14 ISLAM AT WAR
booty-gathering raids, but in the destruction of the enemy’s forces. At
Badr, Muhammad targeted not the rich caravan but the Meccan army. This
concept of destruction of the enemy’s army as the key to victory would
repeat itself throughout the expansion of Islam. The Romans had practiced
wars of annihilation, but this process disappeared in the Western European
military tradition, not to reappear until Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1796 cam-
paign where he set about the destruction of the enemy armies, knowing
that to be the quickest and surest path to victory.
For a man whose first experience of combat appears to have occurred
when he was fifty-three years old, Muhammad proved a remarkably ca-
pable leader, tactician, and strategist. Where he would have gone had he
not died inA.D. 632 we of course will never know, but it is unlikely that
his successors deviated far from his chosen path.
CHRONOLOGY
571 Muhammad is born in Mecca.
615–22 Muhammad preaches.
622 Hijrah to Medina.
623 Muhammad has authority in Medina, war with Mecca.
630 Occupation of Mecca
630–32 Muhammad consolidates control of Arabian Peninsula.
632 Muhammad dies, June 8.
NOTES
- Koran: Surah XCVI, 1–5.
- For the sake of those not comfortable with Arabic names, the Quraysh will, hence-
forth, be referred to as the “Meccans,” since they lived in Mecca. - Koran: Surah VIII, 39.
- HazratÛUmar Ibin-Al-Khattab, the second caliph, who ruled fromA.D. 634 to 645.
- Koran: Surah XLVIII, 27.