In the second year after the Hijrah, on a Friday in Ramadan, the Prophet Muhammad met the army of Quraish at Badr, and the military history of the young Muslim community began in earnest. This volume presents Ibn Kathir's account of that campaign and the nine major engagements that followed it -- Uhud, Al-Ahzab, Banu Quraizah, Al-Muraysi, Khaibar, Mu'tah, the Conquest of Makkah, Hunain, and Tabuk -- drawn from his monumental history Al-Bidayah wa'l-Nihayah and rendered here in an abridged English translation by Wa'il Abdul Mut'aal Shihab.
Ibn Kathir, the fourteenth-century Damascene scholar best known for his Qur'anic commentary, builds each account from the hadith collections of Al-Bukhari and Muslim and the earlier maghazi scholarship of Ibn Ishaq, preserving the chains of transmission through which the reports reached him. What results is a narrative dense with named participants, precise chronology, and the words of the Companions themselves -- from the tribal councils that preceded Badr, to Hamzah's death at Uhud and the eyewitness account of his killer given decades later, to the Prophet's entry into Makkah reciting Surat Al-Fath from the back of his she-camel.
Alongside the fighting, the book records the controversies that shaped early Muslim law and practice: the division of spoils before and after Qur'anic legislation on the subject, the affair of Banu Quraizah, the slander against A'ishah known as the Ifk and its resolution, and the case of the three Companions whose repentance after Tabuk is described in the Qur'an itself. Qur'anic verses relevant to each episode are quoted throughout in Yusuf Ali's translation, situating the military narrative within its scriptural context rather than treating it as a chronicle set apart from revelation.
This is a foundational sirah text for students of Islamic history, a working reference for anyone studying the maghazi literature, and an accessible entry point for readers encountering the campaigns of the Prophet's Madinan period for the first time. The translator keeps his abridgment focused on the events themselves, and his bracketed notes clarify points the original narration leaves implicit.