page_title: Medina
section_title: Battle of Uhud
hierarchical_section_title: Medina / History / Under Muhammad and the Rashidun / Battle of Uhud
caption_attribution_description: English: Mount Uhud
context_page_description: Medina, officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah, commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah, is one of the three holiest cities in Islam and the capital of the Medina Region of Saudi Arabia. The 2020 estimated population of the city is 1,488,782, making it the fourth-most populous city in the country. Located at the core of the Madinah Province in the western reaches of the country, the city is distributed over 589 square kilometers, 293 km². of which constitutes the city's urban area, while the rest is occupied by the Hejaz mountain range, empty valleys, agricultural spaces, older dormant volcanoes and the Nafud desert.
  The city is considered to be the second-holiest of three cities in Islamic tradition, the other two being Mecca and Jerusalem. The Masjid al-Nabawi built by Muhammad in 622 CE, is of exceptional importance in Islam and is the site of burial of the last Islamic prophet. Muslims visit his rawdhah in what is known as Ziyarat at least once in their lifetime, although this is not obligatory. The original name of the city before the advent of Islam was Yathrib and it is referred to by the same name in the Qur'an in Chapter 33, al-Ahzab.
context_section_description: In the year 625 CE (3 AH), Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, a senior chieftain of Mecca who later converted to Islam, led a Meccan force against Medina. Muhammad marched out to meet the Qurayshi army with an estimated 1,000 troops, but just as the army approached the battlefield, 300 men under 'Abd Allah ibn Ubayy withdrew, dealing a severe blow to the Muslim army's morale. Muhammad continued marching with his now 700-strong force and ordered a group of 50 archers to climb a small hill, now called Jabal ar-Rummaah (The Archers' Hill) to keep an eye on the Meccan's cavalry and to provide protection to the rear of the Muslim's army. As the battle heated up, the Meccans were forced to retreat. The frontline was pushed further and further away from the archers and foreseeing the battle to have be a victory for the Muslims, the archers decided to leave their posts to pursue the retreating Meccans. A small party, however, stayed behind; pleading the rest to not disobey their Muhammad's orders.
  Seeing that the archers were starting to descend from the hill, Khalid ibn al-Walid commanded his unit to ambush the hill and his cavalry unit pursued the descending archers were systematically slain by being caught in the plain ahead of the hill and the frontline, watched upon by their desperate comrades who stayed behind up in the hill who were shooting arrows to thwart the raiders, but with little to no effect. However, the Meccans did not capitalise on their advantage by invading Medina and returned to Mecca. The Madanis (people of Medina) suffered heavy losses, and Muhammad was injured.
caption: Mount Uhud, with the old Mosque of the Leader of Martyrs (جامع سيد الشهداء), named after Muhammad's uncle, Hamza ibn Abdul Muttalib, in the foreground. The mosque was demolished in 2012 and a new, larger mosque with the same name was built in its place.[22]
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