Ghazwah and Sariyyah

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), after receiving permission from Allah, the Almighty and Majestic, to fight:

— started sending out what is referred to as sariyyah. So you have, in the books of sīrah, sariyyah, and you have ghazwah. So what is the difference between the two? So you would have Ghazwat Badr, and you would have Ghazwat Uḥud, and you would have Ghazwat al-Khandaq. On the other hand, you would have Sariyyat Abī ʿUbaydah, Sariyyat ʿAbdullāh ibn Jaḥsh, Sariyyat Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ. The difference is, sariyyah referred to the armies that were sent out by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) without him participating in them, while a ghazwah is an army led by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). So that is the difference between a ghazwah and a sariyyah — anyone reading a book of sīrah will run into these two terms. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) started sending out sarāyā, and he was leading ghazawāt. Now, in terms of the linguistic meaning of the two words: a ghazwah means an army of conquest — that is the linguistic meaning of ghazwah — while a sariyyah is simply an army, and it does not really mean that it is involved in conquest or not. But these are just the linguistic meanings of the words, and they are not really relevant to how the scholars of sīrah use the two words.