Scholars
the battle of Badr
In Ramadan of the second Hijri year (624 CE), two small armies met at Badr: about 313 Muslims against nearly a thousand Quraysh guarding their caravan home from Syria. Victory went to the Muslims; the Quraysh lost their champions and about seventy were captured. The Qur'an calls it the Day of the Criterion — the day truth was marked out and the new call stood firm — and remembers angels strengthening the believers. Many captives returned home by ransom or by teaching Muslim children to read and write. So Badr became a name for divine aid and the start of a period that tilted the peninsula's balance of power; without it Medina might not have survived at all. Muslims keep its memory every Ramadan and recite its verses in every generation, until it became the measure by which faith's victory with few numbers is judged.