"Your Great Numbers Elated You"

To close, the ayah that was revealed about Ghazwat Hawāzin, or Ḥunayn — it is called Hawāzin and Ḥunayn: Ḥunayn because it is the place, the location, and Hawāzin is the name of the tribe. Allah (ʿazza wa jall) says:

Assuredly Allah did help you on many battlefields, and on the day of Ḥunayn: behold, your great numbers elated you, but they availed you nothing; the land, for all that it is wide, did constrain you, and you turned back in retreat. Allah (ʿazza wa jall) says: behold, your great numbers elated you — you felt confident in the numbers you had — and that is where the problem lies. If we feel that we will win because of our numbers; if we feel that we will win because of our training; if we feel that we will win because of our technology; if we feel that we will win because of our arms and weapons — we are mistaken. We win because of Allah (ʿazza wa jall), and whenever we attribute our victory to anything other than Allah (ʿazza wa jall), we will be defeated; the help of Allah will not be with us. Therefore this is what counts: it is the īmān; it is the trust we have in Allah (ʿazza wa jall), the tawakkul; it is our dependence on Him. Allah (ʿazza wa jall) says that you thought your numbers would give you victory, and your numbers did you no good. And then Allah (ʿazza wa jall) says: even the land became too constrained for you — you felt so crowded that you felt the land was not even enough for you; you had to flee. And then after that Allah says: but Allah did pour His calm on His Messenger and on the believers, and sent down forces which you saw not; He punished the unbelievers; thus does He reward those without faith.

The people of Hawāzin were defeated by a core group of the Muslim army. The Muslim army was twelve thousand; however, those who stood firm with the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) after the great retreat were between eighty and a hundred Companions. And there was a core group among those who were the firmest and never retreated — in fact, they only moved forward — and these were the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and his uncle, and his cousin, and two or three other men next to them who were guarding the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). And then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) called for the Anṣār specifically, and then he called for al-Khazraj, and then he called for Banū al-Najjār. These had been the supporters of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) throughout the past years, and they were his supporters now; and these are the ones who defended the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and then defeated the huge army of the tribes of Hawāzin.