Announced From the First Day

And the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) started the greatest mobilisation in the history of Islam so far. Usually, when the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) led an army or sent out an army, he would keep the target secret, in order to ambush the enemy and take them by surprise. In this case, however, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) made it public from day one. Why? First of all, because they were facing a new enemy: they were facing the Roman Empire. This was a different situation: now we are not facing a tribe, and we are not facing people of our own kind whom we already know. This was something unknown; it was a foreign nation. Plus, the Roman Empire had such a great reputation all over the world for its strength and power, and this reputation was centuries old. Therefore the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) made it clear from the beginning that we are going to fight the Romans.

The second reason was the distance. There was going to be a lot of travelling involved, and therefore the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted them to prepare accordingly: this was not a short journey, and therefore a lot of preparation was needed. And the third reason: it was the worst time of the year to travel. It was midsummer, very hot, and it was the time when the dates were ripening on the palm trees — and that is a very tempting time to stay behind, because the life of the people of Madīnah was based on agriculture, and their agriculture was mostly date palms; that was the main agriculture of the Anṣār. So you wait all year long for the harvest, and now we are supposed to travel right at the time when the fruit is ripening on the tree, and it is very tempting. So it was a very difficult time to set out.

But the Battle of Tabūk was going to be the last major trial the Muslims would go through before the death of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). And one will notice that the Battle of Tabūk represents the peak of Islam, and represents the most difficult test so far. And it was the Battle of Tabūk that brought down the āyāt speaking about nifāq and īmān; so this was going to be the criterion between the true believers and the munāfiqūn. This is the closing chapter of the jihād of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), so now the final laws of fighting were going to come: these are the āyāt that would abrogate the āyāt before them. And the āyāt that would expose the munāfiqūn were going to come down at Tabūk — even though the phenomenon of nifāq was a few years old by then, because nifāq appeared in Madīnah right after the Battle of Badr, so that was a span of seven years of the existence of nifāq. Nevertheless, the sūrah that speaks most about nifāq is Sūrat al-Tawbah, and Sūrat al-Tawbah was revealed in the ninth year of the hijrah, the year in which the Battle of Tabūk occurred; and most of the āyāt of Sūrat al-Tawbah relate to the Battle of Tabūk.

So these are prime moments, very important moments, and we are getting close to the end of the daʿwah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). So what is being spoken of now are the final stages, the final chapters — and they are the final and most important ones. Even though there was no fighting at the Battle of Tabūk, it was an epic event: it has great importance in the Sharīʿah, and in the sīrah, and in ʿaqīdah — in every area of Islamic knowledge. And that is why a lot of āyāt will be gone through, because so many āyāt were revealed in Sūrat al-Tawbah about the Battle of Tabūk.

So Allah (swt) said: yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū qātilū alladhīna yalūnakum min al-kuffāri wa l-yajidū fīkum ghilẓah, wa-ʿlamū anna Allāha maʿa al-muttaqīn — O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers, and let them find in you harshness, and know that Allah is with the righteous. So again, the Battle of Tabūk represents a trial from Allah (swt): as was mentioned, there was no fighting involved, but it was a test — it was a test — and it was the most difficult battle so far. And that is also the reason this battle was given the name jaysh al-ʿusrah, the army of difficulty. ʿUsrah means difficult, severe, tough — because the financing of the army was difficult; the gathering of the army was difficult; the travel of the army was difficult; the weather was difficult; and the enemy they were facing was difficult. And that is why it is called jaysh al-ʿusrah, the army of difficulty; and Allah (swt) called it in the Qur'an sāʿat al-ʿusrah, the hour of difficulty (9:117) — and that ayah will come, in shāʾ Allāh.

The mobilisation. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) sent out — the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) called on the people in Madīnah, and the surrounding tribes, and Makkah — everywhere — all of the Muslims. There had never been such a mobilisation before. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted to recruit every able-bodied Muslim, and the āyāt of the Qur'an came to support this, and to lay down the final laws regarding fighting in the way of Allah.