Malik, too, sent three spies towards the Muslims in a...

Malik, too, sent three spies towards the Muslims in a special manner so that they might bring the requisite information for him. They, however, returned to Malik with their hearts full of awe and fear. The commander of the enemy army decided to make amends for the numerical inferiority and weak morale of his soldiers by means of a military trick, i.e.

by making a surprise attack, create confusion among the army of Islam so that the discipline of their units might be disrupted and the schemes of their high command might be frustrated. To achieve this end, he encamped at the end of the pass which led to the region of Hunayn.

He then ordered all the soldiers to hide themselves behind the stones, the rocks and gaps of the mountains and at elevated places around the pass, and as soon as the army of Islam arrived in this deep and lengthy pass, all of them should come out of their places of hiding and attack the units of Islam with arrows and stones. Thereafter, a special group should descend from the mountains in an orderly manner and put the Muslims to sword under the cover of their archers.

Equipment Of The Muslims The Prophet was aware of the strength and the obstinacy of the enemy. Before leaving Makkah, therefore, he called Safwan bin Umayyah and borrowed one hundred coats of mail from him and guaranteed its return. He personally put on two coats of mail, put a helmet on his head, mounted a white mule, which had been presented to him, and moved on behind the army of Islam.

The army of Islam rested at night at the mouth of the pass and the day had not yet dawned fully when the tribe of Bani Salim arrived in the passage of Hunayn under the command of Khalid bin Walid. When a major part of the army of Islam was still in the pass, a sudden noise of the buzzing of the arrows and roaring of the warriors, who were sitting in ambush behind the rocks, was heard and it created a strange fear and terror among the Muslims.

Arrows were being showered upon them and a group of the enemy attacked them under the protection of the archers. This sudden attack terrified the Muslims so much that they began to flee and created, more than the enemy itself, disorder and disruption among their ranks. These developments were a source of great joy for the hypocrites present in the army of Islam, so much so that Abu Sufyan said: "Muslims will run up to the coast of the sea".

Another hypocrite said: "The magic has been counteracted".