand under their feet.
Here the Prophet ﷺ stretched his hands until his cloak fell, a thousand angels arrived "following one another" (8:9), and the chiefs of Quraysh who had tortured the weak of Makkah were laid in one of its dry pits, their Prophet standing over it at night asking whether they had found their Lord's promise true. The men of this field became Islam's aristocracy: "perhaps Allah looked upon the people of Badr and said: do as you wish, for I have forgiven you" (Bukhari 3007), the sentence that saved a man's gravest slip. The Codex marks the site as the Path's proof that geography is made by what obedience does on it: wells, then a criterion.
The facts
- Date17 Ramadan, 2 AH
- NameYawm al-Furqan (8:41)
- Guests1,000 angels
- Its men“Do as you wish: forgiven”
The Qur'an on it
وَلَقَدْ نَصَرَكُمُ اللَّهُ بِبَدْرٍ وَأَنتُمْ أَذِلَّةٌ
Allah had already given you victory at Badr while you were few.
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The words
On the Path
People beside it
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